In a world of disruption, the Olympics confronts the World Friendship Games

In a world of disruption, the Olympics confronts the World Friendship Games

The No. 1 complaint athletes have about the Olympic movement is that they can’t make money.

Meet the International Olympic Committee-disapproved Friendship Games, coming this September in Russia: 36 sports, 21 venues, 17 in Moscow, four in Ekaterinburg (including track and field Sept. 18-22).

Total prize money, across all sports: $100 million. Winners get $40,000. Second place, $25,000. Third, $17,000. No ‘Olympic village.’ Instead, you’ll be welcome in three- or four-star hotels.

Push, meet shove – brought to the world in some significant measure by Umar Kremlev, arguably one of the most provocative and interesting figures in world sport in 2024. 

Track and field has an 18-to-34 problem. It is not the long jump

Track and field has an 18-to-34 problem. It is not the long jump

The problem with track and field is not the long jump. 

To be honest, if you know who Miltiadis Tentoglou is, you are a real junkie and ought to be attending Track and Field Anonymous Meetings. With me, maybe.

The problem with track and field is that it is both anchored in tradition and traditionalists, and while traditionalists love the sport, and that’s all good, track and field is dying a very noticeable death with the audience it needs to resonate with, 18 to 34 year olds. 

What 'Olympic family' really is about: the story of Ed Hula and Miguel Hernandez Mendez

What 'Olympic family' really is about: the story of Ed Hula and Miguel Hernandez Mendez

As we get older in life, we learn a few things. Human beings need hope. And we need each other.

This is the story of Ed Hula, a pioneering Olympic journalist in the United States, and Miguel Hernandez Mendez, who for most of his life has been a journalist in Cuba and is now, in significant measure because of the goodness of Ed Hula, a new American citizen. 

“Olympic brothers,” Miguel said in a recent telephone call.

Rough justice 4 teen girls: Kamila, u get 4 yrs 4 1st offense. Adults? Whut?

Rough justice 4 teen girls: Kamila, u get 4 yrs 4 1st offense. Adults? Whut?

From the get-go, there was never any question there was a substance in the Russian skater Kamila Valieva’s 15-year-old body that shouldn’t have been there.

The issues all along were: 1/ where did that substance, the banned substance trimetazidine, or TMZ, come from, 2/ and what to do about it, since she was 15, and in theory someone who is 15 ought not be treated the same under the rules, anyone’s rules, as someone who is, say, 32. 

Put aside everything else – and there’s so much connected to the Valieva matter, which threatened to all but eclipse everything that wasn’t Valieva at the Beijing 2022 Winter Games – and those two keys make up the core of Monday’s Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport judgment, which said those rules mean Valieva deserves to be treated like a grown-up. 

So, it said, she got what she deserves, the usual: a four-year ban.

For, let’s note, a first offense.

How does any of this make sense?

How does any of this make sense?

In 2024, it would make for an excellent debate at an Oxford or Cambridge about what constitutes a World Athletics-driven “boycott” of Russia and what amounts to a punitive exercise in keeping them out that is indisputably and irrevocably at odds with the fundamental principle of the Olympic charter, which calls for inclusion.

Because, in the end, who gets punished? Vladimir Putin? Or the athletes?

What would the 1980 version of Seb Coe say? What would the 1980 version of Seb Coe tell the then British Olympic Assn. chair Denis Follows, who defied the then prime minister Margaret Thatcher and ensured a British team went to Moscow? Maybe, you know, thanks for letting me live my dream? Which is what an athlete asks?

People, wake up. The problem is not Saudi Arabia. It's Iran

People, wake up. The problem is not Saudi Arabia. It's Iran

News: Jon Rahm, the 2023 Masters champion, signs with the Saudi-backed LIV golf tour, for $300 million per many reports.

Like a game of whac-a-mole, some number of PGA Tour golfers claim betrayal. Predictably, too, some number of writers scream about 9/11 or Jamal Khashoggi or blood money or sportswashing.

As challenging as it is for some people to read or hear what’s next, these things must be said, because journalism is about the truth.

Time - now - for Plan B for the Paris 2024 opening ceremony

Time - now - for Plan B for the Paris 2024 opening ceremony

From the front lines of campus unrest here in the United States, this dispatch from the University of Southern California, where the mood decidedly is, to be gentle, unsettled.

One of my best students in last year’s sophomore news writing cohort was personally called out, by name, at an on-campus protest—right in front of the j-school building that, you should know, is due to be the main press center at the 2028 LA Games. One of my current sophomore standouts, 19 years old, covering a rally, was so rattled by taunts she asked to be driven home in a police cruiser. She called me, her professor, from the back of the car, saying, am I going to be OK? 

This, so we are all clear, is the key demographic — teens, college kids — the International Olympic Committee is seeking to draw to the Paris 2024 Games in eight short months. Prediction: uphill climb.

Casey Wasserman at the IOC and unequivocally in solidarity with Israel

Casey Wasserman at the IOC and unequivocally in solidarity with Israel

MUMBAI — Presenting Monday to the International Olympic Committee at its 141st assembly, Casey Wasserman, chair of the LA28 organizing committee, said, “I unequivocally stand in solidarity with Israel.

“But let me be clear. I also stand with the innocent civilians in Gaza who did not choose this war.”

Wasserman’s remarks marked part of a stirring one-two combo in which he and former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, now the U.S. ambassador to India, served noticed that sports and politics assuredly do mix.

AI comes to the IOC and says it and Olympic movement need, uh-oh, 'radical overhaul'

AI comes to the IOC and says it and Olympic movement need, uh-oh, 'radical overhaul'

MUMBAI – International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach’s manta, change or be changed, is apt. 

The challenge facing the IOC, the Olympic Games, indeed the wider Olympic movement, is both fundamental and existential. All of it is a 19th-century construct. Owing to broadcast television, U.S.-driven corporate sponsorship and, to some extent, Cold War rivalries, it found its footing in the 20th century. Now it is struggling to find a way in our 21st century. 

Television ratings are down. The sponsor program needs a far-reaching re-do. Change is not an option. It’s a must. It’s why, as part of his speech Saturday night here opening the IOC’s 141st session, Bach for the first time made extensive reference to the possibilities of artificial intelligence and, too, announced the IOC would study the creation of an “Olympic Esports Games.”

Change is one thing. But the IOC is furiously slapping at different currents, trying to find direction, not least about its own rules and about whether Bach or someone else ought to be in charge come 2025, when Bach, in theory, is due to step down.

Taylor Swift has what the Olympics needs. These five sports for LA28 are not it

Taylor Swift has what the Olympics needs. These five sports for LA28 are not it

MUMBAI – Squash? Really? That’s part of a purportedly cool plan to draw in tweens, teens and 20-somethings? Weed is legal in California, no problem out of competition, thank you doping control, but that is the idea? Seriously? Squash?

I teach college students at the University of Southern California, a key piece of the International Olympic Committee’s target audience. When the discussion came up this week in class about the five new sports the Los Angeles 2028 said it was proposing, squash, yay, and four others, a package the IOC executive board ratified here Friday for confirmation by its assembly in a few days, one of my students who consistently sees right through institutional BS called it the way it is:

“What,” he said, “is squash?”