Most everyone knows there are nine movies in the core Star Wars canon. Then there is the 2016 prequel Rogue One, arguably the best in the anthology. It’s about a band at the outskirts of the galaxy in confrontation with the Empire. 

This brings us to the situation involving the World Olympians Association and the International Olympic Committee. 

Nominally, this situation would appear to be about money. There is a compelling argument, however, that it marks a set piece about the state of the IOC under the presidency of Thomas Bach even as it points to urgent consideration of a different direction the IOC might well consider under a new president — he or she will be elected in March.

The story of Imane Khelif, the Algerian athlete who won gold in the women’s boxing competition at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, is filled with layers of complication. 

The question confronting all of us now, with the story in the spotlight again Monday, is not just whether the Imane Khelif matter will ultimately prove a decisive turn in the history of female sport but, too, whether it can serve as a poignant reminder of what we all can desperately need, all the more so in our fragile and beleaguered world, to be reminded of:

Our common humanity. 

The International Olympic Committee under president Thomas Bach has sought to work closely with the United Nations. Particularly when it comes to the rights and roles of women and girls. 

So it was all the more noteworthy that the UN’s “Special Rapporteur” for, among other matters, women in sports took a plain shot Tuesday at the IOC for the controversy that erupted at the Paris Games in women’s boxing.

Breaking is a real sport. The world’s best do street gymnastics to a hip-hop beat. To reiterate: it is a real sport, at its best extraordinary demanding and thrilling. It is that rare experience that locks the audience in. At world-class breaking, no one, repeat no one, idly scrolls their cellphone. The crowd, young, urban, is part of the scene. And it is a scene. A scene you want to be part of. Especially if you are a teen or 20-something, the Olympic target audience.

Breaking was in for Paris 2024. It’s out for LA28. It’s unclear whether it might come back for Brisbane in 2032 and beyond.

A key challenge in breaking’s Olympic future – in or out – is the World DanceSport Federation, the international federation that oversaw breaking to and through Paris 

Perhaps nothing underscores that challenge than the WDSF World Ranking, readily available online for both men and women, or in the jargon, bboys and bgirls:

-       Raygun, the Australian breaker Rachael Gunn, is women’s No. 1.

 In the latest twist to the gymnastics drama that has trailed out of the Paris Olympics, the American Jordan Chiles, now out of a bronze medal in the floor exercise after an arbitration ruling, made a lengthy social media post that said she was “overwhelmed” by the “love” she had received and “incredibly grateful” to, among others, USA Gymnastics and the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee.

USA Gym? Sure.

The USOPC? Wow. Does anyone else read these rulings? Because it is as plain as day, page 9, paragraph 45, that the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee did not show at the hearing. Why? It didn’t offer a reason. Nor “did it contact” the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport “any more at any time until the conclusion of the proceedings” – that is, until the three-judge CAS panel ruled, as the world now knows, against Chiles.

News alert: the Games famously were in LA in 1932 and 1984 and will be back in 2028. If you think Paris was the best ever, and it’s right up there with London, with the proviso that all Games have backstage glitches, and on TV you lived none of that, none of the Olympic Village food drama, the COVID cases or, anywhere, the signage that would send you on trips to nowhere — LA formally now has next.

To be clear, the bar is set high, International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach calling these Games, which came Sunday to a close, a “love story.”