The 50km walk may be unglamorous and a little absurd but seven female athletes’ legal fight with the IOC is worth backingTo Lausanne then, home of the International Olympic Committee, and the source last week of an exciting press release about the latest developments in its “global licencing strategy”. The IOC has teamed up with the toy manufacturer Mattel, which has designed a set of Olympic-themed Barbie dolls. “The collaboration with Mattel is a great way to engage with an important audience, our younger fans and their families, and through these high-quality products to connect them with the Olympic brand and values” sayzzzzz, sorry, says Timo Lumme, managing director of IOC television and marketing servicezzzzz. The new line is designed...
The ban on protests at the Tokyo Games this summer comes from an organisation, the IOC, that considers itself far too noble-minded to allow unfortunate ‘divisions’ in the real worldIn a memoir published a few months after Arthur Ashe’s death the tennis champion reflected on one of the most famous demonstrations in sporting history. Tommie Smith and John Carlos made their Black Power salute at the Mexico Olympics in 1968, the year that Ashe won the first US Open. “Although I did not always agree with everything these men had said and done,” he wrote, “I respected the way they had stood tall against the sky and had insisted on being heard on matters other than boxing or track and...
The Russian oligarch has moved on from Arsenal to Everton but more intriguing is his decision to buy Pierre de Coubertin’s 1892 manifesto and donate it to the Olympic MuseumAt last, the mystery buyer of the world’s most expensive piece of sports memorabilia has been revealed as the Russian tycoon Alisher Usmanov. The cuddly oligarch purchased Pierre de Coubertin’s original 1892 Olympic manifesto for $8.8m (£6.8m) in December – a whole week after he had suggested Wada’s Russian doping ban was a “lynching”, and a whole two weeks after the IOC president, Thomas Bach, had awarded Usmanov the IOC Trophy of Olympic Values in his capacity as the deep-pocketed bankroller and president of the International Fencing Federation. As Bach advised...
Ever since Peter O’Connor scaled a flagpole in Athens to call out Olympic unfairness the stage was set for winning athletes to make powerful statements. So why outlaw it now?Some called him the Antelope. Others the King of Spring. But, above all, Peter O’Connor was a revolutionary. These days the exploits of the Irishman have been all but forgotten, yet at the 1906 Olympics in Athens he caused a worldwide stir by staging the first – and quite possibly greatest – podium protest in history.And what a protest it was. O’Connor was incensed enough when he was told he had to represent Great Britain despite being selected by the Gaelic Athletic Association to compete for Ireland. But matters got even...
Dick Pound’s defence of his latest successor as Wada president, Craig Reedie, just doesn’t stand upEncouraging news for the embattled Wada president, Sir Craig Reedie, as the founder Wada president, Dick Pound, rides eye-catchingly to his defence. By way of recap, Russia last week missed the deadline to allow the World Anti‑Doping Agency access to the Moscow laboratory that was at the heart of its massive state-sponsored doping programme. This deadline was itself a bizarre act of faith on Wada’s part, given that Russia has failed to comply with two crucial recommendations of the McLaren report which uncovered the vast scale of their cheating.Anyway, the predictably missed deadline has gone down like the proverbial sandwich with many national anti-doping authorities,...