The International Olympic Committee on Monday defended its stance against a moment of silence at the London Games for Israel's 11 athletes and coaches killed by terrorists in 1972, a response that follows an Israeli official's vow to pressure the organizing committee to change its position.
Israel's deputy foreign minister is taking to social media to pressure the International Olympic Committee to reverse its stance against a moment of silence at the London Games for 11 Israeli athletes and coaches killed at the 1972 games.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Anthony Ervin isn't revealing everything about the last eight years of his life. The parts he does share make you wish he would.
A British explorer is bringing an Olympic medal to the top of Mt. Everest to honor a pledge from 1924.
CNN's Don Lemon and Azadeh Ansari go beyond the headlines into female athlete participation in the 2012 London Olympics.
Bahiya Al-Hamad is a 19-year-old college student and air-rifle shooter who is about to make history for her country.
CNN's Dan Rivers looks at the history of the Falklands War on the 30th anniversary of the conflict.
Britain and international Olympic officials are taking issue with an advertisement claiming Argentina has sovereignty over the Falkland Islands.
British defense officials say they may deploy missiles from residential rooftops at the Olympics. Atika Shubert reports.
The British Olympic Association (BOA) has lost a court ruling that could lead to several high-profile athletes -- previously banned for doping offenses -- competing at London 2012.
She was remembered in her last Olympics 16 years ago -- a near lifetime in an athlete's career -- as a diminutive figure whose size belied her big ambitions and ability to win Olympic gold.
Canadian wheelchair rugby player Garett Hickling talks to CNN about the accident that changed his life.
CNN's Matthew Chance looks at the long term economic impact of the London Olympics for the United Kingdom.
CNN's Ben Wyatt visits the GlaxoSmithKline laboratory to learn more about dope screening ahead of the Olympic Games.
An arena where the Taliban used to execute women provides a chilling and incongruous setting for one teen girl's unlikely Olympic dream.
CNN's Nick Paton Walsh meets some young Afghan female boxers preparing for this year's London Olympics.
Syrian athletes will be allowed to attend this summer's London Olympics but officials from the war-torn country will not be welcome, says UK Prime Minister David Cameron.
Rima Maktabi discusses the symbolic move by Saudi Arabia to eventually send female athletes to the Olympics.
Yohan Blake is the 100-meter World Champion, but can he catch Usain Bolt at the 2012 Olympics?
Equestrian champion Ingrid Klimke could ride a horse before she could walk, such is the fondness her family holds for the animals.
German Olympic champion equestrian rider Ingrid Klimke talks to CNN about her Beijing gold and London 2012.
Victims and campaigners from the Bhopal disaster of 1984 have staged a "die-in" outside the UK's sports ministry to protest at the sponsorship role Dow Chemical Company will play in the London 2012 Olympics.
Robbers broke into a museum in Olympia, the birthplace of the Olympics, tied and gagged a museum guard, and fled with stolen artifacts, Greek authorities said Friday.
American sprinter and Olympic medal hopeful Tyson Gay talks to CNN about his targets for 2012.
A diving competition in the United States is bound to have several necessities: a springboard, a platform, some deep water and a Dumais -- in fact maybe two of them, or three. Otherwise, it seems, the meet is just a bunch of guys splashing around in the pool. Might as well be a triple Lindy and a cannonball.
There are few topics in sport more taboo than betting. Ask baseball's Pete Rose.
Friday is the six month mark before the Opening Ceremony for London 2012. Jim Boulden got a tour of the Olympic Park.
Golf returns to Olympics in 2016 after a 112-year hiatus and some of the greatest names in the sport are battling to put their name to the new course on which the event is to be played.
When Jerry Colangelo set out to rebuild the USA men's basketball program and end an eight-year gold-medal drought in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the international resumes of the players he was so high on said everything about the operation he was taking over.
CNN's Aiming for Gold talks to the world's fastest man, Usain Bolt.
Illegal gambling threatens the integrity of all sport says International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Jacques Rogge, but he's confident that the London Olympics can remain free from the scourge which has tarnished the reputation of cricket and football in recent months.
With only 200 days to go until the 2012 Olympic Games in London, CNN's Dan Rivers reports from the Olympic Park.
London 2012 Olympic organizers said Wednesday they oversold thousands of tickets for the synchronized swimming events at this summer's Games.
Africa is ready to host the World Athletics Championships for the first time, the sport's president Lamine Diack told CNN.
IAAF President Lamine Diack answers questions about allegations of corruption.
1. The United States will not lead the medal table in London. China, which didn't fully compete in the Olympics until 1984, will conquer the overall medal standings for the first time, completing its rise into sports superpower status. The Chinese led the Beijing Games with 51 golds, but the U.S. had 110 total medals to the host nation's 100 to top the table for the fourth straight Olympics.
1. Bolt disqualified. It was a bit like seeing Old Faithful oversleep or Big Ben lose track of time. At the World Championships in Daegu, South Korea, in August, Jamaica's Usain Bolt, the Olympic champion and world's fastest man, false-started and watched the final of the men's 100 meters from the sidelines. In his absence, Bolt's 21-year-old teammate, Yohan Blake, won the race in 9.92 seconds (Blake would follow up a few weeks in Brussels by running the second-fastest 200 in history, .07 seconds behind Bolt's record of 19.19). But a sprint race without Bolt is really Christmas without Santa. His explosions out of the blocks are among the few athletic viewings that can leave spectators in awe. Instead, his mistake left the running world in a state of aw-shucks.
Two leading world sports officials were sanctioned by the International Olympic Committee Thursday over cash payments they received from a collapsed sports marketing agency.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) have confirmed that former FIFA president Joao Havelange has resigned from his position within the organization with immediate effect.
Roger Federer wants to add an Olympic singles gold medal to his list of achievements in tennis after securing his 70th career title at the ATP World Tour Finals in London.
Ground-to-air missiles at the 2012 Olympic Games? It's not a new sport added to the London line-up, but proof that Britain's government is taking security seriously.
With Olympic berths available in some sports and athlete fields ranging from secondary to top shelf, the Pan Am Games in Guadalajara, Mexico, wrapped up last weekend, featuring athletes from the Americas competing in Olympic sports less than a year out from the London Games. Here are some of the highlights:
1. Jordyn Wieber will be NBC's "it" girl in 2012. Wieber, 16, exceeded considerable hype in her first year as a senior gymnast. She capped a 2011 all-around trifecta by edging Russian cofavorite Viktoria Komova, also 16, for the world championship, one of her three medals won this past week in Tokyo. Wieber had put everyone on notice in March, defeating 2010 world champion Aliya Mustafina at the American Cup, and in August, winning the U.S. title by the largest margin since the sport scrapped the perfect 10 in 2006.
Athletes suspended for doping cannot be barred from competing in the next Olympics if they have served their ban, the highest court in international sports ruled Thursday.
U.S. boxer Rau'shee Warren made history at the world championships this week, becoming the first athlete to qualify for three U.S. Olympic boxing teams. The 24-year-old from Cincinnati locked up an Olympic spot for the U.S. in the 114-pound flyweight division this week by winning his third-round bout at the world championships in Baku, Azerbaijan. After beating Shawn Simpson in the finals of the U.S. trials in Mobile in August, Warren needed to finish among the top 10 at worlds to secure his third Olympic berth. He outpointed Rey Saludar of the Philippines, 22-12, to guarantee a top-10 finish in his weight class and, therefore, a U.S. slot in that class.
The International Olympic Committee told CNN Friday that they are waiting on the result of an investigation by amateur boxing's world governing body into allegations that huge bribes were paid so Azerbaijan can win gold medals at the London 2012 Games.
It dawned on me this week that one of the Olympians I covered in Vancouver last year had just begun his bobsled career months before 9/11, and then was an alternate on his first Olympic team in Salt Lake City just months after 9/11. So I gave Steve Mesler, a 2010 gold medalist in four-man bobsled who retired after Vancouver, a call to ask how 9/11 changed things in his corner of the sports world. He recalled president Bush coming to talk to the team before opening ceremonies in Salt Lake City and telling the athletes how important it would be for Americans that they go out and perform their best. He recalled the athletes each being given a copper bracelet bearing the name of a dead New York firefighter or police officer. And he recalled walking toward the Olympic stadium during opening ceremonies and seeing snipers on buildings around the stadium silhouetted like shadow puppets against the evening sky.
DAEGU, South Korea -- Seven reasons, among many, to make a little time for the World Track and Field Championships, which begin Saturday in this city of 2.5 million people, 145 miles southeast of Seoul.
It's a country in the headlines every day, on its way to becoming the world's biggest economy and perhaps even replacing the U.S. as the world's No.1 superpower. But how much do you really know about China?
Jeret Peterson has died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He's featured in this 2010 video after winning silver medal.
It could have been the 15,000 participants, or maybe the $100 million price tag, or perhaps The Flying Man, the guy who lit the torch after completing his final lap of the Olympic Stadium track while suspended in midair. Whatever the cause, organizers of next summer's London Olympics must have felt gobsmacked by the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. The Games are all about quadrennium-upon-quadrennium comparatives -- faster, stronger, higher and all that -- and in the Olympic event that could be called synchronized can-you-top-this, the Chinese retired the trophy.
CNN's Atika Shubert visits London's Olympic village.
The World Olympic Gymnastics Academy in Plano, Texas, wears its reputation on its windows.
Olympic ticket buyers won't be told how much or when money will be deducted from their accounts. Emily Reuben reports.
A look at the work being done to restore, rejuvenate and clean east London's industrial areas for the 2012 Olympic games.
CNN's Paula Hancocks reports from Pyeongchang, South Korea, just after it was picked to host the 2018 Winter Olympics.
Kim Yuna, South Korea's golden girl of ice skating, on what it meant to win at the Olympic Games.
Chinese authorities have released activist Hu Jia, his wife posted Sunday on Twitter.
Ed Moses suffered the biggest disappointment of his life at the 2004 U.S. Olympic swim trials. The 2000 Olympic gold and silver medal breaststroker, a co-American record holder in the 100-meter breaststroke, finished fourth and sixth in his events. Only the top two in each made the Olympic team.
Kulsoom Abdullah is a 35-year-old with a doctorate in electrical and computer engineering. But it's her passion outside of work that has put her at the center of a debate -- one that could affect athletic competitions worldwide, even the Olympics.
NEW YORK -- It's been a little more than three years since Tyson Gay's world changed. This was back in the spring of the Olympic year, 2008, and Gay was the reigning world champion in both the 100 and 200 meters, presumptive heir to the U.S. sprinting legacy that stretched back over decades and included names like Morrow and Hayes and Lewis and Greene, among many others. Now it was Gay's time, a 25-year-old who paid his dues in hundreds of races at a junior college and the University of Arkansas and now prepared to win gold medals in Beijing.
As the Comcast/NBC presentation neared its conclusion Tuesday morning at the International Olympic Committee headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, Bob Costas stepped to the front of the room to deliver the emotional highlight of the allocution.
The Peacock is shelling out a whopping $4.38 billion for the rights to broadcast the Olympic Games through 2020.
Dick Ebersol resigned Thursday as chairman of the NBC Sports Group after 22 years, a move that may put in doubt the network's broadcasting of future Olympic Games.
A horrific motor accident led to the partial amputation of one of her legs but that was never enough to stop South African swimming heroine Natalie du Toit from realizing her ambitions.
Natalie du Toit became a national hero in South Africa, even after she lost a leg in a scooter accident.
Tickets finally go on sale Tuesday for the 2012 Olympics, with 500 days till the world gathers in London for the opening ceremony on July 27. Full details can be found on the London 2012 website.
Skiers understand the capricious nature of fame in a sport that is largely hidden from public view for years at a time. It's all about timing. (And back stories, too, but that's another matter. And sometimes it's about timing and back stories together). You can win all the races you like, on any mountainside in the world, but unless you win at the Olympics, you are anonymous. Ted Ligety knows all about this.
With fresh silver in her pocket from another major competition, Lindsey Vonn has decided to pull out of the World Alpine Ski Championships in Garmisch, Germany. The Olympic gold medalist is still suffering from post-concussion effects after a training fall in Austria a week earlier. Vonn underwent a head scan and subsequent concussion protocols during the week, but was allowed to continue and chose to ski even though she confessed to "skiing in a fog." She placed seventh in the Super G, withdrew from the downhill part of the combined and then on Sunday won a silver in the downhill, the event in which she is the Olympic champion. She has not ruled out a return to competition for the remaining four sites on the tour.
The head of the Vancouver Olympics organizing committee warned that an athlete could get "badly injured or worse" almost a full year before Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was killed during a practice run at the 2010 Winter Games.
Even as the Dallas area bursts its buttons, hosting the Super Bowl for the first time in Jerry Jones' new American coliseum, the city itself has developed an even greater itch it wants to scratch.
Snowboard queen Kelly Clark isn't resting on her laurels or her board. At the X Games in Aspen, Colo., over the weekend, the 27-year-old, two-time Olympic medalist became the first woman to land a frontside 1080, on her way to a gold medal in the superpipe.
The USOC announced its athletes of the year on Tuesday morning, not surprisingly tapping stars from the Vancouver Olympics as honorees. Figure skater Evan Lysacek was named Sportsman of the Year, outlasting snowboarder Shaun White, history-making speed skater Apolo Ohno and rejuvenated alpine whiz Bode Miller. Lysacek won a nail-biting men's title in Vancouver against Russia's Evgeny Plushenko in a battle of contrasting styles.
This month on Revealed, Snowboarding legend and Olympic gold medallist, Shaun White.
An Olympic athlete needs help. This is a call to action for anyone who might hear of anything, see anything, have a lead or even a hunch. Over the holidays, some thieves broke into the home of Merrill Moses' parents in Manteca, Calif. In the middle of the night they swiped some jewelry, a flat screen TV and other valuables from Max and Marlene Moses.
These are some of the outstanding male athletes, listed in alphabetical order, in Olympic sports for the year 2010. Last week, we looked at some of the top female athletes.
Here are some of the most outstanding female athletes of the year in Olympic sports, listed in alphabetical order with a nod to the Korean and Chinese whose family names appear first. Next week, we'll look at some of the top males.
In a breakthrough performance that may have resurrected an always-promising international career, Alissa Czisny won the ladies event at the Grand Prix final in Beijing over the weekend. For years, Czisny, a 23-year-old Bowling Green grad, has been considered a brilliant artist with the tightest spins and most elegant turns in the sport. But she's also a capable jumper who would often crumble under the spotlight of competition. This weekend, she put together two strong efforts, taking the lead during the short program and maintaining the margin through the free skate.
So much for the idea that Lindsey Vonn and the rest of the U.S. ski team would have a down season in the post-Olympic year. Vonn and fellow Olympic champ Ted Ligety both earned decisive victories in World Cup events as the Cup tour made its annual fall pass through North America. Vonn captured the Super G race in Lake Louise, Alberta on Sunday, while Ligety won the giant slalom event on the Birds of Prey course in Beaver Creek, Colo. It marked the first time since 2006 that two U.S. alpine skiers had won World Cup events on the same day.
It took far more sweat than expected, but the U.S. women's soccer team, perennially a threat to win world and Olympic titles, finally secured the 16th and final position for the 2011 World Cup in Germany. With a 1-0 victory over Italy in Bridgeview, Ill. last weekend, the U.S. team won the two-game series against the Italians by a 2-0 aggregate score. The U.S. also defeated Italy, 1-0, in Padova on Nov. 20. Alex Morgan connected in the first game; Amy Rodriguez scored the lone U.S. goal on Saturday; and Nicole Barnhart was flawless in the U.S. net throughout both games. The World Cup will take place from June 26 to July 17, when the U.S. women will face North Korea, Colombia and Sweden in the qualification round.
Sports Illustrated will announce its choice for Sportsman of the Year on Nov. 29. Here's one of the nominations for that honor by an SI writer.
In another universe, the local grocery store might have a Mariel Zagunis cereal box on the front shelf, next door to a Mariel line of athletic wear or a Zagunis video game with its own parry-riposte throttle. But Zagunis may have to be content with merely being the best in the world today at what she does and the most successful U.S. athlete in the history of her sport, one that predates most other sports in this country. When she defended her world fencing championship in Paris this month, Zagunis floated into a new stratosphere.
After the World Championships in Rome last summer when he won a bronze medal in the 10-kilometer open water swim event, Fran Crippen talked glowingly about how the open-water event essentially revived his career.
The punishment for U.S. quarter-miler LaShawn Merritt has been set at 21 months after the two-time Olympic champ tested positive three times for Dehydroepiandrosterone, a drug contained in a product he said he took to improve his sex life. Though Merritt could be eligible to return before the London Games, since his suspension was retroactive to October 2009, an IOC rule prohibits him as a banned athlete from actually taking part in the next Olympics. Merritt won gold at the Beijing Olympics in both the 400 meters and the 4x400-meter relay. He also won golds in both events at the world championships in Berlin last summer.
Just three weeks after the U.S. men's basketball team defeated host nation Turkey in the finals of their world championship, the U.S. women's team knocked off the hosts from the Czech Republic, 89-69, to capture the women's title in Karlovy Vary on Sunday. Angel McCoughtry led the U.S. with 18 points and Diana Taurasi added 16. The victory also gave the U.S. squad an automatic berth in the tournament at the London Olympics.
The first thing the visitors noticed was the calm. Along the sides of Lake Carnegie, the man-made facility constructed for rowing in Princeton, N.J., a century ago, sat picturesque grass embankments and a spanking clean boathouse. On Tuesday, the members of the Iraqi rowing team affirmed their approval. "It's very clean, very peaceful, very, I would say, almost perfect," said Ahmed Abdul Salam. The scene was different several years ago when Salam and his partner went out for a row on the Tigris River, a venue encircled by a battered Baghdad landscape, security checkpoints and, oh yes, the soldiers who began shooting at them. "We heard the pops in the water," he recalls. "They told us to stop. We were a threat. We were being arrested."
Brady Ellison took another step toward a world No. 1 ranking, stunning Olympic gold medalist Im Dong-hyun of South Korea to win the World Cup Archery final in Edinburgh, Scotland on Sunday. Ellison first rallied from a 5-1 deficit in the second set against India's Jayanta Talukdar in the semifinals, winning the match on a one-arrow shoot-off. Ellison, 22, then beat Im Dong-hyun in the finals to earn the title and avenge an earlier loss to Im two years ago in Antalya, Turkey.
It was an impossible question, one USA Basketball director Jerry Colangelo could never properly answer: Which was more satisfying -- the Olympic gold medal earned through the blood, sweat and tears shed during a three-year rebuilding process; or the World Championship gold, claimed by a young, upstart team that seemed an unlikely group to end America's 16-year drought in the event?
Even before the skating season kicks off, there has been plenty of kicking and screaming from the rink over the split between Korean Olympic champ Kim Yu-na and her Canadian coach Brian Orser. Granted, Kim's mother, Park Mi-hee has always been a strong presence in her life, but she and Orser co-existed peacefully during Kim's run to the Olympic title in Vancouver last year despite their differences. This year, according to Orser, trouble escalated when he learned through press reports that Kim was skipping the Grand Prix season. She had also asked an outside coach, Shae-Lynn Bourne, to help choreograph her routine without first consulting with Orser.
Last year, Angela Ruggiero, a star for the past decade with the U.S. hockey team, was elected as an athlete member of the IOC, joining Anita DeFrantz and Jim Easton as the only U.S. members of the committee. In four Olympics, the California-born, New England-raised defenseman won four medals, including gold at the Nagano Olympics in 1998, when she was still a high school senior. In 2005, a year after graduating cum laude from Harvard with a degree in government, Ruggiero became the first woman to play professionally at a position other than goalie in a men's game, when she skated for the Tulsa Oilers of the Central Hockey League. She sat down with SI.com last week at the World Hockey Summit in Toronto to discuss the women's game, the Olympics and her future.
(TORONTO) -- I'm here at the World Hockey Summit trying to assimilate three days of information and ideas that span the spectrum of considerations. This forum included everything from what is best for the youngest of youth players to all the political and economic issues connected with NHL players participating in the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia.
A giant of the track and field world passed away last week, when Hal Connolly died at age 79. Connolly won the gold medal in the hammer throw at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, then continued a lengthy career of distinction, competing in three more Olympics and missing out on a fourth at the 1972 Olympic trials. Over his career he broke the world record in the event six times over a period that lasted more than nine years. His final record-breaking throw in 1965 sailed 233 feet, nine inches. Years later, Connolly admitted to using steroids during his career, when they were not yet illegal and their consequences were not widely known.
I swear I don't wake up in the morning looking for reasons to snip at Brian Burke. I like the guy. I think he's one of the best general managers in the game. But geez, it's hard to look the other way after his Tomas Kaberle fumble and now this silliness about using the World Cup to grow the sport.
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. -- Some six hours later, they would be inducted en masse into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. But, at 2 in the afternoon on Friday, an assemblage of basketball's all-time greatest sat around a table in the ballroom of the Sheraton Hotel gossiping like high school kids in the lunchroom.
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. -- Al Kelley retired in 1999 after a 45-year career in parts distribution with Caterpillar, Inc., the world-famous manufacturer of construction equipment. He is 77 years old, stands 5-foot-11 and looks more like your weekend poker buddy than an accomplished basketball player.
Surely the Olympic rings were turned on their sides this past week. Two giants of their respective sports suffered rare defeats when Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps each lost races.
Surely the Olympic rings were turned on their sides this past week. Two giants of their respective sports suffered rare defeats when Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps each lost races.
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