There are 44,000 windows along the six-kilometer route, roughly three and a half miles, of the River Seine proposed for the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Keep this in mind as you weigh Saturday’s events in Pennsylvania, where a gunman climbed to an open roof to take shots at Donald Trump.
It is 100% impossible to secure open space.
Reynold Hoover is four weeks into his new gig, chief executive officer at LA28.
Hoover, 63, comes to the job after an incredible career, mostly in the military, that saw him earn the rank of lieutenant general. That’s three stars.
Skeptics: do we really need a former three-star general militarizing the Olympic Games? In, of all places, Los Angeles?
“I’m not going to try to militarize the organization or the Olympics,” Hoover said Wednesday in his first interview since taking over at LA28. “That’s the wrong way to go.
EUGENE, Oregon – The 2024 U.S. track and field Trials came to a close Sunday with Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone winning the women’s 400-meter hurdles, and in world record time, 50.65 seconds. “Honestly… when I crossed the line,” she said, “I was, like, oh, snap.”
Sydney is a generational talent. She is so ridiculously good, almost two full seconds ahead of runner-up Anna Cockrell, in 52.64, she might well do in Paris in the 400 hurdles what most world-class female racers can only dream of in the open 400 – run in 49 seconds. Sydney is so good she has run the fastest time in the world this year in the open 400, 48.75 seconds. But she’s not going to run that in Paris. Only the 400 hurdles.
Sydney is so good that her 400 hurdles now is like a men’s 400 hurdles featuring Edwin Moses in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Edwin won 122 in a row. Sydney doesn’t race that often. Not hardly. Still, the point is the same. With respect to Holland’s Femke Bol, until proven otherwise, it’s not who’s going to win. It’s how much by.
EUGENE, Oregon – As part of the official schedule of the 2024 Trials, USATF, the United States track and field federation, dutifully staged 20-kilometer race walks for both men and women Saturday morning, and three men and three women finished 1-2-3 in each race and none stands much of a chance to go to Paris for the Olympics, and what are we doing here?
The third-place finisher on the women’s side Saturday is 58 years old, Michelle Rohl, mother of five, grandmother of one. She competed in the Olympics in 1992, 1996 and 2000. Allen James, who competed in the Games in 1992 and 1996, finished 14th Saturday in the men’s race. He is 60.
EUGENE, Oregon – Track and field is not football, the American kind. But it happens on the track that falls happen. That is, in racing, people fall down. Sometimes at critical moments. Sucks.
The thing is, just as in football, as the timeworn saying goes, it’s not that you fall – it’s how you get back up.
Football coaches will tell you, endlessly, it’s a matter of character.
Which brings us, amid the U.S. Trials for the 2024 Paris Games, to Athing Mu, who fell earlier this week in the women’s 800 meters, and is not going to get the chance to defend the gold medal she won in the event in Tokyo three years ago.
EUGENE, Oregon – To get to the shrine that is Pre’s Rock, about a mile east of Hayward Field, you must go – drive, sure, but on foot is best, really – up.
The spot where Steve Prefontaine died, 50 years ago next year, is up a steep and winding hill. Do you believe in certain theologies? Up?
On the occasion of a major track meet, like this week’s U.S. Trials, pilgrims wind their way up to the Rock. As they did Thursday. Scott Davis, 53, of Grosse Pointe, Michigan, a pastor, referring to Prefontaine: “He’s an inspirational figure. Never quitting.” Michelle Bright, 51, of Bryan, Texas, and Katherine Denena, also 51, of College Station, Texas, Bright saying of Pre, “I’ve always known the name.”
What is it about Steve Prefontaine, dead since late May 1975?
Michael Phelps will be back to call swimming at the Paris Games, NBC announced Friday, in maybe the least-unexpected pre-Paris Games news ever, and good for Michael.
Disclosure: 16 years ago, after his eight-for-eight at the Beijing Games, I worked with Michael on writing his best-selling book, No Limits. Here is to nothing but success and, more importantly, joy and sweetness for Michael, Nicole and their four boys.
In Tokyo three years ago, I had a perch in the row behind Michael, Dan Hicks, Rowdy Gaines and Elisabeth Beisel, and – department of the obvious – Michael 1/ is a star, 2/ knows swimming and 3/ isn’t afraid to say what’s on his mind. That’s a recipe for good TV.
Now, to the matter of the moment: is Michael going to draw 18-to-34-year-olds?
Erriyon Knighton, second in the men’s 200 meters at last year’s Budapest world championships, had not run since March 30. Odd for an Olympic year. On Wednesday, it was made clear why: he had been provisionally suspended April 12 after testing positive for the steroid trenbolone.
Cattle ranchers use the stuff to make animals bigger, and on Wednesday an arbitrator cleared Knighton of doping, ruling he had ingested contaminated meat. Knighton is now free to run in the 200 at the U.S. Trials in Eugene, the heats beginning next Thursday.
At first blush, it is tempting to lump Knighton in with a bunch of other American track and field athletes who also got off, and, if you were the Chinese authorities, or for that matter, following the situation from anywhere, looking at what’s what in the United States and saying, WTF – is there one set of rules for 🇺🇸 and another set of rules for everyone else?
Holy hell, but Thomas Bach really is out to get Seb Coe.
Anywhere and everywhere you go in Olympic circles these days, it’s the talk, and what transpired Friday – calling 911, Bach all but sticking a figurative knife into Coe in broad daylight, anointing Hugh Robertson, head of the British Olympic Association, an individual IOC member – was just the latest as the wheel of IOC presidential succession politics turns.
For months, Bach has sought to downplay the what-comes-next phase for International Olympic Committee leadership. His term, in theory, ends in June 2025. An election is purportedly set for sometime next year. If there is an election.
U.S. swimmer Kensey McMahon just got four years for an anti-doping rule violation, and it’s not right.
To be clear, under the rules, the four-year ban she got is – correct.
But there can be a difference between correct, and right, and this is one of those times, and perhaps the case of Kensey McMahon can, maybe sooner than later, effect a course correction in the anti-doping rules because this matter underscores the disconnect between the rules as they’re supposed to be and the way they work, when applied, as written, with no wiggle room, in real life.
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