international Page 3 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Ovechkin ‘calls for peace’ but fails to denounce Putin’s invasion of Ukraine
Alexander Ovechkin finally addressed the crisis in Ukraine, saying some words in a press conference in Philadelphia that sounded nice but were ultimately meaningless....
Kamila Valieva was just a figurine in a Game among nations
What a farce the International Olympic Committee has made of the Games this year. By not installing real sanctions against Russia for institutionalizing a surreptitious doping program in Sochi, and by not barring an athlete who tested positive for a banned substance, we were witness to the oddest of...
Debacle on ice: Olympics women’s figure skating was the opposite of heartwarming
The scene after the end of the women’s free skate was hard to watch Thursday — tears, screaming, and heartbreak pouring from the Russian athletes expected to sweep the podium, their Olympic experience destroyed by a doping scandal involving the country’s 15-year-old star, Kamila Valieva....
Kylian Mbappé continues to bend Champions League to his will
Kylian Mbappé is only 23, but his plunge into the world soccer scene keeps growing. The French dynamo, playing for his home country’s most successful club over the last dozen years, Paris Saint-Germain, as well as being an integral member of France’s national team, keeps scoring critical goals. Two ...
Funny how the little white girl who skates got treated differently than the fast Black girl who sprints
Unsurprisingly, Emmanuel Acho doesn’t have anything to say. ...
Kamila Valieva’s saga sets a dangerous precedent for skaters
It wouldn’t be a proper Winter Olympics without a figure skating melodrama. It’s earned a reputation as the Olympics’ closest equivalent to soap opera. In 2002, a judge cheating scandal led to a reform of the entire scoring system. Tonya Harding’s sabotage of Nancy Kerrigan before the ‘92 Olympics a...
In a surprise to no one, Russian Olympic team in another doping scandal
Only seven years after a comprehensive Russian state-sponsored doping program was discovered, and two years after Russia was consequently sanctioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, the Russian Olympic Committee’s 15-year-old star skater Kamila Valieva has tested positive for a banned substance, pos...
Nathan Chen deserves every second of the Olympic spotlight he’s about to get
The Winter Olympics are always sports’ most unique event. For the most part, it’s a collection of niche sports getting international attention all at once. Exceptions have existed with men’s ice hockey, with five straight Olympiads allowing the NHL’s stars to participate for their countries, last ta...
The Beijing Olympics are everything you’d thought they’d be
At least we can say the Winter Olympics are practiced at holding their events in a communist dictatorship, as they’ve held two of the last three in one. We’re just about three or four days into the whole thing, and already the stories of athletes being held against their will, shitty facilities, unp...
So what is the Olympic spirit, anyway?
We’ve all known that these upcoming Olympic games were a bad idea, and that’s putting it insultingly lightly. When they were first announced, even if you could get past the tiny little morsel of the egregious human rights abuses of the Chinese government (and you shouldn’t), there’s the whole thing ...
Warriors’ minority owner dragged for declaring the NBA’s stance on Uyghurs out loud
“No one cares about genocide” is, to put it lightly, a concerning stance to take, but it is the stance that billionaire and Golden State Warriors minority owner Chamath Palihapitiya chose to espouse on his podcast this week....
The IIHF thinks women are more contagious than men
In theory, the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) isn’t a for-profit agency. Much like FIFA. This is a laughable farce, of course. But there is relief that the facade of shepherding the game and promoting its growth crashed to the sidewalk long ago. They’re barely trying to hide it anymore....
At least the IOC is admitting its lies, in a way
The IOC admitted yesterday that the charade they tried to pull was pretty much full of shit, without saying it was full of shit, to try and save whatever face it could. You see, the IOC doesn’t want anything to hurt its precious Games that are just two months away and in Beijing, even if that means ...
The WTA stood up to China, thank goodness somebody did
The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) decided that enough was enough and it could not continue its business relationship with China, but the right decision could come with a significant financial cost. WTA Chairman and CEO Steve Simon released a statement that the organization will be suspending all ...
The WTA stood up to China, thank goodness somebody did
The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) decided that enough was enough and it could not continue its business relationship with China, but the right decision could come with a significant financial cost. WTA Chairman and CEO Steve Simon released a statement that the organization will be suspending all ...
Freedom’s just another word for a loser
I’m not big on catchphrases, sayings, or, in general, life advice that before Twitter and Instagram would’ve been an AIM Away Message or a bumper sticker. However, I do have a saying I use sometimes that I believe Boston Celtics center Enes Kanter should take to heart: Check your privilege at the do...
Sorry, I just don’t trust the IOC
The IOC continues to happily eat whatever the Chinese government is willing to shovel to it. Yesterday IOC President Thomas Bach allegedly had a 30-minute video confab with Peng Shuai, in the hopes that would quell all the questions and fears about her whereabouts and well-being after she went off t...
IOC makes it clear what it is
The case of tennis player Peng Shuai gets scarier by the day. Jane McManus covered the first steps a couple days ago. Since then, the Chinese government, through their propaganda channels, released a statement that Peng is safe, except no one believes the evidence it produced. Which is what any reas...
If the NFL is serious about games in Europe, Jerry Jones and the Cowboys need to make some trips across the pond
In 2014, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said that he would like to see an NFL team in London. He said this while in London for the Cowboys’ one and only appearance at the NFL London Games. Every NFL team has been to London except for the Green Bay Packers, but that doesn’t mean that the other 31 t...
U.S. Soccer offers equal pay to USMNT and USWNT... <i>kinda?</i>
It’s been one of the longer lasting sagas in American sports, as the U.S. Women’s National team seeks either a new contract or a resolution to their lawsuit against U.S. Soccer that sees them make huge gains in pay for representing their country. U.S. Soccer would have you believe that it’s recently...