HEARD AFTER HALFTIME: World-leading 13.06 for Roberts at NCAAs, IAAF replies to the...
News, views and noise from the non-stop, worldwide circus of Olympic sport: ● Athletics ● The first day of the NCAA Division I Championships in Austin, Texas (USA) showed once again why – except in the opinion of the IAAF World Rankings compilers – this is one of the best meets in the world each […]
LANE ONE: Finally, it’s time to talk about sponsoring Olympic-sport athletes
If you’re an athlete in one of the four major professional sports in the U.S. – baseball, basketball, football or ice hockey – you...
HEARD AFTER HALFTIME: IAAF’s women’s regs suspended by Swiss Court, so Semenya can...
News, views and noise from the non-stop, worldwide circus of Olympic sport: ● Athletics ● South Africa’s Caster Semenya won a round against the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and its regulations for women in the 400 m-Mile events on Monday. The Swiss Federal Tribunal, acting on a request from Semenya’s attorneys, suspended the […]
LANE ONE: The IOC keeps changing the Games, and not a minute too...
International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach has said – with good reason – that the Olympic Movement is in pretty good shape at the moment. Olympic host cities are set through 2028, there are two viable candidates for the 2026 Winter Games and the first-ever Olympic competitions in Africa will be held in 2022 with […]
HEARD AFTER HALFTIME: IOC is going to be even more flexible in the...
News, views and noise from the non-stop, worldwide circus of Olympic sport: ● Olympic Games ● The International Olympic Committee’s Executive Board received a report on Wednesday from a working group charged with reviewing the procedures for selecting the host city/region/country for the Olympic Games. Its recommendations, which will be offered for approval by the […]
THE BIG PICTURE: Iran’s judo federation pledges not to discriminate against Israel …...
All credit to the International Judo Federation, which has consistently championed the right of all countries – notably Israel and Kosovo – to compete in its international competitions, especially those held in nations which either do not recognize their existence, or which do not have diplomatic relations. This has especially been an issue with Iran, […]
LANE ONE: Olympic budget pressures mean nothing to those who aren’t paying for...
Spending someone else’s money is pretty easy. The Olympic Movement has been great at it for decades. The International Olympic Committee, especially under the administration of President Thomas Bach (GER), has found that host cities have gotten tired of the continuous bleating from it, from the International Federations and the National Olympic Committees, and has […]
LANE ONE: Remembering the day the Olympic Movement didn’t collapse: 8 May 1984
(This is a reprint of our Lane One column of 9 May 2018, which was available in our old PDF format and not as...
LANE ONE: The LA28-USOC deal with NBC could be just the beginning
Words like “visionary” and “unprecedented” and “revolutionary” have been thrown about over the past week about the agreement between NBCUniversal, the Los Angeles 2028 organizing committee and the United States Olympic Committee to combine their sales efforts. In fact, this might only be the beginning. The deal was hailed as a game-changer, but it really […]
LANE ONE: Thomas Bach is changing the IOC into something totally new, but...
Meetings of the International Olympic Committee’s Executive Board draw quite a bit of media attention, even though there is often not a single athlete in attendance. There are some former athletes, like gold-medal fencer Thomas Bach (GER), the IOC President since 2013, and American rowing bronze medalist Anita DeFrantz, who are members of the Executive […]
LANE ONE: Thomas Bach’s IOC wants “to get the couch potatoes off the...
The focus of the Olympic Movement has changed. It was, until very recently, to stage the greatest sports spectacle in the world. But in a 54-minute news conference following the second day of International Olympic Committee Executive Board meetings, IOC chief Thomas Bach clearly signaled that the technical organization of the Games will more and […]
LANE ONE: A call to eliminate guns from the Games, but that doesn’t...
The highly-respected Alan Abrahamson, one of the best commentators on Olympic sport, wrote on his 3WireSports site last Saturday that: “The Games and the values for which the Olympics purport to be about — excellence, friendship, respect and, by extension, tolerance — are the very thing that stand in marked contrast to an abhorrent shooting […]
THE BIG PICTURE: German Cartel Office relaxes IOC’s Rule 40 restrictions through 2026
A long administrative process that began in 2017 resulted in a decision issued Wednesday (27th) that “extended” the personal advertising activities of German athletes...
LANE ONE: The Paris 2024 legacy will be about athletes, but not Olympians
The Paris 2024 organizing committee created plenty of headlines last week with its announcement that it would ask the International Olympic Committee to approve four “added” sports to the Games: Skateboarding, Sport Climbing, Surfing and Breakdancing. The latter drew most of the attention and the Paris 2024 folks created a gaudy, 29-page press kit (here) […]
LANE ONE: Think politics and sports don’t mix? They mix, but pretty badly...
During his 20-year term as the head of the International Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage often insisted that “sports and politics don’t mix.” He found out, to his horror and that of the entire world, that they do mix and can mix very badly, as Palestinian terrorists murdered 11 members of the Israeli Olympic delegation at […]
LANE ONE: Burger King is not an Olympic sponsor, but it has the...
This is a busy time for the leadership and staff of the International Olympic Committee, even though there is no Olympic Games – winter or summer – in 2019. The IOC and especially the Executive Board have a long list of issues to be dealt with, including the continuing saga of Russia and its standing […]
LANE ONE: The Olympic Games cannot solve the world’s problems, as Paris 2024...
There was a time when modesty and humility were prized, and the idea that if you made reasonable promises and over-delivered on those promises, the results would be widely viewed as positive. Those concepts appear today to be as ancient as Egypt’s pyramids. Society in many countries appears divided along many lines and the social […]
TOKYO 2020 Panorama: Government costs are still an issue, but there will be lots...
The cost to the Japanese taxpayer for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo is holding steady – sort of – according to a Thursday...
SPEED READ: Headlines from The Sports Examiner for Friday, 18 January 2019
Welcome to The Sports Examiner SPEED READ, a 100 mph (44.7 m/s) review of the week (so far) in the turbulent world of international sport: LANE ONE: Wednesday: There really is a change going on in Olympic bidding, if you believe what the Milan-Cortina bid has in their presentation submitted on 11 January. Its organizing […]
LANE ONE: The IOC can pat itself on the back (for now): the...
It’s so easy to be against everything these days. And should something positive happen, it’s usually discounted as unimportant, or those claiming responsibility grow longer arms to pat themselves – endlessly and loudly – on the back. But it’s worth taking notice of what has happened with the 2026 Olympic Winter Games bid from Italy, […]
Recent Posts
