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≡ THE 5-RING CIRCUS ≡
1. Wasserman: more LA28 revenue today than all of Paris ‘24
2. Wasserman: Olympics primed for a comeback in Paris
3. Paris police chief Nunez: traffic trouble from 1-15 July
4. FIFA says six million expected to visit for 2026 World Cup
5. Ski star Shiffrin expected back on the slopes in Are
● On The Bill Simmons Podcast posted this week, LA28 Chair Casey Wasserman confirmed once again that the organizing committee is well on its way to having more than enough money to stage the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. In fact, it has revenues under contract now in excess of the total Paris 2024 budget.
● Wasserman also said that there will be a lot of learn from seeing the Paris Games in person this summer, and that he expects U.S. interest in the Olympics to rebound after multiple recent Games in unusual places or impacted by Covid-19.
● The Paris Prefect of Police said in an interview that beyond the heavy security being arranged for the time of the Olympic and Paralympic Games this summer, access to multiple bridges across the Seine River will be closed for 1-15 July in advance of the event. A union leader threatens strikes at hospitals if staff are not paid more money during the Games period.
● FIFA expects six million people to visit the FIFA World Cup matches in 2026, of which only a fraction will be attending the matches at the 16 host cities in Canada, Mexico and the U.S.
● U.S. skiing star Mikaela Shiffrin expects to race again this weekend in Sweden after a January crash that knocked her out of action; even so, she’s closing in on another World Cup record!
● Panorama: Rio 2016 (Nuzman conviction annulled) = Alpine Skiing (Braathen to ski for Brazil next season) = Athletics (3: USATF U-20s to be held with Nike Outdoor Nationals; Kenyan athlete boycott gets more African Games travel spots; RG III offers Coleman $100,000 for sub-4 40!) = Cycling (Plapp leads Paris-Nice; Milan leads Tirreno-Adriatico) = Fencing (questions over scoring manipulation affecting U.S. men’s Sabre athletes) = Football (FIFA report shows no net doping positives in 2023!) = Swimming (Tyr Pro Swim Series in Westmont underway) ●
1.
Wasserman: more LA28 revenue today than all of Paris ‘24
(For Thursday’s story on Wasserman comments on the LA28 venue assignments and changes, click here.)
Los Angeles 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games organizing committee Chair Casey Wasserman confirmed once again that revenue for the LA28 Games is coming in solidly and as expected. He spoke on The Bill Simmons Podcast on TheRinger.com posted on Wednesday (6th), and explained:
“I would say the biggest positive which we believed – but continues to get validated – is the power of this country’s passion for and willing to spend and support big sporting events and big global events, so we have more revenue today contracted than Paris will generate in total.
“And we’re four years from the Games, so the revenue has done what we thought when you start a project like this and you have to generate $7 billion from zero, and you can only spend what you generate – you don’t know – and it hasn’t been a long time since the Summer Games were here and it’s a different world.
“But having said that, it has been really great and we’re really validating and people are generally excited and engaged about what it means for the Olympics to come back to this country, especially in a city like L.A. …
“We are the only country on earth that provides no public support for its Olympic Movement, so the [U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee], the [National Governing Bodies], athlete training, support for our Olympians, comes in two places: American universities … and private support: donors, sponsorships, philanthropy. There is no public funding, and so – by the same token – our Olympic Games are privately funded.
“And there is good and bad to that. The good is, we get to do things in a rational, business-driven, economically-minded way. The challenge is, which is the part that keeps me up at night is this: the Olympics in L.A. will be the largest peacetime gathering in the history of the world, it is a level of complexity and scale that is unimaginable. …
“And so the scary part is, we will spend 85% of our budget in the last 18 months.
“So, our budget, we are break-even of $6.8 billion – is what we believe revenue and expenses is, sort of how we manage the business – we will spend 85% of that $6.8 billion in the last 18 months, which means you better know what you’re about to spend because you don’t have time to course-correct if you go over budget, because if you start, you kind of have to finish because July 14th, 2028, that torch is showing up at SoFi, whether we like it or not.”
Asked about the differences from the revolutionary 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, Wasserman explained it starts with scale:
“We’ll have the biggest sport program ever, we have more tickets to sell than ever, more countries in the Olympics, the scale of the Olympics keeps growing, and we’ll have the most ambitious sport program ever, and in ‘84, [we had] the Coliseum, now we have the Coliseum and SoFi [Stadium], ‘84, gymnastics was at Pauley Pavilion, we have now Crypto [.com arena] and Intuit [Dome], and Honda Center and The Forum, right.
“We have all these things that didn’t exist, so the scale of our venues and the infrastructure here is stunningly different than ‘84, and the size of the Olympic Games is growing, and so all of those things make it big.
“It is the operational equivalent of seven Super Bowls a day for 30 days.”
Simmons inquired about how the Olympic Village arrangements are different from 1984; Wasserman noted:
“The Olympic Village was split between UCLA and USC because neither had enough dorms. UCLA has built a tremendous amounts of dorms and now 90% of students live on campus, and given the scale and complexity of security to protect the Village, you can’t split the athletes any more, it’s too complicated. …
“It’s funny. People always ask why you’re Opening Ceremonies is July 14, it’s the earliest Opening Ceremonies in the history of the Olympics, it’s because, very simply, we have to have time to get into the dorms when the students get out, and we have time to get out of the USC facilities before USC gets in because they start in August. UCLA ends in June, so we have a window of time for the Olympics and Paralympics that’s about 40 days that we can operate.
“And so there won’t be summer school, to be fair, but unlike ‘84, there won’t be competitions at Pauley Pavilion. We need the whole campus just for athletes and athlete training and security and transportation.”
Asked what does Los Angeles gets out of all this – remembering that the Games will be privately funded – Wasserman pointed to activities already well underway, four years out:
“The good part is we’re not building anything, so on some level, what they keep is a couple things.
“One, we’re investing in youth sports in the city, so all youth sports through Recs & Parks in the City of L.A. is subsidized by us, so it’s only $5 for any kid who wants to play [through] Recs & Parks. So that is the biggest investment in youth sports in the history of this country in one city, and, until we started funding this program there wasn’t an adaptive sport program offered in the City of L.A. So, we will host the Paralympics too, and there wasn’t a single adaptive-sport program offered by Recs & Parks, when by – statistically – 10% of the population has a physical impairment.
“So, that’s a huge benefit, and then, just like ‘84, if we can create a surplus, that surplus – because we are a 501(c)(3) – stays to benefit the City forever.
“The real legacy is: the economic legacy post-the-Games, the economic activity during the Games, and when you have an event of this size and this scale, it’s a great line in the sand to get the city being motivated and focused on being at its best when the world comes here.”
Simmons also asked how transportation is going to be managed; Wasserman was ready with the answer:
“Most Olympics operate on buses and public transportation, so we will do that. We’ll borrow 5,000 buses, one of the biggest complicating, sort of organizational things we have to do is borrow 5,000 buses to provide buses for media, fans, athletes, officials, volunteers; those buses go in dedicated lanes, so that’s a very traffic-relieving thing. Instead of going to Dodger Stadium with 30,000 cars, you have 5,000 buses, or 2,000 buses going to Dodger Stadium for a baseball game. It’s a different stress on the system.
“Plus one of the things we want to do given the infrastructure [subway] investment here is allow anybody with an Olympic ticket to use the Metro for free because we want to show people that once this thing is built, you can go from Westwood to downtown L.A. in 20 minutes. So, why don’t we use it as an opportunity to teach people how great the system is and get them used to using it? And [then] you’re used to using public transportation.”
Wasserman also noted that the Metro infrastructure projects were not in any way a product of having the 2028 Games in Los Angeles:
“They [Metro] actually got the funding before, from a ballot measure and what we did was, our bid was not contingent on [the system] being done. If it’s done, we benefit from it, but it was not required for us to deliver the Games.”
Then Simmons asked Wasserman about a decline in Los Angeles since the 2028 Games was awarded in 2017. The question was no surprise:
“I get asked a lot, ‘what are you doing to do about homelessness and my answer is really two-fold. One, our responsibility is to deliver the Olympic Games responsibly, and our job is not to fix every problem in the City of L.A.
“But for someone like you, who lives here and cares about the city, if we haven’t done anything by 2028, we’ve all failed.
“Especially when you think about what drives the economy of L.A., it’s tourism: 50 million people come to L.A. every year. If people don’t feel safe and comfortable coming to L.A. as tourists, whether it’s to come to Hollywood Boulevard or Disneyland or Universal Studios or Santa Monica Beach or the museums or whyever they come here, and that goes down to 40 million. L.A. is probably bankrupt as a city.
“So, we have to get this city better, and again, going back to what I said, the Olympics out there is a great opportunity to make sure our city is at its best because, think about, look, next weekend, whenever this airs, is the Academy Awards’ there’s homeless people on Hollywood Boulevard right now. They will not be on the red carpet when Tom Cruise or whatever superstar walks down the red carpet, and if they were, that wouldn’t be a good look.
“We’re going to have Super Bowls and All-Star Games, World Cups and Olympics and Wrestlemanias and all these massive events here, we have to be at our best, because we’re competing for those events, we’re competing for those dollars, and as people who live and care about the city, we have to get that right.”
Observed: The Paris 2024 budget is €4.397 billion in total, or about $4.79 billion U.S., and Wasserman and former chief executive Kathy Carter have stated previously that LA28 has revenues of about that amount under contract, so his comment was no surprise. It is also worth noting that none of those funds are public money, as the only public financial commitments are $270 million in guarantees against an after-the-Games deficit by the State of California and the City of Los Angeles.
Part of the amount contracted to LA28 so far is $1.535 billion in cash from the International Olympic Committee, of which $160 million has been assigned to fund Los Angeles Recreation & Parks youth sports programs since 2017, and continuing to the middle of 2028.
2.
Wasserman: Olympics primed for a comeback in Paris
Simmons wanted to know what Wasserman was looking forward to seeing in Paris at the Olympic and Paralympic Games this summer:
“When we got the Games in 2017, we thought we would get two free looks, if you will, Tokyo and Paris. I was in Tokyo for 10 days and didn’t leave my hotel, so fair to say, I didn’t get to see a whole lot of sport, and not a lot of learning.
“So it will be the first chance for our staff, and all of us to see – in the context of planning for a Games – as opposed to when we were in Rio, when we were bidding for a Games, for what we’re going to have to deliver, good and bad.
“They are doing things differently, the city is different, it’s a government entity that delivers the Games, but having said that, the scale they operate is close to ours, the complexity of a big city, the complexity of politics, the complexity of being respectful to residents, and all the things that exist, and have to continue to exist while the Games are going on, and to make the Games an incredible experience, and a positive experience. So, there’s a lot to learn operationally, there’s a lot to learn when you think about security, taking care of fans, how you manage transportation, how do you manage athletes and making them feel at home, so it’s a lot of learning because it’s our only chance to see it at scale.
“One of the challenges everybody has with the Olympics is because it operates at the scale it does there’s nothing that compares to it, so you can’t really practice for it.
“Like the first morning, opening ceremonies Friday night in Paris, and Saturday morning, a half a million fans, 30,000 volunteers, 5,000 coaches and athletes will all leave essentially the same place at the same time to go to the same place at the same time and you cannot practice for that.
“And so that’s a great thing for us to watch and see. Not that it’s the same in Paris as in L.A., but it’s a great opportunity to watch.”
And how will be 2024 Games be received in the U.S.?
“I think one of the things you’ll see this year, when we watch on TV, is that NBC is not going to pretend like it’s live anymore, which is what they used to do in primetime. What they’re going to do is treat it like a reality show.
“So, reality TV is, the magic’s in the ending, and telling the story of what you know is happening, and I think what you’ll see in primetime is not pretending like, ‘let’s go to heat one, because we don’t know that this upset happens,’ no.
“We know the upset, so the three hours of primetime is going to be reality-like storytelling, to create the drama and the story to produce what the event [is] doesn’t mean that at 3 in the afternoon we might not watch the swimming live in L.A., but you’ll still watch that night the waves package even though we know the result.
“Paris is going to work. It’s the most beautiful city in the world and it’s going to be absolutely spectacular.”
Simmons, 54, also asked a fascinating question about the Games in general: “Do you feel like the Olympics matters as much it did as when we were kids?” Wasserman’s answer was confident:
“I don’t, but I think if we’re honest with ourselves, the Olympics in Paris is the first real, full-scale Olympics in a truly great, global city since London. Not putting anybody down, but you went to Sochi and Rio, then you went to PyeongChang for Winter Games, and then two Covid Games.
“So really, it’s been a long time since people have seen what the Olympics can be, and I think that the combination of that, and Paris, will actually reignite a lot of excitement. Now four years is a long time, so you can’t maintain what you used to be able to maintain in excitement, but I think it will resonate with people in this country that, OK, we’re next.”
3.
Paris police chief Nunez: traffic trouble from 1-15 July
The much-anticipated opening of the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad in Paris on the Seine River will be held on 26 July, but Laurent Nunez, the Prefect of the Paris Police, said Wednesday that the challenges for Parisians will come earlier. He said on Wednesday’s 8:30 a.m. FranceInfo show:
“The big trouble will begin from July 1 to 15, with several Parisian bridges which will be closed to traffic. … [W]e will maintain five bridges which we can continue to cross.”
That’s going to be a headache; Nunez added:
“We are doing everything we can to achieve this balance which allows us to continue to live as much as possible; the restaurants, businesses remain open, you can go home, of course.”
Nunez said that the security staffing would include “45,000 law enforcement agents on certain days, 30-35,000 on average over the entire period,” and that for the opening along the Seine River, “we work in accordance with public and crowd safety rules and we do not exceed three people per square meter,” which helped to set the crowd total at 326,000, which could still “go down by a few thousand.”
He acknowledged the terrorist concerns, but stated “we have no known Islamist threat,” but is also cautious over “the endogenous threat of individuals present in the territory, who could take action, and the inspired threat that comes from outside, like ISIS, Afghanistan, Syria.” And “there are threats from the ultra-left, the ultra-right” and “there is the threat from radicalized environmentalists, who are already announcing that they will commit a certain number of actions of civil disobedience.”
Security checks of people coming for the Games will be made, of course, as will all those buying tickets or obtaining free tickets for the opening, along with owners of apartments with views of the river who will also be watching the 26 July ceremony. In all, about a million individuals are expected to be reviewed.
As for the Olympic competition sites, “there will be areas where we will only enter if we are going to attend a competition, and then around it, we have established motorized traffic perimeters.” He said these areas, “which are quite limited, you will have to obtain an exemption [to travel there], because you are a local resident, because you work there, because you are a doctor and you have to provide care.”
Nunez noted, “It’s a challenge, but we will take it up.”
¶
Sophie Binet, the general secretary of the French Confederation generale de travail (CGT) labor union threatened a strike during the Games period, demanding more money for their members, notably in hospitals. She also spoke on FranceInfo, on Thursday:
“We want the government to take immediate action to ensure the success of the Games.
“For this to happen, our warnings must be heeded and the Games must be prepared from a social point of view. We’ve been saying the same thing for months now, and no one cares. It’s getting very tiresome.
“What are the social conditions of this work? How are we going to accommodate all the workers who will have to come to [Paris] for the Olympics? How are we going to take care of their children when they’re the ones who have to work? What kind of bonuses will they get?”
Police officers who will work during the Games have been offered extra pay of up to €1,900 (€1 = $1.09 U.S.), but plans for other categories of public workers have not been announced.
4.
FIFA says six million expected to visit for 2026 World Cup
“Six million visitors are expected for the competition.”
That’s from FIFA posting on Thursday, reporting on the FIFA World Cup26 Host Cities Commercial Summit in Miami, where representatives of all 16 host cities are learning about what they can and can’t do in terms of sponsorships and other fund-raising opportunities.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino (SUI) addressed the attendees, with his usual enthusiasm and hyperbole:
“This (FIFA) World Cup will not just be the biggest-ever (FIFA) World Cup, it will be the greatest show that the planet has ever seen. It will be something that everyone will remember. …
“We live, as you all know, in a world which is quite divided and quite aggressive, but in a world which needs occasions to come together. The United States, Canada and Mexico, and all of your cities, are melting pots of cultures. They’ve been built thanks to the work of many people from many, many parts of the world, and you reflect exactly this unity that we want to reflect in football.”
The 2026 tournament – the biggest ever with 48 teams – will be held in two Canadian cities, three in Mexico and 11 in the U.S. Infantino noted that only some of the visitors will actually attend any of the 104 matches:
“We’ll have a few lucky ones who have secured tickets to enter the stadiums, but we’ll have many, many more who will just come to stay close to their team, to be part of something special. We have hundreds of thousands, coming to your cities, and I can promise you they will come with a peaceful spirit, with a joyful spirit – they want to celebrate, they want to have fun.
“We need to welcome them in the best possible way. Because, if we welcome them and make them feel at home, then this will have an incredibly positive return in what we do.”
The 2026 World Cup could be in the middle of three straight years of major FIFA competitions in the U.S., with the hugely-expanded Club World Cup in 2025, the 2026 World Cup and possibly the 2027 Women’s World Cup, with the U.S. and Mexico in a joint bid, to be decided on 17 May.
5.
Ski star Shiffrin expected back on the slopes in Are
Mostly recovered from a bad Downhill training crash at Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, American skiing star Mikaela Shiffrin expects to return to the FIS Alpine World Cup at Are, Sweden this weekend.
The program includes a Giant Slalom on Saturday and a Slalom on Sunday; Shiffrin’s team tweeted earlier in the week:
“Mikaela is improving in slalom and feels that the slalom race is still realistic, but the [Giant Slalom] is in question.”
Shiffrin was well on her way to another World Cup seasonal title at the time of her crash, but she is all but mathematically eliminated now, as Swiss star Lara Gut-Behrami — the 2016 World Cup champ – has won five of the last nine races and has zoomed to the lead with 1,594 points to 1,268 for Federica Brignone (ITA) and 1,209 for Shiffrin, with six races remaining.
However, Shiffrin – the all-time World Cup wins leader with 95 and still just 28 – is getting close to another mark, for the most medals in history at the Alpine World Cup. The man she passed for the most wins, Sweden’s Ingemar Stenmark, won 155 from 1973 to 1989, and Shiffrin is now at 150.
Shiffrin is also still the seasonal leader in the Slalom discipline, with 630 points to 505 for the injured Petra Vlhova (SVK) and 442 for German Lena Duerr. Shiffrin will clinch the Slalom title in Are with a finish of 18th or better; if she does, it will be her eighth Crystal Globe in her favorite discipline.
≡ PANORAMA ≡
● Olympic Games 2016: Rio ● The 2021 conviction of Rio 2016 organizing committee chief Carlos Nuzman (BRA) and former Rio governor Sergio Cabral related to bribes paid to International Olympic Committee members to become the host city was annulled by a federal court on Wednesday.
The holding was that Judge Marcelo Bretas did not have the “legal competence,” so the case will be transferred to another court. The court said Nuzman and Cabral will be heard before the transfer is made for a new hearing.
Nuzman, now 81, was sentenced in 2021 to 30 years and 11 months and Cabral is serving a long sentence for corruption and money laundering outside of the Olympic bribery scandal. He testified that he paid $2 million to obtain 6-9 IOC votes for Rio in a scheme coordinated with then-IAAF President and IOC member Lamine Diack of Senegal (now deceased).
● Alpine Skiing ● Lucas Braathen, the talented Norwegian skier, is transferring allegiance to Brazil, and will return to skiing next season representing his mother’s home nation.
Still just 23, he won the FIS World Cup Slalom title in 2023 and was fourth in the overall World Cup standings. He scored five wins and 12 medals in five years on the World Cup tour, but left the Norwegian team and sat out this season in a dispute with the Norwegian federation over sponsorship rights.
His transfer application still has to be formally approved by the FIS Council.
● Athletics ● Interesting announcement from USA Track & Field and the National Scholastic Athletics Federation that the USATF U-20 National Championships and the NSAF’s Nike Outdoor Nationals for preps will be held together in 2024.
The statement indicated that the meets are not being integrated, but will both be held from 12-15 June in Eugene, Oregon: “The 2024 USATF U20 Championships will be featured in the afternoon of the first two days at the Nike Outdoor Nationals.” More details are promised later.
¶
The Kenyan athlete boycott of the planned team trials for the African Games that will begin this weekend in Accra (GHA) paid off, with the Ministry of Youth Affairs, Creative Economy and Sports agreeing to allow up to three athletes per event, instead of one.
This applies only to athletes who have met the qualification standards for the Games, but satisfies the athlete demand that Kenya send as large a team as possible in the nation’s no. 1 sport. The trials events on 5-6 March did go off after a delay of several hours.
¶
The football vs. track speed chatter is getting spicier. After Texas wide receiver Xavier Worthy ran an NFL Combine record of 4.21 in Indianapolis last Saturday (2nd), Robert Griffin III – the 2011 Heisman winner for Baylor, an eight-year NFL quarterback, a 49.22 400 m hurdler (!), and now an ESPN analyst – tweeted:
● “For those watching the NFL Combine, there is a MASSIVE difference between football speed and track speed. Here is Christian Coleman running a 4.12 second 40 yard dash at 85% effort. The NFL Combine record is 4.22.”
● Coleman tweeted in reply, “Mind you this was 7 years ago. My start way more efficient today”
● RG III’s reply: “I got 100k for you if you go sub 4 @__coleman”
● Coleman: “Bet [handshake emoji] easy”
Where and when? How about an at upcoming NFL Pro Day this month on a college campus with a track?
● Cycling ● Two important early-season races are continuing toward a finish this weekend, the 82nd edition of Paris-Nice and the 59th Tirreno-Adriatico in Italy.
After five of the eight stages in France, Australia’s Luke Plapp has the overall lead
Dutch rider Olav Kooij won the hilly first and fifth stages, with countryman Arvid de Kleijn winning the flat second stage. Plapp, just 23, is already a three-time Australian national road champion and two-time time trial winner, and vaulted to the overall lead with second-place finishes in the Team Time Trial and in the 10-climb fourth stage.
After the sprinter’s finish in the fifth stage, Plapp holds a 13-second lead on Santiago Buitrago (COL), then 27 seconds on American Brandon McNulty, with the top nine all within 52 seconds and 20 within 1:31. The race will likely be decided at Saturday’s double climb up La Colmiane, with an uphill to finish to Auron at 1,604 m.
In Italy, another 23-year-old, Jonathan Milan (ITA) has the lead after four stags, having finished third in the opener (Individual Time Trial), the second over stage three and won stage four – the first stage with a major climb – by winning the final sprint from Belgian star Jasper Philipsen in Guilianova.
Some 47 riders are within a minute of Milan’s lead, with Juan Ayuso (ESP: +0:04) and Kevin Vauquelin (FRA: +0:18) the closest. Stage 5 offers a late climb over the 144 km route, and the uphill finish to Monte Petrano in Cagli on Saturday may be decisive. The final stage to San Benedetto del Tronto has an early climb, but then a long flat, final 78.5 km finish, perfect for the sprinters.
● Fencing ● A 14 February letter from the Global Athlete activist group to the Federation Internationale de Escrime raised questions about whether Bulgarian referees in men’s Sabre matches “consistently appear to favor the American fencer.”
Global Athlete head Rob Koehler (CAN) wrote:
“These events raise serious concerns regarding the fairness and equity of the competition in question. With Olympic qualification at stake, we ask that these allegations be investigated to ensure that legitimate fencers have the opportunity to participate in the 2024 Olympics.”
Koehler told USA Today:
“I don’t really trust international federations to react or take action on athlete complaints. But I do want to defend them as much as possible to make sure they take action and the situation is investigated. We look forward to assisting.
“When you see athletes coming forward with accusations, it’s not something that’s done lightly. And once that’s over, we need to take it seriously.”
USA Fencing has gotten involved, announcing Thursday:
“In a decisive move designed to uphold the integrity of our sport, USA Fencing and the USA Fencing Referees’ Commission (RC) are teaming up with Aequitask LLC, Prince Lobel Tye and Edgeworth Economics to explore concerns recently raised regarding potential bout manipulation within the saber discipline.”
USA Fencing chooses its Olympic teams based on a points-earned system from competitions, so a bias toward a U.S. fencer in international competition could potentially help that fencer earn an Olympic team berth.
● Football ● FIFA released its anti-doping report for 2023, with good news: one doping positive among 1,592 tests (and 2,616 samples) from nine FIFA competitions, and that positive was covered by a pre-approved, therapeutic use exemption.
In terms of testing, the major focus in 2023 was the FIFA Women’s World Cup:
● 860: FIFA Women’s World Cup
● 244: FIFA men’s U-20 World Cup
● 244: FIFA men’s U-17 World Cup
● 132: FIFA World Cup 2026 qualifiers
● 44: FIFA Club World Cup Saudi Arabia 2023
● 22: FIFA Club World Cup Morocco 2022 (held in 2023)
● 52: FIFA e-competitions (3)
The tests were divided between out-of-competition sampling (622: 39%) and in-competition (970 (61%). The primary collection method is still for urine (60.4%), then blood (18.2%), blood passport (17.2%) and dried blood spot (4.2%). All the tests outside the Women’s World Cup were of men. Brazil (67), Spain (60) and France (53) were the most-tested countries.
At the FIFA Women’s World Cup, every player was tested at least once and all of the players on the semi-finalist teams were tested at least three times and up to seven times during the year by FIFA alone.
The report also noted CONCACAF’s testing program for 2023, which collected 333 samples, more than eight times as many as in 2022 (40), with 540 scheduled for 2024.
● Swimming ● Clare Weinstein and David Johnston won the 800 m Freestyle races to kick off the Tyr Pro Swim Series meet in Westmont, Illinois on Wednesday night.
Weinstein, a 2022 Worlds 4×200 m Free gold medalist, won the women’s race in 8:23.73, ahead of U.S. 10 km open-water champ Katie Grimes (8:24.84) and Tokyo Olympian Paige Madden (8:31.70), while Johnston touched just ahead of Michael Brinegar (7:57.11) and Luke Whitlock (7:58.20).
Weinstein and Grimes are now nos. 6-7 on the 2024 world list.
¶
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