★ The Sports Examiner: Chronicling the key competitive, economic and political forces shaping elite sport and the Olympic Movement.★
★ To get the daily Sports Examiner Recap by e-mail: sign up here! ★
≡ THE 5-RING CIRCUS ≡
● Olympic Winter Games 1980: Lake Placid ● The “Miracle on Ice Congressional Gold Medal Act” was unveiled on Tuesday, introduced by Republican representatives Pete Stauber (Minnesota) and Elise Stefanik (New York) and Democrats Bill Keating (Minnesota) and Mike Quigley (Illinois) to honor the American underdogs who won the 1980 Olympic ice hockey gold in Lake Placid.
In summary, the bill asks:
“To award 3 Congressional Gold Medals to the members of the 1980 U.S. Olympic Men’s Ice Hockey Team, in recognition of their extraordinary achievement at the 1980 Winter Olympics where, being comprised of amateur collegiate players, they defeated the dominant Soviet hockey team in the historic ‘Miracle on Ice,’ revitalizing American morale at the height of the Cold War, inspiring generations and transforming the sport of hockey in the United States.”
Beyond awarding medals to the team members, the three medals would be distributed to the Lake Placid Olympic Center, the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame in Eveleth, Minnesota and to the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Hall of Fame in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
A public sale is also authorized for bronze copies of the medals to the public.
The Congressional Gold Medal was first awarded in 1776 to General George Washington, and has been awarded 184 times. It is designated as the nation’s highest civilian honor, alongside the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which began in 1963.
● Olympic Winter Games 2030: French Alps ● In another demonstration of the expected continuity between the Paris 2024 Olympic Games and the 2030 Winter Games, the International Olympic Committee appointed the head of the Paris 2024 Coordination Commission to continue for 2030: Belgian IOC member Pierre-Olivier Beckers-Vieujant.
The announcement noted:
“Through this experience, he has gained a deep knowledge of the French governance and sports system and has established excellent relations with the French authorities at all levels, the sports organisations, including the French National Olympic Committee (Comité National Olympique et Sportif Français – CNOSF), and society at large.”
The rest of the Commission will be appointed once the 2030 organizing committee is actually formed.
● Bobsled & Skeleton ● In what can only be considered bad news for the rest of the men’s bobsled world, Germany’s Johannes Lochner announced that at 33, he’s not done yet. He wrote on Instagram:
“Due to many requests, I am finally happy to officially announce that I will extend my bobsleigh career until the 2026 Olympic Games in Cortina.
“The new season is also just around the corner and I couldn’t be more positive about the future! With a fantastic team and outstanding old and new partners at my side, I’m ready to give everything for our dream of Olympic gold.”
Lochner won Olympic silvers at Beijing 2022 in the Two-Man and Four-Man sleds and owns five Worlds golds and a total of 15 Worlds medals of all colors (5-7-3). At the 2024 Worlds, he won the Two-Man bronze and the Four-Man silver.
German teammate Tina Hermann, 32, a seven-time Worlds Skeleton gold medalist, said she has retired from competition. A two-time World Cup seasonal winner, she was also a two-time Olympian, finishing fifth in PyeongChang in 2018 and fourth at Beijing 2022.
Australian skeleton star Jaclyn Narracott, 33, the 2022 Olympic silver medallist, also said she has retired. She was the first-ever Australian Olympic skeleton medal winner. She also won one World Cup race and finished with a World Championships best finish of 16th in 2015.
● Boxing ● Two-time unified professional boxing champion and Olympic silver Gennadiy “GGG” Golovkin, now the head of the National Olympic Committee of Kazakhstan, addressed the Panam Sports General Assembly in Paraguay last week, urging support for the World Boxing group as the sport’s possible new governing body for Olympic boxing.
His goal, as the Chair of World Boxing’s Olympic Commission, is to promote membership, with the goal of recognition in 2025 by the IOC. He was assisted by Sports and Competition Committee Chair Hernan Salvo (ARG) and American Mike McAtee, the World Boxing Olympic Commission Secretary.
Golovkin’s presentation noted that 48 federations are now World Boxing members, with 10 more under review. In the Americas, there are 15 members of World Boxing, vs. 41 National Olympic Committees in Panam Sports, so there is considerable room to grow.
● Fencing ● “A German court has imposed an injunction against the dissemination of allegations by the leading German TV consortium ARD about a ‘system of bribing referees’ in the International Fencing Federation (FIE).”
That’s from a Federation Internationale d’Escrime (FIE) post on Tuesday, further explaining the FIE response after the allegations were aired on 4 August 2024:
“FIE President-elect Alisher Usmanov [RUS], who voluntarily suspended his duties in March 2022 due to EU sanctions and was named in the report as the ‘creator’ of this ‘system,’ filed a request for an injunction against WDR, a consortium member of ARD that disseminated the slanderous allegations, with the Hamburg Regional Court. The statements were banned by a decision of this court, which found them to be ‘inadmissible suspicion-based reporting.’ As a consequence of the ruling, they may no longer be reproduced or disseminated.”
¶
★ Receive our exclusive, weekday TSX Recap by e-mail by clicking here.
★ Sign up a friend to receive the TSX Recap by clicking here.
★ Please consider a donation here to keep this site going.
For our updated, 547-event International Sports Calendar for the rest of 2024 and beyond, by date and by sport, click here!
