Olympics

Six medals in some 30 years. Suddenly, two in two days -- hope anew for one of Europe's poorest nations, Moldova

Six medals in some 30 years. Suddenly, two in two days -- hope anew for one of Europe's poorest nations, Moldova

PARIS – By any measure, landlocked Moldova, on the northeastern corner of the Balkans, is one of the poorest countries in Europe. Bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east and south, Moldova has been buffeted by an array of crises made all the more challenging in the past two years by the war nearby.

Over the past 30 or so years, roughly half the people who once called Modolva home – they’re gone. This exodus, this demographic decline, is so profound the situation is potentially, as a nation, existential. When it gained independence amid the end of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the population of Moldova was more than 4 million. Currently: 2.5 million, and dropping.

Before these Paris Games, Moldova had won a total – since its first appearance, in Atlanta in 1996, as an independent entity – of six medals.

Now, already, here two.

Both in judo. Both bronze.

What does it mean to 'win'? Racked by civil war, team from Yemen says, 'We believe in love and solidarity and humanity'

What does it mean to 'win'? Racked by civil war, team from Yemen says, 'We believe in love and solidarity and humanity'

The national Olympic committee of Yemen's annual budget is about $370,000, all of which comes from outside the country, mostly from the International Olympic Committee. That money supports 16 sports and feeds a staff of 21. Each lives on roughly $200 per month. There is no government funding. “They don’t have the budget anymore,” the secretary general of the Olympic committee, Mohammed Al-Ahjeri, 66, said here Tuesday.

This, though, is not a story about pity for Yemen. Far from it.

This is a story about the true meaning of the Olympics.

What it means, ultimately, to “win.”

The message the Olympic world needs to hear: Pay the athletes. Especially on the podium

The message the Olympic world needs to hear: Pay the athletes. Especially on the podium

Change or be changed, the president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach says.

Seb Coe, the head of World Athletics, must feel right now as if he’s living in parallel worlds.

He’s got his athletes telling him he’s, like, the greatest — amid a plan to pay $50,000 to winners at the Paris Games. That’s change. Big change.

Then he’s got critics. Lots of critics. Including institutional critics within the Olympic world.

The world has changed, Seb Coe says: track and field winners at Games to get paid

The world has changed, Seb Coe says: track and field winners at Games to get paid

A few weeks back came the announcement of the Friendship Games, to be held in Russia in September. Total prize money across all sports: $100 million. Winners get $40,000. Second place, $25,000. Third: $17,000.

On Wednesday, World Athletics, the No. 1 sport in the Olympic landscape, made a precedent-setting move, announcing it would pay gold medalists at the Paris Games. Total prize money: $2.4 million. Winners across each of the four dozen track and field events will receive $50,000 each. Relay teams will split the $50k. Starting in Los Angeles in 2028, silver and bronze medalists will also be paid. 

The timing may seem like World Athletics is following the Russians. To be clear, very clear: it is not. 

“I have to accept the world has changed,” World Athletics president Sebastian Coe said Wednesday in an interview with Steve Scott at ITV.

In a world of disruption, the Olympics confronts the World Friendship Games

In a world of disruption, the Olympics confronts the World Friendship Games

The No. 1 complaint athletes have about the Olympic movement is that they can’t make money.

Meet the International Olympic Committee-disapproved Friendship Games, coming this September in Russia: 36 sports, 21 venues, 17 in Moscow, four in Ekaterinburg (including track and field Sept. 18-22).

Total prize money, across all sports: $100 million. Winners get $40,000. Second place, $25,000. Third, $17,000. No ‘Olympic village.’ Instead, you’ll be welcome in three- or four-star hotels.

Push, meet shove – brought to the world in some significant measure by Umar Kremlev, arguably one of the most provocative and interesting figures in world sport in 2024. 

What 'Olympic family' really is about: the story of Ed Hula and Miguel Hernandez Mendez

What 'Olympic family' really is about: the story of Ed Hula and Miguel Hernandez Mendez

As we get older in life, we learn a few things. Human beings need hope. And we need each other.

This is the story of Ed Hula, a pioneering Olympic journalist in the United States, and Miguel Hernandez Mendez, who for most of his life has been a journalist in Cuba and is now, in significant measure because of the goodness of Ed Hula, a new American citizen. 

“Olympic brothers,” Miguel said in a recent telephone call.

Again: less screaming, less vitriol. Kamila Valieva is just 16

Again: less screaming, less vitriol. Kamila Valieva is just 16

From the get-go, it has been entirely unclear why so much vitriol has been directed at Kamila Valieva. 

She is still just 16. 

Here is yet another call for everyone — repeat, everyone — to dial down the rhetoric, the anger, the urge to put Valieva front and center as proxy for everything Russian or Putin and the war. She is none of those things.

She is a 16-year-old figure skater who, when last seen, was performing at the Russian national championships with a charming down-to-the-move celebration of Jenna Ortega’s viral Wednesday Addams dance from the hit Netflix series.

The Russians (still, again) and Salt Lake (again, still) -- the gifts that keep giving

The Russians (still, again) and Salt Lake (again, still) -- the gifts that keep giving

Twelve things about the flurry of pronouncements and announcements over the past several days about the Russians and whether they will or won’t be at the Paris Summer Games in 2024.

OK, 11 about the Russians and one about Salt Lake City.

The Russians and Salt Lake. They’re the Olympic gifts that keep giving.

1. Don’t delude yourself. Don’t be naive. Don’t be a hater, either. The Russians will almost surely be in Paris in 2024. Except they won’t be identified as Russians. They will be neutrals. The way they typically had been at World Athletics meets — something like ANA, or Authorized Neutral Athlete.

François Carrard was a giant -- and other thoughts

François Carrard was a giant -- and other thoughts

François Carrard has died, and the world of international and Olympic sport has lost a giant. He was 83.

Carrard knew seemingly everyone and everything. Perhaps most important, he frequently knew how to find and reach consensus in a world too often marked by polarizing disagreement.

Beyond, he was a renaissance man, learned in letters and music, especially jazz. He was unafraid to speak his mind. And he could be wickedly funny.

A small note about which some but not many people knew. When he was young, Carrard spent a year as an exchange student in the States, in Pasadena, California. There he was not “François” but “Frank.”

RIP Kobe ... and Shayne

RIP Kobe ... and Shayne

Early last Saturday morning, our nephew — my wife’s sister’s son, Shayne Rebbetoy — fell to his death. He was just 16.

Flying back to California as soon as possible, landing Sunday afternoon at a very foggy Los Angeles International airport, the news: Kobe Bryant and eight others, including his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, had been killed just hours earlier in a helicopter crash near Calabasas.

We have spent this week in shock and grief, and in preparing for the seemingly infinite number of details that attend Shayne’s memorial service, which is set for Saturday. It is a fascinating thing to be very intensely mourning the passing of a teenage boy, a sweet and gentle soul you have known since he literally came to life, with the very public outpouring around the globe for a basketball icon who for some 20 years, since he came into all of our lives, inspired countless hopes and dreams.

Shayne’s mother, Lisa Hudson, my wife’s sister, was one of the early pioneers on the women’s pro beach volleyball circuit, and has for many years been active in the action sports industry. Her friends include Olympic medalists and skateboard legends, and they have rallied around her and her husband, Jack Rebbetoy. A GoFundMe campaign that asked for $10,000 (for grief therapy, among other things) is now five times past that; if you’d like to contribute, here’s the link.