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☆ Fencing Rattled by Suspensions and Accusations Ahead of Olympics
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-09 | by ( Jeré Longman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Fencing is a niche but fundamental sport in the Olympics, contested at every Summer Games since 1896. Yet despite its genteel reputation and simple objective — touch an opponent with your blade before being touched — the sport has long been rife with drama and suspicion. Two months before the Paris Olympics, international saber fencing is engulfed by questions about the integrity of refereeing, accusations of preferential treatment and concerns among top athletes and coaches that their sport’s tangled connections may be helping decide who gets to compete at the Games. The federation that governs fencing in the United States, USA Fencing, recently suspended two international referees after they acknowledged communicating with each other during an Olympic qualifying tournament in California. And just last week, more than a half-dozen elite fencers demanded harsher punishments and urgent action to protect a sport that they say is “vulnerable to unfair refereeing and match-fixing.”

Organizations: Games, Paris Olympics Locations: United States, USA, California

☆ New Study Bolsters Idea of Athletic Differences Between Men and Trans Women
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-23 | by ( Jeré Longman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

A new study financed by the International Olympic Committee found that transgender female athletes showed greater handgrip strength — an indicator of overall muscle strength — but lower jumping ability, lung function and relative cardiovascular fitness compared with women whose gender was assigned female at birth. That data, which also compared trans women with men, contradicted a broad claim often made by proponents of rules that bar transgender women from competing in women’s sports. It also led the study’s authors to caution against a rush to expand such policies, which already bar transgender athletes from a handful of Olympic sports. The study’s most important finding, according to one of its authors, Yannis Pitsiladis, a member of the I.O.C.’s medical and scientific commission, was that, given physiological differences, “Trans women are not biological men.”Alternately praised and criticized, the study added an intriguing data set to an unsettled and often politicized debate that may only grow louder with the Paris Olympics and a U.S. presidential election approaching.

Persons: Yannis Pitsiladis Organizations: International Olympic Committee, Paris Olympics, U.S

☆ How the Wait for Olympic Medals Became an Endurance Sport
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-11 | by ( Jeré Longman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

It took Lashinda Demus of the United States 52.77 seconds to run the women’s 400-meter hurdles at the 2012 London Olympics. A year after that decision, and 12 years after the race, she is still waiting to receive her gold medal. One of her American teammates, Erik Kynard Jr., competed in the high jump at the London Games. And like Demus, he had to wait many years before being named the victor. Demus and Kynard are expected to finally receive their medals this summer during the Paris Olympics, according to officials at the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee.

Persons: Erik Kynard Jr Organizations: United, London, Paris, United States Olympic, Paralympic Committee, International Olympic Committee Locations: United States, Russian

☆ An Olympic Dream Falters Amid Track’s Shifting Rules
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-24 | by ( Jeré Longman | More About Jeré Longman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Maximila Imali, a top Kenyan sprinter, did not lose her eligibility to compete in the Paris Olympics because she cheated. She did not fail a doping test. Instead, she is set to miss this year’s Summer Games because she was born with a rare genetic variant that results in naturally elevated levels of testosterone. And last March, track and field’s global governing body ruled that Ms. Imali’s biology gave her an unfair advantage in all events against other women, effectively barring her from international competition. As a result, Ms. Imali, 27, finds her Olympic dream in peril and her career and her livelihood in limbo.

Persons: Maximila, Imali Organizations: Kenyan, Paris Olympics Locations: Paris

☆ Kenyan Runners Set the World’s Pace, Chased by a Doping Crisis
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-02 | by ( Jeré Longman | More About Jeré Longman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

When Kelvin Kiptum, of Kenya, broke the world marathon record in early October, he threatened a landmark barrier of human possibility: running 26.2 miles in less than two hours in a competitive race. Kiptum’s time of 2 hours 35 seconds at the Chicago Marathon brought him tantalizingly close to the milestone, a feat achieved once — by a fellow Kenyan in a 2019 exhibition — but only by using pacing and hydration tactics that rendered the performance ineligible for a record. Yet because Kiptum’s triumph came as Kenyan athletics is struggling with an alarming doping crisis, the 23-year-old record-holder — who has not been accused of doping — found himself discussing not only what he had done in Chicago, but what he had not. The record time, Kiptum told reporters when he returned to Kenya, was the product of running 150 miles or more per week at altitude, not the use of banned substances. “My secret is training,” he said.

Persons: Kelvin Kiptum, tantalizingly, —, Kiptum, ”, “ Organizations: Chicago Marathon, Kenyan, New York City Marathon Locations: Kenya, Kenyan, Chicago, East

☆ Australian Punters Are Putting a New Spin on Football
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-07 | by ( Jeré Longman | More About Jeré Longman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

On a cloudy, gusty morning last month, three dozen students, teachers, construction workers, electricians and bartenders wore helmets and shoulder pads and boomed torpedoes, banana kicks and drop punts. Down the hill from a strip mall outside Melbourne, on a borrowed soccer field, they trained to become the next generation of Australian punters who greatly influence special teams play at the highest levels of American college football and, to a lesser extent, the N.F.L. This season, 61 of the 133 teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision, the top tier of N.C.A.A. football, have Aussie punters on their rosters, according to Prokick Australia, a Melbourne-based academy that converts Australian rules football players and some rugby players into punters (and a smaller number of kickers) for the American game.

Organizations: Football Locations: Melbourne, N.C.A.A, Australia

Ms. Muñoz, who resigned in 2019 after a year on the job, recounted for the first time the reasons for her departure. (Mr. Rubiales has previously denied any wrongdoing in either case). Fifteen of the federation’s 18 board members were men, Ms. Muñoz recalled. Players tried and failed to force change last year over the behavior of Mr. Vilda, the now-fired national coach. Mr. Vilda also required players to keep their doors open at night until he could check that each of them was in bed.

Persons: Muñoz, “, ”, Rubiales, Vilda, Boquete, ” Ms Organizations: Team Locations: Saudi Arabia, Spain

☆ Sweden Ousts Japan, Ensuring World Cup Will Have First-Time Champion
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-11 | by ( Jeré Longman | More About Jeré Longman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

A Women’s World Cup of change, of unexpected early departures and tantalizing arrivals, has completed its upending of certainty and tradition. No former champion remains in the tournament with two rounds to play. And now Japan, the 2011 winner, has exited in the quarterfinals with a 2-1 defeat to Sweden on Friday in Auckland, New Zealand. It has participated in all nine Women’s World Cups, finishing second in 2003 and third three times. But it has never won a major tournament and longs to be a first-time champion.

Locations: United States, Germany, Norway, Japan, Sweden, Auckland , New Zealand

☆ Is Japan the Best Team Left in the World Cup?
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-10 | by ( Jeré Longman | More About Jeré Longman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Having wilted after winning the 2011 World Cup in a penalty kick shootout against the United States, Japan has bloomed anew with versatility to play the possession style of short passes known as tiki-taka or to launch searing counterattacks. After a blistering 4-0 loss to Japan during group play, Spain Coach Jorge Vilda said that his team’s defeat had been psychic as well as numerical. “They’re so disciplined and very structured in the way they play offense and defense,” Hansen said. Sweden has scored four of its nine goals on corner kicks, a total that nearly grew last Sunday as it packed the six-yard box against the United States like a crowded elevator. But the Swedes could not manage a goal in 90 minutes of regulation and 30 minutes of overtime before subduing the Americans, finally and microscopically, on penalty kicks.

Persons: Jorge Vilda, ” Vilda, Caroline Graham Hansen, “, ” Hansen, Zecira Musovic, Jonna Andersson, Trinity Rodman, Lynn Williams Organizations: Japan, Norway, Champions League, Barcelona Locations: United States, Japan, Spain, Norwegian, Sweden

☆ For Megan Rapinoe, an Ending Not Even She Could Have Imagined
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-06 | by ( Jeré Longman | More About Jeré Longman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

It ended in the most excruciating way for Megan Rapinoe: a penalty kick skied over the crossbar, shock, disappointment, a rueful smile to herself. Rapinoe could not remember the last time she missed a penalty kick. It was her penalty kick that provided the decisive goal in the final of the 2019 World Cup. There is more soccer to play for Rapinoe, a National Women’s Soccer League championship to chase in Seattle with the OL Reign. The light of Rapinoe’s renowned and polarizing career as a player and activist has now gone into shadow on the World Cup stage, where she played her best and emphatically spoke her mind.

Persons: Megan Rapinoe, “ It’s, ” Rapinoe, Rapinoe Organizations: Sweden, Rapinoe, Women’s Soccer League Locations: United States, Melbourne, Australia, Seattle

When Vietnam fielded its first women’s national soccer team in 1997, its players wore oversized jerseys made for men. In the years after the Vietnam War — called the American War here — ended in 1975, economic reform took precedence over sports. The Vietnam Football Federation, which governs soccer in the unified country, was not established until 1989. In its early days, soccer was widely considered a game for men, too hard and demanding for women to play. “Society didn’t accept the existence of such a team,” said Mai Duc Chung, 74, Vietnam’s women’s national coach then and now.

Persons: —, didn’t, ”, Mai Duc Chung Organizations: Vietnam, soccer team, Vietnam Football Federation, “ Locations: Ho Chi Minh City, Saigon, Vietnam

☆ With War as a Backdrop, a Russian Fencing Drama Plays Out in the U.S.
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-08 | by ( Jeré Longman | More About Jeré Longman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Fencing is usually among the least visible Olympic events, but a year out from the Paris Games it is providing political, sporting and familial drama related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A top Russian coach has been fired after a star épée couple left three weeks ago for the United States. And a high-profile fencing divorce has touched the upper reaches of the Russian Olympic Committee and even led to the entry of “raspberry frappé” into the lexicon as a sword-fighting put-down. One of the Russian fencers now training and coaching in San Diego, Konstantin Lokhanov, 24, is a former son-in-law of the president of Russia’s Olympic Committee and the ex-husband of a two-time Russian Olympic fencing gold medalist. He won the men’s saber competition at the American summer championships after having competed for Russia at the 2021 Tokyo Games.

Persons: Konstantin Lokhanov Organizations: Paris, Russian Olympic Committee, Russia’s Olympic Locations: Ukraine, United States, Phoenix, Russian, San Diego, Russia

☆ After a ‘Kill Shot’ to the Eye, a Wrestler Restarts His Life
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-18 | by ( Jeré Longman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

After being stabilized in late September 2018, Rich was flown to Philadelphia, where he entered a rehab facility for nearly two months. During the pandemic, when Rich could not attend rehab indoors, Gina improvised at home. She and her husband also lugged foam mats to parks around Philadelphia so that Rich could continue to work with his physical therapist. “She’s really gone to war for me, which I’m so grateful for,” Rich Perry said. The family has grown more hopeful over the last eight months or so, Gina Perry said.

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