World Sports News

Iran has formally complained to FIFA and asked for a 10 match playing ban for the American team, which led to the American coach popping up in media apologising for the error and claiming the team and the coaching staff and everybody involved had nothing to do with the mistake...

So much for keeping politics out of sport... lets ask the Russian or Belarus teams... oh... we can't because that is not politics... except that it is.

Dale Argentina! Hurrah Argentina!

So pleased a country from the Southern Hemisphere won...

Argentina beat the All Blacks and now they win the Soccer world cup... very happy for them.

So pleased a country from the Southern Hemisphere won... Cool

Argentina beat the All Blacks and now they win the Soccer world cup... very happy for them.

And FIFA said no to Zelensky's request for a pre-match address to World Cup final viewers

When they said no a couple days ago, Western media and Ukrainian officials labelled it an 'apparent' snub, and that 'talks were still ongoing'. Meaning that they had a mind to bring in their US and EU paymasters to strong-arm FIFA. However it seems that they simply weren't able to pressure them in time. Zelensky left it too late.

And to be fair where would it end... the Greta speech to start with and a US sanctioned speech afterwards, and then a speech to tell the current non western host country how terrible they are but if they work harder they might get up to western standards...

Piss off....

No one likes to get a sermon from a priest of a different religion from the one you have chosen, but it is always worse when the sermon topic is always an area this particular disciple is one of the worst offenders... because everything the west lectures on they always have far more experience on a much wider scale than any country you could care to name.

You are American aren't you?

The All Blacks are New Zealands Rugby team... if you are in to Rugby you will know who they are, so clearly you are not... but that is fine... I understand, I couldn't name any American ice hockey or basket ball or base ball or grid iron teams either.

The All Blacks has nothing to do with colour or race, they are called the All Blacks because their uniform is all black, just like our Soccer team are the all whites and you can guess why they are called that.

BTW there is plenty of colour in our teams, Maori and Pacific Islanders enjoy playing sport and tend to be very good at it, we also get players from our international opponents coming here to play, so we have Japanese and Argentinian as well as other players too.

We do have a racist team, we have the Maori All Blacks, which is, as the name implies a team for Maori players only, but that is positive racism getting Maori players more exposure to international sport, and I have no problem with that... the Maori have had a rugby team longer than many countries that play now... their first game was about 1888... so you can't call it woke.

Medvedev ends Djokovic's 20-match winning streak, 03.03.2023.

Medvedev breaks Djokovic's 20-match winning streak and reaches the final of the tournament in Dubai.

Russian tennis player in the semi-finals of the tournament in Dubai beat the first racket of the world in straight sets. It's Djokovic's first loss since last November, and Medvedev's first defeat of a Serb since the 2021 US Open final. In the final in Dubai, he will play with Andrey Rublev.

Russian tennis player Daniil Medvedev reached the final of the ATP tournament in Dubai.

In the semi-final, the 27-year-old Russian, seeded third in the tournament, beat the world No. 1 Serb Novak Djokovic with a score of 6:4, 6:4.

In the decisive match, Medvedev's opponent will be compatriot Andrei Rublev, who defeated the German Alexander Zverev.. Thus, the Russian tennis player will win the tournament in Dubai for the third year in a row. In 2021, Aslan Karatsev became the best, in 2022 - Rublev.

https://sportrbc.ru/news/640222a59a7947f7ba442773

The Paris Olympics are the most French thing ever – for better or worse, by Rachel Marsden for RT. 07.30.2024.

From the outrageous opening ceremony to the organizational screw-ups, the games will surely go down in history for all the wrong reasons.

French culture isn’t just about masked balls at Versailles anymore. As the Paris Olympic Games have proven, it’s now also debating whether drag queens’ balls were adequately masked.

Looks like Thomas Jolly, the Games’ Opening Ceremony director, is just now coming to the realization that the entire world doesn’t function like Paris Left Bank intellectuals. He bit off more than he could chew by transmitting a French art house vibe to every country around the globe, some of which – from Morocco and Algeria to China and the US – straight up censored parts of the show that perhaps should have come with a disclaimer in the same way that risqué French films do.

Because it turns out that kids – and even some adults – weren’t quite ready to witness a giant Smurf rolling around in a fruit bowl in front of a bunch of drag queens re-enacting what appeared to be the Last Supper. And the fact that French blasphemy laws were abolished two years after the French Revolution, enshrining a right that became a cornerstone of French free speech, didn’t matter to those who felt offended, which included everyone from religious figures to left-wing France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Melenchon.

France has defended religious satire as free expression, even when cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed led to a terrorist massacre in January 2015 at the Parisian headquarters of the magazine Charlie Hebdo, which published them. So this is just France being France, which wasn’t very well received, including by some of the most progressive-minded French officials.

One US-based advertiser – the wireless company C Spire – has already said it was yanking their Olympic advertising. Guess there’s a dice roll with the risk that your product might end up somewhere in the vicinity if a clip or screencap of a bunch of drag queens, or a saucy Papa Smurf, and that wasn’t quite the vibe that you were going for when you signed up for high-level sports sponsorship.

There was also an onslaught of reports of X (former Twitter) social media users being hit with copyright takedown notices for posting some of the controversial scenes from the opening show for debate and discussion. Not surprising that the International Olympic Committee, guardian of the Olympic brand, might not want the images etched into history of these Games, to be dominated by things like closeups of drag queens' crotches for the purpose of debating whether the world actually witnessed some fruit tumbling out of a pair of plum smugglers in a wardrobe malfunction – or whether it was just an everyday pantyhose rip. You know, the kind of thing that could happen to any dude in an average day at the office.

The Games have really showcased that world-famous French rigor.

Whoever was in charge of the anthems for the men’s basketball games apparently saw that South Sudan was playing and just figured that the national anthem for Sudan would do. It’s like during the opening ceremonies when South Korean athletes were introduced as North Koreans. Same thing, really.

One of the best things about these Games are the adorable mascots, the Phryges, based on the French Revolutionary hats of the same name. But at this point, can we get these little bright-red cuties to amp up the Gallic shrugging? Because that’s what’s really now become the main vibe of these Games.

No air conditioning amid 33C heat in the Olympic village or athletes’ rooms because the French greenwashed their cheapness as “eco-friendly”? Shrug. Competitors complaining about the lack of high protein eggs and meat at the village chow halls because Games organizers figured that elite athletes could just eat like rabbits for the sake of the planet (and of profit margins, no doubt)? Shrug. The world is now discovering the kind of reception that I get at my local gym when they block whatever climate control exists at 26C in the middle of summer. That would be a “you” problem. Shrug. Some countries’ delegations took the initiative of supplying their own air conditioners, just as Team Great Britain ended up bringing over their own chefs so their athletes could be properly fed for high performance.

The trains stopped running last week around France due to sabotaged lines. Israel has already blamed that on Iran. The average French person’s mind just went straight to everyday, garden variety French incompetence – the kind that would also would explain all the heavy-handed “security theatre” during the Games.

The government required everyone to apply online for QR Codes if they wanted to even cross the downtown core, which was turned into a maze of 44,000 barricades days before the opening ceremony. And the excuse had to be a good one – like you lived there or had an appointment. And the Interior Ministry had already used the Games as a pretext for loading up on new high-tech surveillance systems, from surveillance drones and anti-drone systems to crowd scanners coupled with Minority Report style artificial intelligence algorithms. If all of it actually worked, then why give people the run-around? If their surveillance-industrial complex pals were going to stuff their pockets under the pretext of Games security, then couldn’t they just spy on us in peace without all the added bureaucratic nonsense?

Speaking of national security, a bunch of hackers leaked the military background of Israeli athletes, a country with mandatory service and currently involved in an active conflict criticized by the UN’s International Court of Justice and accused of apartheid – an offense that the IOC explicitly cites as justification for Games exclusion. Meanwhile Russian athletes who have never even been in the army can’t even compete in their country’s name. So what happens if a Russian wins a gold medal? The IOC created a special flag just for them, which looks like someone’s kid whipped it up in about five minutes on an app. They also made a new anthem with no lyrics for Russian athletes that sounds like the opening soundtrack for a make-believe fantasy movie. Which is really what all this is: one big Hollywood-grade fantasy that one of the top Olympic nations since forever doesn’t even exist now at the Olympics.

And remember those €1.4 billion to clean up the Seine River for the triathlon and open water events? The mayor of Paris and French sports minister rolled around in it for about a minute, gushing about how wonderful the water was.

Well, it turns out that triathlon practice was cancelled on Sunday and Monday. Too much fecal bacteria. Organizers had until Tuesday’s men’s race to figure it all out. Then, on Tuesday, at 4am,  they announced that the men’s triathlon would be postponed to Wednesday, right after the scheduled women’s race, with both triathlons “subject to the forthcoming water tests complying with the established World Triathlon thresholds for swimming.”

The backup plan, which they had seven years to come up with? Just to have the running and cycling without the swimming. Which is a whole other sport called a duathlon. Close enough though, right?

As for the swimming, it turns out that they messed up and didn’t build enough seats into the Olympic pool venue for it to actually host the Olympic swimming, so they were forced to install a temporary swimming pool inside Paris La Défense Arena, where Taylor Swift recently performed. That pool is now the subject of much speculation among members of the sporting press and global swimming community, who are wondering whether the pool’s notable lack of depth or some other aspect of the makeshift construction is responsible for relatively slow swims at this meet. “Zero World Records have been broken at the 2024 Paris Olympics through two nights of competition in the pool. The last time that no World Record was broken after just one day of competition was 1992, but here we are, entering night three with zero,” one of the world’s leading swimming news and discussion outlets, SwimSwam, remarked in asking whether the Paris pool was just “slow”.

That world famous French discipline – really shining right now on the world stage. Thankfully, the athletes – in all their unforced diversity through meritocracy – have taken center stage despite being relegated to background actors in the opening show, having to share boats with other countries like they were Uber carpools. Except the refugees. Organizers gave them their own boat to sail down the Seine, smiling and waving. But with the way these Games are being run, it’s a wonder that it hasn’t just ended up in Britain.

https://www.rt.com/news/601830-paris-olympics-outrageous-opening-ceremony/

I would interview him right now. He might have something to say.

Thomas Bach announces resignation as IOC President, 08.10.2024.

Thomas Bach announces he will step down as IOC President in 2025.

The German's mandate ends in 2025.

The head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Thomas Bach announced that he will not seek re-election for a new term in 2025. He stated this at the IOC session.

"As a result of deep reflection and extensive discussions, including with my family present here in the hall, I have come to the conclusion that my mandate should not be extended beyond the period provided for in the Olympic Charter," Bach said.

In July, the IOC postponed a decision on extending Bach's term. At that time, the decision on an amendment to the Olympic Charter allowing for the German's powers to be extended was not adopted by the organization's legal affairs commission and was postponed until 2025.

Last October, several IOC members at the organization's session in India suggested that Bach not step down after his second term in office expires in 2025.

Bach has been an IOC member since 1991, taking over the organisation in 2013 for eight years before serving another four-year term. His term ends in 2025. He is the 1976 Olympic champion in team foil.

https://www.rbc.ru/sport/10/08/2024/66b79a199a79475f4fbdc7b1

How do Russians feel about not participating in the 2024 Paris Summer Olympic Games? Are they disappointed and blame Putin or the West including the United States?

The Russian sports organisations seem to understand that the problem is with WADA and the IOC and not with Putin who has done a lot for sports of all types in Russia.

On another point, why doesn't Russia field better women's basketball teams that can challenge the United States? Is it because Russian women are afraid of the US or has basketball lost popularity?

Is Womens basketball popular in Russia? Why would Russian women be afraid of America?

If Russia athletes are so shit at everything why does the US and the west use WADA and the IOC to ban them from international sports?

On another note, did the USSR send professionals to represent the Soviet men's basketball teams during the Cold War? This is what a lot of Americans accuse the Russians of during.

Hahahaha... the technology and facilities for elite sports people in the west means there are no amateur sports people in the west. They have doctors and university educated support people using all sorts of technology to improve their performance... including the pharmaceutical industry... if you know what I mean.

The same cannot be said for the Soviets, who called upon experienced veteran players who were not officially part of any sports associations – instead they were servicemen or members from social organizations."

If they don't play in professional sports leagues then they are not professional players. If they happen to be members of a company or organisation like a mililtary that allows them to train full time then that is not the same as a professional athlete that competes for their income.

Just sounds like sour grapes from the US...

Bach has been an IOC member since 1991, taking over the organisation in 2013 for eight years before serving another four-year term. His term ends in 2025. He is the 1976 Olympic champion in team foil.

Would he have still won his medal if the Lebanese foil champion had been allowed to compete?

Lebanon had a civil war in 1976 so I guess their athletes would not have been allowed to compete in the olympic games.... right?

Algerian posters about the victory of Imane Khelif.

The Western maintream media who criticized her forget that Algeria has Islam traditional culture, and is very conservative about LGBT issues. There is no way a transgender can join Algerian national team.

And anybody know genetics already understand that it is possible for a "straight" woman to have a more or less masculine apperance.

https://scontent.fsgn5-11.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/453623838_1008300507415994_456609680986167261_n.jpg?_nc_cat=111&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=833d8c&_nc_ohc=S9CcXrkxgpgQ7kNvgH-9tR3&_nc_ht=scontent.fsgn5-11.fna&oh=00_AYCrtnDA4zJrXfWqfn_Xn0rbWg_KGjijoPcbHinR9iBzvg&oe=66C127D3