2016-olympics Page 1 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

More Than Two Years After The Games, Rio's Olympic Debt Keeps Rising
Just because the Olympics are long over doesn’t mean that we’re done with the fallout from the Rio de Janeiro Games. According to a report from Brazil, the debt incurred by the local organizing committee has dramatically increased to more than three times the original estimate. In December 2016, the...

Where Does The IOC's Money Go?
It’s impossible to avoid money at the Olympics. It’s everywhere: sponsorships, advertising, and evidence of broadcasting rights abound. While it’s well known by this point that host cities and countries typically incur high costs to put on the games, they’re not the ones reaping the major financial ...

Report: Brazil Appellate Court Dismisses Charges Against Ryan Lochte
Just about 11 months after the bizarre late-night confrontation that led to Ryan Lochte being charged in Rio with falsely communicating a crime to authorities, an appellate court in Brazil has reportedly dismissed all charges against the gold-medal beefcake....

8 Months Later, The Rio Olympics Keep Finding New Ways Of Falling Apart
The Rio Olympics, which started with an “uninhabitable” athletes’ village and continued on with a creeping green death in the diving and water polo venues, are finding new ways to suck months after the closing ceremony as athletes are finding their hard-won medals are falling apart....

Electricity Turned Off At Rio's Maracanã Stadium After Olympic Organizers Can't Pay Bill<em></em>
Two weeks ago we wrote about the decaying state of Rio de Janeiro’s Olympic facilities and noted that the Maracanã stadium, despite missing seats and dealing with a mold problem, was still hosting club soccer. The stadium hosted the opening and closing ceremonies, and it’s one of the most famous st...

Let's Check In On Rio De Janeiro, Which Hosted The Olympics Five Months Ago
Even before the 2016 Olympics kicked off in August, the state of Rio de Janeiro had declared a “state of public calamity in financial administration.” Five months later, things aren’t any better....

Report: Kenya's Olympic Team Was Torpedoed By Their Own Comically Corrupt Officials<em></em>
Kenya finished the Rio Olympics with 13 track and field medals, second only to the United States who finished with 32. That’s a gulf, not a gap, but after reading details about how thoroughly the team was sold up the river by their own Olympic committee, I’m impressed that Kenya managed that many....

Irish Olympic Boxer Bet On Himself To Lose, Won
That fellow up there in the blue is Irish welterweight Steven Donnelly, after his round-of-16 win at the Rio Olympics. Looks happy, doesn’t he? No matter how the bout went, he couldn’t lose....

Russian Hackers Get Into WADA Data, Find Nothing Incriminating<em></em>
Perhaps feeling a little bent out of shape about how much shit their country caught for running a massive, Cold War-style doping program for Olympic athletes, a group of Russian hackers have obtained confidential documents that they claim prove American Olympians are also big fat cheaters. The only ...

Report: Ryan Lochte Suspended Ten Months Over Rio Gas Station Fiasco
Ryan Lochte has been suspended for ten months by the IOC and USA Swimming, per a report from TMZ Sports. This means that Lochte’s suspension for pissing all over a gas station then lying about it to Matt Lauer will be almost twice as long as Michael Phelps got for a pair of DUIs. ...

Inika McPherson Represented In Rio, Continues With Flair In Zurich
U.S. high jumper Inika McPherson finished 10th in the Olympic final, finishing second for Team USA behind Chaunte Lowe. She cleared 1.93 meters, but missed three attempts at 1.97 meters. ...

Dalilah Muhammad Covers Herself In Gold<em></em>
In 1974, the Iranian national women’s volleyball team competed in the well-recognized volleyball ensemble—shorts and a t-shirt—with their hair uncovered. Today they compete, heads covered, in long-sleeved jerseys and long pants....

Katie Ledecky Turned Bryce Harper Into A Medal Rack
Strong-as-hell swimming champion Katie Ledecky is from Washington D.C., and the Nationals invited her to come throw the first pitch tonight before their game against the Orioles. She arrived, as well she should, decked out in all five of her recently-acquired Olympic medals. Thankfully, Bryce Harper...

Team Great Britain Thought It Was Being Helpful By Providing The Luggage
I have few rules of airplane travel, but they are inviolable. Get to the airport ass-early, because having to wait around is worth the stress of worrying you won’t make it through security in time. Sit at the front of the plane so you can board later and get off faster. Only do carry-on if at all po...

The Calculus Of Enjoying Almaz Ayana's World Record
The Olympic 10,000 meters was eyeballs out, hands down the fastest, deepest women’s 25-lap race I have ever seen. But instead of cheers, before the race was even over, half of the commentariat lit up with shouts of “Dirty!”...

Why Don't They Just Make The Whole Airplane Out Of Olympic Venues?
By now everybody knows the modern Olympic Games system—whereby competing cities bid for the right to piss the GDP of Iceland into shabbily constructed venues that will host esoteric sports competitions for three weeks and then persist as rotting, uninhabited, politically radioactive civic boondoggle...

Neymar Flipped His Shit On A Heckling Fan Right After Winning Olympic Gold
Brazil has a complex, often combative relationship with its national soccer team. Winning their first Olympic gold medal, as they did on Saturday, to some extent cooled the beef, but obviously not entirely. So this video of an irate Neymar shouting at a fan on the pitch immediately following Brazil’...

NBC's Closing Ceremony Broadcast Edited Out More Than An Hour. Here's What You Missed.
As in years past, NBC went heavy on the razor blade in trimming down last night’s closing ceremony to a time that allowed for commercials and a Very Special Episode of The Voice. The festivities in Rio took two hours, 43 minutes to complete; NBC aired one hour, 40 minutes of them. That left 38% of t...

Marathon Silver Medalist Feyisa Lilesa Says "Maybe They Will Kill Me" If He Returns To Ethiopia After Olympic Protest
As he crossed the finish line to win the silver medal in the Olympic marathon, Feyisa Lilesa crossed his forearms above his head in an “X,” a gesture of protest that resonated back home in Ethiopia. Lilesa said it was a risk. “If I go back to Ethiopia maybe they will kill me,” he said after the race...

Jerry Colangelo Says USA Basketball Will Reign Until "Other Countries Get Their Acts Together"
For a team that won group play games by margins as slim as three, three, and six points, Team USA didn’t make this Olympic basketball tournament feel particularly dramatic. Polishing off Serbia 96-66 was the exclamation point on another dominant run through knockout play, and another gold medal, and...