The 2022 Youth Olympic Games were slated for Dakar, Senegal, in October and November, the first Olympic event to be staged in Africa. Like many other events during the COVID-19 pandemic, the quadrennial event was postponed by the International Olympic Committee. But in this case, the IOC took the step of moving the event back […]
American opulence is expected at the Olympics. So even as U.S. athletes were racking up medals at the Tokyo Olympics, much of the conversation seemed to dwell on why we weren’t winning more. Indeed, according to the FiveThirtyEight medal tracker, Team USA was projected to win 16 more medals than it did, with its gold […]
Why do some countries flourish at the Olympics and others founder? It’s a question that’s been studied for years. In general, rich countries fare better than poor ones, healthy countries better than sick and countries well connected with roads and bridges better than those lacking basic infrastructure. Harsh geopolitical and material inequalities don’t disappear when […]
After the 1996 Olympics were over, after her big press tour had ended, Amy Van Dyken went grocery shopping. In the cereal aisle, the six-time gold medalist swimmer saw herself smiling back at her from the rows of Wheaties boxes on the shelves. “I remember just standing there, looking at it, and being like, ‘That’s […]
Men’s Olympic sprints traffic heavily in machismo and self-assurance, so an incredulous victor is a rarity on the track. Rarer still is the bewildered champion who hails from a country with no record of producing an event finalist. But there was Italy’s Lamont Marcell Jacobs on Sunday night, telling reporters, “I think I need four […]