The Olympics - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Mikaela Shiffrin is the GOAT, and 'medalz culture' can shove it
I know I’m one of the few sports writers leaping to my keyboard to riff on Mikaela Shiffrin breaking the all-time record for wins — earning No. 87 in Åre, Sweden, and passing Ingemar Stenmark on Saturday — but I wanted to issue this as a reminder that Olympic success is kind of bullshit. The last im...
Gus Kenworthy believes reaction to Carl Nassib coming out wasn’t all positive for the LGBTQ+ community
Gus Kenworthy knows a thing or two about breaking boundaries in sports for LGBTQ+ athletes. He was the first openly gay X Games athlete and alongside good friend and figure skater Adam Rippon, he was half of the first openly gay duo to represent the United States in the Winter Olympics at the 2018 g...
Team USA gymnasts file for $1 billion in restitution in wake of Larry Nassar abuse
Simone Biles, Aly Raisman, and McKayla Maroney are joined by about 90 other girls and women in seeking over $1 billion dollars from the FBI after the bureau’s bungled investigation into Larry Nassar’s decades of sexual abuse. Nassar, estimated to have assaulted over 300 victims over the course of hi...
You won’t have 15-year old figure skaters to kick around anymore
Anyone remember the hot garbage fire that was the Olympic figure skating finals in February? For those who don’t, allow me to jog your memory — 15-year-old star Kamila Valieva, the center of a Russian Olympic Committee doping scandal, sobbing after falling twice as the pressure of the PED investigat...
The Ohio GOP would like to ‘inspect’ your daughters’ genitals
Ohio’s ban on trans youth in sports is the epitome of the conservative culture war on the LGBTQ community. Their obsession has reached pathological levels. Last week, Ohio’s Republican-dominated House approved a bill requiring genital inspections to prevent transgender female athletes from competing...
The International Gymnastics Federation will break you… eventually
The ability of the sports world to churn on through societal decay is dismaying or courageous depending on how you frame it. Oscillating between the stoicism of the Ukrainian national team playing through an invasion, and Black athletes being asked to perform in front of white people a day after a r...
Coed sports can be a thing
For all the energy devoted to the Lia Thomas story, you’d think there was an army of transitioning athletes looking to snatch Division I titles from the women who rightfully won them. Laws have been written, passed, vetoed and passed again to prevent people assigned one sex at birth from competing w...
Whew… we need to talk about the Russian gymnasts
This morning, I woke up to the sight of a river of people, from the elderly down to the babies carried in their parents’ arms, trying to escape Ukraine. I watched my TV in horror as they slipped and slid uphill, some of them falling, wondering if they were going to get back up again. Behind them, a ...
Biathlete Yevhen Malyshev killed defending Ukraine
Nineteen-year-old Ukranian biathlete Yevhen Malyshev was killed in action on Tuesday while fighting for the Ukrainian military against the ongoing Russian military invasion. His death was confirmed Wednesday by the International Biathlon Union, who wrote, “Above all, the IBU expresses its deepest co...
Not all Olympians are apoplectic over the Beijing Games
I tried. I tried to focus on the competitions and athletes at the Olympics instead of wallowing in the politics, conditions, and COVID of it all. No longer. I can’t take it anymore. The men’s skiing halfpipe final was more scary to watch than it was fun because gale-force winds (probably an exaggera...
Kamila Valieva was just a figurine in a Game among nations
What a farce the International Olympic Committee has made of the Games this year. By not installing real sanctions against Russia for institutionalizing a surreptitious doping program in Sochi, and by not barring an athlete who tested positive for a banned substance, we were witness to the oddest of...
Debacle on ice: Olympics women’s figure skating was the opposite of heartwarming
The scene after the end of the women’s free skate was hard to watch Thursday — tears, screaming, and heartbreak pouring from the Russian athletes expected to sweep the podium, their Olympic experience destroyed by a doping scandal involving the country’s 15-year-old star, Kamila Valieva....