Home2024 Olympic GamesPANORAMA: Eiffel Tower Rings down for now; IOC’s Bach on four-stop U.S. visit; Ethiopia sweeps 50th Berlin...

PANORAMA: Eiffel Tower Rings down for now; IOC’s Bach on four-stop U.S. visit; Ethiopia sweeps 50th Berlin Marathon

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≡ THE 5-RING CIRCUS ≡

● Olympic Games 2024: Paris ● As expected, the Olympic Rings which adorned the Eiffel Tower in Paris were removed on Friday.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said that the 13-ton logo installed on the tower on 7 June, is too heavy to remain for a long period, and the plan is to create a lighter, perhaps smaller, emblem which can be attached to the monument for a longer period.

Hidalgo says she has the authority to have the Rings up for years, perhaps to 2028, but others have called for the Rings to be removed at the end of the year. The removed logo will be melted and recycling and the Agence France Report said that the International Olympic Committee is expected to pay for the new, lighter set.

● Olympic Games 2036 ● India has said repeatedly it wants to host the 2036 Olympic Games, but has found itself continuously in turmoil, especially within the Indian Olympic Committee.

The latest fight came last Thursday, when IOA President P.T. Usha – famed for her four-gold-medal performance at the 1986 Asian Games in the women’s 200-400-400 hurdles – was rejected in her effort to seat a new chief executive.

A majority of the Executive Council rejected Raghuram Iyer’s appointment as chief executive, although Usha said they had agreed in January. Usha said after the meeting:

“They want to re-initiate the whole process, they want to re-advertise afresh. It’s like saying we don’t want this person and let us start the process from the scratch.

“This process (of appointment of CEO) took two years and now they want to start all over again. This is going to have repercussions (from the IOC). It can jeopardise India’s chances of bidding for and hosting the 2036 Olympics.

“I am not going to accept this. I have told this to the IOC. I am not a quitter, I am not going anywhere without cleaning the IOA.”

● Olympic Winter Games 2034: Salt Lake City ● International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach (GER) toured the University of Utah, the Utah Olympic Oval skating rink and the Utah Olympic Park in Park City, and met with leaders of the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City.

Meetings with the in-formation 2034 Salt Lake City organizing committee were also held, with IOC Director General Christophe de Kepper (BEL) and Olympic Games Executive Director Christophe Dubi (SUI).

Bach began his week-long tour of the U.S. at the United Nations in New York, met with the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee and visited the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum in Colorado Springs and finished with meeting with the LA28 organizers in Los Angeles.

U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee President Gene Sykes was asked about the addition to the termination clause in the Olympic Host Contract referring to the authority of the World Anti-Doping Agency; he called it a “reasonable accommodation” to the IOC’s concerns and added:

“It would have been incredibly disturbing if the Games had not been awarded at that time.

“There were 150 people in the Utah delegation who’d traveled to Paris for the single purpose of being there when the Games were awarded. So this allowed that to happen in a way that we still feel very confident does not put Utah at any real risk of losing the Games. The IOC absolutely does not want to lose Utah in 2034.”

● Athletics ● Ethiopia’s Milkesa Mengesha and Tigist Ketema won the 50th Berlin Marathons on Sunday, in 2:03:17 and 2:16:42.

Running his fourth career marathon, Mengesha was 10th at the Tokyo Olympic 5,000 m in 2021, then moved to the roads in 2022. He won in Daegu (KOR) in 2023, then finished sixth at the 2023 World Championships in Budapest.

In Berlin, he was with a pack of 11 that passed the half in 60:57, thinned to eight by 30 km and seven at 35 km. Mengesha finally broke away only in the final 1,000 m, winning in a lifetime best of 2:03:17, moving to no. 3 on the 2024 world list.

Kenya’s Cybrian Kotut was a close second in a lifetime best of 2:03:22, followed by Haymanot Alew (ETH: 2:03:31) and Stephen Kiprop (KEN: 2:03:37).

Ketema won the women’s race in a runaway, running only with fellow Ethiopian Azmera Gebru from the 5 km mark and dropping her by 20 km. Ketema crossed the half in 1:07:53 and cruised to a 2:16:42 win, second only to her 2:16:07 in the Dubai Marathon in January.

Ethiopians swept the top four places, with Mestawot Fikir second with a lifetime best of 2:18:48, then Bosena Mulatie (2:19:00) and Aberu Anaya Mulisa (2:20:20).

It was the first Ethiopian sweep of both the men’s and women’s races since 2021 and the seventh ever.

Former Huntington University track coach Nick Johnson was convicted of sexual battery in Indiana state court on Thursday evening.

Johnson, who was at Huntington from 2018-20, was found guilty by an eight-member jury in Huntington Superior Court in a two-day trial. The specific incident took place in July 2020 involving a female athlete who Johnson had given a massage. The verdict came in Thursday evening.

Johnson had been accused of running a doping program in a federal suit which was dismissed. Sentencing for Johnson’s conviction is scheduled for 7 October.

● Cycling ● The penultimate leg of the 2024 UCI Mountain Bike World Cup was in Lake Placid, New York, with the women’s race coming down to a battle between Austria’s Laura Stigger and Swiss Sina Frei, the Tokyo 2020 Olympic runner-up. Stigger won in 1:18:36 for her second career World Cup gold, with Frei in the same time and France’s Loana Lecompte, the 2023 Worlds silver winner, third in 1:18:40.

Frei won the Short Track race in 19:41, with Rio 2016 Olympic champ Jenny Rissveds (SWE: 19:44) second.

Paris Olympic runner-up Victor Koretzky (FRA) won a very tight men’s race in 1:22:17, barely ahead of Paris bronze medalist Alan Hatherly (RSA), Filippo Colombo (SUI) and Marcel Guerrini (SUI), all timed in 1:22:18. It’s Koretzky’s first World Cup win of the season.

Koretzky also won the Short-Track race – his third this season – over Denmark’s Simon Andreassen, 22:00 to 22:02.

The season will wrap next week at Mont-Sainte-Anne in Quebec.

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