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≡ THE 5-RING CIRCUS ≡
● Paralympic Games 2028: Los Angeles ● The LA28 organizers marked 1,000 days until the opening of the 2028 Paralympic Games by releasing a “first look” at the 23-sport, 560-event sports schedule.
The Games will open on 15 August 2028 at SoFi Stadium and closing at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on 27 August. The first medals events on 16 August will be in Para Athletics, Wheelchair Fencing, Shooting Para Sport, Para Equestrian and Para Cycling Track.
Wheelchair Basketball is the only sport that will run for all 12 days following the opening on 15 August. Sitting Volleyball will go for 11 days as will Para Athletics. Para Swimming and Para Table Tennis will both go for 10 days.
The shortest sport on the program? Para Triathlon, for just two days on 18-19 August. The detailed event schedule is to be announced later.
● Basketball ● U.S. superstars LeBron James and Steph Curry were major contributors to the American gold at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, but they won’t be in 2028.
Speaking with two-time NBA Most Valuable Player Steve Nash (CAN) on the “Mind The Game” podcast that he co-hosts, James said of 2028, “You already know my answer. Don’t even ask. I will be watching from Cabo.”
Curry explained, “It is the opposite answer of what I told him last year. It was like, God willing, I still have the choice and the physical option to be like, I could actually impact the team. Never say never, but I highly doubt it. Love to be a part of the movement.”
James will be 43 at the time of the 2028 Games in Los Angeles and Curry will be 40.
● Cross Country Skiing ● Jessie Diggins, now 34, the most important skier in American cross-country history, announced that she will retire at the end of the 2025-26 season.
It’s impossible to overstate the impact that Diggins has had, along with already-retired Kikkan Randall, on women’s cross-country in the U.S. Together, they won the first-ever U.S. gold in Olympic cross-country history in the 2018 PyeongChang women’s Team Sprint.
Diggins has gone on to become a dominant force in the sport, winning the seasonal FIS World Cup in 2021, 2023 and 2025 and has a U.S.-record 29 World Cup wins and 79 total World cup medals.
She is a three-time Olympic medalist, adding a stunning 30 km Free silver in 2022 as well as a bronze in Beijing in the women’s Sprint. She owns seven FIS World Championships medals, including golds in the 2013 women’s Team Sprint and the 10 km Free in 2023.
She explained, “I hope I’m remembered not just for the pain cave and ability to suffer deeply for a team that I love and a sport I care about so much, but for the joy, sense of fun on snow, heart-on-sleeve racing, deep vulnerability and openness that I’ve brought to everything I do.”
Diggins is looking to be part of a fourth Olympic Team and for more medals in Milan Cortina; she will be a threat in multiple events. The newfound depth and strength of the American women’s squad, in particular, is a testament to the inspiration that she and Randall have been to a sport in which the U.S. was an afterthought for decades.
● Skiing & Snowboard ● U.S. Ski & Snowboard’s “HERoic Initiative” that increased the number of women’s coaches, expanded education and awarded prize money for the top alpine skier, is being expanded across seven U.S. winter-sport National Governing Bodies with financial support from medicine giant Eli Lilly & Company.
“HERoic will now be an official campaign to celebrate women athletes” as they qualify for the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Games, with Lilly receiving broadcast visibility, venue signage and social media support from U.S. Ski & Snowboard but also Team USA.
● Snowboard ● One-time Canadian Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding now has a $15 million bounty from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation for information leading to arrest and/or conviction as the U.S. government is trying to find him for “allegedly running and participating in a transnational drug trafficking operation that routinely shipped hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia, through Mexico and Southern California, to Canada, and other locations in the U.S.”
In a Tuesday news conference, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Wedding and his associates were responsible for more than $1 billion in annual cocaine sales; he is believed to be living in Mexico. According to new indictments filed Wednesday:
“Wedding was accused of ordering the murder of a federal witness—who was executed with five bullets to the head earlier this year – before he could testify against Wedding. Among seven subjects arrested today in Canada was Wedding’s attorney, Deepak Paradkar, who allegedly recommended to Wedding that he have the witness murdered.”
Wedding competed for Canada at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games, finishing 24th in the men’s Parallel Giant Slalom.
● Table Tennis ● The International Table Tennis Federation announced that Steve Dainton (AUS), the federation’s chief executive since 2017, will transition to World Table Tennis, the federation’s commercial arm, as its full-time chief executive, to further expand the sport’s reach and commercial value. He has been with the ITTF since 2005.
The ITTF Secretary General since 2017, Spain’s Raul Calin has been recruited by World Archery to be its new Secretary General as of 1 December 2025. Calin began working with the ITTF as Competition Manager in 2004 and was in the federation’s Asia-Pacific office in Singapore until 2022 when he moved to the ITTF headquarters.
Calin won’t be going far as the offices for both federations are in the Maison du Sport in Lausanne (SUI)!
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