Category: olympic sports

olympic sports

Boston 2024: Do Olympics need to be “walkable”?

Posted on by Beau Dure

Boston 2024 co-chair David Manfredi is proud of the bid committee’s plans to have walkable, compact Olympics, with 28 of 33 venues within 6.2 miles of the athletes’ village, AP reports.

But is that really important?

For someone like me, who goes gallivanting around the Olympics as quickly as Beijing buses will allow, sure. And perhaps for other reporters, not to mention all the muckety-mucks who need special lanes so they can zip across the venues to see Usain Bolt and Kerri Walsh in the same hour.

Do the Games need to be designed for people like … us?

Maybe we don’t want athletes in buses an hour a day. But the notion of cramming tens of thousands of people in a small space creates a few issues, doesn’t it?

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olympic sports, winter sports

Beijing’s bid for the Winter Games

Posted on by Beau Dure

Curling at the Water Cube? Please make this happen!

The rest of this USA TODAY story is more skeptical, perhaps with good reason. China isn’t known for skiing, to put it mildly. But one of their local ski resorts is getting good reviews at TripAdvisor.

And it’s probably too late to consider splitting the Games to put ice events in Beijing and snow events in Norway, so it’s either this or Almaty.

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medal projections, olympic sports, track and field

Medal projection fever: Events that matter in 2015

Posted on by Beau Dure

Ten days until the men’s handball World Championships! That’s the first of many events that will feed into the 2016 medal projections this year. By the end of the year, I’ll have every Rio event projected. Even SuperBacteria Sailing.

Wikipedia rounds up nearly everything that matters in 2015, but I’ll focus here on medal projection events, mostly World Championships.

Jan. 15-Feb. 1: Men’s handball Worlds, Qatar. Winner qualifies for Olympics.

Feb. 18-22: Track cycling Worlds, Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. Olympic qualifying is based on rankings.

April 14-19: Equestrian dressage and jumping World Cup finals, Las Vegas. The World Equestrian Games are in even non-Olympic years. The other Olympic discipline, eventing, has World Cup events from March to October. Wikipedia sums up Olympic qualifying quite well and links to the official documents.

April 26-May 3: Table tennis Worlds, Suzhou, China. Little effect on Olympic qualifying, which is done through continental tournaments and rankings.

May 16-17: Rugby (men’s) Sevens Series final, London. Top four in final standings qualify for Olympics.

May 23-24: Rugby Women’s Sevens Series final, Amsterdam. Top four in final standings … you get the idea.

May 30-June 20: Soccer, men’s U20 World Cup, New Zealand. The closest analogue to an Olympic men’s soccer (U23 plus some overage players) event this year. Olympic qualification is in 2016.

* June 6-July 5: Soccer, Women’s World Cup, Canada. For European teams, this is also this Olympic qualifier, as absurd as that is. North American qualification will be in 2016.

June 8-14: Sailing, World Cup final, Weymouth and Portland, England. Sailing has Worlds in non-Olympic even years, though some classes also have Worlds in odd years. Got it? I’m just linking to Wikipedia for the Olympic qualification summary, which is more up-to-date and coherent than the official version.

June 26-July 5: Beach volleyball Worlds, Netherlands. The FIVB also has four “majors” in June through August and five “Grand Slams” in May through August. That’s not confusing at all. World champions earn Olympic quotas; most of the other spots are filled by rankings.

June 28-July 28: Modern pentathlon Worlds, Berlin. Three Olympic quota spots per gender available. World Cup final, which offers one spot per gender, is two weeks earlier. They’ll also give three more per gender at the 2016 Worlds.

July 13-19: Fencing Worlds, Moscow. The Grand Prix runs through May 31. Olympic qualification is mostly rankings.

July 21-25: BMX Worlds, Heusden-Zolder, Germany. Also World Cup events in April, May, August and September (2). Olympic qualification is almost solely based on rankings.

* July 24-Aug. 9: Aquatic Worlds (swimming, diving, water polo, synchro, open water), Kazan, Russia. Diving also has a World Series and a Grand Prix leading up to an October finale. The water polo World League finals will be in June and July. FINA kindly wraps up all its Olympic qualifying info on one hub page. Quota spots at stake here: Swimming relays, open water, diving, water polo. Not individual swimming races (based on qualifying times) or synchronized swimming (continental qualifiers).

July 26-Aug. 2: Archery Worlds, Copenhagen, Denmark. Olympic quotas at stake. World Cups are scattered May through October in addition to an indoor season that wraps Feb. 6-7 in Las Vegas.

Aug. 6-16: Shooting, World Cup, Gabala, Azerbaijan. This is the last stop of the year in which Olympic quotas are at stake. Except in shotgun (see Sept. 9-18).

Aug. 10-16: Badminton Worlds, Jakarta, Indonesia. Other events go year-round. Olympic quotas based on world ranking May 5, 2016.

Aug. 19-23: Canoe sprint Worlds, Milan, Italy. Many Olympic quota spots at stake. Also three World Cup events in May.

* Aug. 22-30: Track and field Worlds, Beijing. The Diamond League runs May 15 through July 30, then resumes after Worlds with final events Sept. 3 and 11. Olympic qualification is based mostly on times.

Aug. 22-Sept. 6: Women’s volleyball World Cup, Japan. The World Championship was last year, and the World Grand Prix will wrap earlier in the summer. This one has a couple of Olympic spots available.

Aug. 24-30: Judo Worlds, Astana, Kazakhstan. Olympic qualification is driven by rankings, so watch Grand Slam (ouch!) and Grand Prix events through the year.

Aug. 30-Sept. 6: Rowing Worlds, Lac d’Aiguebelette, France. This is the main Olympic quota qualifier.

Aug. 31-Sept. 6: Mountain bike Worlds, Vallnord, Andorra. World Cup final is a week earlier. Olympic qualification based mostly on rankings.

Sept. 7-13: Rhythmic gymnastics Worlds, Stuttgart, Germany. Many Olympic quotas at stake.

* Sept. 7-13: Wrestling Worlds, Las Vegas. Winners get Olympic quotas.

Sept. 8-23: Men’s volleyball World Cup, Japan. The World Championship was last year, and the World League will wrap earlier in the summer. This one has a couple of Olympic spots available.

Sept. 9-18: Shooting, World Shotgun Championship, Lonato, Italy. Yes, Olympic quotas are at stake.

Sept. 15-20: Canoe slalom Worlds, London. This is the big Olympic qualifier. World Cups run June through August.

Sept. 15-20: Triathlon World Series final, Chicago. Last of a 10-race series in addition to several World Cup races. Many Olympic quota spots are based on rankings, but there are a few other events that give automatic spots. Not this one, though.

Sept. 16-23: Taekwondo World Championships, Chelyabinsk, Russia. Olympic quotas based mostly on ranking.

Sept. 19-27: Road cycling Worlds, Richmond, Va. (!!) Overshadowed by the Tour de France and sometimes lost in the very busy cycling calendar, but the time trials have Olympic quota spots up for grabs.

Oct. 5-18: Men’s boxing Worlds, Qatar. Women’s Worlds were held in November 2014. Will add links when AIBA’s website comes back up. The men’s event has a handful of Olympic quotas at stake.

* Oct. 24-Nov. 2: Gymnastics Worlds, Glasgow. Many Olympic quotas at stake. Gymnastics has a few other competitions through the year, but not always with great pools of talent.

Nov. 20-29: Weightlifting Worlds, Houston. Olympic quotas at stake.

Nov. 28-Dec. 6: Field hockey men’s World League final, Mohali, India. Olympic qualifying spots at stake. Field hockey also has a World Cup in non-Olympic even years.

Nov. 25-28: Trampoline Worlds, Odense, Denmark. Will fill roughly half of the Olympic quotas.

Dec. 5-13: Field hockey women’s World League finals, Rosario, Argentina. Olympic qualifying spots at stake. Field hockey also has a World Cup in non-Olympic even years.

Dec. 5-20: Women’s handball Worlds, Denmark.  Winner qualifies for Olympics.

No World Championships or definitive international competition this year: Basketball (men’s World Cup and women’s World Championship in 2014).

Golf and tennis qualification is based on rankings, and you won’t need me to tell you when the majors pop up.

Important events and Olympic qualifiers in the Americas …

July 10-26: Pan Am Games, Toronto. A few sports use this for Olympic qualification, including canoe/kayak, diving, equestrian, field hockey, handball, shooting, table tennis, water polo.

2016 or tba: Continental or last-chance qualifiers in archery, beach volleyball, boxing, canoe/kayak (only for countries with no qualifiers), diving, fencing, gymnastics, handball, modern pentathlon, mountain bike, rowing, rugby, soccer, synchronized swimming. table tennis, triathlon, water polo, volleyball, weightlifting, wrestling.

***

And for winter sports folks …

Jan. 15-25: Snowboarding and freestyle skiing Worlds, Kreischberg, Austria. It’s like the FIS answer to the X Games! And unfortunately, it’s scheduled at the same time …

Jan. 22-25: Winter X Games, Aspen. Looks like they’ll have most of the top athletes except perhaps in one or two events.

Feb. 2-15: Alpine skiing Worlds, Vail/Beaver Creek, Colo.

Feb. 12-15: Speedskating Worlds (single-distance), Heerenveen, Netherlands. The sprint championships are Feb. 28-March 1 (Astana, Kazakhstan), allrounds are March 7-8 (Calgary).

Feb. 14-15: Luge Worlds, Sigulda, Latvia.

Feb. 18-March 1: Nordic skiing Worlds (including ski jumping and combined), Falun, Sweden.

Feb. 23-March 8: Bobsled/skeleton Worlds, Winterberg, Germany.

March 3-15: Biathlon Worlds, Kontiolahti, Finland.

March 13-15: Short-track speedskating Worlds, Moscow.

March 14-22: Women’s curling Worlds, Sapporo, Japan. Interesting test for the USA’s revamped High Performance program.

March 23-29: Figure skating Worlds, Shanghai.

March 28-April 4: Women’s hockey Worlds, Malmo, Sweden. USA’s turn at last? Will anyone other than the USA and Canada take gold or silver?

March 28-April 5: Men’s curling Worlds, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Another interesting test for the USA’s revamped High Performance program.

May 1-17: Men’s hockey Worlds, Czech Republic. (As always, conveniently scheduled while many of the world’s best players are busy with the Stanley Cup playoffs.)

And other stuff you should know about this year:

Jan. 31-Feb. 1: Cyclocross Worlds, Tabor, Czech Republic. Not an Olympic event but should be. In Katie Compton we trust.

Feb. 14-March 29: Cricket (men’s) World Cup, Australia/New Zealand.

July 4-18??: American football Worlds. Moving from Sweden to Canton, Ohio. Not sure if they’ll keep those dates.

Sept. 18-Oct. 31: Rugby (men’s) World Cup, England.

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olympic sports

Break up the Olympics!

Posted on by Beau Dure

The U.S. Olympic Committee may soon select a bid city for the 2024 Olympics, picking from a pool that includes Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

The correct answer is … all of them. Why not?

That’s the direction the Olympics are going, and with good reason. The IOC’s new Agenda 2020 adds some flexibility for multiple cities to bid together.

And on a related note: Agenda 2020 is big on containing costs by asking cities something very simple — quit building big, expensive stuff that won’t have much use after the Closing Ceremony. Don’t build entire mountain cities or coastal villages that may or may not be used after the Games. Looking your way, Sochi.

The other cost-containment measures make a little less sense. Cutting the 200 meters, 10,000 meters and shot put so local organizers can add something they like?

IOC reformists want to avoid white elephants, using existing infrastructure wherever possible. Boston comes close, using a lot of university facilities. And yet Boston has some powerful opposition. San Francisco got a Dave Zirin smackdown. D.C. has a few existing facilities but doesn’t seem to address whether the new D.C. United stadium, likely to be approved this week, could host something. Maybe rugby? Maybe archery? That’d be fun.

It’s not as if every Olympic event can be held in one place, anyway. They can’t hold sailing and canoe/kayak events on the Potomac. The 2008 equestrian events were held in Hong Kong, which is near Beijing in the sense that they’re on the same continent. Soccer games are held all over the host country.

The 2018 Games might be split. The feasibility of a sliding track in Pyeongchang is suddenly an issue, though maybe things sped up a bit when the idea of moving those events to Nagano came up. (Hey, it worked for the 2002 World Cup, right?)

There’s no question the Olympic movement is suffering after Sochi, even though a lot of the money went to construction and goodness knows what else. Frankly, some of the trouble is perception. The media fanned out through Sochi a few months later to find no one there, but everything looked fine when Formula One raced there in October.

The USA is losing a bit of Olympic spirit as well. Colleges are worried about keeping nonrevenue sports afloat. And it’s been a while since we hosted.

So imagine the possibilities:

– Sailing in San Francisco, just like the 2013 America’s Cup.

– Could we get a track back in the Los Angeles Coliseum?

– Add baseball back to the program and hold it in Fenway Park.

– An Opening Ceremony in a new national stadium on the site of RFK Stadium, which is still standing. Last time I checked. Has anyone stopped by to make sure it’s still there?

The Olympics need bold new thinking. Olympic cities can’t keep up with building new facilities for every event. (Yay, golf in Rio!)

So why pick one when all four can host?

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olympic sports

Just when you thought the Olympics were dead (bowling edition)

Posted on by Beau Dure

If only the IOC had as many suitable hosts for the Winter Olympics as it had sports who want to get on the Summer Olympic program …

The sport of bowling, long an Olympic aspirant, is taking aim at the Olympics, with a new scoring system that more closely resembles match play golf. (Which, ironically, is not the format golf will use in its Olympic rollout in 2016.)

Here’s how it works:

In the Tour finals, held at the South Point Bowling Plaza in Las Vegas on Sunday, matches will effectively become a frame-by-frame showdown, with each bowler initially rolling a single ball per frame.

If a player outscores their opponent, they win the frame and go “one-up”, like in match-play golf. If both hit a strike, each gets a half. If both hit, for example, an eight, each competitor would attempt to complete their spare, with the higher scorer taking the frame. Matches tied after 12 frames continue until there is a winner.

It’s a strange proposal on two levels:

1. Bowling proponents have long tried to explain to us that lanes are like holes in golf — the wax patterns give them distinct identities. To make this format work, each bowler will have to be on a different lane. (Unless they reset the pins after each shot, which would kill the “speed up the game” component of this argument.) So that would be like Tiger Woods facing off against Rory McIlroy with Woods playing the fifth hole and McIlroy on the 15th.

2. Bowling is already all about match play. Two bowlers go head to head. If one bowler gets a strike in a particular frame and the other doesn’t, it’s pretty much the same thing as winning the hole.

But the fact that bowling is willing to consider such a radical change should remind us: A lot of people still care about the Olympics. Never mind the fact that a lot of Olympic sports barely get a minute of coverage in any mass-media coverage. The mere association with the name “Olympics” carries a lot of prestige. Just as softball organizers still reeling from being excluded or wrestlers who fought tooth and nail to keep their sport back in the Games.

These are crucial years for the Olympic movement. How can we encourage diverse opportunities without creating (or continuing) a giant tangled mess?

And how can soon can we get this new bowling format on Wii Sports?

 

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olympic sports

Oly roundups: Oct. 6

Posted on by Beau Dure

The roundup of the Olympic sports roundups for the week:

Team USA Sports Scene: U.S. women win world basketball title, U.S. Army wins Warrior Games, lower-level competitions in diving and figure skating.

Universal Sports video: Lot of synchronized swimming, some volleyball.

Frontier Sports: World Gymnastics, Oslo 2022 withdrawal fallout, IAAF Athlete of the Year controversy (Gatlin nomination), The Guardian on USA Rugby (!?), UK’s new badminton league, progress on women’s Tour de France, Usain Bolt celebrating Oktoberfest in lederhosen.

Repeating: Usain Bolt celebrating Oktoberfest in lederhosen.

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olympic sports, winter sports

Whither the Winter Games? A study in arrogance

Posted on by Beau Dure

The Winter Olympics aren’t that expensive. Not if you already have most of the infrastructure in place — a sliding track, ski jumps, a solid Alpine skiing area, and maybe four or five arenas ranging from 3,000 (curling) to 15,000 (figure skating).

Russia spent $51 billion, allegedly, to stage the 2014 Games. That’s Russia. That’s the hubris of building things from scratch and the corruption to get it done in haphazard fashion. Sochi will host some other stuff, from the (men’s soccer) World Cup to Formula 1 to the Magnus Carlsen-Vishy Anand World Chess Championship rematch, but we’ll have to see if anyone actually goes there on a regular basis in the future. In any case, they didn’t spend $51 billion on the Olympics. They spent that money to grease a few palms and build the world’s biggest Potemkin village. (Even the originally Potemkin villages may have been overblown.)

Oslo could host the Games with relative ease. Some venues — the sliding track, the Kvitfjell and Hafjell resorts for Alpine skiing — have been in steady use since Lillehammer 1994. The Holmenkollen area, practically the birthplace of modern ski jumping, hosted the 2011 World Nordic Championships. They’re already hosting the 2016 Youth Olympic Games.

So we’re talking about a much, much smaller price tag. And as Alan Abrahamson points out, the IOC was going to chip in a hefty $880 million for expenses.

Add in the fact that Norway is generally considered a pleasant place to visit, without the recent history of undermining neighboring governments, and Oslo looks like a much better bet that Sochi when it comes to hosting the Games. Surely it would have defeated 2022 bid opponents Almaty and Beijing with ease.

Until Norway decided to withdraw the bid.

What happened?

Sochi certainly poisoned the well. You can tell people the Games didn’t cost and won’t cost $51 billion, but it sticks in the head. I guarantee you someone will respond to this post — here, on Twitter, or on Facebook — using the $51 billion figure as if it’s true.

But there’s more to it, and it’s all about the IOC.

Rewinding a bit: I actually met the last IOC president, Jacques Rogge. He stopped by to visit USA TODAY not long after his election. I held open a door for him, and he insisted on stopping to thank me and shake my hand. The impression he left: Compared to his predecessor, he was down to earth and humble. He backed up that impression by staying in the Olympic Village alongside the athletes.

Those gestures, though, were never going to change the culture of the IOC. The Olympic movement is still in the hands of people who want to be treated as kings and kingmakers.

Separating the stereotype from reality is difficult, so not all of the complaints about the IOC hold water. Business Insider extracted a few IOC demands that aren’t particularly demanding:

– Hot breakfast buffet at IOC hotel. (That seems reasonable.)

– Consistent signage in sans-serif font. (If you’ve ever been to the Olympics, you know how helpful that is. Or is the objection that the IOC should use serifs?)

– IOC members and guests “segregated from press and broadcast” personnel. (THANK you! The last thing we need in the press area is a bunch of IOC bigwigs wandering around.)

– IOC hotel’s fitness areas, pool and sauna must be available at no extra cost. (Can I make this demand the next time I’m covering something in Vegas?)

– Volunteer drivers must speak fluent English or French. (Well, yeah.)

– No street vendors. (Call that a reaction to Atlanta.)

– Airports must have “smiling, positive and welcoming staff” to greet IOC members. (OK, that’s creepy.)

– IOC meeting rooms must be air-conditioned to 68 degrees. (For Summer Olympics, that seems a little extreme. But at least we’re talking about winter here.)

The IOC has shot back that all of this is less than ironclad. And indeed, the Technical Manual says: “The content found within the Manuals represents the IOC and its partners‟ best understanding of the specific theme at a given moment in time, and must always be put in context for each Games edition. Even a requirement with a distinct objective may vary from Games to Games, and therefore a spirit of partnership should be shared with the Games organisers to allow for the evolution of the requirements. This is especially true as the Manuals are updated following the evaluation phase of each Games.”

But a bit of bureaucratic sheen can’t hide the fact that Norway simply found the IOC just a bit overbearing.

“Norway is a rich country, but we don’t want to spend money on wrong things, like satisfying the crazy demands from IOC apparatchiks,” said Frithjof Jacobsen, VG’s chief political commentator. “These insane demands that they should be treated like the king of Saudi Arabia just won’t fly with the Norwegian public.”

…

“The IOC’s arrogance was an argument held high by a lot of people in our party,” said Ole Berget, a deputy minister in the Finance Ministry. “Norwegian culture is really down to earth. When you get these IOC demands that are quite snobby, Norwegian people cannot be satisfied.”

So even if non-authoritarian countries are willing to pay the financial price, will they pay the price of hosting a bunch of people they really don’t like?

Abrahamson has suggested that the IOC should put off the 2022 bidding until the IOC releases a new highfalutin’ vision. Perhaps that vision should include a nice dose of reality. Or at some point in our lifetime, World Championships will become more important than the Olympics.

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olympic sports

Jordan Burroughs’ second career loss and one-day wrestling

Posted on by Beau Dure

Jordan Burroughs is pushing for the title of best U.S. wrestler of all time. He’s 92-2 in his international career, with two world championships and Olympic gold. (Hence the Twitter handle: @allIseeisgold)

The second of those losses might merit an asterisk, as the headline implies: Jordan Burroughs sprains MCL, wins bronze at World Wrestling Championships | OlympicTalk.

To give credit where it’s due: Russia’s Denis Tsargush, who beat Burroughs, is a former world champion himself and the man who has given Burroughs a couple of tough matches in major events.

But seeing Burroughs lose on a hobbled leg raises a question: Are wrestling and other combat sports better off in the current format of running through an entire weight class in one day?

The format is still relatively new in wrestling. (It’s older in judo.) In 2000 and 2004, wrestlers had two or three days of competition, starting with small round-robin pools before advancing to a knockout bracket. By 2008, they switched to one day per weight class.

Maybe a different format couldn’t have helped Burroughs recover from his injury in time to have another classic match with Tsargush. But what are the advantages to making wrestlers do everything in a day? It doesn’t add any drama. Broadcasters, let alone reporters, have no time to build the story of a wrestler, particularly an underdog, moving through a tournament to the final.

When wrestling was placed on the Olympic chopping block last year, FILA reconsidered its rules but left the one-day format intact. Bloody Elbow’s Mike Riordan sees a better way:

The NCAA Division I wrestling championships stand alone as the true gold standard when it comes to well-attended television-friendly amateur wrestling tournaments. At the NCAAs, all weights compete simultaneously in six sessions spread over a three day period. The semifinals, which determine the match ups for the finals, take place at the end of day two, and the finals take place at the end of the third day. This creates a situation where all of the event’s most anticipated matches fall on a Saturday night, with a whole day left before them to ensure proper coverage, allow for decent marketing, and maximize fan anticipation.

If FILA seeks to eventually optimize the product of its World Championships and Olympics, then it needs to eventually abandon the one-day model, and continue to progress into a format which resembles the NCAA championships.

The NCAA doing something right while the international organizer gets it wrong? Go figure.

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mind games, mma, olympic sports, soccer

I’m back – what’d I miss?

Posted on by Beau Dure

My hand is out of a splint after three weeks, though my typing speed is still diminished by a bit of tape on my two still-aching fingers. I may need to put my goalkeeping career on hold for a while.

I’m also relatively not sick. I have no idea how I’ve had waves of sinus and throat problems through the most mild summer of my lifetime, but a doctor has assured me she’ll figure it out. I got back from vacation to find Northern Virginia had become a sauna to start September, and after leading a couple of youth soccer practices in Venusian conditions last night and walking a couple of miles this morning, I actually feel better. Go figure.

Enough complaining. I’m back, and it’s time to give a quick update on the blog, my writing priorities over the next few months, and what happened in the sports world while I was healing.

The blog: Expect more links and fewer 1,000-word pieces. I want to keep sharing Olympic sports news, but I’m going to do that more efficiently. No more Monday Myriad (in part because my youth soccer practices are on Mondays), so this will be the last “roundup” post for a while. My analysis will more commonly be on …

The podcast: Hoping to do another one this week, depending on my guest’s schedule.

Medal projections: By next year, I hope Olympic sports news will be in the context of my medal projections. I’ll be working on that, along with …

Enduring Spirit epilogue: The tentative plan is to re-release the book (electronically only) with the epilogue added. I’ll also release the epilogue separately at a low, low price, so if you already bought the book, you won’t be shelling out another six bucks. I’m going to do a few postseason interviews, so don’t expect this right away.

Single-Digit Soccer: This project keeps gathering momentum. I’m planning to speak and gather input at the NSCAA convention in January, and I hope to finish it by next summer.

Other than that, I’ll still be writing at OZY, a site you should check out even if you never read anything I write. And you may still see an MMA book I finished a while back.

—

So what happened while I was out? In no particular order:

Badminton World Championships: South Korea wins men’s doubles, China won three other events, and the women’s singles went to … Spain? First time for everything, and this is a terrific photo:

Judo World Championships: Olympic champion Kayla Harrison was the only U.S. medalist, taking bronze.

Rowing World Championships: Britain won 10 medals, New Zealand won nine, Australia and Germany eight each, and the USA won seven. The World Championships include a lot of non-Olympic events, so don’t use this for medal projections. These championships included some para-rowing events, which accounted for one U.S. medal. The sole U.S. gold went to, as always, the mighty women’s eight.

World Equestrian Games: The sole U.S. medals so far are in the non-Olympic discipline of reining. Britain, Germany and the Netherlands are cleaning up. Olympic quota spots (earned by the country, not the athlete) are available in dressage, eventing and show jumping.

Also, Ollie Williams (the man behind Frontier Sports) looks at the Olympic prospects of horseball. Yes, horseball. They compare it to a mix of rugby and basketball, but I think it’s a mix of polo and quidditch.

Triathlon, World Series grand final: Gwen Jorgensen didn’t need a great finish to clinch the world championship. She did it anyway. Too early to declare her athlete of the year?

Swimming, Pan-Pacific Games: Phelps, Ledecky and company have it easy compared to Haley Anderson, who won open-water gold after a jellyfish sting, a race postponement and a race relocation. 

Track and field, Diamond League finals: Half of the events wrapped for the season at the Weltklasse Zurich over the weekend; the rest finish up Friday in Brussels. Check the Monday Morning Run for a recap that includes fellow Dukie Shannon Rowbury diving along with U.S. teammate Jenny Simpson as the latter took the women’s 1,500 title in style.

Today’s Frontier Sports wrap has a couple of track and field links (along with helpful links on badminton and much more), including “the often-told, never-dull tale of how (Brianne Theisen-Eaton) almost impaled (Ashton Eaton) with a javelin.”

Overall Diamond League winners include Simpson, Michael Tinsley (USA, 400 hurdles), Christian Taylor (USA, triple jump, took title away from teammate Will Claye at final), Lashawn Merritt (USA, 400 meters, Kirani James wasn’t at the final), Reese Hoffa (USA, shot put), Veronica Campbell-Brown (Jamaica, 100), Dawn Harper-Nelson (USA, 100 hurdles — Americans won every Diamond League race), Tiana Bartoletta (USA, long jump) and Valerie Evans (New Zealand, shot put, swept).

Women’s soccer, NWSL final: I got back from vacation to see this, and I’m glad I did. It was a compelling final, and while Seattle would’ve been a worthy champion in every sense, Kansas City deserved it. The Lauren Holiday-to-Amy Rodriguez combo is as potent as anything you’ll see in soccer.

Kansas City now holds the top-division U.S./Canada titles in men’s soccer (Sporting KC, MLS), women’s soccer (FCKC), and men’s indoor soccer (Missouri Comets, coached by FCKC’s Vlatko Andonovski). The latter won the last MISL title before most of that league leapt to the MASL.

The league also announced it would play a full schedule next summer with a break for the World Cup, which means international players will miss a considerable number of games. The big worry: The season will spill into September, bad news for those counting on international loans or fall coaching jobs to supplement the league’s small paychecks. But the league didn’t have a lot of good options, and now they’re poised to ride a World Cup wave if one materializes again.

Basketball World Cup: Senegal over Croatia is the big upset so far, while France, Brazil and Serbia have created a logjam for second behind Spain in Group A. The USA is cruising through an easy group.

Men’s volleyball World Championships: Many people are watching.

https://twitter.com/OllieW/status/505752806159319040

The USA won a thrilling five-setter and lost an epic to Iran in early group play.

Modern pentathlon World Championships: Underway with relays.

MMA: The UFC 177 pay-per-view card had already been hit by a rash of injuries. Then one of the UFC’s most heralded recent signings, Olympic wrestling gold medalist Henry Cejudo, had a “medical issue” while trying to make weight. Then former bantamweight champion Renan Barao, set for a rematch against new champ T.J. Dillashaw, also couldn’t make weight. Joe Soto got the Seth Petruzelli-style bump from the undercard to the main event. Unlike Petruzelli against Kimbo Slice, Soto couldn’t take advantage of the opportunity.

So the most noteworthy things about the card, apart from Cejudo and Barao’s weight-cutting issues, were:

1. Bethe Correia taking out another of Ronda Rousey’s buddies, veteran Shayna Baszler. Now Rousey wants a piece of Correia, who’ll be happy to oblige.

2. Dana White launching an unholy rip of the media. Some days, I miss covering this sport — this would’ve been fun.

Overseas in ONE FC — I’m absolutely biased toward Kamal Shalorus, who works in our wonderful local dojo and is as nice as he could be. Glad to see him get a title shot, but Shinya Aoki was always going to be a tough matchup, and Aoki indeed kept the belt.

Chess: World champ Magnus Carlsen and top U.S. player Hikaru Nakamura are at the Sinquefield Cup, but Italy’s Fabiano Caruana has left them in the dust, beating Carlsen, Nakamura and the other three to go a perfect 5-for-5 halfway through the double round-robin.

And we’re a month away from Millionaire Chess. Ignore the monetary losses and enjoy.

Cycling: Vuelta a Espana in brief — Nairo Quintana fell, Alberto Contador took the lead.

Video games: A terrific glitch in Madden ’15 — a 14-inch-tall linebacker:

Coming up: Bloody Elbow is looking at the upcoming wrestling World Championships.

Glad to be back!

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