Last weekend in the Czech Republic, appropriately as most of her countrymen and women slept, Mikaela Shiffrin moved one snow-propelled ski run closer to “resetting” a 34-year-old record when she became the second alpine skier (male or female) to win 85 World Cup races. After topping the slalom Saturday at the same resort where she […]
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 […]
It is impossible not to notice the ski jump. It looms above the office parks of southwest Minneapolis, Mount Everest to their glass-walled foothills. At night, it glows — power lights reflecting on snow in a soft-focused, brilliant white, like angels descending into a 1970s shampoo ad. If you drive by it on the city’s […]
When “Cool Runnings” hit the silver screen in 1993, American audiences were captivated by the feel-good story of Jamaica — a tropical country better known for its sprinting prowess — improbably sending its first bobsled team to compete in the 1988 Calgary Olympics. And though Jamaica ultimately crashed out of the competition that winter, the […]
In 1902, a 20-year-old figure skater from England named Madge Syers showed up somewhere that no official from the International Skating Union expected her to be: center ice at the world championships. Though figure skating competitions were hardly a new thing — they took place throughout the latter half of the 19th century — a […]