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≡ THE 5-RING CIRCUS ≡
● Olympic Games 2024: Paris ● The International Olympic Committee released statistics from its online abuse protection program for the Paris Games, with 2.4 million posts and comments reviewed in 35 languages, covering the social-media handles of more than 10,400 athletes using 20,000 accounts, on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X.
Of these, more than 152,000 posts were identified for review and more than 10,200 were flagged (about 0.4%) and reported to the platforms for action.
About 8,900 accounts were detected as sending abusive messages, with 353 athletes specifically targeted for abuse. Of those, 70% were men.
The IOC also noted that 74 National Olympic Committees had a total of 152 accredited safeguarding officers supporting their athletes during the Games.
● Olympic Winter Games 2030: French Alps ● With the government financial guarantees now in place, the 2030 organizing committee needs to be formed. The first decision is expected to be the President to lead the team, but there is now no clear choice.
FrancsJeux.com summarizes the current situation, hopefully to be concluded by the end of October, as starting with five-time Olympic gold medalist in biathlon Martin Fourcade, 36, who has been deeply involved in athlete affairs since retiring in 2020. But there are others: Marie Martinod, a two-time Olympic Freestyle Halfpipe silver medalist, Vincent Jay, the 2010 Olympic biathlon Sprint winner, and even perhaps Amalie Oudea-Castera, the Olympic minister under the now-ousted government who successfully steered the Paris project home safely.
● Athletics ● Popular British commentator (and 1984 Olympian at 5,000 m) Tim Hutchings points to another factor in Ruth Chepngetich‘s 2:09:56 women’s marathon world record in Chicago on Sunday:
“[W]hat folk DO underestimate, is the cumulative effect of training in the new tech year after year, & the training effect on overall fitness. This will continue for years yet.”
● Football ● “FIFPRO Europe and European Leagues, representing European player unions and national leagues, together with LaLiga, have today filed a complaint to the European Commission against FIFA over its conduct concerning the imposition of the international match calendar, including decisions relating to the FIFA Club World Cup 2025.”
Monday’s filing, with the Directorate-General for Competition of the European Commission, complains that “FIFA’s conflict of interest as a competition organiser and governing body, coupled with a lack of meaningful engagement with social partners, infringes European Union competition law.”
At the core:
“The oversaturated international football calendar risks player safety and wellbeing, and threatens the economic and social sustainability of important national competitions which have been enjoyed for generations by fans in Europe and around the world.”
So, this is a case of European football interests complaining that FIFA is using their clubs, players and teams too much. The greatly-expanded FIFA Club World Cup, scheduled to begin in the U.S. next June and running for a month, has been the catalyst to the filings, but action will be required soon to impact it at all.
● Shooting ● China’s Olympic men’s 50 m Rifle/3 Positions gold medalist Yukun Liu and Korean women’s 25 m Pistol Paris winner Ji-in Yang were named as the International Shooting Sports Federation’s Athletes of the Year.
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