The men’s World Cup is nearly upon us, and with it a telling if not altogether disturbing push in some quarters to turn to Celsius, meters and, worst of all, British English. 

We the People! This summer, as the World Cup bracket plays out, marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The 13 colonies broke away from the British. We won. This is the United States of America. And so this truth ought to be self-evident: let’s speak American English.

Kirsty Coventry has been president of the International Olympic Committee for, by her count at a news conference Thursday, 318 days.

In almost every meaningful way, Coventry is now executing a pivot away from predecessor Thomas Bach, IOC president from September 2013 until last June. Indeed, it is said behind the scenes in Lausanne, at IOC headquarters, that Coventry has little to maybe no interest in the past — only what lies ahead. 

Yu-Ting Lin of Chinese Taipei, a gold medalist in women’s boxing at the 2024 Paris Olympics, took bronze Monday in the 2026 Asian continental boxing championships.

In Paris, Lin won the 57-kilogram class (just over 125 pounds) to become Taiwan’s first Olympic boxing champion. Heading toward two years later, Lin is now fighting at 60 kilos (132 pounds). The Asian championships were held in the capital of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar.

After Monday’s action, Lin’s coach, Tzu-Chiang Tseng, emphasized for the China News Agency the value of Lin fighting up a category: “After all, this is our first time competing in the 60-kilo division after the Olympics. The opponents’ skills, strategies and styles are all new to us, so we used this opportunity to observe and learn.”

This is not the story.

The story is, rather, how this could have been allowed to happen in the first instance. 

The 2026 Milano-Cortina Paralympic Games drew Sunday to a close, with China atop the medals table, the United States second and — what’s this — Russia third. 

The successful — no other word for it — reintegration of the Russians at the Paralympics foreshadows, almost certainly, not only what is likely but what should most certainly be the case at the Olympics, presumably if not probably as soon as the next edition, the Los Angeles Games in 2028. 

Skiing got its Bud Greenspan moment here at these 2026 Milano-Cortina Winter Games. In men’s slalom, India’s 35-year-old Arif Khan, with back pain and more, finished dead last. In a sport in which races are won by hundredths and sometimes thousandths of a second, Khan finished nearly 48 seconds behind the winner, Switzerland’s Loic Meillard. 

But — Khan finished. 

In conditions that knocked more than half of those who started out of the race, among them Norway’s Atle Lie McGrath, the first-run leader who after missing a gate took off his skis and literally walked into the woods, distraught, Arif Khan finished.