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≡ THE 5-RING CIRCUS ≡
● Olympic Games 2028: Los Angeles ● A motion from Los Angeles City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson filed Wednesday proposes an “Olympic Friendship City relationship” designation for Los Angeles and Brisbane (AUS), host for the 2032 Games. In specific:
“The LA-Brisbane Olympic Friendship City relationship will focus on key areas including, but not limited to: Sustainability, Housing, Transportation, Indigenous Recognition, Emergency Preparedness, Security, and Infrastructure.
“Formalizing Brisbane as an Olympic Friendship City presents a valuable opportunity to develop extensive exchange programs, particularly those linked to the upcoming Olympic and Paralympic Games and future initiatives.”
The motion was referred to the Rules, Elections and Intergovernmental Relations Committee.
● Olympic Winter Games 2026: Milan Cortina ● After a flurry of criticism from politicians such as Milan mayor Giuseppe Sala about the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement staff coming as part of the U.S. security detail, an Italian Interior Ministry statement explained:
“It should be reiterated that the investigators of the Homeland Security Investigation [a unit of ICE] will not be represented by operational personnel such as those engaged in migration controls in U.S. territory, but by referents exclusively specialized in investigations, without any attribution on the Italian territory and mainly responsible for consulting their databases and supporting the other actors involved.”
The U.S. Italian Embassy’s statement noted, “HSI’s role at the Olympics will be strictly advisory and intelligence-based, with no patrolling or enforcement involvement,” the embassy added. “All security operations will remain the responsibility of Italian authorities.”
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Brazilian statistician Marcio Melo posted a list of announced team sizes for Milan Cortina; the leaders:
● 232: United States
● 206: Canada
● 193: Italy
● 184: Germany
● 176: Switzerland
● 156: France
● 125: China
● 120: Austria
● 118: Japan
● 114: Czech Republic
There are 12 teams with 100 or more. Norway, expected to lead the medal table, has a team of 83 (and did not qualify either of its ice hockey teams).
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Revisiting the story on American and Mexican Olympic skier Sarah Schleper getting ready to compete in her seventh Games, Olympic super-statistician Dr. Bill Mallon reports that “there have been 126 women who competed for two different National Olympic Committees at the Winter Olympics. However, only 24 of them competed for distinctly different nations.”
What does that mean? That 102 of these dual-nation competitors were part of “split-off” team formed by political changes, such as the many countries that used to be part of the USSR, or Yugoslavia, but also situations such as the integration of East Germany into Germany
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The International Testing Agency announced that a team of 150 Doping Control Officers will staff the Milan Cortina Games, at 23 doping control centers in the venues and Olympic Villages.
The doping control effort will include about 2,200 test sessions and collection of about 3,000 samples: urine, blood and dried-blood-spot samples. Testing of samples will be done at the accredited laboratory in Rome.
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The Official Pin Trading Center at the Milan Cortina Winter Games will be “redesigned with a Looney Tunes look and feel through a licensing collaboration between Warner Bros. Discovery, Honav USA, and the IOC. The center will be open February 6–22 at Via Carlo de Cristoforis 1.”
The location is perhaps a half-hour walk from the iconic Duomo Milano; the pin-trading hall will include 12 tables, rotated among traders in three-hour shifts. Trading is allowed; no selling, but Honav USA, the licensee for organizing committee pins, will have a sales site as well.
A limited-edition pin will be offered for each of the 17 days of the Games, available until exhausted with a limit of two per buyer per day.
● U.S. Center for SafeSport ● The Associated Press interviewed newly-named SafeSport chief executive Benita Fitzgerald Mosley and she explained that the first order of business will be to identify what actually works and what doesn’t:
“We may need to alter the structure of how we go about the work. I think, though, it’s important [to acknowledge] many of the complaints come from the grassroots. If we’re really, truly trying to change the culture of American sports to focus on athlete well-being and safety, you have to start from the bottom and go to the top.
“Then we’re going to go back to them and say ‘Thank you for participating. This is what we found, and this is what we’re going to do about it.’”
She was part of the U.S. Commission on the State of the Olympics and Paralympics, which suggested that issues at the youth level may be better served through regional entities rather than a national office also tasked with elite sport.
She knows the clock is ticking: “I’ll be able to tell you in six or nine months, how quickly are we able to turn this barge around? Is it three months, is it six months, is it 18 months? I don’t know. But it can’t be 18 years. We’ve got to do this quickly.”
● Transgender ● The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights “found that San José State University (SJSU) violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX). OCR concluded that SJSU’s policies allowing males to compete in women’s sports and access female-only facilities deny women equal educational opportunities and benefits.
“In February 2025, OCR initiated a directed investigation into SJSU amid allegations that the university allowed a male to compete on the female indoor volleyball team and allegedly retaliated against female students and an assistant coach who condemned its ‘gender identity’ policies.”
The Wednesday announcement included a summary of the factual background:
“OCR found that beginning in 2022, SJSU actively recruited and allowed a male to compete on the women’s indoor and beach volleyball teams and reportedly instructed members of the coaching staff not to tell the female players that the athlete was a male. As a result, female athletes on the team shared women’s locker rooms and hotel rooms with the male student while being unaware that he is a member of the opposite sex.
“In addition to privacy concerns, the presence of this male athlete presented a safety concern for female athletes and provided SJSU’s volleyball team with an unfair physical advantage over opposing teams. On multiple occasions, the male athlete spiked the ball so forcefully that it knocked females on the opposing team to the ground. During one season, seven all-women’s teams from other universities forfeited their competitions, accepting a loss rather than competing against a male.”
Among five steps demanded of San Jose State by the Department of Education are to “[i]ssue a public statement to the SJSU community that SJSU will adopt biology-based definitions of the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ and acknowledge that the sex of a human – male or female – is unchangeable” and “[s]end a personalized apology to every woman who played in SJSU’s women’s indoor volleyball (2022–2024), 2023 beach volleyball, and to any woman on a team that forfeited rather than compete against SJSU while a male student was on the roster – expressing sincere regret for placing female athletes in that position.”
● Alpine Skiing ● Norway scored a 1-2 on the second-day night Slalom of the Schladming stop on the FIS World Cup tour, with star Henrik Kristoffersen placing second on both runs to win in 1:53.80, ahead of first-run leader Atle Lie McGrath (1:54.14). France’s 2022 Olympic champ Clement Noel was third (1:54.34).
Benjamin Ritchie was the top American, in 13th (1:56.60).
● Athletics ● The Athletics Integrity Unit lowered the boom on betting. In a Thursday announcement:
“The Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) has sanctioned German discus throwers, Henrik Janssen and Steven Richter, along with French middle-distance runner, Aurore Fleury, for breaching the World Athletics Integrity Code and Manipulation of Competition (MSC) rules regarding betting.
“In a move that highlights the AIU’s zero-tolerance to betting on the sport by participants, 27- year-old Janssen and 22-year-old Richter were handed three-month suspended bans while 32- year-old Fleury received a six-month ban (from 1 September 2025) and was fined 3 000 Euros to be donated to charity. All three athletes were charged with violating Integrity Standard 3.3.4 relating to ‘Maintaining Integrity of Competition’ – and they all admitted the violations. The rules concerning betting prohibit all ‘applicable persons’ from betting on any athletics event.”
Janssen and Richter both placed small bets on the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo and unsuccessfully tried to rescind them after being told it was not allowed.
Fleury was a lot more serious, wagering €2,000 on another French athlete, and ended up winning €5,000 at the 2024 European Athletics Championships in Rome. The size of the bet was considered grounds for more serious punishment.
● Boxing ● World Boxing continues to add national federation members, with Benin, Mali, Moldova and St. Lucia endorsed to join, awaiting final approval by the World Boxing Congress later this year.
The additions bring the federation to 159 members.
● Football ● The German Football Association (DFB) downplayed boycott chatter about the 2026 FIFA World Cup with federation chief Bernd Neuendorf explaining: “I don’t think this is a big debate at all, because I believe we at the DFB are very unanimous in our view that this debate is completely misguided at this point in time.”
German Football League (DFL) President Hans-Joachim Watzke, added, “When the time is right, we will discuss it, but from my point of view, it is completely out of place right now.”
Oke Gottlich, a DFB Vice President, had raised the issue. Neuendorf noted that Gottlich “hasn’t been with us that long. But as a rule, we first discuss these issues in committees, so to speak, and then form an opinion. Unfortunately, he has now jumped the gun on this issue.”
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Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass joined the chorus of critics of the ticket prices for the FIFA World Cup 2026. During a public forum with Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt at the U.S. Conference of Mayors winter meeting in Washington, D.C., she noted:
“Another thing about the Olympics is that the tickets are going to be a range [of prices], and they will be affordable.
“That’s the thing that is unfortunate about FIFA. Because even the nosebleed tickets are hundreds of dollars.”
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It was reported that Cindy Parlow Cone will run unopposed for re-election as the President of the U.S. Soccer Federation.
She became President in 2020, filling the unexpired term of Carlos Cordeiro, then won election on her own for the one-year remainder of that term in 2021 and then for a full term in 2022. She will be elected again at the USSF Annual General Meeting in February.
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