As he was questioned by lawyers in 2015 over and over again about what he did and did not know about sexual abuse suffered by Olympic athletes, then-U.S. Olympic Committee lawyer Gary Johansen made a choice. No matter the question, no matter which lawyer asked it, Johansen did not say “child abuse,” he did not say…
The United States Anti-Doping Agency announced this morning that jolly bro airhead Ryan Lochte would be suspended for 14 months for “his use of a prohibited method.” As the language of USADA’s release hints at, Lochte’s is not a normal doping violation, which is not surprising since Lochte is not a normal swimming guy.
Ohio State released today its investigative report into what happened when multiple people told the university in 2014 that then-assistant diving coach William Bohonyi was having a sexual relationship with a teenage diver. The documents goes over the multiple people who reported what they had heard, as well as how…
A lawsuit filed last week adds USA Diving to the list of U.S. Olympic Committee-certified national governing bodies that have allegedly enabled the abuse of young female athletes. The lawsuit, filed in an Indiana federal court, describes one coach in particular who has habitually raped his divers, and the indifference…
The U.S. Olympic Committee announced its new CEO yesterday—Sarah Hirshland. She previously was an executive with the U.S. Golf Association and, before that, spent several years at Wasserman Media Group, a giant sports marketing agency whose CEO, Casey Wasserman, helped bring the Olympics to Los Angeles.
At the 2012 Olympics in London, Kayla Harrison became the first American to win a gold medal in judo. Four years later, she defended her title at the Rio Games. That’s the last time she competed in judo. Since then, Harrison has been training for a shift to MMA and working on a book about child sexual abuse, based on…
Asbel Kiprop, the best miler of the last decade, a three-time 1,500-meter world champion, and an Olympic gold medalist, reportedly tested positive for the blood-boosting drug EPO. Matt Lawton of the Daily Mail broke the story yesterday; several other outlets independently confirmed the report; and Kiprop released a…
U.S. Olympic speedskater John-Henry Krueger announced on Monday that he is joining his brother on the Hungarian Olympic team, ending a lengthy spat between U.S. Skating and the Krueger brothers.
With sexual abuse scandals plaguing USA Gymnastics, USA Swimming, and USA Taekwondo, the national governing body for wrestling is putting bizarre new policies in place that will subject those who cover the sport to harsher protocols.
A former coach of the U.S. taekwondo team was banned from the sport this week for sexual misconduct. The ban of Jean Lopez, which is not yet permanent, was based on a report done by the U.S. Center for SafeSport, an organization created by the U.S. Olympic Committee to investigate sexual abuse. Lopez had coached the…
USA Swimming is—once again—being taken to task for its role in failing to prevent and even covering up sexual abuse within the sport. Sexual abuse in swimming was the subject of a 20/20 investigation in 2010, a devastating Outside magazine piece in 2014, then an Orange County Register investigation last month. As was…
I know that the Olympics fades from the collective consciousness the second the closing ceremonies end, if not sooner! But this week, Deadspin Olympics correspondent Hannah Keyser came onto the DEADCAST to debrief us on her time in Pyeongchang and ended up giving us an EXCLUSIVE BACKSTAGE LOOK at how your Olympics…
Fox News executive vice president John Moody—who complained about a “darker, gayer, different” U.S. Olympic team in a disastrous column last month—has retired from the network, as first reported by CNN.
Bronx-born fencer and Olympic silver medalist Daryl Homer has previously been kind enough to teach us how to wield a saber and rank things. Recently he took us inside the Peter Westbrook Foundation in New York City, the place he was first introduced to fencing. He talked about the importance of the culture created by…
Hey, remember that unhinged interview Mirai Nagasu gave following her bafflingly poor free skate performance? The one where Nagasu framed the fucking Olympics as an audition for Dancing With the Stars? The one where she threw her teammates under the bus? What the hell happened there?
Of all the ways of failing to medal in a grueling 30-kilometer cross-country race, Austrian Olympian Teresa Stadlober certainly discovered the most excruciatingly regrettable: She got lost. She took a wrong friggin’ turn and got lost. Per the Associated Press:
Two-time Olympic open swimmer Haley Anderson knows a thing or two about buoyancy, but how does she feel about the buoyancy of, say, Olympic curler Matt Hamilton? Or Aja Evans? Or the relative merits of the Williams sisters versus the Knowles sisters? It truly takes an Olympian to bring clarity to these important…
Ester Ledecká, who basically won Super-G in alpine skiing by accident on a pair of borrowed skis, claimed gold in her primary event as the Czech sailed to the finish of the snowboard parallel giant slalom well ahead of silver medalist Selina Joerg.
The Holland House is the place to be for the Pyeongchang Olympics if you’re Dutch. It has concerts, drunken revelry, appearances by medal-winning Dutch athletes, and possible minor head injuries. Speedskating quartet Sven Kramer, Jan Blokhuijsen, Patrick Roest, and Koen Verweij attended a party at the house last night…
Kevin Rolland of France suffered an especially nasty fall during the freestyle skiing men’s halfpipe final, landing right on the lip of the pipe and crashing in hard before tumbling backwards.
