Our underdog soccer team's success last week in South Africa was a sweet surprise till Brazil caught us -- but, in the meantime, in the year's other major international sports competition, we're the heavy favorite. But can we hang on down the stretch this next time against Brazil? Can Chicago beat out Rio for the right to hold the 2016 Olympics?
The Dream Team is still dominating.
In his first competition since winning eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics last summer, Michael Phelps came to the Charlotte Ultraswim meet in North Carolina well-rested and with some new style: he debuted a new straight-arm or "windmill" stroke technique for some of his freestyle events, a stroke that allows him to slice throw the water more efficiently.
Michael Phelps -- the Olympic gold-medal swimmer who jumped into hot water over a photo of him holding a bong -- has returned to competition for the first time since the Beijing Olympics.
Battered by the current economic recession, Hawaii's economy could get a strong boost from two key sporting events.
This article is reprinted from the December 8, 2008 issue of Sports Illustrated.
Jim Scherr's abrupt resignation as Chief Executive Officer of the U.S. Olympic Committee leaves several questions: Why is he out, what does it mean for the USOC and could his resignation affect Chicago's chances to land the 2016 Olympics when the IOC awards those Games in October? Is an organization that had righted its ship after years of dysfunction now setting itself up for another era of wayward management or merely adjusting its priorities in a tough economy?
Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps admitted to "regrettable" behavior Sunday and vowed it wouldn't happen again after a British newspaper published a photograph of the swimmer smoking from a bong.
Sada Jacobson may be a world champion fencer with three Olympic medals, but dressed in a T-shirt and sweats, she looked like any other student getting a lesson at the gym.
For Sebastian Coe, one of Britain's greatest athletes, the glory of winning Olympic gold medals comes in second to clinching the Olympics Games for London in 2012.
Our underdog soccer team's success last week in South Africa was a sweet surprise till Brazil caught us -- but, in the meantime, in the year's other major international sports competition, we're the heavy favorite. But can we hang on down the stretch this next time against Brazil? Can Chicago beat out Rio for the right to hold the 2016 Olympics?
The Dream Team is still dominating.
In his first competition since winning eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics last summer, Michael Phelps came to the Charlotte Ultraswim meet in North Carolina well-rested and with some new style: he debuted a new straight-arm or "windmill" stroke technique for some of his freestyle events, a stroke that allows him to slice throw the water more efficiently.
Michael Phelps -- the Olympic gold-medal swimmer who jumped into hot water over a photo of him holding a bong -- has returned to competition for the first time since the Beijing Olympics.
Battered by the current economic recession, Hawaii's economy could get a strong boost from two key sporting events.
This article is reprinted from the December 8, 2008 issue of Sports Illustrated.
Jim Scherr's abrupt resignation as Chief Executive Officer of the U.S. Olympic Committee leaves several questions: Why is he out, what does it mean for the USOC and could his resignation affect Chicago's chances to land the 2016 Olympics when the IOC awards those Games in October? Is an organization that had righted its ship after years of dysfunction now setting itself up for another era of wayward management or merely adjusting its priorities in a tough economy?
Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps admitted to "regrettable" behavior Sunday and vowed it wouldn't happen again after a British newspaper published a photograph of the swimmer smoking from a bong.
Sada Jacobson may be a world champion fencer with three Olympic medals, but dressed in a T-shirt and sweats, she looked like any other student getting a lesson at the gym.
For Sebastian Coe, one of Britain's greatest athletes, the glory of winning Olympic gold medals comes in second to clinching the Olympics Games for London in 2012.
The party of the year in the swimming world took place not in Beijing's Water Cube in August but in a New York City hotel ballroom the week before Thanksgiving. The occasion was the Golden Goggle Awards, the Oscars of the amphibious set, and most of the 43 members of the U.S. Olympic swim team turned out for the splashy event. With their short skirts, high heels and ripped biceps the women were visions of powerful femininity. The dudes wore their tuxedos ironically, with shaggy hair and bow ties askew. Before the awards show began, there was a rip-roaring cocktail hour. The view of midtown Manhattan from the ballroom revealed the grand old Ziegfeld Theatre, which on this night was hosting a red-carpet premiere for the latest overwrought Hollywood drama. Despite the constellation of paparazzi flashes the assembled actors couldn't match the star power at the Golden Goggles.
Post-Olympics Beijing is a vastly changed landscape from the one that existed in 2001 when the city won the bid.
China opened the 29th Olympic Games on Friday with stunning fireworks as the Asian nation kicked off one of the most heavily scrutinized games in history.
Without proper food, shoes, or support from his government, Hem Bunting, the Cambodian Olympic marathon competitor, prepared for the Olympics and hoped for international support in late July.
Brits are known for theater, pageantry, music and humor. But if stodgy politicians have their way, none of that may come through in the 2012 Olympics
True to the script, an outstanding Argentina team brushed aside all opposition in Beijing as it successfully defended its Olympic gold medal. La Albiceleste proved far superior to all the teams it faced in China as Sergio Batista's squad cruised to six successive victories, scoring 11 goals (second only to Brazil) while only conceding two (best at the Games).
The record-setting American calls the ceremony a "great start" to the 2012 games
As spectacular as the sports were, the Games in the end had become more of an extravaganza for the Chinese, with the rest of the world tagging along
He predicted the U.S. would win basketball gold in Beijing. Spain came close to spoiling it all, but James came through
BEIJING -- There are no fairy tale endings when a good man dies brutally and senselessly, nothing a victory in an Olympic final can alter.
So-called "age-doping" may be the scandal about to break over women's gymnastics. But are there lab tests to quantify how old you are?
BEIJING -- The gaggle of major-league scouts was seated just to the left of home plate in a section reserved for Olympic family, but no one was getting too comfortable on the hard plastic chairs.
The International Olympic Committee has asked gymnastics officials to look into whether China's women's gymnastics team used underaged competitors, an IOC spokeswoman said Friday.
On Oct. 2, 2009, the International Olympic Committee will convene in Copenhagen to vote on the city that will host the Olympics in 2016. Chicago is one of four candidate cities, along with Rio de Janiero, Madrid and Tokyo. Chicago Bid Chairman Patrick Ryan talked with SI.com about the prospects of the Chicago bid.
As other U.S. women win gold, the one surefire team, softball, was shocked. And now the sport is leaving the Olympics. Superstar Jennie Finch shares her pain
SI.com checked in with Sports Illustrated's Selena Roberts shortly after Japan's stunning 3-1 win over the U.S. in the gold medal game in softball on Thursday. It was the first Olympic loss for the U.S. since 2000, and ended its run of three consecutive Olympic titles.
Though rarely asked these days, the question "What is mixed martial arts?" was a common inquiry not too long ago. The best response came from Randy Couture: "Take elements of wrestling, boxing, judo and taekwondo, and you've got MMA."
The vaunted Olympic spirit is terrible for competition. What we need, says Joel Stein, are some anti-medals, and a new scoring system
In a dream world, the best baseball players on the planet would stop whatever they're doing every four years, pick up their bats and their gloves and their pine tar and make a pilgrimage to the Olympic Games, where national pride and Olympic ideals would combine to provide us with the world's greatest baseball spectacle.
MINNEAPOLIS -- If the quality of play in Olympic baseball competition was consistently more suited to a beer league than to Beijing, if the value of an entire sport depended solely on the names in that day's lineup, if someone was trying to pass off the worst-of-the-worst as the best-of-the-best, then dropping baseball beginning with the 2012 London Games might make some sense.
BEIJING -- It remains the most arresting track and field moment I have ever witnessed live.
When it comes to this nation's stick-and-ball sports as worthy Olympic pursuits, the United States apparently is damned if it dominates and damned if it doesn't.
BEIJING -- Television executives as a rule are an over-caffeinated bunch. They spit out platitudes with machine-gun frequency and sell their content with the same fervor Barnum sold his circus. That's why it's always interesting to check in with NBC Sports and Olympics officials during the second week of an Olympic Games. It's a dog-tired group, gutting out the final days after a month of little sleep. They've read the critics -- the NBC press office onsite gets faxed copies of every major publication daily -- and monitored the ratings with the circumspectness of a jeweler. If the news is good, you'll find smiles through the yawns.
Sports Illustrated photographer Heinz Kluetmeier has covered every Olympics for SI (with the exception of Innsbruck) since the Munich Games. He and his assistant, Jeff Kavanaugh, landed the signature sequence of the Olympics: Michael Phelps beating Serbia's Milorad Cavic to the touchpad in the 100 butterfly. Below, Kluetmeier explains how he got the shot and the difference between Mark Spitz and Michael Phelps as photography subjects. Click here to see the photos.
The American gymnasts closed out their Beijing stay in spectacular style Tuesday, with Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin adding to their medal haul by winning gold and silver in the balance beam, and Jonathon Horton, who'd led the men to a bronze in the team competition, unexpectedly taking the silver medal in the high bar.
Usain Bolt makes the impossible seem commonplace. His running has been so spectacular here that he has forced hard-traveled track scribes to consider the question: Can Bolt break Michael Johnson's 12-year-old record in the 200? The time to beat is 19.32.
More athletes are competing in Beijing under foreign flags than ever before in the Games' history. Is switching teams a betrayal of the Olympic spirit -- or just smart sportsmanship?
This was the Great Wail of China.
A Swedish wrestler who discarded his bronze medal in a protest during the presentation ceremony has been stripped of the award and disqualified from the tournament in Beijing.
BEIJING -- On a sticky Sunday morning when history and mythology were intertwined, a 23-year-old swimmer with the slack-jawed smile and an acute sense of the moment churned through Lane 4 of the Water Cube and into sports immortality and the common currency of the English language. In rewriting swimming and Olympic history with his eighth gold medal, Michael Phelps was rewriting the dictionary. As backstroker Aaron Peirsol, who started the 4x100 medley relay, would say, "The term Spitzian might be outdated now by the Phelpsian feat."
When Chinese officials and the IOC declared the air in Beijing clean for the Games -- IOC president Jacques Rogge said the sun was simply hiding behind fog from "heat and humidity," never mind that, some days, there was less than 60 percent relative humidity -- it gave a seal of approval to pollution-control measures that Beijing has ramped up over years in preparation for the Olympics. And in the last few days, the fervor over Beijing's air pollution has subsided, as pea soup skies gave way to a pleasant azure backdrop, the first of the Games.
Well, there's always 48 Hours Mystery on CBS, and ABC appears to be showing another can't-miss episode of Eli Stone. Of course, if you're reading this, it's a safe bet you'll be watching the Michael Phelps coronation. If Phelps and his teammates win the 4x100 medley relay (bet the house, the vacation house and all your other possessions on it), he will become the all-time leader in gold medals in a single games with eight. The scheduled time of the race is 10:58 p.m., the final event of the swimming program in Beijing. "The U.S. should win unless something goes wrong," says Sports Illustrated's Brian Cazeneuve. "But keep in mind that the last time they swam this event at a major competition -- the world championships in 2007 -- something went very wrong. The team was disqualified because of an illegal exchange. Barring that, I just don't think there is a team with four swimmers at the level of the U.S."
BEIJING -- The track meet starts Friday morning at the Bird's Nest. Ten things I'm most intrigued by at the beginning:
BEIJING -- For a scene to be truly surreal, it has to go beyond the realm of what we call odd or strange. There has to be a feeling of displacement. Time must bend a bit. And there's got to be a bewildering wrench thrown in for good measure, something so incongruous that its absurdity somehow balances out the vague sense of menace in the air.
Key errors ended the US women's team's gold medal hopes. But injuries and a new scoring system also played a role
It's a historic event taking place on an international stage that's been seven years and $40 billion in the making.
He cuts through the water like he's shredding through the record books at the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing.
How does NBC spell ratings? Two words: Michael Phelps. The Golden Boy takes to Water Cube on Tuesday for the men's 200 freestyle final (10:16 p.m. ET on Monday night). "Coming into the competition, I thought that would be one of his easier races," said Sports Illustrated's Brian Cazeneuve, who predicts -- surprise! -- gold for Phelps in the event.
The U.S. has sent nearly 600 athletes to Beijing for the Olympic Games. But who are they? America's new set of Olympians are from 47 of the 50 states -- as well as athletes who were born in 28 other countries -- and includes identical twins, teenagers, a cancer patient and the daughter of a Super Bowl champion. Who's from the smallest hometown? Which team is the brainest? Which college is represented by the most Olympians? Get to know a little more about Team USA.
A Chinese man wielding a knife stabbed an American couple in central Beijing on Saturday, killing the man and seriously wounding the woman before jumping to his death from an ancient tower, said U.S. Olympic officials and state-run media.
An Iranian swimmer at the Beijing Olympics who withdrew from a race that included an Israeli did so because he was ill, authorities said Monday.
The Beijing Games have officially become the first "YouTube" Olympics.
BEIJING -- The situation called for delicate diplomacy, but not by No. 41 and No. 43 on your Bush presidential dial. Bush senior and junior were simple hoop fans among rowdy Olympic spectators Sunday night -- the only Americans without face paint in the arena -- when the U.S. men opened its competition in the Beijing Games against China.
BEIJING -- The team that was too good for its own good returns for the final hurrah, an overwhelming favorite to win the fourth and, for now, last, Olympic softball gold medal.
Fireworks, athletes and pageantry on a scale never before seen in the Olympics opened the Summer Games in Beijing on Friday as the Asian nation kicked off the biggest and most scrutinized Games in history.
BEIJING -- Who's got more pressure on them in Beijing? The Chinese women's gymnastics team, which has never won an Olympic team title and is looking to ride a wave of hometown support to end that surprising drought? Or the U.S. women, the defending world champions, whose only Olympic team title was brought home by the legendary "Magnificent Seven" in 1996?
China's determination to keep the Games safe and free of dissent has taken some of the fun out of the host city
BEIJING -- On Friday morning, Lopez Lomong sat before a room full of journalists and was asked to tell his story. Twenty-six minutes later, he stopped. And if this constitutes the longest press conference soliloquy that many in attendance had ever heard, it was also scarcely long enough to embrace Lomong's remarkable young life.
"We have the power to unite the people. If we can unite people who are willing to take a stand, miracles can happen. In Darfur, hundreds of thousands have been murdered, mutilated. Families torn apart...we have the power to save lives. Restore lives." -- Kobe Bryant, in a widely distributed PSA
BEIJING -- This night was supposed to be different. Seven years ago, I was a student here when the city was awarded the 2008 Olympics. An amateur Olympics nut then, I watched the entire IOC meeting on Chinese national television that July 13, 2001.
Michael Phelps may rule the American sports universe for these Olympics, but in China, ask local fans who they're supporting and you'll start hearing names like Lin Dan (badminton), Zhang Yining (table tennis) and Zhao Ruirui (volleyball).
A spectacular opening ceremonies does what the rulers of Beijing have long wanted: declare the return of the Middle Kingdom to the center of the world
BEIJING -- The 24-hour Olympics are so 2004. In what NBC Universal is calling the most ambitious single media project in history, the network and its affiliates will present 3,600 total hours from Beijing on seven NBC Universal networks: NBC, USA, MSNBC, CNBC, Oxygen (for the first time), Telemundo and Universal HD, as well as NBCOlympics.com. That's an average of more than 212 hours per day of Olympic coverage.
The modern Olympic Games have always been a chick-flick moment for women who finally have the camera long enough to turn America's head. They haven't batted their eyes, but performed flips for enough mass adoration to last Mary Lou Retton's lifetime. They haven't vanished as fly-by darlings, but endured as women who have delivered iconic nicknames (Suzy "ChapStick" Chaffee) and haircuts (The Dorothy Hamill 'do) and first-name familiarity (Mia, as in Hamm).
A U.S. athlete who overcame the chaos of war in Sudan to become a middle-distance runner in the United States will carry the American flag during Friday's opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Games.
BEIJING -- In the last weekend in June, Tyson Gay finally seemed to have found his path to the Olympic Games. Less than a month after he was crushed in the 100 meters by 21-year-old Jamaican Usain Bolt's world record of 9.72 seconds at the Reebok Track Classic in New York, Gay won the U.S. Olympic Trials.
I'm like anybody else. I watch the Olympics because I want to see who wins. But the 2008 Summer Games are intriguing for reasons that go well beyond the 100-meter final, Michael Phelps' bid to become the greatest Olympian ever or the daily mine-is-bigger exercise of comparing medal counts.
For many overseas reporters now in Beijing, covering the Summer Games has turned into an Olympian task.
Ten thousand athletes have gathered in China for the Olympics, along with hundreds of thousands of fans and 30,000 journalists. All are being watched over by 100,000 security forces.
BEIJING -- Until Tuesday, Joey Cheek wasn't going to be a big story at these Olympics. His mission to make the world aware of the genocide in Darfur, to hold China accountable as Sudan's largest trading partner, to be sports world's best example of the activist-athlete, had started to fade as the opening ceremonies approached.
BEIJING -- The haze over the Bird's Nest possesses the air quality of a smoker's lung, and yet a group of spin artists on the Beijing scene Wednesday declared a blue-sky vision without a single catch in their throats.
QINHUANGDAO, China -- There's no delicate way to put it. Brian McBride is an old guy.
In reality, the Summer Olympics that open on August 8 create three different categories of events.
Once the gold medals leave Beijing, will China's economy remain gilded?
For over a decade, chess and bridge enthusiasts have lobbied the IOC to allow them to compete in the Games. Will they ever succeed?
Iraq will be allowed to compete in next month's Olympic Games in China after agreeing to restore its independent national Olympic panel, the International Olympic Committee said Tuesday.
The U.S. Olympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee are expected to ask a federal judge Monday to shut down Web sites they allege scam customers trying to buy Olympic tickets, according to court documents.
On the last weekend before the Olympic Games begin in Beijing, Olympic officials were still wrestling with pollution problems, Internet access, and at least one doping case -- albeit an old one.
The route to my ancestral home is etched into my heart. Unfortunately, not knowing the address is a problem in the ever-changing urban geography of Chenghai, an industrial town 30-minutes from Shantou in China's Guangdong province.
Facing criticism over reneging on its promise to relax censorship for visiting media, Olympic officials announce that China has agreed to relax curbs on Internet access
China has rejected a new report which claims it has broken a promise to improve its human rights situation and "betrayed the core values of the Olympics."
The International Olympic Committee says Iraq can take part in Beijing Games, lifting its previous ban
Four years ago, as a recent college graduate and a rookie in the WNBA, Diana Taurasi earned her first Olympic gold medal as part of a U.S. team led by experienced veterans like Lisa Leslie and Sheryl Swoopes. Today, with 3,000 career points under her belt in her fourth year in the league, Taurasi's heading back to the Games -- this time with two younger superstars.
Paul Hamm won't be going to the Beijing Olympics, after all. The reigning Olympic gold medalist announced Monday that he is withdrawing from the U.S. team because he is not sufficiently healthy enough to compete
Standing slightly more than 4 feet tall, 9-year-old Tuguldur proudly stated the greatest challenge he faced in a horse race across the Mongolian plains in the country's annual Naadam Festival was serenading his horse.
Iraqi representatives will meet with the International Olympic Committee on Monday to try to reach an agreement that would allow now-banned Iraq to participate in next month's games, an official said Friday.
Why pick on Iraq now, they ask, when sports corruption under Saddam Hussein was so much worse?
The Chinese organizers have set aside three areas for demonstrations during the Games. But they're out of the way. And you'll likely need a permit
Just two weeks before the start of the Olympics, Iraq was told Thursday it's not welcome in Beijing because of a political feud in Baghdad that angered the games' guardians
A few months ago, it seemed liked nothing could stop Iraqi sprinter Dana Hussain from representing her country in the upcoming Summer Olympics.
The International Olympic Committee has upheld a ban on Iraqi teams at the Beijing Games, saying Thursday the government missed the deadline to address accusations of political interference
This year's Summer Olympic Games have been seen as China's coming-out party, destined to be as significant for the host country as the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo were for Japan.
A champion rider and her pony would have won hearts at the Olympics. But now Karen O'Connor is on the sidelines
CNN's monthly program, "Countdown Beijing: Chasing the Dream," profiles the athletes who hope to represent their nations in Beijing, and the issues and stories in the build-up to the Games in August.
A draconian set of industrial and traffic cutbacks will help clear the skies over the notoriously noxious capital in time for the Olympics. But it's only a quick fix
Broadcasters and the IOC are pushing China to keep its promises and open up Tiananmen Square to more hours of live coverage for the Beijing Olympics
Olympic swimmer Eric Shanteau is heading to Beijing with a devastating diagnosis: He has cancer
Hounded by religious extremists, the only woman on the country's Olympic team vanishes. Is she seeking asylum? Or has something worse happened?
The U.S. Olympic track and field team was dramatically changed in a period of five seconds early Saturday afternoon during the team trials at Hayward Field.
In ancient China, a hat tells of social rank. For the six Ngan siblings, hats tell the story of their rise to fortune.
| Most Viewed | Most Emailed | Top Searches |
Video
Photos
