Category Archives: Olympics

Representing the U.S. in rugby sevens at the Tokyo Olympics, Kristi Kirshe 17 evades a tackle in a game against Australia. (Photo Courtesy of Mike Lee, KLC fotos.)

Div. III athletics are not commonly thought of as a breeding ground for Olympic athletes. But four Williams alums Joey Lye 09, Tala Abujbara 14, Will Hardy 10, and Kristi Kirshe 17 have broken the mold, appearing in this years Olympics in a variety of roles and for three different countries. From the Purple Valley to Tokyo, and after a year-long delay of the Games, these four alums have traversed a diverse array of paths to reach the pinnacle of their sports.

Joey Lye 09

Joey Lye 09, alongside the rest of the Canadian softball team, received her Olympic bronze medal standing on the Olympic podium in front of a near-empty stadium. Even though the stadium wasnt overflowing with spectators and cheers, that moment was an extremely special one for our program and country, she wrote in an email to the Record. I will forever remember the emotions of placing [teammate] Erika Polidoris medal around her neck and receiving mine from Jenn Salling in addition to sharing a big embrace with each of them.

Lye helped Canada bring home a bronze medal with a 3-2 win over Mexico. The typical exclusion of softball in the Olympic games it hadnt been in the games since 2008 and will not be in 2024 made this experience especially historic, despite the lack of spectators.

While we would have loved to share the experience with family and friends, we enjoyed the intimate experience of making history for our country with just us to witness it in person, she wrote. It was a special moment for our team that we will remember forever.

While Olympians could not bring family and friends to the Games, Lye noted that there was a sense of community in the Olympic Village. Despite [having to mask at all times], there were still many athletes out and about trading pins and sharing stories, she recalled. You could feel the energy and excitement, especially when we returned to the village from our trip to Fukushima where we played our first two games.

Lye also had the opportunity to meet up with fellow Ephs Kirshe and Abujbara, which proved to be her favorite moment off the field. It was pretty special to meet fellow Eph athletes and hear about the successes and obstacles they faced in order to be competing in Tokyo, she wrote.

The transition from college athletics to the international level is an adjustment, according to Lye. My nerves were probably the biggest thing I had to learn to control after having been so comfortable playing at Williams by the time I graduated, she wrote. Lots of attention has been given to the mental side of the game over the past 12 years.

[But] Williams prepared me by challenging me in every aspect physically, mentally, emotionally, and with time-management and balancing various responsibilities, Lye wrote. Stepping into the real world after graduation, I felt I could accomplish almost anything I set my mind to.

Tala Abujbara 14

Abujbara had never rowed before stepping foot on the Colleges campus. In a whirlwind 11 years, however, she learned to row, became the first Qatari woman to qualify for and compete in the Olympics in her sport, and achieved a goal she had set for herself many years before.

When Abujbara returned to her home country of Qatar after graduating from the College in 2014, she began training with the Qatar Sailing & Rowing Federation. At the time, rowing was still relatively unknown in Qatar, according to Abujbara. Due to the lack of rowers in Qatar, she was forced to row in a single. I am a team sport athlete at heart, so to be training and competing alone for most of my journey has been the part I struggled with the most, she wrote to the Record.

The transition to individual rowing was challenging for Abujbara. Seemingly overnight, I went from winning consecutive NCAA championships in an eight [-person boat] to survival-rowing my way to the finish line in a single at the 2014 World Championships, a full 1.5 minutes behind all other competition, she told the Record. However, my experiences at Williams instilled a love for rowing and a passion for high-level sport which helped carry me through the challenges over the years.

Undeterred by these challenges, Abujbara had her eyes set on a greater goal: competing at the Olympics. Her plan was simple. She would finish her Masters program, compete at the Olympics, and then return to Qatar to start working. The pandemic and resulting postponement of the 2020 Olympics, however, presented significant obstacles to that plan, as she now had to balance training with working a full-time job.

Despite these obstacles, Abujbara managed to secure an Olympic qualification spot at a regatta last May. Earning the spot meant Abujbara would represent Qatar in the womens single sculls competition. It was a huge honor to represent my country and to be competing at the Olympics, she wrote. I went into the competition knowing that I was way out of medal contention, but I had my plan and my job to do.

Abujbara did just that, winning her final race with a 6.78-second margin of victory over Ugandas Kathleen Noble and finishing in 25th place in the womens single scull competition.

Like Lye, Abujbara also found community in the Olympic Village. Every single rower competing at the Olympics has been through inconceivable challenges to make it to the start line, she wrote. It was extremely inspiring to be in the midst of that and there was a great sense of sportsmanship and solidarity between us.

While at the Olympics, Abujbara created once-in-a-lifetime memories. Not only was she a flag-bearer at the opening ceremonies, but she also enjoyed meeting with Lye and Kirshe. We chatted about our sports careers during/after Williams and found a lot of common ground in our experience, she wrote.

Having returned home from Tokyo, Abujbara plans to take a step back from rowing and focus on other aspects of her life that she has had to sacrifice over the past few years.

Becoming an Olympian has taught me that achieving a big goal is great, but it is only truly worth it if you enjoy the process along the way, she wrote. I have no regrets and am so grateful for my journey, but I am now ready to spend less time relentlessly grinding away at the future and more time focusing on the present.

While her time representing Qatar in rowing may be drawing to a close, Abujbaras impact on womens sports in Qatar has just begun. Several young women have already reached out to me expressing their interest in taking up sport and asking for my advice, she wrote to the Record. If I could inspire even just a handful of girls to start participating in sports, then this was all worth it.

Will Hardy 10

Hardy took a slightly different route to the Tokyo Olympics than his fellow Ephs. Chosen by San Antonio Spurs and U.S. mens basketball head coach Gregg Popovich to be a member of his staff, Hardy stayed with the basketball team in a hotel away from the Olympic Village. It was a far different Olympic experience than people are familiar with, Hardy said. They really kept everything very separate to try to prevent any type of outbreak [of COVID].

As a coach, Hardy also had a different set of responsibilities and priorities from the other Ephs during his time in Tokyo. Hardys main role was briefing the U.S. mens basketball team on the various opponents that they faced on the way to their 16th gold medal. My responsibility was really making sure that everybody had the video they needed and preparing the scouting reports, Hardy said.

Hardy had taken on a similar role earlier in his career. After a successful playing career with the Colleges mens basketball team, Hardy worked as a video coordinator for the Spurs. It was there that Hardy grew close to Popovich, eventually rising up the ranks to become the Spurs assistant coach for five years and even joining Popovichs staff for the USA mens basketball team at the 2019 FIBA World Cup.

While Hardy left the Spurs to join the Boston Celtics this summer, the Olympics gave him the opportunity to have one last run with Popovich, his long-time mentor. It was kind of a couple-year commitment because [Popovich] was going to coach the [USA] team for that long and he wanted to have the same staff all the way through, Hardy said. He asked a couple years ago it was a pretty quick decision to say yes.

Like all the other teams, U.S. mens basketball had to face the ramifications of the year-long delay brought about by the pandemic. However, the process of assembling the team and preparing for competition remained largely unchanged.

I dont know if COVID and the delay affected our preparation super directly, because a lot of that preparation happens towards the end once you know whos in the tournament and then what the groups are, Hardy said. We dont know what the team would have been in 2020, in terms of the people that would have been on it, because the team isnt selected until much later.

U.S. mens basketball had a rough start, losing pre-tournament exhibition games against Nigeria and Australia and its opening game of the Olympics to France. As the most prominent team in one of the biggest sports at the Olympics, Hardy knew that there would be pressure to deliver results. Team USA basketball always draws a big audience, Hardy said. A lot of people [are] excited to see our guys play, and probably a lot of people [are] hoping to see our guys lose.

The lack of spectators at the games added a new element to the mix. To be in a building of that size without the noise is eerie at times, he said. Chandler Gym with no one in it would be weird to play a game [in].

Still, the team made the best of the strange circumstances, according to Hardy. In some ways, it really brings you back to the team dynamic because you have to create your own energy, he said. The bench is probably more animated than it would be in a regular game because theyre trying to carry some of that energy that a crowd would bring.

Despite their slow start, the team closed out the tournament with five consecutive wins, earning them their fourth consecutive gold medal. I think it just takes a little time for everybody to sort out how they best fit together, said Hardy. The guys are so competitive they just want to win. I think this group in particular was really fun to watch. They all put their own personal egos and all that stuff aside and just tried to figure out how they best fit together.

U.S. basketball is no stranger to Olympic gold medals. However, Hardy said that this years victory was especially sweet given the unforeseen challenges of competing during a pandemic. It was hard, I think, for a lot of reasons, Hardy said. There was the slow start, some guys had to leave the team with COVID, we had three guys come in the first day of the game from the [NBA] Finals, being away from your family for a month It was isolating in some ways, and I think everybody, really, just put their heads down and worked, he said.

Still barely 10 years out from his graduation, Hardy reflected upon how far he had come from his time at the College. Id be lying to you if I said I had a master plan while I was at Williams, he said. At 20 and 21 I was just trying to get an education, and I was enjoying college and being on a team and being in Williamstown, which was an experience I still look back on so fondly because it changed me and matured me in ways I never expected. Im not going to sit here and tell you I knew when I was 20, living in [Mark] Hopkins and eating at Greylock, that I was like, Im going to be a coach one day.

Kristi Kirshe 17

Throughout her time in college, Kirshe didnt give much thought to the possibility of an athletic career post-graduation. I figured that once I made the choice to go to Williams and play Division III soccer my life was going to be outside of purely athletics, she said. I thought my moment had passed already.

At the College, Kirshe was a consistent standout on the womens soccer team, earning two-time All-American honors and setting school records for all-time career goals and points. In fact, her rugby career did not start until nine months after her departure from the Purple Valley. Barely four years later, Kirshe was representing her country at the Olympics in womens rugby, a sport she had never even tried out until after graduating. It was quite a whirlwind of a process, Kirshe said.

After joining a local club in Boston, where she was working, Kirshe was quickly recruited to a regional academy team. Kirshe was scouted at her first tournament with the team at the U.S. rugby training center in California and called up to a national team camp soon afterward. I made my national team debut in January of 2019, 11 months after first going to a rugby practice, said Kirshe. Pretty crazy little timeline.

Some parts of her soccer experience, Kirshe said, served her well during the transition to a career in rugby. One of the big elements is just the fluidity of soccer and rugby, she said. Theyre not really start-stop sports, theyre sports where youre constantly kind of in motion.

Like the other Olympic athletes, Kirshe and U.S. womens rugby struggled with the adjustments required after the year-long delay. It was tough because we didnt have the same level of competitions and international games and all that kind of stuff that we would have in a normal year, so we spent a lot of time playing ourselves, practicing against ourselves, Kirshe said.

After the postponement, I didnt want to put too much weight on [the Olympics] because you never knew if it was actually going to happen, Kirshe added. But moments like the opening ceremonies and running out on the field for the first time were such special, surreal moments that Im just so thankful I got to experience.

The camaraderie of the Olympic experience was also a highlight. Being with all of Team USA and being around all these athletes that you grow up looking up to was a really special moment, Kirshe said. It was just such a dream come true.

When reflecting on her time as an Eph, Kirshe explained that the environment of athletics at the College prepared her well for Olympic rugby. When youre at Williams, your sport feels like the most important thing, Kirshe said. [The] environment is very similar, very professional. So that was actually a pretty easy transition for me because I was like, Yeah, I know how to do this. I know how to show up every day ready to play because I learned it all at Williams.

Not satisfied with just one Olympics appearance, Kirshe is training hard with an eye towards Paris 2024. For now, rugby is my full-time job, [my] full-time career, she said. So at this point, Im hoping to stay around until 2024.

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An Olympics like no other: Four alums reflect on their experiences in Tokyo - The Williams record

PHOENIX -- Amy Bockerstette will be taking her talents to the national stage next year.

Bockerstette, who has Down syndrome, was one of five golfers selected for the 2022 Special Olympics USA Games, which will be held next June at the Orange County National Golf Center in Orlando, Florida.

PGA Tour golfer Gary Woodland told Bockerstette she was selected to represent Special Olympics Arizona in a video Monday.

"Millions of people have been inspired by your positive attitude and the positive energy you share with everyone," Woodland said in the video. "I look forward to cheering you and your fellow athletes on as you compete and shine as one. I know you will continue to inspire us and make us all so proud. Amy, you got this."

The two first met in 2019, when Bockerstette played the famous No. 16 hole at TPC Scottsdale during that year's Waste Management Phoenix Open Pro-Am. She parred the hole with Woodland and Matt Kuchar by her side, becoming a viral sensation in the process.

Bockerstette and Woodland continued to stay close. He credited her "I got this" mantra for helping him win the U.S. Open in 2019 at Pebble Beach.

"I was so happy to see Gary invite me to go to Florida next year for the Special Olympics USA Games," Bockerstette told ESPN. "We are best friends. I am very excited to go to Disney, too!"

Bockerstette, who plays golf for Paradise Valley Community College, will be one of more than 200 Special Olympics athletes competing in the USA Games.

"Amy loves playing golf in Special Olympics and this will be her first opportunity to compete at the USA Games," Amy's father, Joe Bockerstette, told ESPN. "We're grateful to Special Olympics Arizona for facilitating Amy's introduction to Gary Woodland at the Phoenix Open in 2019 and it is special for her to receive the invitation to the USA Games from her friend, Gary. We are looking forward to a fun and challenging competition in Orlando."

Bockerstette became the first person with Down syndrome to play in a collegiate championship on any level in May, when she played in the NJCAA Division I women's golf national championship.

The rest is here:

Gary Woodland surprises friend Amy Bockerstette with Special Olympics USA Games selection - 'Amy, you got this' - ESPN

Its been a long fight, but NHL players are finally back at the Olympics. Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid on the same team is a reason to tune in by itself, but if youre a Predators fan, youre not there to watch them. Of course, its a great side effect, but its more fun when you get to watch players from your favorite team play and, most importantly, win. So which players from the Predators will be headed to Bejing, and what can they bring to their countrys team?

Sweden is a country that I always find myself paying attention to in most Olympic sports for literally no good reason. I have zero connection to it, but the yellow screams, watch me. So I do. However, now Ill be even more invested with two of the biggest players on the Predators being put in the lineup.

We all know what Filip Forsberg is capable of on a line with capable players. With Ryan Johansen and Viktor Arvidsson, who is now a Los Angeles King but will most likely make the roster, he scored many points before that line fell off a cliff. The same way he scored a ton of points with Matt Duchene and Mikael Granlund before the Laviolette line shuffle game began to infiltrate the lineup.

Forsberg brings size, speed, and creativity to Swedens top six. The line combinations remain to be seen but putting him with someone like Elias Lindholm and Arvidsson could be very beneficial for all of them.

The Swedish coaching staff could make many combinations, whether with Mika Zibanejad centering him and Lindholm or Nicklas Backstrom with him and Arvidsson. Either way, all that really matters is getting him a good center that can help drive the play along with him. One of the Predators' problems is that hes left to drive play for the first line when Duchene isnt there. Someone like Backstrom can really move the puck well, and hes not afraid to skate it up with speed and look for options after entering the zone.

The only thing that Forsberg needs to be worried about is scoring goals and creating for his line. Hes not going to be the star of the forwards like he is in Nashville, which hopefully relieves some of the pressure.

The final member of Team Sweden is the lovable and flamboyant 6-foot-4 defenseman, Mattias Ekholm. He could definitely be a leader on a Sweden team that slowly incorporates young players into the lineup. His inherently vociferous nature on the ice would make him an excellent captain or assistant captain material. As for his play, the second pair would be the most likely option considering the best defenseman in the worldVictor Hedmanand the once best defensemanErik Karlssonwill be on the first. One thing Im interested to see is who lines up next to him.

The immediate thought is John Klingberg of the Dallas Stars. Klingberg ended the Predators season in the first round of the 2018-19 playoffs, so it will most likely be a little bit odd at first for most, but once they hit stride, Im sure there will be no issues.

Gone are the days of players like Pekka Rinne and Mikko Koivu representing Finland in the NHL. Now, its time for a new and younger age led by Sebastian Aho, Aleksander Barkov, Mikko Rantanen, and Miro Heiskanen.

Mikael Granlund isnt one of the young players leading the team, but he will be a good veteran presence for said young guys. Hes an excellent passer, and Im extremely confident that he will provide some solid two-way play in a depth role. He will play with is unknown at this point, but Kasperi Kapanen, Roope Hintz, and maybe even Eeli Tolvanen, who Ill touch on in a moment.

Heres the biggest piece to the puzzle. Juuse Saros proved himself to be one of the best goaltenders in the league last season. He put up some Vezina-caliber numbers but was ultimately robbed of a finalist position because of Philipp Grubauer and the voters. He has always been a freak of nature.

Standing at a stout 5-foot-11, hes going to be looked at in a lower light compared to goalies that are over 6-foot. However, hes incredible with his lateral movement, and that's what truly puts him ahead of the competition. The one thing you wont have to worry about with Saros in net is his commitment. He plays every puck like its his last, and it results in a lot of saves.

Tuukka Rask of the Boston Bruins will most likely be going but in a backup role. Obviously, he still has to sign an NHL contract, and his age and injury history may be limiting his play. Its time for a younger and more recently prominent goaltender to take the spotlight on the world stage.

As I mentioned in the section with Granlund, there is a possibility that Tolvanen makes the roster. However, it would depend on a ton on how he starts the season. If he produces enough during the first two months, I could see it. There was a point in time during the 2020-21 season where Tolvanen could have been a Calder Trophy candidate if he didnt get hurt, so its entirely possible. However, a lot has to go right.

Another option is he is added as a depth player at even-strength, but hes played on the first powerplay unit. That situation eerily reminds me of what happened between the newest Predator Cody Glass and the Vegas Golden Knights. He was used on the top powerplay, but he wasnt given enough chances at even-strength to contribute anything at all. Of course, Tolvanen isnt going to be looked at to score a ton of points during the tournament, but having him as a reliable powerplay option and depth scoring presence could be good for team structure and overall confidence.

Switzerland is interesting. Theyve never been a hockey powerhouse, and the best player theyve boasted up to this point is who Im going to talk about here. Former Predators forward Kevin Fiala will be one of the better forwards on the team, but he isn't the best now.

The 31-year-old Predators captain Roman Josi will be the best player on the Switzerland roster. What is there to say about him that hasnt been said already? Hes a natural-born leader, and although he may not be the most vocal, he leads by example. He won the Norris Trophy in 2019-20, and hes always been an excellent source of offense for a team that has been notably unable to score points. His claim to fame is his excellent transition metrics. Outside of star Colorado Avalanche defenseman Cale Makar, theres no other defenseman in his league in possession zone exits and entries.

Josi will be the go-to guy for the Switzerland team both in the offensive and defensive zone. Hes always been a slightly below-average defensive player (outside of his Norris year), but its certainly not egregious, and his offensive prowess can explain itself. Any time you tune into a game, theres always a reason to stick around when he's on the ice. Not only does he use his extremely smooth, Scott Niedermayer-Esque skating to open up lanes for himself, but the amount of defenders that he attracts is almost otherworldly.

The Switzerland team and coaching staff are getting a valiant leader that will do anything to win games. They may not be the most talented compared to the likes of Canada and the United States. Still, if we know anything about Josi after watching him for his entire career, hes going to compete at the highest level, and his team will follow.

The Predators will be well-represented in Beijing in 2022. New lines with familiar faces may be the key to some players breaking out of their shells and showing what they can truly do in a different system. Its all a matter of time before we see which countries take home the gold and which Predators players will come back to the league victorious.

Read more here:

Which Nashville Predators might be headed to the Olympics? - On The Forecheck

A wretched 24 hours for UK Athletics continued on Tuesday when CJ Ujahs B sample confirmed his positive drug test at the Tokyo Olympics. It now seems increasingly likely the Team GB mens 4x100m team will be stripped of their silver medal.

Separately UK Sport has admitted to having concerns about the crisis in British athletics, which led to several Team GB stars asking Sebastian Coe to save the sport in this country when they met him last week in Zurich.

That news, which was revealed on Monday night, has sent shockwaves through the sport and UK Sport has urged those athletes to come forward to air their grievances.

The suggestion that athletes may be considering leaving the worldclass programme is a concern and something we will discuss with the UK Athletics leadership team, a UK Sport statement said.

Furthermore, we are committed to an athlete-first approach within Olympic and Paralympic sport and would urge any athlete who has a grievance to speak up. There are various channels dedicated to supporting athletes on the World Class Programme, including independent advice through the British Athletes Commission.

That statement did not impress one participant in the meeting, who told the Guardian it was a load of rubbish. However UK Sport says it will review UKAs performance in Tokyo, where it won six medals, in the coming weeks.

It looks increasingly likely that the UKA medal haul will be reduced to five in the coming months after the International Testing Agency confirmed there were two banned substances in Ujahs B sample. The ITA confirmed they were the selective androgen receptor modulators ostarine and S-23, which are used to treat muscle wasting and bone health respectively. The case has now been referred to the court of arbitration for sport anti-doping division.

Unless Ujah is exonerated the British mens quartet which also included Zharnel Hughes, Richard Kilty and Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake will lose their silver medal.

The Cas ADD will consider the matter of the finding of an anti-doping rule violation and the disqualification of the mens 4x100 relay results of the Great Britain team, the ITA said.

Under World Anti-Doping Agency rules if an athlete of a relay team is found to have committed an antidoping rule violation, that team are automatically disqualified from the event in question, with all resulting consequences for the relay team, including the forfeiture of all titles, awards, medals, points and prize and appearance money.

Once the matter is settled under the IOC ADR, the case will be referred to the Athletics Integrity Unit to follow up on sanctions beyond the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, the ITA said.

Ujah has maintained his innocence and last month released a statement saying he was shocked and devastated by the outcome of the test. To be absolutely clear, I am not a cheat and I have never and would never knowingly take a banned substance. I love my sport and I know my responsibilities both as an athlete and as a teammate.

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Team GB set to lose 4x100m Olympic silver after second positive for Ujah - The Guardian

Early yearsEdit

The International Olympic Committee was founded in 1894 when Pierre de Coubertin, a French pedagogue and historian, sought to promote international understanding through sporting competition. The first edition of The Olympic Games was held in Athens in 1896 and attracted just 245 competitors, of whom more than 200 were Greek, and only 14 countries were represented. Nevertheless, no international events of this magnitude had been organised before. Female athletes were not allowed to compete, though one woman, Stamata Revithi, ran the marathon course on her own, saying "If the committee doesn't let me compete I will go after them regardless".[3]

The 1896 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event which was celebrated in Athens, Greece, from 6 to 15 April 1896. It was the first Olympic Games held in the Modern era. About 100,000 people attended for the opening of the games. The athletes came from 14 nations, with most coming from Greece. Although Greece had the most athletes, the U.S. finished with the most champions. 11 Americans placed first in their events vs. the 10 from Greece.[4] Ancient Greece was the birthplace of the Olympic Games, consequently Athens was perceived to be an appropriate choice to stage the inaugural modern Games. It was unanimously chosen as the host city during a congress organised by Pierre de Coubertin in Paris, on 23 June 1894. The IOC was also established during this congress.

Despite many obstacles and setbacks, the 1896 Olympics were regarded as a great success. The Games had the largest international participation of any sporting event to that date. Panathinaiko Stadium, the first big stadium in the modern world, overflowed with the largest crowd ever to watch a sporting event.[5] The highlight for the Greeks was the marathon victory by their compatriot Spiridon Louis, a water carrier. He won in 2 hours 58 minutes and 50 seconds, setting off wild celebrations at the stadium. The most successful competitor was German wrestler and gymnast Carl Schuhmann, who won four gold medals.

Greek officials and the public were enthusiastic about the experience of hosting an Olympic Games. This feeling was shared by many of the athletes, who even demanded that Athens be the permanent Olympic host city. The IOC intended for subsequent Games to be rotated to various host cities around the world. The second Olympics was held in Paris.[6]

Four years later the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris attracted more than four times as many athletes, including 20 women, who were allowed to officially compete for the first time, in croquet, golf, sailing, and tennis. The Games were integrated with the Paris World's Fair and lasted over 5 months. It is still disputed which events exactly were Olympic, since few or maybe even none of the events were advertised as such at the time.

Tensions caused by the RussoJapanese War and the difficulty of getting to St. Louis may have contributed to the fact that very few top-ranked athletes from outside the US and Canada took part in the 1904 Games.[7]

A series of smaller games were held in Athens in 1906. The IOC does not currently recognise these games as being official Olympic Games, although many historians do. The 1906 Athens games were the first of an alternating series of games to be held in Athens, but the series failed to materialise. The games were more successful than the 1900 and 1904 games, with over 900 athletes competing, and contributed positively to the success of future games.

The 1908 London Games saw numbers rise again, as well as the first running of the marathon over its now-standard distance of 42.195 km (26 miles 385 yards). The first Olympic Marathon in 1896 (a male-only race) was raced at a distance of 40 km (24 miles 85 yards). The new marathon distance was chosen to ensure that the race finished in front of the box occupied by the British royal family. Thus the marathon had been 40km (24.9mi) for the first games in 1896, but was subsequently varied by up to 2km (1.2mi) due to local conditions such as street and stadium layout. At the six Olympic games between 1900 and 1920, the marathon was raced over six distances. The Games saw Great Britain winning 146 medals, 99 more than second-placed Americans, its best result to this day.

At the end of the 1908 marathon, the Italian runner Dorando Pietri was first to enter the stadium, but he was clearly in distress and collapsed of exhaustion before he could complete the event. He was helped over the finish line by concerned race officials and later disqualified for that. As compensation for the missing medal, Queen Alexandra gave Pietri a gilded silver cup. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a special report about the race in the Daily Mail.[8]

The Games continued to grow, attracting 2,504 competitors, to Stockholm in 1912, including the great all-rounder Jim Thorpe, who won both the decathlon and pentathlon. Thorpe had previously played a few games of baseball for a fee, and saw his medals stripped for this 'breach' of amateurism after complaints from Avery Brundage. They were reinstated in 1983, 30 years after his death. The Games at Stockholm were the first to fulfil Pierre de Coubertin's original idea. For the first time since the Games started in 1896 were all five inhabited continents represented with athletes competing in the same stadium.

The scheduled 1916 Summer Olympics were cancelled following the onset of World War I.

The 1920 Antwerp games in war-ravaged Belgium were a subdued affair, but again drew a record number of competitors. This record only stood until 1924, when the Paris Games involved 3,000 competitors, the greatest of whom was Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi. The "Flying Finn" won three team gold medals and the individual 1,500 and 5,000 meter runs, the latter two on the same day.[9]

The 1928 Amsterdam games was notable for being the first games which allowed females to compete at track & field athletics, and benefited greatly from the general prosperity of the times alongside the first appearance of sponsorship of the games, from the Coca-Cola Company. The 1928 games saw the introduction of a standard medal design with the IOC choosing Giuseppe Cassioli's depiction of Greek goddess Nike and a winner being carried by a crowd of people. This design was used up until 1972.[citation needed]

The 1932 Los Angeles games were affected by the Great Depression, which contributed to the low number of competitors.

The 1936 Berlin Games were seen by the German government as a golden opportunity to promote their ideology. The ruling Nazi Party commissioned film-maker Leni Riefenstahl to film the games. The result, Olympia, was widely considered to be a masterpiece, despite Hitler's theories of Aryan racial superiority being repeatedly shown up by "non-Aryan" athletes. In particular, African-American sprinter and long jumper Jesse Owens won four gold medals. The 1936 Berlin Games also saw the introduction of the Torch Relay.[10]

Due to World War II, the Games of 1940 (due to be held in Tokyo and temporarily relocated to Helsinki upon the outbreak of war) were cancelled. The Games of 1944 were due to be held in London but were also cancelled; instead, London hosted the first games after the end of the war, in 1948.

The first post-war Games were held in 1948 in London, with both Germany and Japan excluded. Dutch sprinter Fanny Blankers-Koen won four gold medals on the track, emulating Owens' achievement in Berlin.

At the 1952 Games in Helsinki the USSR team competed for the first time and immediately became one of the dominant teams (finishing second both in the number of gold and overall medals won). Soviet immediate success might be explained by the advent of the state-sponsored "full-time amateur athlete". The USSR entered teams of athletes who were all nominally students, soldiers, or working in a profession, but many of whom were in reality paid by the state to train on a full-time basis, hence violating amateur rules.[11][12] Finland made a legend of an amiable Czechoslovak army lieutenant named Emil Ztopek, who was intent on improving on his single gold and silver medals from 1948. Having first won both the 10,000 and 5,000-meter races, he also entered the marathon, despite having never previously raced at that distance. Pacing himself by chatting with the other leaders, Ztopek led from about halfway, slowly dropping the remaining contenders to win by two and a half minutes, and completed a trio of wins.

The 1956 Melbourne Games were largely successful, barring a water polo match between Hungary and the Soviet Union, which the Soviet invasion of Hungary caused to end as a pitched battle between the teams. Due to a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in Britain at the time and the strict quarantine laws of Australia, the equestrian events were held in Stockholm.

At the 1960 Rome Games a young light-heavyweight boxer named Cassius Clay, later known as Muhammad Ali, arrived on the scene. Ali would later throw his gold medal away in disgust after being refused service in a whites-only restaurant in his home town of Louisville, Kentucky.[13] He was awarded a new medal 36 years later at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Other performers of note in 1960 included Wilma Rudolph, a gold medallist in the 100 meters, 200 meters and 4 100 meters relay events.

The 1964 Games held in Tokyo are notable for heralding the modern age of telecommunications. These games were the first to be broadcast worldwide on television, enabled by the recent advent of communication satellites. The 1964 Games were thus a turning point in the global visibility and popularity of the Olympics. Judo debuted as an official sport, and Dutch judoka Anton Geesink created quite a stir when he won the final of the open weight division, defeating Akio Kaminaga in front of his home crowd.

Performances at the 1968 Mexico City games were affected by the altitude of the host city.[14] The 1968 Games also introduced the now-universal Fosbury flop, a technique which won American high jumper Dick Fosbury the gold medal. In the medal award ceremony for the men's 200 meter race, black American athletes Tommie Smith (gold) and John Carlos (bronze) took a stand for civil rights by raising their black-gloved fists and wearing black socks in lieu of shoes. They were banned by the IOC. Vra slavsk, in protest to the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia and the controversial decision by the judges on the Balance Beam and Floor, turned her head down and away from the Soviet flag whilst the anthem played during the medal ceremony. She returned home as a heroine of the Czechoslovak people but was made an outcast by the Soviet-dominated government.

Politics again intervened at Munich in 1972, with lethal consequences. A Palestinian terrorist group named Black September invaded the Olympic village and broke into the apartment of the Israeli delegation. They killed two Israelis and held 9 others as hostages. The terrorists demanded that Israel release numerous prisoners. When the Israeli government refused their demand, a tense stand-off ensued while negotiations continued. Eventually, the captors, still holding their hostages, were offered safe passage and taken to an airport, where they were ambushed by German security forces. In the firefight that followed, 15 people, including the nine Israeli athletes and five of the terrorists, were killed. After much debate, it was decided that the Games would continue, but proceedings were obviously dominated by these events.[15] Some memorable athletic achievements did occur during these Games, notably the winning of a then-record seven gold medals by United States swimmer Mark Spitz, Lasse Virn (of Finland)'s back-to-back gold in the 5,000 meters and 10,000 meters, and the winning of three gold medals by Soviet gymnastic star Olga Korbut - who achieved a historic backflip off the high bar. Korbut, however, failed to win the all-around, losing to her teammate Ludmilla Tourischeva.

There was no such tragedy in Montreal in 1976, but bad planning and fraud led to the Games' cost far exceeding the budget. The Montreal Games were the most expensive in Olympic history, until the 2014 Winter Olympics, costing over $5billion (equivalent to $22.03billion in 2020). For a time, it seemed that the Olympics might no longer be a viable financial proposition. In retrospect, the belief that contractors (suspected of being members of the Montreal Mafia) skimmed large sums of money from all levels of contracts while also profiting from the substitution of cheaper building materials of lesser quality, may have contributed to the delays, poor construction and excessive costs. In 1988, one such contractor, Giuseppe Zappia "was cleared of fraud charges that resulted from his work on Olympic facilities after two key witnesses died before testifying at his trial".[16] There was also a boycott by many African nations to protest against a recent tour of apartheid-run South Africa by the New Zealand national rugby union team. The Romanian gymnast Nadia Comneci won the women's individual all-around gold medal with two of four possible perfect scores, this giving birth to a gymnastics dynasty in Romania. She also won two other individual events, with two perfect scores in the balance beam and all perfect scores in the uneven bars. Lasse Virn repeated his double gold in the 5,000 meters and 10,000 meters, making him the first athlete to ever win the distance double twice.

Following the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, 66 nations, including the United States, Canada, West Germany, and Japan, boycotted the 1980 games held in Moscow. Eighty nations were represented at the Moscow Games the smallest number since 1956. The boycott contributed to the 1980 Games being a less publicised and less competitive affair, which was dominated by the host country.

In 1984 the Soviet Union and 13 Soviet allies reciprocated by boycotting the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Romania, notably, was one of the nations in the Eastern Bloc that did attend the 1984 Olympics. These games were perhaps the first games of a new era to make a profit. Although a boycott led by the Soviet Union depleted the field in certain sports, 140 National Olympic Committees took part, which was a record at the time.[17] The Games were also the first time mainland China (People's Republic) participated.

According to British journalist Andrew Jennings, a KGB colonel stated that the agency's officers had posed as anti-doping authorities from the IOC to undermine doping tests and that Soviet athletes were "rescued with [these] tremendous efforts".[18] On the topic of the 1980 Summer Olympics, a 1989 Australian study said "There is hardly a medal winner at the Moscow Games, certainly not a gold medal winner, who is not on one sort of drug or another: usually several kinds. The Moscow Games might as well have been called the Chemists' Games."[18]

Documents obtained in 2016 revealed the Soviet Union's plans for a statewide doping system in track and field in preparation for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Dated prior to the country's decision to boycott the Games, the document detailed the existing steroids operations of the programme, along with suggestions for further enhancements.[19] The communication, directed to the Soviet Union's head of track and field, was prepared by Dr. Sergei Portugalov of the Institute for Physical Culture. Portugalov was also one of the main figures involved in the implementation of the Russian doping programme prior to the 2016 Summer Olympics.[19]

The 1988 games, in Seoul, was very well planned but the games were tainted when many of the athletes, most notably men's 100 metres winner Ben Johnson, failed mandatory drug tests. Despite splendid drug-free performances by many individuals, the number of people who failed screenings for performance-enhancing chemicals overshadowed the games.

The 1992 Barcelona Games featured the admittance of players from one of the North American top leagues, the NBA, exemplified by but not limited to US basketball's "Dream Team". The 1992 games also saw the reintroduction to the Games of several smaller European states which had been incorporated into the Soviet Union since World War II. At these games, gymnast Vitaly Scherbo set an inaugural medal record of five individual gold medals at a Summer Olympics, and equaled the inaugural record set by Eric Heiden at the 1980 Winter Olympics.

By then the process of choosing a location for the Games had become a commercial concern; there were widespread allegations of corruption potentially affecting the IOC's decision process.

At the Atlanta 1996 Summer Olympics, the highlight was 200 meters runner Michael Johnson annihilating the world record in front of a home crowd. Canadians savoured Donovan Bailey's recording gold medal run in the 100-meter dash. This was popularly felt to be an appropriate recompense for the previous national disgrace involving Ben Johnson. There were also emotional scenes, such as when Muhammad Ali, clearly affected by Parkinson's disease, lit the Olympic torch and received a replacement medal for the one he had discarded in 1960. The latter event took place in the basketball arena. The atmosphere at the Games was marred, however, when a bomb exploded during the celebration in Centennial Olympic Park. In June 2003, the principal suspect in this bombing, Eric Robert Rudolph, was arrested.

The 2000 Summer Olympics was held in Sydney, Australia, and showcased individual performances by local favorite Ian Thorpe in the pool, Briton Steve Redgrave who won a rowing gold medal in an unprecedented fifth consecutive Olympics, and Cathy Freeman, an Indigenous Australian whose triumph in the 400 meters united a packed stadium. Eric "the Eel" Moussambani, a swimmer from Equatorial Guinea, received wide media coverage when he completed the 100 meter freestyle swim in by far the slowest time in Olympic history. He nevertheless won the heat as both his opponents had been disqualified for false starts. His female compatriot Paula Barila Bolopa also received media attention for her record-slow and struggling but courageous performance. The Sydney Games also saw the first appearance of a joint North and South Korean contingent at the opening ceremonies, though they competed as different countries. Controversy occurred in the Women's Artistic Gymnastics when the vaulting horse was set to the wrong height during the All-Around Competition.

In 2004, the Olympic Games returned to their birthplace in Athens, Greece. At least $7.2billion was spent on the 2004 Games, including $1.5billion on security. Michael Phelps won his first Olympic medals, tallying six gold and two bronze medals. Pyrros Dimas, winning a bronze medal, became the most decorated weightlifter of all time with four Olympic medals, three gold and one bronze. Although unfounded reports of potential terrorism drove crowds away from the preliminary competitions at the first weekend of the Olympics (1415August 2004), attendance picked up as the Games progressed. A third of the tickets failed to sell,[20] but ticket sales still topped figures from the Seoul and Barcelona Olympics (1988 and 1992).[citation needed] IOC President Jacques Rogge characterised Greece's organisation as outstanding and its security precautions as flawless.[21] All 202 NOCs participated at the Athens Games with over 11,000 participants.

The 2008 Summer Olympics was held in Beijing, People's Republic of China. Several new events were held, including the new discipline of BMX for both men and women. Women competed in the steeplechase for the first time. The fencing programme was expanded to include all six events for both men and women; previously, women had not been able to compete in team foil or sabre events, although women's team pe and men's team foil were dropped for these Games. Marathon swimming events were added, over the distance of 10km (6.2mi). Also, the doubles events in table tennis were replaced by team events.[22] American swimmer Michael Phelps set a record for gold medals at a single Games with eight, and tied the record of most gold medals by a single competitor previously held by both Eric Heiden and Vitaly Scherbo. Another notable star of the Games was Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, who became the first male athlete ever to set world records in the finals of both the 100 and 200metres in the same Games. Equestrian events were held in Hong Kong.

London held the 2012 Summer Olympics, becoming the first city to host the Olympic Games three times. In his closing address, Jacques Rogge described the Games as "Happy and glorious". The host nation won 29 gold medals, the best haul for Great Britain since the 1908 Games in London. The United States returned to the top of the medal table after China dominated in 2008. The IOC had removed baseball and softball from the 2012 programme. The London Games were successful on a commercial level because they were the first in history to completely sell out every ticket, with as many as 1million applications for 40,000 tickets for both the Opening Ceremony and the 100m Men's Sprint Final. Such was the demand for tickets to all levels of each event that there was controversy over seats being set aside for sponsors and National Delegations which went unused in the early days. A system of reallocation was put in place so the empty seats were filled throughout the Games.

Rio de Janeiro in Brazil hosted the 2016 Summer Olympics, becoming the first South American city to host the Olympics, the second Olympic host city in Latin America, after Mexico City in 1968, as well as the third city in the Southern Hemisphere to host the Olympics after Melbourne, Australia, in 1956 and Sydney, Australia, in 2000. The preparation for these Games was overshadowed by controversies, including the political instability of Brazil's federal government; the country's economic crisis; health and safety concerns surrounding the Zika virus and significant pollution in the Guanabara Bay; and a state-sponsored doping scandal involving Russia, which affected the participation of its athletes in the Games.[23]

The 2020 Summer Olympics were originally scheduled to take place from 24July to 9August 2020 in Tokyo, Japan. The city was the fifth in history to host the Games twice, and the first Asian city to have this title. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, the IOC and the Tokyo Organising Committee announced that the 2020 Games were to be delayed until 2021, marking the first time that the Olympic Games have been postponed. Unlike previous Olympics, these Games took place without spectators due to concerns over COVID-19 and a state of emergency imposed in the host city. [24][25][26] The Tokyo 2020 Olympics Games, however, featured many highly memorable moments. US gymnast and gold medal favourite Simone Biles gracefully bowed out to focus on her mental health, but later returned to claim a bronze medal. Norway's Karsten Warholm obliterated his own world record to set a new world and olympic record in 400m hurdles.

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Summer Olympic Games - Wikipedia

LONDON, ENGLAND - APRIL 06: The Olympic flag with the iconic Olympic rings is pictured during the IOC Executive Board meetings, held at the Westminster Bridge Park Plaza on April 6, 2011 in London, England. (Photo by Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images)

2011 Getty Images

The Olympic Games is a quadrennial international multi-sport event celebrated as a global sports festival by people all over the world. The Olympic Games are held in both the summer and winter, with the ultimate goal of cultivating people and world peace through sports. The Games of the XXIX Olympiad held in Beijing in 2008 saw athletes from 204 countries and regions participate. London hosted the 2012 Olympics, commemorating the 30th Olympic Games.

The ancient Olympic Games

ATHENS - 1880: The Site of the Ancient Olympic Stadium in Athens, Greece. (Photo by Getty Images)

2002 Getty Images

The roots of todays Olympic Games date back to the ancient Olympic Games, held 2,800 years ago. Also known as the "Olympiad," the event took place in the Olympia region of ancient Greece. There are various opinions regarding its origins. It is said that the event was an athletic and artistic festival dedicated to the worship of the gods. But the ancient Olympic Games were hindered by numerous conflicts and finally came to an end in 393 AD.

The modern Olympic Games

Baron Pierre de Coubertin (1863 - 1937), founder of the International Olympic Committee, circa 1925. (Photo by Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Then 1,500 years later in 1892, a French educator named Baron Pierre de Coubertin began the Olympic revival movement. Baron de Coubertin's idea to reinstate the Olympic Games was presented to the audience at the international congress in Paris, 1894, and his proposal was unanimously approved. Two years later the unforgettable first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens, Greece, the homeland of the ancient Olympic Games.

The five rings the well-known symbol of the Olympic Games were also created by Baron de Coubertin, to express the solidarity of the world's five continents.

Olympic Games in Japan

Japanese educator, Jigoro Kano is considered the "father of the Olympic Movement" in Japan. He was the headmaster of the Tokyo Higher Normal School (currently known as Tsukuba University) and made great efforts to promote judo. In 1909, Kano became the first IOC member to serve from Asia. Following this, he established the Japan Sports Association in preparation for Japan's eventual participation in the Olympic Games. In 1911, he organised an Olympic qualifying competition, from which short distance runner Yahiko Mishima and marathoner Shiso Kanaguri qualified for the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm the first Olympic Games in which Japanese athletes participated.

The notion of Olympism Baron de Coubertin advocated was the elevation of mind and soul, overcoming differences between nationalities and cultures while embracing friendship, a sense of solidarity and fair play. This would ultimately contribute to world peace and betterment an ideal that has been passed down undiminished to this day. As a result, he is revered as the "Father of the Olympics." In addition to the Olympic themes of "sports" and "culture," another focus today is "environment." The Olympic Games provide an opportunity for the international community to direct its attention to global environmental issues.

The Olympic Movement

LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND - JANUARY 11: The Olympic Rings sit on display outside the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Headquarters on January 11, 2020 in Lausanne, Switzerland. (Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images)

2020 Getty Images

The Olympic Movement is led by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), guided by the philosophy of Olympism, which strives to promote world peace and the betterment of society. The Olympic Movement is embraced all over the world, and the Olympic Charter has chosen the intersecting five-ring mark as its symbol.

The IOC is fully responsible for the advancement of Olympism in accordance with the Olympic Charter. The IOC recognises 205 countries and regions and hosts the Summer and Winter Olympic Games.

The Olympic Movement is advanced by various people and organisations. The National Olympic Committees (NOCs) and the International Federations (IFs) are also members of the Olympic Movement. The NOCs send their national delegations to the Olympic Games. The Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC) is the NOC in Japan. The IFs are the international sports organisations that govern each specific sport, and they retain full authority over the operation of their respective competitions during the Games.

Additionally, the International Olympic Academy (IOA) and the National Olympic Academy (NOA) both take charge of educational and promotional activities founded on Olympism.

Some of the main activities the Olympic Movement are involved in are anti-doping, women's participation and economic support. Doping the use of muscle-enhancing agents and other banned substances to improve performance is not only illegal but can have serious detrimental effects on the body. As such, the IOC took on an indispensable role in establishing the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to fight doping in sports. Women were not allowed to compete in the ancient Olympic Games, and it was not until the inaugural modern Olympic Games in Athens that they were welcomed as participants. As a result of the women's movement, as well as the efforts of the IOC's working group, many female athletes now take part in the Games. Through the aid programme, "Solidarity," the IOC plays a major role in providing financial support to athletes and coaches living in economically-deprived societies. Funds are allocated for scholarships, construction of sports facilities and other activities aimed at improving expertise and performance for all.

Another core activity of the Olympic Movement is the Paralympic Games the pinnacle of sporting events for athletes with disabilities. The Paralympic Games are hosted immediately after the Olympic Games, and performance levels are increasing at a rapid pace.

The Tokyo 1964 Olympic Games

TOKYO - OCTOBER 10: General view as Yoshinori Sakai, a student born in Hiroshima on the day the first atomic bomb devastated the city, carries the torch up the stairs to light the cauldron during the opening ceremony for the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympic Games in the National Stadium on October 10, 1964 in Tokyo, Japan. 5,151 athletes from 93 nations participated in the XVIII Olympiad. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

On October 10, 1964, the Games of the XVIII Olympiad began with the Opening Ceremony at Kasumigaoka National Stadium. 5,133 athletes from 93 nations and regions demonstrated their exceptional abilities in 163 events across 20 sporting competitions. It was the first ever Olympic Games held in Asia and an enormous success. In conjunction with this momentous event, Tokyo experienced dramatic developments in its post-war infrastructure, including the construction of the Metropolitan Expressway and the Tokaido Shinkansen railway ("the bullet train"). This type of major progress in the capital served as a stepping stone for an era of rapid economic growth in Japan, demonstrating its miraculous restoration to the world.

Athletes that inspired Japan

The three winners of the marathon event at the Tokyo Olympics stand side by side on the rostrum, 23rd October 1964. From left to right, they are Basil Heatley of Great British (silver), Abebe Bikila of Ethiopia (gold) and Kokichi Tsuburaya of Japan (bronze). Bikila also set a world record of 2 hours, 12.11 minutes. (Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

2005 Getty Images

Japanese athletes put on a remarkable Olympic show, receiving 29 medals including 16 gold, 5 silver and 8 bronze. Among the most memorable moments was the Japanese women's volleyball team's historic gold medal-winning match over a formidable and tenacious USSR side. Many outstanding international athletes gained popularity in Japan. These included Ethiopias two-time men's marathon gold medallist Abebe Bikila, and Czechoslovakia's Vera Caslavska, who captured the hearts of fans with her marvellous gymnastics performance.

Achievements of the 1964 Games

The 1964 Games not only served as a driving force of urban development and economic growth, its role in promoting sport in Japan must not be overlooked. Sport became an integral part of Japanese people's lives, with the popularity of football leading to the creation of the national league, and sport clubs emerging across the country.

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About the Olympic Games

Sep 3, 2021

Emily KaplanESPN

The NHL and NHLPA have come to an agreement with the IIHF and IOC that will allow NHL players to participate in the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing.

The agreement does carry an opt-out clause: The NHL and NHLPA can pull out of the Olympics should COVID-19 conditions worsen, or if the 2021-22 NHL schedule is disrupted by cancellations and the league feels it needs to use the Olympic break to make up games. The deadline for the opt-out is believed to be in early January, sources told ESPN.

The NHL did not participate in the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, ending a run of five consecutive tournaments in which the league allowed its players to appear. However, NHL players earned a massive win when they signed a new collective bargaining agreement with the league in 2020: The CBA included language to allow players to participate in the 2022 and 2026 Olympic Games -- contingent on an agreement with the IIHF and IOC.

The NHL, NHLPA, IIHF and IOC had been negotiating on and off all summer -- and bypassed some arbitrary deadlines -- but finally came to an agreement on Friday.

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NHL players have uniformly fought to return to the Olympic games.

"As any Canadian kid, your dream is to play in the NHL, and then your dream is to play for Team Canada at the Olympics. I think that's always how it is, and I'm no different," Edmonton Oilers star Connor McDavid told reporters last week. "Obviously, with not going to the Olympics, it's been a long time since we've been able to represent our country at a best-on-best tournament. So, my last time would have been a world juniors [in 2015], so it's been a long time, and I'm certainly looking forward to, I guess, having the ability to chase down a spot and hopefully make the team and represent my country at the Olympics."

As part of the agreement, the IIHF and IOC are picking up all travel and insurance costs for NHL players and will cover for players' guests if they are allowed to attend as well. A big hang-up was COVID insurance: While the NHL and NHLPA found a provider, the IIHF and IOC did not want to cover for additional COVID insurance, so it will be up to each individual player to determine whether he secures that or not.

The NHL is scheduled to break from games from Thursday, February 3 through Tuesday, February 22. All-Star weekend in Las Vegas -- beginning on Feb. 4 -- will happen whether NHL players participate in the Olympics or not.

Olympians who attend All-Star weekend will leave directly from Las Vegas and travel to Beijing.

All players who participate in the Olympics will be required to take the vaccine; however, there could be very limited exemptions on a case-by-case basis. Multiple league sources have told ESPN "an overwhelming majority" of NHL players are already vaccinated.

One thing the NHL wanted from an Olympic agreement was expanded media and advertising rights.

In a February 2020 meeting with the IIHF, the NHL outlined some of the things it wanted -- NHL logos and advertisements featured in Olympic games, the ability to use Olympic highlights on NHL Network or NHL.com -- which the league hoped would help promote the game.

However, sources say the NHL was largely denied most of its requests. The climate has changed since that February 2020 meeting; the NHL parted with broadcast partner NBC, which also carries the Olympics. Also, sources involved in the talks said the IIHF and IOC knew they had leverage considering NHL players have been so vocal about their desire to return to the Olympics.

Participating Olympic teams must submit their "long lists" of players by Oct. 15. The provisional playing rosters will be announced by January. National teams are not allowed to host in-person orientation camps, but they can host virtual meetings before the games.

According to sources, players are being told to prepare for strict protocols during the Olympics. That includes a bubble environment enforced by the Chinese government, daily testing, significant restrictions on interactions and movements, and the possibility of wearing GPS location devices to assist with contact tracing and ensure protocol compliance.

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Agreement reached for NHL players to participate in 2022 Olympics in Beijing - ESPN

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

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.

See more here:

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

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