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≡ THE 5-RING CIRCUS ≡
● Olympic Games 2028: Los Angeles ● LA28 announced Archer as its “Official Air Taxi Provider” for the 2028 Games and for the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee. The company and the organizing committee
“will look to integrate Archer’s Midnight eVTOL aircraft across the LA28 Games in a variety of ways, such as transporting VIPs, fans, and stakeholders, while electrifying vertiport take-off-and-landing hubs for key venues and providing support for emergency services and security.”
The Midnight is a four-passenger, piloted vehicle; as to destinations:
“Archer’s planned network in LA includes vertiports at key venues that are central to the LA28 Games, including the Stadium in Inglewood and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Additionally, the network is planned to include critical visitor hubs, including Los Angeles International Airport, Hollywood, Orange County, and Santa Monica.”
The air taxi idea was floated for Paris 2024, but never took off.
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The Los Angeles City Council approved, by a 12-3 vote, a motion for an ordinance to be drafted to increase the city’s Hotel Worker Minimum Wage Ordinance from the present $18 per hour for hotels with more than 60 rooms in steps to $30 by 2028.
The increased would be to $22.50 hourly by July 2025, then $25.00 in 2026, $27.50 in 2027, and $30.00 in July 2028. In addition, workers would be paid $8.35 per hour in health care costs, beginning in 2026, and a minimum of six hours of training time for all workers.
The existing ordinance also requires 96 compensated “off time” hours and 80 hours of uncompensated time off annually. The revised ordinance is expected to come back to the Council for approval on 23 May.
The LA28 organizing committee has already negotiated room blocks for use by officials, media and sponsors; it is not clear if the ordinance – when passed – will impact hotel participation or costs.
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The National Football League team owners will consider a proposal next week to allow players to participate in the flag football competition at the 2028 Olympic Games.
Agreement on the resolution will not end the issue, but allow the NFL to negotiate with the NFL Players Association and the International Federation of American Football on entry standards and other details for 2028.
The proposal currently would have each team designate an “international player” and a maximum of one additional player per team to be selected for Olympic play.
● Olympic Games 2032: Brisbane ● The Queensland government is back asking for money, this time for transportation infrastructure improvements, but not directly to support the 2032 Games.
On Monday, Queensland Premier David Crisafulli told reporters:
“We are going to have to spend billions of dollars on transport infrastructure, and that’s not just for the Games. That’s for a growing region, and that does involve partnerships with Canberra.
“[The federal government] are working with us now to deliver the upgrades that the Bruce Highway haven’t had for a generation, and they’re paying 80 per cent of it. So they should. It’s a federal road, but we negotiated in good faith.
“I see 2032 as being a deadline that we can work to, but I’m very confident that people will see good partnerships between us and the federal government’s support.”
Queensland is looking for more rail lines and new roads; these are permanent improvements that are actually not part of the 2032 Games requirements, but naysayers will include the costs as “Olympic” no matter what.
● Anti-Doping ● The World Anti-Doping Agency placed Iran on its “watchlist” of possibly non-compliant countries for “non-conformities related to the area of testing that were identified through the Code Compliance Questionnaire (CCQ) exercise.”
The Iranian anti-doping agency provided WADA with a corrective plan within four months, which, if completed, will remove the country from the watchlist.
● Athletics ● The Athletics Integrity Unit provisionally suspended Ukrainian jumping star Maryna Bekh-Romanchuk, 29, as of 14 May, for using testosterone.
She has not competed since the Paris Olympic Games, where she placed 11th in the triple jump. She’s a three-time Olympian, and the 2019 Worlds women’s long jump silver medalist and 2023 Worlds women’s triple jump silver winner. She was expected to compete at the Doha Diamond League meet on Friday.
Also banned was Kenyan Nehamiah Kipyegon (KEN), 27, a 60:34 half-marathoner from 2024, for three years for the use of trimetazidine. His results were nullified as of 15 February 2025. He failed an in-competition test on 15 February and said that he did not know that he used the substance, but accepted the consequences.
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In what should be a busy weekend on the track, three major events stand out:
● The Diamond League resumes on Friday in Doha (QAT) with Olympic men’s 200 m champion Letsile Tebogo (BOT), five-time women’s World 100 m champ Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce (JAM) and Tokyo Olympic men’s javelin winner Neeraj Chopra of India.
The men’s discus will be fascinating with Tokyo Olympic winner Daniel Stahl (SWE), 2022 World Champion Kristjian Ceh (SLO) and Paris Olympic bronzer Matt Denny, who is the no. 2 thrower all-time with his 74.78 m (245-4) toss in the wind tunnel in Ramona, Oklahoma last month. The meet is available in the U.S. only on the FloTrack streaming service.
● In the U.S., the Atlanta City Games “street meet” will be held in Piedmont Park on Saturday (17th), with Paris Olympic men’s 100 m champ Noah Lyles scheduled to run in the men’s 150 m dash, in which he is the defending champion.
Part of the meet will be shown on NBC from 3-4 p.m. Eastern time.
● U.S. collegiate conference meets will be all over the place, with the Atlantic Coast Conference in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; the Big 10 at Eugene, Oregon; the Big XII in Lawrence, Kansas and the Southern Conference meet in Lexington, Kentucky, among many others.
Then, on Sunday comes a World Athletics Continental Tour Gold meet – the Seiko Golden Grand Prix – with Paris Olympic women’s 100 m silver medalist Sha’Carri Richardson of the U.S. expected to make her seasonal debut.
Olympic champions Yaroslava Mahuchikh (UKR: high jump) and Haruka Kitaguchi (JPN: javelin) are also expected to compete.
● Basketball ● The FIBA Basketball World Cup for women comes next in 2026 from 4-13 September in Germany, but the FIBA Central Board agreed to move the 2030 tournament and those following to the end of the year, from 27 November to 8 December in 2030.
Why? Consider that the WNBA season, with added teams and a 44-game schedule now, runs from 16 May to 11 September in 2025, plus the playoffs. With so many important players in this league, FIBA had to get out of the way.
The men’s FIBA World Cup will stay in the summer to avoid the NBA season.
● Cross Country Skiing ● A man in his 60s who stalked Sweden’s 13-time World Championships medal winner Frida Karlsson, 25, for 16 months was given a suspended sentence and fined SEK 40,000 (~$4,108 U.S.).
According to the Swedish news agency TT, the man called Karlsson 207 times and sent “masses” of voicemails and text messages, even seeking her out in public places, including outside her apartment in Oestersund.
Both the prosecutors and the convicted man have filed appeals, with the prosecutors still insisting on jail time. Said Karlsson:
“It has been a process. But I think he has gotten enough focus. Just this with stalking is something that affects many and it was one of the reasons why we reported it, says the skiing star.
“It affects not just public figures. It’s primarily women who are exposed and it’s also for them that I’m doing this now.”
● Cycling ● Australian sprinter Kaden Groves got his second career stage win at the Giro d’Italia in Thursday’s sixth stage, but only after a massive pile-up caused the race to be stopped.
The up-and-down, 227 km stage from Potenza to Naples had a lengthy final third which was flat, and when 2022 champion Jai Hundley (AUS) slipped due to the rainy conditions just entering the flatter part of the course, it caused a major crash. The race was stopped between 156 and 166 km and once re-started, no points or time gaps or bonuses were awarded.
Groves won the expected mass sprint to the line in 4:59:52 over Milan Fretin (BEL) and Paul Magnier (FRA), and all of the finishing riders given the same time. Hindley and three others did not finish; Hindley was taken to a hospital with a concussion.
Dane Mads Pedersen still leads 2023 winner Primoz Roglic (SLO) by 17 seconds with the first climbing stage coming on Friday.
● Football ● The activist Human Rights Watch organization sent a 5 May letter to FIFA President Gianni Infantino (SUI) criticizing U.S. immigration policies under President Donald Trump and alleging they “fundamentally undermine the inclusive spirit of the World Cup and the non-discrimination policies under FIFA’s Statutes.”
The letter, from Human Rights Watch Global Initiatives Director Minky Worden (USA) stated:
“FIFA should publicly acknowledge the threat US immigration policies pose to the tournament’s integrity and urge the US government to ensure that all qualified teams, support staff, media, and fans will have equal access to enter the US regardless of nationality, religion, or opinion.
“FIFA should also establish clear benchmarks and timelines for US immigration policy changes needed to ensure respect for the rights of players, fans, and other participants in the World Cup and be prepared to reconsider the hosting decision if such guarantees cannot be secured.”
Given the close relationship between Infantino and Trump, the letter will accomplish very little.
¶
Worden and labor-rights activist group FairSquare also criticized FIFA for failure to monitor human rights and labor issues in Saudi Arabia, where the FIFA 2034 World Cup will be played, with multiple stadiums being built, along with many other non-sport-related projects.
The Associated Press reported:
“Human Rights Watch and another rights group, FairSquare, released separate investigations Wednesday detailing preventable deaths of migrant workers from job-site accidents and work-related illnesses.
“The reports accuse Saudi authorities of often misreporting such deaths and failing to investigate, preventing families from receiving compensation from the kingdom that they are entitled to and knowing how their loved ones died.”
● Ice Hockey ● At the IIHF men’s World Championship in Denmark and Sweden, Canada and Sweden both moved to 4-0 in Group A with comprehensive wins on Wednesday and Thursday.
Sweden stomped Latvia on Wednesday, 6-0, and the Canadians skated past Austria, 5-1 on Thursday. They each have one more game before meeting for the group win on the 20th, the final day of group play.
In Group B, Switzerland smashed Germany, 5-1 and the Czech Republic eased by Hungary, 6-1, so the Czechs now lead the group with 11 points (4-0), ahead of the Swiss (3-1: 10), then Germany (3-1: 9) and the U.S. (3-1: 8). The top four move on to the quarters; no other team in the group has more than three points.
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