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≡ THE 5-RING CIRCUS ≡
● Olympic Games 2028: Los Angeles ● A few more notes from the Monday announcement of the by-sport and by-session schedules for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles:
● First event: The first competitions will be on 12 July, a couple of days before the opening, for the team sports of cricket (Pomona Fairgrounds), handball (Long Beach Arena) and field hockey at the Dignity Health Sports Center, all starting at 9 a.m. local time. Look for some preliminary football matches to be added later that might be even earlier.
● First medal: The first event to be completed appears to be one of the triathlons, on 15 July at Venice Beach, starting at 7:30 a.m. (if the weather and the water are OK). Next up appears to be Canoe Slalom racing in Oklahoma City, with the session on 14 July running from 9 a.m. to noon local time and 7-10 a.m. L.A. times.
● Last event: The final events shown on the schedule are at SoFi Stadium in swimming, at 4:30 p.m., possibly the 4×100 m medley relays, ending just 90 minutes before the closing ceremonies at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. No time is shown for the final-day marathon, which could end even later, but would be running in late-afternoon heat in Los Angeles.
A total of 844 ticketed sessions are currently scheduled. There will be many tweaks on the road to 2028, but that’s what the Monday announcement shows now.
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LA28 and the City of Los Angeles announced Monday that the PlayLA program, powered by $160 million from the International Olympic Committee, has reached the one million mark in registered participants.
● Aquatics ● Water quality for open-water swimming isn’t an issue only for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games and the Seine River, as World Aquatics postponed the open-water opener of the 2025 World Aquatics Championships in Singapore on Monday:
“The Women’s 10km event was originally scheduled to take place on 15 July 2025 at 8:00 a.m. Following a review involving representatives from World Aquatics, the Singapore 2025 Organising Committee, the World Aquatics Sports Medicine Committee, and the World Aquatics Open Water Swimming Technical Committee, the decision was made to postpone the race in the utmost interest of athlete safety.”
Water samples on Sunday (13th) showed unacceptable pollution levels, so the women’s and men’s 10 km races are now slated for 16 July (Wednesday); an off-day is scheduled for the 17th.
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Swimswam.com reported that entries for the swimming portion of the World Aquatics Championships show 30 Russians – 18 men and 12 women – admitted as neutrals by World Aquatics. Russia had one swimmer at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
● Cycling ● Monday’s eight-climb stage across 165.3 km to the uphill finish at Le Mont turned the 112th Tour de France inside out. A breakaway group of 29 finally came down to five men and then to British star Simon Yates – the Giro d’Italia winner – who attacked with 3 km left and won in 4:20:05 for his third career Tour stage win.
Behind him was Thymen Arensman (NED: +0:09), then stage 6 winner Ben Healy of Ireland (+0:31). The race leaders were way back, with Tadej Pogacar (SLO: +4:51) in ninth and two-time winner Jonas Vingegaard (DEN: +4:51) in 10th.
So, Healy took the yellow jersey going into Tuesday’s rest day, 29 seconds up on Pogacar, and 1:29 ahead of Remco Evenepoel (BEL), 1:46 up on Vingegaard and 2:06 ahead of American Matteo Jorgenson.
● Football ● The FIFA Club World Cup ended Sunday with an excellent crowd of 81,118 – biggest of the tournament – at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey for Chelsea’s 3-0 win over Paris-St. Germain.
Overall, the expanded event had a total attendance of 2,491,462 or 39,547 per match, far beyond what this event drew previously as a small tournament on the FIFA schedule. But, even with NFL stadiums available for most of the matches, some marquee European clubs playing and a lot of pre-event hype, it was far behind the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar – also with 32 teams and 104 matches – that drew 3,404,252 spectators or 53,191 per match.
The semifinals and finals were all held at MetLife – the site for the World Cup final in 2026 – which drew strong crowds of 70,556 and 77,542 for the semis and then a close-to-capacity crowd for the final. FIFA has the idea to hold the tournament again in 2029.
● Rowing ● World Rowing found a replacement for Rio de Janeiro (BRA), which withdrew suddenly in May as the host of the 2025 Beach Sprint Finals in October. Instead, Antalya (TUR), which is already hosting the European Beach Sprint Finals from 8-13 October, will also hold the World Rowing Beach Sprint finals from 6-9 November.
The Beach Sprint has been added to the 2028 Olympic program, as the Lightweight classes in rowing were eliminated.
● Triathlon ● Australian Matt Hauser won the men’s World Triathlon Championship Series race in Hamburg (GER), then came back to help his Australian team take Sunday’s Mixed Relay and earn the 2025 World Championship gold.
The Aussies were seventh entering the final leg, with Hauser trailing 2021 European Champion Dorian Connix (FRA), as Olympic champion Cassandra Beaugrand had given the French an 18-second advantage over Australian third leg Emma Jeffcoat. But Hauser made up 16 seconds on the swim and was essentially even starting the 1.6 km run. He completed the two laps in 4:23 to 4:27 for Connix to end a 1:16:52 to 1:16:55 victory. Germany was third at 1:16:59; the U.S. was eighth at 1:17:52, with Taylor Spivey, Chase McQueen, Erika Ackerlund and John Reed.
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