Monthly Archives: August 2021

The Tokyo Olympics offered much of the world a needed reprieve after 18 months of pandemic loss. Now, some fans are looking as far ahead as the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angelesand not just because the coronavirus pandemic will, hopefully, be a bygone era. That year is also the year lacrosse is primed to return to the Olympic field after nearly a century.

Lacrosse is more popular than ever before. From elite U.S. suburbs to college quads to Japan and Uganda, it is quickly blossoming into the fastest growing sport on Earth, with 70 nations in its global federation. But its return to the Olympics is also not without controversy: Lacrosses most important teamand its best playermay not be invited to play.

Lyle Thompson is the NCAAs all-time lacrosse scoring leader. Hes also Iroquois and a member of the Iroquois Nationalsthe only national team belonging to an Indigenous nation. Last August, the Iroquois Nationals was excluded from invitation to the 2022 World Games, a stepping stone to the Olympicsthe latest political snub faced by a team from a once prestigious nation now boxed in by generations of legalese. The scandal was resolved only after a Change.org petition and a boycott threatclearing a wide open yet uncharted path for the teams Olympic participation.

If they compete, the Iroquois Nationals will not be the only Olympic team representing an unrecognized state. Puerto Rico, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the British Virgin Islands, and Hong Kong all have their own teams, as do a handful of dependent freely associated states in contract to a larger nationsuch as Palau, Cook Islands, Marshall Islands, and Micronesia. The Iroquois Nationals, however, would be the first unrecognized Native American nation to join that list.

It means a lot for the next generation, Thompson told Foreign Policy. I want to see my other relatives repping each other too. Were Native America.

The Iroquois Nationalsfounded by college lacrosse star-turned-political firebrand Oren Lyons, his friend Rick Hill, and lacrosse stick-maker Wesley Patterson in 1983was, from its birth, an Indigenous sovereignty movement, the latest diplomatic turret in an Iroquois lineage of transformative foreign policy. But as the team ascended world rankspulling from a talent pool numbering just hundreds of playersit has been carrying other facets of the nation state along with it.

Nestled between and beyond the Adirondack Mountains and Great Lakes in what is now the United States and Canada, the Haudenosaunee Confederacythe mother-tongue name for the Iroquois Confederacyhas existed for centuries. With a capital at Onondaga (outside Syracuse, New York), the six-member confederacy is a European Union-type alliance led by a 50-chief legislative Grand Council. As the oldest continuously governing body in North America, the Haudenosaunee Confederacycomprised of the Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, Tuscarora, and Seneca nationsstraddled an empire before its lands were whittled and strewn, violently encroached on by U.S. and British settler regimes.

The Haudenosaunee developed the game of lacrosse millennia ago and fashioned hickory to play it. As early as the 1750s, Mohawks were sharing the game with Quebecois. In 1834, the Mohawk played a public game at the St. Pierre racetrack in Montreal, and lacrosse became a popular spectator sport. By the 1840s, Haudenosaunee and Canadians played each other often, and, in 1856, a lacrosse federation was formed in Montreal. Today, the wooden lacrosse stickgiven to Haudenosaunee at birthflies alongside a Nike logo. The Iroquois Nationals rank third out of the 46 teams and 70 lacrosse federations in the worldnipping at the heels of the United States and Canada, and miles ahead of the rest of the field.

Theyre the creators of the game, said Paul Rabil, a member of the U.S. national lacrosse team.

Fast forward four centuries, and the transition of the game has taken root. [The Iroquois Nationals have] the best players on the planet.

But whether on the map of politics or playoff bracketology, the Iroquois Nationals path to the playing field has been fraught, vexed by the same bylaws of the international system that have long stymied the Haudenosaunees own quest for formal recognition.

Although there is no law requiring the Olympics fit inside the United Nations framework, the Olympic Charter of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) requires countries be recognized by the international community to become eligible as a National Olympic Committee. The primary reference for units of sovereignty since 1947 is U.N. member states. Complications with this definition begin and end with the obvious: The Haudenosauneelike every other native nation in North Americais not an internationally recognized, independent state.

But the Haudenosaunee Confederacy was once a recognized nation that then became an unrecognized state. Haudenosaunee independence is enshrined mostly in individual treaties with other nations and not multilaterally through sporting leagues or international bodies.

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy was and is highly diplomatic. Unlike many Native American nations, the densely organized Haudenosaunee heartland lays smack amid a heavy corridor of colonial migration. This rendered the confederacy a broker between Europeans and other Native American nationsand ultimately decimated the confederacys territory.

The confederacys earliest treaty with Europeans, made with the Netherlands in 1613, is still celebrated today by the Dutch government. In 1710, three confederacy statesmen from the Mohawk nation visited England; they were received as emissaries and had portraits commissioned by Queen Anne. Haudenosaunee politics have been praised by everyone from Benjamin Franklin to the 1987 U.S. Congress. The confederacys constitution, the Great Law of Peace, was published in text in the 19th century.

The convulsions of the American Revolution tore apart the quasi-singular confederacy. Grand Council chiefs couldnt agree on whether to support the Continental Army or the British. Some Haudenosaunee who backed the British resettled to the western frontier of the confederacy, delineated by Niagara Falls and under the Seneca nations general protection.

After the war, a portion of those who fled west were gifted land by the British monarchy in its Dominion of Canada. The subsequent establishment of Six Nations of the Grand Riverwhich exists to this daygave the splintered confederacy a second major pole of political society next to Onondaga. Much of the current Iroquois Nationals roster hails from Six Nations.

On the U.S. side, the fruit of revolution was quickly seen in the form of land prospectors, shaky treaties, and state-led contracts that devoured Indigenous territory up to its edges. Many acquisitions made then have been disputed in writing since the first U.S. administrations and still face lawsuits today.

The state of New York began transacting with native bands, a violation of the 1790 Trade and Intercourse Act, which prohibits states from purchasing Native American land without federal approval. Indeed, an 1802 memo from then-U.S. President Thomas Jefferson queried the legality of land deals with the Seneca nation. But soon, plans were in place to link the Hudson River to the Great Lakes via the Mohawk Riverright through Haudenosaunee heartland. It was only the first project driven by private pockets that hastened after the War of 1812 and led to a precipitous loss of land. Between 1790 and 1825, nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy lost up to 99 percent of their territory.

In 1867, Britain passed a wedge of self-control back over to Ottawa in its Dominion of Canada. Lost in the shuffle was the transfer of Londons formalized recognition, decorated with a long-standing diplomatic protocol, of the confederacy as a foreign partner. Geopolitics and settler sovereignty were pivoting from seizing land to forced assimilation.

Canadas settler government swiftly ushered in the Gradual Enfranchisement Act, spiriting to dismantle native governments. Then came the Indian Act, a series of legislation beginning in the 1870s and resurging in 1921and still active todayseeking to belittle Indigenous nations via reserves, identification cards, and proxy councils as subsidiaries of the Dominion of Canada. The recent discovery of mass graves across Canada filled by remains of Indigenous children has exposed long-silenced massacres and reminded many of the forced relocation of the young to residential schools operating into the 1990s by the Canadian government.

Canada sought to eradicate nearly all aspects of Indigenous cultureexcept lacrosse. Canadians loved lacrosse. They loved it so much that, in 1859, Canada made lacrosse its national sport. But in 1880, Canadas lacrosse federation banished native athletes from playing.

Today, there are 193 U.N. member states but 206 active National Olympic Committees (NOCs) registered with the IOC. Although there arent many unrecognized nations competing in the Olympicsbesides Palestine, which has competed since 1996 and is a U.N. permanent observerthere are at least one dozen Olympic nations that are contracted in some form to other countries, often via a Compact of Free Association or otherwise delineated special relationship, Palau and Hong Kong among them.

Many of these anomalies can be understood as a result of arbitrating a confused category on the worlds modern map: the U.N. list of Non-Self-Governing Territories. Crossed down from 72 names in 1946 to 17 names today, the register functions both as a catalyst for emancipation and as a barrier to statehood. Being on the list isnt a prerequisite for Olympic credentials, but it is a bit of its own tenure track.

The U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoanone of which fight their own warsare on the U.N. list, and all are Olympic nations. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy, made up of nations whose land has been decimated by colonial expansion and forced assimilationhas never made any list of non-self-governing territories and is neither an IOC nor U.N. member.

But its athletesin lacrosse, in particularhave already been bronzed by the Olympics well before the United Nations existed. After the IOC was founded in 1894, and following the success of the first modern games in Athens in 1896, both Canada and the United States yearned for lacrosse to be included. By the 1904 Games in St. Louis, it was an Olympic sport. Three teams from two NOCs competed: a U.S. team, a Canada team, and the Mohawk Indiansin some sources referenced as Iroquoisa team mostly from the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve carved from southern Ontario. The Mohawk team was sponsored by Canadas NOC.

When the United Nations was founded in 1945, the Haudenosaunee traveled to San Francisco for the new world bodys creation, which brought with it simultaneous waves of emancipation and codified order. In 1949, six chiefs of the confederacy attended the U.N. headquarters groundbreaking at 42nd Street in Manhattan with other heads of state. The New York Times reported they were the center of attraction. It didnt last.

As the tide of colonialism receded and people from India to the Democratic Republic of the Congo gained independence, they received a key ring to their new units of sovereignty: U.N. membership. The IOC swiftly ushered them in too, with NOC codes of their own. The confederacy and its pronounced desire to join the world wasnt forgotten; it was neglected. Should an attempt at participation, either limited or comprehensive, be made by the Nations of the Iroquois, a 1961 study of U.N. procedure and statehood found, it could not be entertained.

In 1977, a Haudenosaunee delegation traveled to Geneva to partake in a U.N. conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americasthe first time Indigenous delegations were invited to a U.N.-led event. The delegation was led by Oren Lyons, a member of Onondaga nation and a multiple All-American lacrosse star for nearby Syracuse University.

They traveled on new Haudenosaunee passports, brown booklets with Hau de no sau nee Passport written on the cover. The document befuddled Swiss border police, who suggested they allow the delegation into the country on a special permit instead.

According to a Mohawk newsletter covering the trip, a delegate swiftly rebuked the Swiss guard, lecturing that a special permit dared to undermine the validity of the Haudenosaunee passport.

The important thing is not to get in but that every step of the way, our validity as Indian nations is recognized, one delegated reportedly said.

The standoff eased when the Swiss officials clarified entry permits were standard for passports from all nations Switzerland had yet to formalize relations with, and the stamp endorsed freedom of that passport. So, stamped passports in hand, the new diplomats walked into Europe.

Although the Geneva trip fell short of clinching formal U.N. recognition for the confederacy, its new Haudenosaunee passports would prove key to entering a tinier, cliquey, and humble club: that of international lacrosse competition.

Thanks in part to Lyons leadership, more Haudenosaunee athletes joined collegiate teams in the 1970sin addition to running their own native leagueand, by 1980, overtures grew between tendrils of sporting federations and Indigenous athletes.

The Haudenosaunees first chance was an amateur tournament held in Vancouver in 1980, with U.S. and Canadian national teams also competing. Lyons, together with a Tuscarora student named Rick Hill and a stick-maker named Wesley Patterson, slapped up a Haudenosaunee All-Star team and won second place. Well-respected in the sport, Lyons represented a bridge between the litism of formal Canadian and American organizing bodies and native athletes, argued Allan Downey, a professor of history at McMaster University, in the Journal of the Canadian Historical Association.

After the tournament, some suggested the Iroquois Nationals apply to the then-named International Lacrosse Federation (ILF). Impressed by the teams success and charmed by its effort, the ILF members at the timethe United States, Canada, England, and Australiaoutlined a series of challenges, essentially requiring the group to prove itself capable to field a viable national teamfinancially, competitively, and politically.

In 1983 at Onondaga, the Grand Council of Chiefs of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy formally sanctioned the Iroquois Nationals as the official team representing its nations. The declaration was formative to Haudenosaunee history, centering the confederacy on a single unit. For the Grand Council, it was a fundamental and explicit move to pivot to traditional culture and philosophy as opposed to, say, proliferating casinos. It also offered a potential track to national recognition.

Ahead of the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles, Lyons and the Iroquois Nationals helped host the Jim Thorpe Memorial Pow-Wow and Native Games, which brought members of more than 40 native nations and the national teams of Australia, Canada, England, and the United States together. That year, a womens team was also founded. In 1985, the Iroquois Nationals toured England, successfully journeying on Haudenosaunee passports as they had in Switzerland.

In 1987, the ILF admitted Iroquois Nationals as the national team of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, making it the fifth member of their federation. ILF membership hoisted new scaffolding around the concept of Haudenosaunee nationhood as a physical sovereign unit: Only after the Iroquois Nationals formed did the Haudenosaunee Confederacy design a national flag and compose a national anthem.

Since then, the Iroquois Nationals presence has been irksome, everything from a media headache to a political controversy to a fetish. As the Haudenosaunee passport grew famous and the team ascended global ranks, it was perceived as both an unbeatable Goliath and lacrosses golden ticket.

Iroquois Nationals tryouts brought athletes from all six nations of the confederacy. The first match was in Perth, Australia, in 1990. It was a big deal from the beginning: The Iroquois Nationals arrived on Haudenosaunee passports, the Haudenosaunee flag was flown, and the team lost every game. From there, things could only go up.

By 2006, Nike inked a deal with the Iroquois Nationals, which has been continually renewed since. More than a modeling gig, Nike provides the team with footwear, clothing, and equipment. It was one of the first-ever deals between a Native American nation and a Fortune 500 company and has since been renewed and expanded. It also instilled a confident, motivated momentum in the team, which has lingered with the medal circle; this was seen particularly in its new recruits, who would lift a golden generation of Iroquois lacrosse.

But the Iroquois Nationals newfound prominence also drew scrutiny to the Haudenosaunee passport, a growing symbol of the confederacys broader pursuit for recognition of its sovereignty.

In 2010, the now-named Federation of International Lacrosse (FIL) championships were held in Manchester, England. Although a Haudenosaunee delegation had traveled to Sweden earlier that year without issue, both the United Kingdom and the United States said they would not honor the Haudenosaunee passports, nominally due to post-9/11 security standards.

The United States offered to deliver emergency U.S. passports, but the teams athletes refused.

The Iroquois Nationals became stranded in Manhattan, and the ordeal created a diplomatic crisis. By the time then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton approved travel on Haudenosaunee passports, U.K authorities said it had no guarantee the travelers would be permitted to return. In 2015, the United Kingdom again barred the Haudenosaunee womens lacrosse team from entering on Haudenosaunee passports to compete in Scotland.

When Haudenosaunee passports work, its often with prearranged clearance. Outside of athletics, citizens have traveled on Haudenosaunee passports around the world: in 2004 to Japan; many times to Switzerland; in 2010 to Bolivia, El Salvador, and Peru; to New Zealand and Venezuela, and through much of the European Union. (The EU, for its part, continues to list the Haudenosaunee passport as a fantasy passport.)

Since 2006, when the confederacy formed a Documentation Committee, it has been working to update travel documents consistent with international standards. In February 2008, a Haudenosaunee delegation met with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Canadian Embassy in Washington to iron out details. In March, the Grand Council of Chiefs chose to contract Siemens AG for $1.5 million to manufacture new biometric passports. When the prototypes of the new passports finally arrived in 2009, however, some key features were absent, such as the microchip.

In 2015, the Iroquois Nationals hosted the World Indoor Lacrosse Championships in Onondaga. The theme was lacrosse comes home, and rather than travel on their own passports, the Haudenosaunee stamped those of visiting nations. The tournamentthe first ever global sporting event hosted by an Indigenous nationproved to be a success. It was attended by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and 12 passport-carrying nations, from Israel to Australia to Serbia. (Canada refused to get its passports stamped by the Haudenosaunee hosts.) The Iroquois Nationals opened the tournament by beating the United States.

The now-2022 World Lacrosse Championships; 2022 World Games, and 2028 Olympics will all be in the United States, effectively removing the obstacle of Haudenosaunee passport trouble from the Iroquois Nationals Olympic path. But going from FIL competition to the Olympics still means a second layer of legal vetting and political scrutiny that will involve encountering the United Nationswhether by announcement or vote.

The United Nations celebrates Indigenous issues but has kept expressions of sovereignty at arms-length. From the outset of the Iroquois Nationals membership to the ILFnow the FILthere was pushback from Canada and Australia, which had concerns about whether and how the Iroquois precedent might affect Indigenous aspirations in their own territories. When a 2007 U.N. nonbinding Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples passed overwhelmingly, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Statesall settler colonial states with major Indigenous groupsdid not vote for it.

The most promising precedent for a special Olympic invite may be the IOCs special refugee team. With help from the United Nations, the IOC cobbled together a squad of athletes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Syria to draw attention to migration crises. Its launch was announced during the 70th session of the General Assembly in 2015. The team also featured in Tokyo this year, bulked up by the presence of athletes from a number of new countries who competed in 13 sports. The IOC is planning for a refugee team to reappear for the 2024 Olympics in Paris.

If the Iroquois Nationals and theHaudenosauneeflag meet Olympic fanfare in 2028, some post-colonial governments with active Indigenous minorities could see power slipping through their hands, said Helen Lenskyj, a professor emerita at the University of Toronto who is an Olympics specialist. The Olympic Games recognize a nation in quite a remarkable way, she continued. It might be a slippery slope.

In 2000, when Australian sprinter Cathy Freeman won the 100 meter dash at the Sydney Olympics and did a lap of the field waving an Australian aboriginal flag, it did not go over well in the upper echelons of Australian politics, Lenskyj said.

In recent years, a proliferation of National Olympic Committees have formed throughout semi-autonomous regions, including Somaliland, Macao, Gibraltar, Catalonia, the Faroe Islands, and New Zealands island of Niueall for a chance at the world stage to win a medal.

In the interim, Indigenous nations do what they can: wear hearts on sleeveswith a bazaar of merchandise. Iroquois Nationals gear gets scooped on eBay for hundreds of dollars in bidding wars. An Iroquois Nationals helmet was up for $600. A T-shirt went for $80. And a vintage baseball cap is going for nearly $70. Nike has partnered with the Iroquois Nationals and Thompson Brothers Lacrosse.

But bling doesnt erase red tape. The Iroquois Nationals would like to be in Los Angeles in 2028, in time to meet up with its pastime and win. It needs a way to transform the Haudenosaunee lacrosse federation into a fully fledged NOC.

An NOC requires at least five different sports be represented. In a Haudenosaunee NOC, there could be room for an ice hockey teamalso popular with native athletesas well as baseball or swimming. There is already a Native American Olympic Team Foundation, which counts Lyons as a board member.

On the public relations side, things have been moving swiftly in the months since the World Games reversed its decision to exclude the Iroquois Nationals from the 2022 World Games. In addition to gaining new visibility on social media, the U.S. and Canadian National Olympic Committees signed on in support of the Iroquois Nationals.

Now, the team and Haudenosaunee leaders are working to form a National Olympic Committee and are coordinating with now-named World Lacrosse, the World Games, and the International Olympic Committee. Theyre keeping their fingers crossed that U.S. President Joe Bidens Syracuse connectionhe studied law at the university, graduating in 1968could help.

Meanwhile, the Haudenosaunee will revisit its application for U.N. membership, according to some of the confederacys leaders.

Like many Haudenosaunee, Thompson, widely regarded as the best lacrosse player on the planet, calls lacrosse our vehicle.

Lyons, at age 90, likes the phrase flagship. They have a flag. They want the championship.

But Rick Hill is more philosophical.

The ball will go where the ball will go, Hill told Foreign Policy, and we hope it goes to the back of Canadas net.

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Lacrosse Returns to Olympics in 2028but Will the Sport's Indigenous Founders Be Allowed to Play? - Foreign Policy

Whether the Olympic Gameswould, could, and, above all, should take place this year was a problem that preoccupied everyone from virologists toheptathletes. The emergence of COVID-19 prevented Tokyo from hosting theGames in 2020. A year on, with the virus continuing to spread, even the host nation was unconvinced. According to a poll conducted in May, eighty-three per cent of the Japanese public believed that the Olympics should not go ahead, and enthusiasm in the wider world had barely progressed beyond the featherweight. With so many fears at large, how could we be expected to worry about rhythmic gymnastics? Or dressage, which is rhythmic gymnastics plus horses? Who cares about mens badminton?

The answer to that last question turned out to be Viktor Axelsen, the Dane who dethroned Chen Long, of Chinathe defending championin straight sets, and wept for joy. Sightings of untrammelled happiness have been rare in the past eighteen months; we have grown all too accustomed to the opposite. Rightly or wrongly, the Olympics did proceed, and, to general astonishment, began to work their weird, if slightly shopworn, magic. This may not have been evident in the opening ceremony, which felt hollowed out by the dearth of spectators, but, once the sporting frenzy began, competitors displayed a formidable knack for blotting out their surroundings and knuckling down to their tasks. Somehow, even without your parents screaming helpfully from thirty yards away, you pick up your pole and vault.

Unless youre the American vaulter Sam Kendricks, in which case you pack up your poles and go home. On July29th, Kendricks tested positive for COVID. His Games were over before they had started, and his absence could be sensed in the contest; we were left to imagine the battle that he might have enjoyed with Mondo Duplantis, a Swede with the demeanor of a Disney prince and the name of a tropical night club. In the end, what we got was Duplantis versus himself, seeking to clear the bar at an unprecedented height of six metres nineteen centimetres, a pinch beyond the world record, and failing by the merest graze of a thigh.

How often the Games reveal such lonely eminence. Even at this peak of proficiency, some people leave their rivals far behind. Mijan Lpez, the great Greco-Roman wrestler from Cuba, calmly acquired his fourth Olympic gold at Tokyo; it must be chastening, as a fellow-wrestler, to know for sure that, however hard you train, youll always wind up bent double, with Lpez athwart you and your nose against the mat. In the pool, the swimmers Caeleb Dressel, of the United States, and Emma McKeon, of Australia, won a dozen medals between them, thus proving that they are, to all intents and purposes, porpoises. The lanky empress of the triple jump, Venezuelas Yulimar Rojas, demolished a record that had stood since 1995, and Karsten Warholm, the Norwegian four-hundred-metre hurdler, outstripped his own world record by so absurd a distance that he rejoiced by ripping open his vest. So Warholm can be beaten, but only by a dose of Kryptonite.

Some of the winning margins, on the track, merited not suspicion but complaint. Fingers were pointed at the latest footwear. Before the Games, Usain Bolt remarked, We are really adjusting the spikes to a level where its now giving athletes an advantage to run even faster. Two points need to be made. First, the only technology-assisted way to beat Bolts records, in the one hundred and two hundred metres, is to write to the Acme Company, as patronized by WileE.Coyote, and order those shoes with the giant springs. And, second, spikiness per se is no guarantee. Whereas the U.S. female runnersSydney McLaughlin and Dalilah Muhammad especially, who took gold and silver in the four-hundred-metre hurdleswere in spirited form, their male counterparts, however well shod, had a Games to forget. They came away goldless, and the sprint-relay team languished in the semifinal behind China, Canada, Italy, Germany, and Ghana. The American guys may not have dropped the baton, butthey lost the plot.

Yet the Tokyo Olympics, though menaced by a gruelling degree of heat and humidity, did offer surprising relief. And all because of the kids. So many gazes, understandably, were riveted on Simone Biles that when, to her credit, she nerved herself to compete on the beam and came in third, scant attention was paid to Chinas Guan Chenchen, who beat her to the gold. Guan is sixteen. In everything from schooling to social interaction, the past year and a half has been ruinous for young people, and the Games became an opportunity for a bunch of themthe lucky ones, loaded with freakish talentto exact revenge for the near-imprisonment of a generation. Whats more, they made the fight back look like fun.

Nowhere was that joy more frankly expressed than in the most recent disciplines. Fresh sports are frequentlyadded to the Olympic schedule, the rule being that, after expressing grave reservations about the new event, you then see it in action, get instantly addicted, and wonder how the Games ever managed without it. This year, the dbutants included skateboarding, surfing, BMX freestyle, and sport climbing, which demands three separate skills: Speed, Bouldering, and Lead. (Prizes are awarded to viewers at home for pretending tomaster the jargon.) The victorious climberwas an eighteen-year-old Spaniard, Alberto Gins Lpez. The loser was gravity, and a similar suspension of natural law was visible among the skateboarders, who dwell in a haze of dudeish fellowship where age has no dominion. The silver and bronze medallists in the Womens Park were, respectively, twelve and thirteen. The highest-placed American was Bryce Wettstein, a grizzled veteran of seventeen. She was praised by one commentator for her timeless backside ollie, which would have made Stan Laurel scratch his head.

Only a fool would argue that the world of the pandemic, of fire and flood, and of economic uncertainty was halted or healed by this years Olympic Games. Only a cynic, however, would deny that, for a fortnight, the darkness was put on hold. Faith in the future was restored by the sight of Athing Mu, aged nineteen, who was born and raised in Trenton, New Jersey, whose parents emigrated from Sudan, and whose long, commanding stride brought her a gold medal and a new U.S. record in the eight hundred metres. Afterward, she tweeted her reaction: Lol, I think its funny that we literally run so fast and just stop once we get to the line. Why stop, then? Mu could teach us something. She could run and run.

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The Surprising Relief of the Tokyo Olympics - The New Yorker

Russians are not taking their fifth place finish in the medal count of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics well. Both commentators and officials from the country are accusing the United States and others of rigging the Games. This comes after the Russian Olympic Committee finish fifth in the medal count.

If you include the Russian Olympic Committee results as part of Russia's Olympic history, it is the lowest finish since the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm. Russian-born athletes competed under the Russian Olympic Committee name at the 2020 Games due to penalties Russia was handed after it was discovered the country was running a doping program.

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Russian lawmaker Aleksei Zhuravlyov,according to The Daily Beast, described other competing countries at the Games as "a pack of Russophobic beasts, headed by the United States."

On Monday, Olga Skabeeva, who is a television host on Russia's state-owned television channel, echoed those statements, saying on the air that the Summer Games were the "clearest example of total Russophobia."

"These Olympic Games stink," Skabeeva said. "Global sports forever ceased being an honest competition, turning into a cheap political farce. At the behest of Americans, the International Olympic Committee took away two gold medals from Russian."

Skabeeva didn't provide any evidence to support her claims, but that didn't stop other from agreeing with the claims.

"Americans are freaks. Moral freaks. Why are we even discussing this parade of freaks and perverts?" deputy speaker of the Russian State Duma Pyotr Tolstoy added, the Daily Beast reported.

Oleg Matveychev, who is a member of the Russian Expert Institute for Social Research, referenced Russian gymnast Dina Averina's loss in the rhythmic gymnastics all-around competition as an event that was fixed. Israel's Linoy Ashram won the gold medal in the event, even after the Russian team asked for that victory to be overturned.

Matveychev claimed that Ashram's gold medal should've been take away because she dropped the ribbon during her final exercise. He claimed that it would've been impossible for her to win.

Ironically, Averina of Russia dropped her ribbon at the 2018 world championship, but still managed to win a gold medal.

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Russian officials accuse United States, other countries of rigging 2020 Tokyo Olympics - CBS Sports

Regan Smith: The Triumphs, Setbacks, Pressures and Emotions of Her First Olympics

On the morning of August 27 in Tokyo, Regan Smith won her first Olympic medal, a bronze in the womens 100 backstroke. The only swimmers to beat her were Australias Kaylee McKeown, the world-record holder, and Canadas Kylie Masse, the two-time world champion in the event, and Smiths time of 58.05 was faster than any previous winning time at an Olympics or World Championships. But Smith did not see this as a triumph, an amazing accomplishment to be proud of. Instead, she could not shake her disappointment after a race that Smith had spent years pointing toward as she shot up U.S. and global backstroke rankings

I just remember being on the podium and not being able to appreciate what I was doing in that moment, Smith said. I just wish I had taken in that moment more. Its just such a bummer, just because winning a bronze medal is something to be extremely proud of, and Im extremely proud of it now. I can say that, truly. But in the moment, theres definitely some disappointment.

Smith was only two years removed from an amazing 2019 World Championships where she smashed world records in both the 100 back and 200 back, but while she entered the original Olympic year (2020) riding an enormous wave of momentum, the one-year delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic derailed her momentum. Waiting almost two years between major racing opportunities, the 19-year-old Smith was feeling significant pressure in the months leading up to the U.S. Olympic Trials, and her backstroke fell into a funk. She had overcome significant self-doubt and frustration to win the 100 back at U.S. Trials, but around the same time, she lost her world record in the event to McKeown.

Then in Tokyo, the weight of expectations, partially external but even more so internal, made the bronze medal feel like a loss.

After Trials, I was over the moon and I really thought that would be the end of my stress for a very long time, Smith said. I was really feeling that way all of July. And then once we got to Tokyo and the Games were beginning, I was like, Oh crap. And then it felt like Trials all over again. It was a lot of stress, a lot of nerves. I really worked hard to not feel those external expectations that were on me, but its kind of impossible to not feel those.

Contrast that with Smiths emotions two days later, when she earned her second individual Olympic medal in the womens 200 butterfly. While she had been the world-record holder in both backstroke events prior to the pandemic, the 200 fly was a newer event for her, a total fun one, she said. The pressure of following up world record performances simply did not exist in this race.

Smith was seen as a medal contender, and after qualifying fourth for the final, she turned in third place at 150 meters. But then she closed in 32.10, the quickest last split in the field, and fought her way to a silver medal. The time was 2:05.30, Smiths lifetime best by more than a second and good enough to make her the second-fastest American in history.

When Smith saw this scoreboard showing her time and place, her mouth hung open in shock, a far cry from the disappointment evident in her face after the 100 back.

I just did not think I could do that, Smith said. I dont know if thats just me not being confident in myself or what, or just not knowing what Im capable of, but I did not think I was going to drop a second, just because thats something I hadnt done since Worlds probably. I feel like I hadnt smiled like that after a race in forever, so that was just really, really nice.

Smith called that 200 fly Olympic final one of my favorite races of all time, and that moment reminded her: thats what swimming should feel like all the time, full of joy and excitement rather than pressure and stress. Smith thought to herself, Why is this the first time in so long that I feel like Im having true fun?

On the day in between Smiths two individual Olympic finals, one of the landmark moments of the Games provided Smith with some clarity and relief.

In gymnastics, superstar Simone Biles withdrew from the team final and left her American teammates to compete without her. Biles was not physically hurt, but she choose to prioritize her mental health, thanks to a phenomenon called the twisties, a mental block that developed and prevented her from completing her routines as she wanted.

Beyond that, Biles was feeling the strain of intense pressure and expectations heaped upon her as the greatest of all time and the face of the Games. Biles called the experience a long Olympic process a long year. According to NPR, Biles said, I think were just a little bit too stressed out before adding but we should be out here having fun and sometimes thats not the case.

Sound familiar? For Smith, absolutely. It was a sign that for all of the stress she had felt in the previous few months, she was not alone.

I think it was a great breath of fresh air to hear that from such an accomplished and incredible athlete, she said. It was just a sigh of relief that, Oh my goodness. Literally everyone in this (Olympic) Village is feeling the same way.

Therefore, Smith took away from her first Olympic Games the supreme importance of keeping that light, fun feeling at the center of her athletic endeavors. She wants to be able to consistently replicate those joyful, lively emotions she experienced after the 200 fly final rather than be weighed down by the stress that affected not only her backstroke but also the enjoyment of the entire Olympic process.

That means finding balance, which Smith admittedly lacked in 2021. Because of the pandemic, she deferred her enrollment at Stanford to stay home in Minnesota to train for the Olympic Trials and Olympics with longtime coach Mike Parratto. She took some online college classes in the fall but devoted the spring exclusively to swimming. She described the experience as great for me in a lot of ways but not great for me in a lot of ways. She needed a hobby or an interest some sort of distraction but never found anything sufficient to take her mind away from the pool when it needed to be.

It ended up working out in the end. I made the team, I got some medals, but I think swimming consumed me for a little bit, and it became all who I was, Smith said. The balance is extremely important. You can say its important all you want, but its a different thing to actually have balance, and I definitely think I lost that balance during this last semester. And I think all summer, too, it was just consuming me. I just wasnt the same person that I used to be.

And Smith admits that it will become an added challenge to maintain that balance and not let swimming consume her now that she is being paid for her accomplishments. Because of NCAA rule changes that allow college athletes to profit off their name, image and likeness (NIL), Smith was able to accept prize money from the Olympics and after the Games, she signed an apparel deal with Speedo. She does not want to let swimming become about getting the fastest times so that I can make more money off of. Thats not really how I want to view it.

Smith thinks that could lead her again down the path of extreme pressure and stress and negative mental energy, which she is desperate to avoid. It will be tough to maintain the positive mindset, but I think it will be something I really have to prioritize and work on being conscious of, she said.

Of the entire nine-day Olympic experience, Smith was perhaps most concerned about the womens 200 backstroke because she would not be competing. She was the world-record holder, the world champion in 2019 by more than 2.5 seconds, but after a year in which her backstroke never clicked, she faded to third in the event at U.S. Olympic Trials as Rhyan White and Phoebe Bacon swam past her on the last length.

At the end of Olympic Trials, Smith admitted that the disappointment of missing the 200 back really did taint my Trials experience, as much as she tried to stay positive about qualifying in two events. In Tokyo, I was really nervous about watching the 200 back, Smith admitted.

I was like, Is it going to be hard for me to watch? Am I going to get FOMO? Am I going to wish I was in that race doing it? And I really never thought about it once. I was just cheering for Rhyan and cheering for Phoebe, and it never even crossed my mind. Im really proud of myself for that because I was super scared that I wouldnt even be able to watch the race because Id be so sad about it. But I was so excited, and I was screaming my head off for them the whole time.

While she was certainly disappointed to miss out on racing the 200 back at the Olympics, Smith took away one huge positive from the situation: having Bacon qualify for the Olympic team. Smith and Bacon had been competing against each other in the backstroke events for years but never really knew each other very well before the Olympics. The two were among the six U.S. swimmers, all aged 19 or 20, living in a suite together, and Smith said, I got the biggest kick out of her.

Smith added, Everything happens for a reason, and I wouldnt have it any other way. If I could go back and do things over, I wouldnt want to happen any other way. Im so glad that this happened. It really was the ultimate silver lining for that crummy situation for me because she really was so great and I really think that I made a lifelong friend out of her. Shes wonderful.

As Smith was preparing to finish her Olympics by leading off the U.S. womens 400 medley relay, she noticed right away: she was the only swimmer back from the 2019 world champion medley relay squad that set the world record. Lydia Jacoby had taken over the breaststroke spot from Lilly King, butterflyer Kelsi Dahlia had finished fourth at Olympic Trials in the 100 fly and Simone Manuel had qualified for Tokyo but not in the 100 free. And Smith went from being the youngest on the relay by five years to being the second oldest.

And for the first time in six years, the Americans did not win gold. Smith touched a close third behind Australias McKeown and Canadas Masse after her leg, and while Jacoby and Torri Huske gave the Americans a lead, it was not enough for Abbey Weitzeil to hold off Australian anchor Cate Campbell. At the end of a hugely successful meet for the Australian women, they had enough to beat the Americans by 0.13 for gold.

Weitzeil split 52.49 on the end, by far the fastest split of her career, but being so close to gold brought heavy emotions out of all the swimmers. Weitzeil climbed out of the pool and fell into Smiths arms.

What Abbey said broke my heart because she first got out and said, You guys, Im sorry. After splitting 52.4, Smith said. I was like, Abbey, no one should be sorry.

In that tough moment, Smith was the one telling her teammates, both younger and the older anchor swimmer who hung so tough against Campbell, we did everything we could. There just wasnt anything else we could do. I was trying to repeat that over and over because it was hard to come to terms with myself.

Aside from her three Olympic medals, Smith returned from Tokyo with a lifetime of amazing memories, particularly with her five suitemates. Aside from Bacon, the group included University of Virginia swimmers Kate Douglass, Alex Walsh and Emma Weyant as well as Smiths roommate, 1500 free silver medalist Erica Sullivan. Smith cherishes the memories of the group sitting at the table in their makeshift dining area with folding chairs playing music and playing cards each night for hours on end.

And of course, Smith remembers Sullivans amazing effort in the 1500. The two had known each other for four years, since the 2017 World Junior Championships, and during the 1500 final, Smith was getting a massage after swimming in the 200 fly semifinals but got up to watch the scoreboard as Sullivan surged past her competitors.

It was so incredible. I kick myself every day because I wasnt watching it, Smith said. I still just gush when I think about how incredible that race was, and I just wish I had seen it in person. I got to watch the splits in person, real-time, but oh my goodness. Nobody is more deserving than Erica of that medal, that swim, that best time. It gives me chills thinking about it. She is one of the greatest people on this Earth, and I just, holy crap, it was so cool.

Now, Smith has her college experience to look forward to as she prepares to depart for Stanford in early September. On going to college after the one-year wait, Smith said, Im actually so excited. If you asked me a year ago, Id be terrified. Id be terrified to leave home and start all this. But I think having that extra year, Im ready now.

Once she is at Stanford, she expects to work closely with coach Greg Meehan (who also worked with her during the Olympics) to figure out her backstroke struggles. She thinks the issues are mental, and she is looking forward to possibly working with a sports psychologist to try to get back on track.

I was very capable of swimming fast backstroke at Trials and at the Games. I havent lost anything. I think its just something mental that needs to get worked out, Smith said. If I think about it too much, Im like, Oh my gosh, what if its lost forever? But then thinking rationally, I didnt just forget how to swim backstroke. I havent lost it. I think getting those world records at the time that I did kind of rocked me mentally, and I didnt really realize it. I think Im a lot older now, I think Ive learned a lot from my experiences, and I think Im ready to get some help mentally and just figure things out. And Im just excited to get back into the groove of things.

Since she returned from the Olympics, Smith has enjoyed her break from swimming, but some leftovers from Tokyo motivate me beyond belief. First, theres the young U.S. womens team that won 18 medals in Tokyo with 10 teenagers on the squad. Smith sees this groups massive future potential, and she desperately wants to be with this core dominating the international scene for years to come.

That was the most fun Ive had in a very long time, Smith said. That was probably the most Ive laughed throughout this entire pandemic, during that trip. Its just like, Gosh, I never want to miss that again. Im going to remember that every single day when Im training. I refuse to miss a team. I cant miss out on that opportunity, to be with these people, competing with these people and wearing USA with these people. It was so special.

And secondly, she still wants gold. She did bag two silver medals and a bronze from Tokyo to complete the exceptionally challenging Olympic year, but like any Olympic silver or bronze medalist, she has hopes of reaching that next step. And while it feels like Smith has been on the scene forever, she is still just 19 years old, possibly the most experienced teenaged Olympic swimmer ever but still a teenager.

I hope God-willing that I can go to Paris in three years and do something special, Smith said. Im truly, truly proud of myself for earning bronze now. Im also super happy that were finally starting to recognize silver and bronze as something to be proud. You should be proud of yourself no matter what. I know that gold is my goal. Absolutely it is. I think thats something that Im capable of. It absolutely is. Theres more to my career, I absolutely think that.

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Regan Smith: The Triumphs, Setbacks, Pressures and Emotions of Her First Olympics - Swimming World Magazine