Tag: Olympics

Aly Raisman is a six-time Olympic medalist. She’s a survivor of abuse at the hands of Larry Nassar. And now, she’s an activist.

An Olympic sailor suffering from Truman Show Disorder attempts to wrest control away from the Director.

For the first time in 24 years, there are no NHL players at the Olympics, offering a rare opportunity for a group of journeymen from a nation that claims hockey as its game.

Nicole Chung talks with Kristi Yamaguchi about the cultural significance of her figure skating victory at the 1992 Olympics.

Hosting the Olympics too often spells doom for the host country.

Eighty years ago, in Berlin, Stella Walsh won her second Olympic medal. Decades later, Walsh’s murder and subsequent autopsy threw the legacy of track’s first female superstar into turmoil.

The fan relationship is often built on expectations and hope, however unfair they might be. My expectation going to Dominique [Moceanu]’s hotel that night in 1998 was that she’d come down from her room even after a long day of training and competing, and grant me an autograph or, if I was really lucky, a […]

Before the 1990s hosting was usually a low-key affair. Los Angeles was the only bidder for the 1984 Olympics. It funded its games almost entirely with private money, as largely did Atlanta in 1996. Most football World Cups were played in scarcely renovated older stadiums. But globalisation and new television channels showing sport changed that. […]

In 2009, Brazil introduced “one of the boldest experiments in policing ever witnessed in the democratic world”—the Unidade de Polícia Pacificadora, or UPP—to rid its poorest neighborhoods from the grip of drug traffickers and violent militias before the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics: ‘Everybody in Rio knew – every taxi driver, every senator, every […]

Tracing the modern Olympics back to their origin in rural England, where there was a very different set of competitive events: Ah, but in Much Wenlock, the Olympic spirit thrived, year after year—as it does to this day. Penny Brookes had first scheduled the games on October 22, 1850, in an effort ‘to promote the […]

Does our body tell us when we can’t go any farther, or does our brain? A look at marathon runners and the science behind human endurance. A classic situation in which athletes believe they have hit a true physical limit is ‘bonking’ during a marathon: you stagger to a halt, ostensibly because your body runs […]

Twenty years later, how Michael, Magic and the NBA’s best players sought to regain U.S. dominance in Olympic basketball: Nathaniel Butler (official NBA photographer): We were sitting on the baseline. Magic is backing a guy down, and the guy on defense is yelling at his bench, “Now! Now!” And on the bench, one guy’s pulling […]