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≡ THE 5-RING CIRCUS ≡
● Olympic Games 2024: Paris ● The French government’s Olympic construction management firm, SOLIDEO, announced at its board meeting that the approved total budget of €1.721 billion from December 2023 has been reduced to €1.595 billion (–7.3%) as the enterprise will close at the end of the year. (€1 = $1.16 U.S.)
There are still remaining smaller works in the Athlete Village and Media Village complexes, with completions in 2026 and out to 2028 for some of the final end-use projects. The Grand Paris Aménagement development team will take over the still-to-be-completed work.
● Deaflympics ● The 2025 Deaflympics in Tokyo (JPN) concluded on Wednesday (26th), with Ukraine making the strongest statement, winning a remarkable total of 100 medals (32-39-29) to lead all countries.
The hosts, Japan won 51 (16-12-23), followed by China (50: 12-16-22), then South Korea (42), Iran (37) and the U.S. (36: 17-7-12). The highlight for the American squad was swimmer Carli Cronk – who swims at Notre Dame – who won seven golds in all, including the 200-400 m Freestyles, 100-200 m Butterflys and 400 m Medley and was on the winning U.S. 4×100 m Free and 4×100 m Medley relays. She won an eight medal with a silver in the 50 m Fly, and set world records for the deaf in the 200-400 m Frees and 100-200 m Flys.
A total of 2,911 athletes from 79 nations and territories participated in the Games.
● Alpine Skiing ● Swiss star Lara Gut-Behrami, the two-time overall women’s World Cup champion, will have surgery on her left knee after a bad training crash in Colorado and will miss the rest of the season.
Gut-Behrami, 34, the defending Olympic champ in the women’s Super-G event, had planned to retire after this season, but said in a statement, “My goal is to fully recover from this injury and regain my full performance level. Only then will I know what the future holds for me.”
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At the FIS World Cup men’s Super-G at Copper Mountain, Colorado, Swiss superstar Marco Odermatt opened the Super-G season with a tight win over Austrians Vincent Kriechmayr – the 2021 World Champion – and Raphael Haaser, 1:07.70 to 1:07.78 to 1:07.83.
It’s Odermatt’s 47th career World Cup win and 16th in Super-G. Ryan Cochran-Siegle was the top American in 10th in 1:08.53, and Aleksander Aamodt Kilde (NOR), the 2022 Olympic Super-G bronzer, returned to the World Cup for the first time since a brutal January 2024 crash that required major surgery and a long recovery. He was cheered on by fiancee Mikaela Shiffrin of the U.S.
Competition at Copper Mountain continues through Sunday.
● Athletics ● It was reported by The Athletic that Grand Slam Track is asking vendors to settle for half-payment, in order to avoid bankruptcy, and that vendors – as a group – have until 5 December to agree to the offer.
Estimates are that Grand Slam Track owed about $19 million in all after its final meet in Philadelphia on 1 June, and it acquired funding to pay half of what it owed to its athletes, in October.
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Kennesaw State junior Brian Limo (KEN) was provisionally suspended by the Athletics Integrity Unit “for Presence/Use of a Prohibited Substance (Salbutamol) & tampering.”
He won the Conference USA 5,000 m in May and has a best of 14:11.93 from earlier in 2025.
● Cycling ● The UCI released a detailed report on the economic impact of the 2025 UCI Mountain Bike World Championships in Valais region of Switzerland, with 110,000 spectators estimated to attend in total, with 48,500 unique (non-duplicated) spectators.
The estimate of unique attendees from outside of Valais was 31,000 – about 65% – spending an estimate CHF 6.0 million while there. (CHF 1 = $1.24 U.S.)
Of the 31,000 out-of-area spectators, 48% were from elsewhere in Switzerland (23.300) and 17% (8,000) from outside the country, primarily from France, Germany and The Netherlands. Spending was mostly on accommodations, meals and transport, with an average spend for international visitors of CHF 178 per day across an average stay of 2.3 days.
The total direct spending on the event was CHF 9.6 million, leading to a total economic impact of CHF 19.3 million when adding in indirect and induced impacts.
This was a two-week event from 30 August to 14 September, with eight different locations and 1,135 riders, 521 support staff and 353 news media.
● Football ● FIFA announced that with a contribution of CHF 120,000 by the Swiss government, two mini-fields will be built in the West Bank area of Palestine in 2026. The total project “is to eventually install eight additional mini-pitches in FIFA Member Association Palestine and FIFA Member Association Israel in a second step.”
The Palestine federation has been asking FIFA for more than 10 years to suspend the Israeli federation, without success thus far.
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The FIFA men’s U-17 World Cup in Qatar finished on Thursday, with Portugal winning for the first time with a 1-0 victory over Austria on a 32nd-minute goal from Anisio Cabral.
Brazil, which lost to Portugal in its semifinal on penalties, won the bronze medal with a 4-2 penalty shoot-out win over Italy after a 0-0 tie in regulation time.
Attendance for the tournament averaged 962 per match across 104 matches for a total of 100,073.
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