Distinctions between sports and games seem less important than the money that can be made from them, as one billionaire bridge ace proved by getting cards into the Asian GamesThe richest sportsman on the planet isn’t Floyd Mayweather, LeBron James, Lionel Messi or Roger Federer, but Michael Bambang Hartono, a 78-year-old from the small town of Kudus, in Central Java, Indonesia. His jab’s weak, he surely can’t dunk, and his backhand likely sucks, but he’s a crack lobbyist and he plays a mean hand of bridge. These two talents go together. In 2016, after years of effort, Hartono persuaded the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) to include bridge as a competitive event at the 2018 Asian Games. Last month, he...
We should not be obsessed with winning sporting medals, we should be obsessed with playing sport and getting as many people as possible to do itIt’s been a month of incredible success at the Winter Olympics. It was a month, right? It certainly felt like it, though others will know better. As for the success, that was indisputable. Five medals, one of which was not bronze, made it Team GB’s greatest medal haul at the Winter Games, aka the international sporting event we have little aptitude for given our preponderant meteorological conditions hover somewhere between “dreich” and “probably fine without a coat”. Related: Team GB pitch for more funding to join elite of Winter Olympics Related: The first rule of Celebrity...
The US gymnast, who gave an electrifying victim statement face to face with her abuser in court, is now taking on the US Olympic CommitteeLatest report: Larry Nassar jailed for up to 175 yearsLast Friday, the multiple gold medal‑winning US gymnast Aly Raisman delivered an electrifyingly powerful victim statement at the sentencing hearing of the former US gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. If you haven’t watched it, I recommend you take the time. For any 23-year-old to speak with such intensity, poise and control would be remarkable; to do so directly to her sexual abuser in a packed courtroom under the gaze of the cameras is of a radically different order.I’m glad Raisman was so clear about having only just begun...
The news golf has an Olympic future barely caused a ripple but should be shouted from rooftops – provided the formats are more imaginative than in RioIt felt like a classic case of missed opportunity. Olympic golf had been beset by such a wave of negative publicity before the actual event got under way in Rio that the success of the competition itself, plus the weight Justin Rose placed in victory, was much needed. So, too, was the news that golf had finally and formally been retained as an Olympic sport for 2024 in Paris.Yet it was a case of blink and you’d miss the latter situation. Rather than celebrate a stirring recovery from the point where players questioned the...
Japanese IT giant Fujitsu is developing a 3D sensory system that will make scoring easier. But will computers ever fully replace human judges?A light blinks on the black box alerting the gymnast to begin her routine. She launches off the vault, lands and turns to salute the robotic judge. Her score is already flashing on the big screen to the Olympics crowd and to millions of viewers at home, who have followed the live scoring as the move is dissected in real time.This is not a scene from Blade Runner 2049, but a possible vision of gymnastics future as it races to include artificial intelligence in its judging system. Related: USA's Morgan Hurd wins surprise gold in all-around final at...