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World Sailing confirms Race Officials for the Paris 2024 Olympic Sailing Competition

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International sailing races began in 1851, when members of the New York Yacht Club decided to take part in a competition in England. To compete, they built a 101‑foot schooner named America, sailed to England and won a trophy called the Hundred Guineas Cup. The trophy was then renamed The America’s Cup in memory of this first international sailing competition.

Brief overview of the rules

Sailing involves moving a boat solely by harnessing the power of the wind. Mastery over ever‑changing conditions requires both great skill and experience on the part of the athletes. In Olympic events, the rules of the international sailing federation, World Sailing, apply. Competitions are made up of fleet racing, where two equally-matched boats race around the same varied course. 

There were ten events at the Tokyo Games, including windsurfing, mixed Nacra 17 Foiling, 49ers and the 470. The various sailing disciplines are constantly changing and the boats allowed to compete are designed to be increasingly small and lightweight, placing ever greater demands on both the athletic and technical capacities of the sailors. Two new events will take place for the first time in the Olympic Games in 2024 : windsurfer – iQFoil and kiteboarding.

Olympic history

Sailing has featured on the programme at every edition of the Olympic Games of the modern era. They could not take place on 1 st  April 1896 in Athens, however, as bad weather conditions forced the organisers to cancel the events. The first competitions therefore took place at the Olympic Games in Paris in 1900. Since then, the categories included in the competition have constantly evolved. The different events are organised by monotype classes – i.e. their size and weight.

Events in 2024

The sailing events will take place between the 28th of July and the 8th of August.

• Women’s : One Person Dinghy – Skiff – Windsurfing – Kite.
• Men’s : One Person Dinghy – Skiff – Windsurfing – Kite.
• Mixed : Mixed Multihull – Mixed Two Person Dinghy.

Venue in 2024

Marseille Marina

International organisation

International federation : World Sailing

https://www.sailing.org/

© Clive Mason/Getty Images

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Description

As a competitive sport, sailing was called yachting until the 21st century. The international federation, now World Sailing , changed the sport’s competitive name in an attempt to limit the elitist connotation associated with the term “yachting”. The sport has been termed yachting at the Olympics through 1996 , and sailing, in effect, made its Olympic début at Sydney 2000.

Yachting actually began as a form of sailing, which has been practiced since antiquity as a means of transport. In the modern sense, yachting probably originated in the Netherlands , and the word seems to come from the Dutch “jacht” (for hunting), which was originally used for fast, light ships.

Sailing as a sport was brought to England by King Charles II about 1660, after his exile to Holland. International yacht racing began in 1851, when a syndicate of members of the New York Yacht Club built a 101-foot schooner named America. The yacht was sailed to England, where it won a trophy called the Hundred Guineas Cup, in a race around the Isle of Wight under the auspices of the Royal Yacht Squadron. The trophy was renamed The America’s Cup after the yacht, not after the United States , as is commonly thought.

As aforementioned, sailing has been governed worldwide by World Sailing (WS), formerly the International Yacht Racing Union (IYRU), and even before as the International Sailing Federation (ISAF), which was formed on 14 October 1907, in Paris. As of 2022, WS has 148 member nations.

Sailing was first contested at the 1900 Olympic Games . It made its next Olympic appearance in 1908 and has been on every Olympic Program since that year. Sailing has had a very varied program that is usually changed every few Olympiads as the popularity of various boats waxes and wanes. Women have always been allowed to compete in Olympic sailing with men, and the first woman to compete in the Olympics was a sailor, in 1900. In 1988 , separate sailing events exclusively for women were introduced. In 1984, the popular sport of boardsailing was also added to the Olympic Program, and a separate boardsailing event for women was placed on the program for the first time in 1992.

The current sailing program has events for both men, women, and open crews. The classes fit into certain categories, including a windsurfing class, one-person dinghies, two-person dinghies, heavyweight dinghies, skiffs, and multihull boats. However, the exact type of boat within these categories may now vary from Olympics to Olympics.

Sailing is contested at the Olympics in a series of fleet races, with points awarded for the placement in each race. In 2008 , the so-called Medal Race was added to make the sport more suitable for television: these races feature only the top 10 boats, and take only 30 minutes.

The medal table is topped by Great Britain (30 golds, 63 medals), followed by the United States (19 golds, 61 medals) and France (17 golds, 51 medals). British sailor Ben Ainslie and Paul Elvstrøm ( DEN ) lead the men’s medal table, both with four gold medals. Ainslie has won a total of five medals at the Olympic Games, just as Brazilian sailors Robert Scheidt and Torben Grael . Seven women have won two gold medals, led by British Hannah Mills , who won a silver before her two Olympic titles. Windsurfer Alessandra Sensini , of Italy , is the female sailor with the most medals, with a total of four.

All-time medal table

Olympic games, youth olympic games, most successful competitors, event types.

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Sailors compete across ten Olympic classes - RS:X (men's and women's windsurfing), Laser Radial (women's one-person dinghy), Laser (men's one-person dinghy), Finn (heavyweight men's dinghy), 470 (men's and women's two person dinghy), 49er and 49erFX (men's and women's two-person skiff) and Nacra 17 (two-person mixed multihull) events.

In Tokyo, Team GB finished top of the sailing medal table thanks to a haul of five (three golds, one silver & one bronze); their most successful Games since Beijing 2008. 

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What are the rules for Olympic canoe and kayak races?

The Paris Olympic Games feature 16 canoeing events under two primary disciplines: canoe slalom and canoe sprint. The kayak cross event also makes its debut at the Paris Games.

Here's a guide on how scoring works for the canoeing events at the Olympics.

How do you win an Olympic canoeing race?

The first boat to cross the finish line without any penalties is the winner of the race. To clear the finish line, the bow of the canoe or the kayak must cross the line, which is marked by a pair of red flags on either side of the course.

How does the start work?

Olympic races use a mechanical starting gate, which is anchored to the lane buoy cables and floats underwater. To begin a race, the starter says, "Start within ten seconds," and those words are followed by a sound from the starting system. If a competitor starts to paddle after the voice signal but before the sound signal, the athlete is given a warning and all competitors start again. Two false starts by the same boat results in a disqualification.

What is the five-meter rule in Olympic canoeing?

To prevent boats from riding each other's wakes, a boat may not come within five meters of a boat next to it. If this occurs, the course umpire, who is following the competitors in a motorboat, gives the boat in violation a red flag. The competition committee then decides whether the boat should be disqualified. Accordingly, a boat that fails to stay in its lane is disqualified.

If a boat capsizes, its competitor or crew is disqualified.

What are Olympic canoeing disqualification rules?

A boat may be disqualified for any of the following reasons:

• Team member changes: Team members cannot be changed once the competition has started. Start lists are fixed once the competition begins, regardless of illness or injury. If an athlete cannot participate he/she will be disqualified.
• Arriving late: A boat arrives after the official start time
• False starts: A boat causes two false starts
• Breaking the five-meter rule rule
• Using an underweight boat

What is the 50-second penalty in canoe slalom?

In canoe slalom, touching a gate adds a penalty of two seconds to the competitor's race time, while missing the gate entirely brings about the 50-second penalty, which adds a crippling 50 seconds to the time. Other actions that can bring on this penalty include touching the gate without correct negotiation, intentionally pushing a gate or displacing a gate by 45 degrees.

As competitors paddle down the course, they must negotiate a series of 18 to 25 gates that are strategically placed throughout, similar to a slalom course in alpine skiing. Of the 18 to 25 gates, a minimum of six are marked as upstream gates, requiring paddlers to negotiate them in an upstream direction. The remaining gates are to be negotiated in a downstream direction.

Each gate is marked numerically, and a competitor must go through the gates in the order they are marked. Gates consist of two suspended poles, measuring between 1.4 and 4 meters in width. A competitor can identify if the gate is an upstream or downstream gate by its color: Green and white-striped delineate downstream gates and red and white-striped gates delineate upstream.

Total Score

The total score in canoe slalom is calculated by combining the total running time and the penalty seconds. The competitor with the lowest score wins.

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Here are all 35 venues for the 2024 Olympics

From the eiffel tower to the seine, paris will incorporate landmarks at the 2024 olympics, by max molski • published march 5, 2024 • updated on march 5, 2024 at 3:06 pm.

Paris will be on full display for the world’s best athletes this summer.

The 2024 Olympics will feature events at landmarks across the French capital . From beach volleyball beneath the Eiffel Tower to equestrian at the Palace of Versailles, athletes will have a chance to compete at some of Paris’ most iconic locations. Additionally, the Olympics will begin with a unique Opening Ceremony where athletes will parade across the Seine.

While some events will take place next to sightseeing spots, others will be held at sporting venues that have become synonymous with the city. Track and field events will take place under the bright lights of Stade de France. French Open home Roland Garros will host the tennis and boxing action across the 2024 Games. Over on the other side of town, LeBron James and Simone Biles are among the legends who will go for gold at Bercy Arena . 

MORE: History of United States cities hosting the Olympics

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Not all of the events will be held in Paris — or even France. Soccer matches will be spread across the country, and surfing will take place in French Polynesia.

Here are the 35 venues that will host events at the 2024 Olympics in Paris , listed by sport:

Athletes for the 2024 Olympic Games will not only compete in Paris, but in venues around France and its territories. Hover over each venue to see more.

Source: Paris 2024 • Nina Lin, NBC

• Les Invalides

Track and field

• Stade de France
• Hôtel de Ville → Esplanade des Invalides

Race walking

• Porte de La Chapelle Arena

Men's and women's

• Bercy Arena
• Parc Urbain la Concorde

2024 Paris Olympics: See dates, sports, how to watch and more

Here are the rules for the 2024 Olympics in Paris

Get to know Team USA Olympians ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics

Beach volleyball.

• Eiffel Tower Stadium
• Roland Garros
• Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium

Road cycling

• Les Invalides →  Pont Alexandre III (time trials)
• Trocadéro → Trocadéro (men’s and women’s road races)

Cycling track

• National Velodrome

Mountain biking

• Elancourt Hill

BMX freestyle

• Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines BMX Stadium (inside the National Velodrome )
• Aquatics Centre
• Palace of Versailles
• Grand Palais

Field hockey

• Yves du Manoir Stadium
• Golf National

Artistic gymnastics

• Bercy Arena  

Rhythmic gymnastics

• Porte de la Chapelle Arena
• Pierre Mauroy Stadium
• Champ de Mars Arena

Modern pentathlon

• Marseille Marina
• Chateauroux Shooting Centre

Skateboarding

• Bordeaux Stadium
• Geoffroy-Guichard Stadium
• Lyon Stadium
• Marseille Stadium
• Nantes Stadium
• Nice Stadium
• Parc des Princes

Sport climbing

• Le Bourget Sport Climbing Venue
• Tahiti Teahupo’o
• Paris La Défense Arena

Artistic swimming

Marathon swimming

• Pont Alexandre III

Table tennis

• South Paris Arena
• Pont Alexandre III → Pont Alexandre III

Weightlifting

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Our Shadows Will Remain

Photography by Tom Benjamin

Tallinn and the 1980 Moscow Olympics

In 1974 the Soviet Union won the bid to become the host of the 1980 Summer Olympics. As its host city Moscow is miles inland there was a search for a suitable location to host the sailing events. As Estonia was at that time under Soviet occupation the city of Tallinn was chosen.

The 1980 Olympics saw a number of problems including many countries and participants choosing to boycott the event and not attend, due to the Soviet Unions invasion of Afghanistan. Led by the United States many other countries chose to boycott the games, others claimed financial reasons. It total sixty-five invited countries did not attend the Moscow Olympics.

The Soviet Union invested over 200 million rubles into the city of Tallinn in the years leading up to the event. The TV tower, Hotel Olümpia and the airport were built and developed as well as the Tallinn Olympic Yachting Center in Pritia where the event would be held. There was also a budget for arts and culture, restaurants and museums were built or renovated. 436 houses were randomly painted and renovated around the city and Tallinn’s historical old town was given a makeover.

Tallinn saw great change during the lead up to the event and many of those changes can still be found in the city today.

Hotel Olümpia

Hotel Olümpia began construction in 1974 and took six years to build. There are 390 rooms including a presidential suite and a number of recently renovated conference rooms. The building is 84m tall, 10m taller than the nearby Sokos Hotel Viru , with the name of the hotel in large letters on top. The 26th floor features a fitness club with its very own swimming pool.

Hotel Olümpia is now operated by Radisson Blu .

Tallinn Olympic Yachting Center

Once Tallinn was chosen to host the sailing event a location was picked in Pirita, a neighbourhood three miles from the city centre. The  Tallinn Olympic Yachting Center was constructed over four years and opened in 1980 in time to host its first guests. It was the home for the competitors for the time they were in the city.

Currently the building is home to Pirita Marina Hotel and Spa and several sports clubs, as well as a cafe that looks over the marina and a casino.

Since 1997 the building has been under protection as architectural heritage of Estonia.

The V. I. Lenin Palace of Culture and Sports

Now the culture and sports venue goes by the name Linnahall  and has been out of use since 2009. The design was from architects Raine Karp and Riina Altmäe. The building was completed and opened in 1980 with the name V. I. Lenin Palace of Culture and Sports. Under its concrete and limestone form the building held a 4,200 seat amphitheater, an ice hall, an exhibition space and dance hall. The building was specifically designed so it didn’t interrupt views of Tallinn’s old town from the sea.

Though the building wasn’t used during the Olympics it was part of the development that took place in Tallinn in the years leading up to the games.

Linnahall has heritage protection for its cultural significance but its future remains uncertain as the city searches for investment.

Tallinn’s TV Tower was built to provide better telecommunications for the coverage of the Olympics. It stands 314m tall in a location approximately 5 miles from Tallinn’s city centre, also in the district of Pirita. It was originally designed to have a rotating observation deck on the 21st floor.

The TV Tower played an important role in Estonia’s independence in 1991 when several operators risked their lives to protect the free media of the newly formed republic.

Further reading:

I have covered Linnahall  in great detail and released a collection of my photographs in a small zine titled BRUTAL II .

The Moscow Olympic Games changed the face of Tallinn forever .

The Tallinn Collector  has a fantastic collection of photographs and memorabilia from the 1980 Moscow Olympics in Tallinn.

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How the Wait for Olympic Medals Became an Endurance Sport

Doping rules, legal challenges and endless appeals have left some medalists waiting (and waiting) for their golds.

By Jeré Longman

Reporting from Philadelphia and Glasgow, Scotland

It took Lashinda Demus of the United States 52.77 seconds to run the women’s 400-meter hurdles at the 2012 London Olympics. It took more than a decade for her to be upgraded to first place from second . A year after that decision, and 12 years after the race, she is still waiting to receive her gold medal.

One of her American teammates, Erik Kynard Jr., competed in the high jump at the London Games. Like Demus, he was beaten by a Russian athlete later found guilty of doping. And like Demus, he had to wait many years before being named the victor . He, too, has never touched his gold medal.

Demus and Kynard are expected to finally receive their medals this summer during the Paris Olympics, according to officials at the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee. The details are still being ironed out; officials hope a resolution could come soon.

But for nine American figure skaters who in January were elevated to first place in the team competition nearly two years after the end of the 2022 Beijing Olympics , the wait continues: The Russian team that finished ahead of them in Beijing, and later became embroiled in a doping case, has filed multiple appeals challenging the loss of its gold medals. That could mean months, at least, of new legal battles .

All three cases have highlighted longstanding concerns about the inability of international sports officials to balance the imperatives of clean sport and fair play with providing justice to deserving athletes in a timely manner. The reasons are varied — vulnerabilities in testing; a lack of uniform international commitment in the antidoping system; an often lengthy appeals process — but the consequences are personal.

Dozens of competitors have received their gold, silver and bronze medals long after their Olympic moment has passed. Some, like Demus, 41, and Kynard, 33, retired from competition before getting a resolution. Others have eventually celebrated what should have been a career highlight with something more akin to a shrug.

“It makes the I.O.C. look really bad,” said Bill Mallon, an Olympic historian who tracks the reallocation of medals. “In the N.B.A. and the N.F.L., when the game ends, you know who won.”

A year seems more reasonable to resolve doping cases and reallocate medals, Kynard said in an interview, “but not 12.”

During his ordeal, Kynard said, his faith and trust in the Olympic movement have fallen “lower and lower.” But he also said he had learned not to define himself by the outcome of a sporting event. He laughed at one point and said there was one consolation to waiting for his gold medal: “I look forward to giving my youngest son a new teething toy.”

The reception of a deferred medal can confirm an athlete’s sense of integrity, and bring some inner peace. But the waiting can also cause mental stress and, for gold medalists in particular, a significant loss of financial opportunities.

Kynard estimated that he had lost out on at least $500,000 in potential prize money, sponsorships and appearance fees that he might have claimed as an Olympic champion. Twelve years later, he said, the meaning of a gold medal feels diminished, “like a participation trophy.”

Belated medals have often been delivered quietly, and sometimes with little dignity. Adam Nelson, who was declared the winner of the shot put competition at the 2004 Athens Olympics after the apparent victor was disqualified for doping, received his gold medal nine years later outside a Burger King in the Atlanta airport .

Nelson said the anticlimax of receiving his medal at an airport rather than at the site of the competition in Olympia, Greece, the hallowed home of the ancient Games, filled him not with joy but rather “a real sense of loss.”

Demus, now a high school track coach, did not respond to requests for comment. Last year, upon finally being declared the 2012 hurdles champion, she expressed mixed emotions. In an email to NBC Sports, she wrote that users of banned drugs should be stripped of their medals — and added that she would not want any other athlete to experience the loss that she did in terms of “the official title, medal, recognition and missed compensation that goes with it all.”

Since drug screenings began at the Olympics in 1968, there have been 164 events in which medals have been reallocated or withdrawn, according to Mallon, the Olympic historian.

Perhaps most notoriously, six of the top seven finishers in the men’s 94 kilogram (roughly 207 pounds) weight lifting competition at the London Olympics — including all three original medalists — were later disqualified for doping. The eventual winner was Saeid Mohammadpour , an Iranian who finished fifth in the initial results.

Antidoping officials are often a step behind in an endless game of pharmacological cat-and-mouse with athletes who use banned substances and blood-boosting agents. To enhance the efficacy of drug testing, blood and urine samples can be stored and retested for up to 10 years as more cutting-edge detection technology is developed.

(In 2022, when he was retired from elite competition, Kynard accepted a six-month ban sparked by a post on social media showing him using an intravenous saline infusion — which can aid in recuperation — beyond a permitted volume. The infusion contained no prohibited substances, United States antidoping officials said, but the violation still required a punishment.)

Even brief delays can see competitors miss out on every Olympic athlete’s dream: to stand atop a podium at the Games, to see their flag raised, to hear their national anthem played.

“When the systems fail you and you get slighted, there’s no adequate replacements for it,” said Nelson, now a high school athletic director. “In the Olympic cycle, it happens once every four years. There’s nothing you can do to go back and rewrite that history. That moment has passed.”

Since 2018, the I.O.C. and sports governing bodies have sought more decorous ways to present deferred medals. The sites in Paris being considered as possible venues for Demus and Kynard to receive their gold medals include the Olympic Stadium, where the track and field competition will be held, and a park at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, where all medalists will be invited to celebrate among family, friends and thousands of spectators.

Kynard said the Olympic Stadium seemed a less likely choice because it would probably be embarrassing for the I.O.C. to so publicly acknowledge “how bad this got screwed up.” The I.O.C. said that it seeks to resolve such situations in a dignified manner by giving athletes options that attempt to “best meet their preferences.”

If the figure-skating appeals process from the 2022 Beijing Olympics is completed in time for the Paris Games, which remains uncertain, the nine American skaters could be awarded their gold medals during the closing ceremony.

Madison Chock, 31, an ice dancer with her husband, Evan Bates, 35, said on a teleconference call in January that they have experienced “a small underlying feeling of maybe a little bit of sadness and disappointment that we didn’t get that Olympic moment.”

Sarah Hirshland, the chief executive of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, said that protecting the integrity of sports should be the highest priority. But she also described the long wait for redress by Demus and Kynard as “terrible” and “unacceptable.”

“We have a chance to try to make it right,” she said, “and that’s what we have to do.”

Jeré Longman covers international sports, focusing on competitive, social, cultural and political issues around the world. More about Jeré Longman

Olympics-New costumes in revamped torch lighting ceremony for Paris 2024

A THENS (Reuters) - Next month's Paris 2024 Olympics flame lighting ceremony in ancient Olympia will showcase a new high priestess, redesigned costumes and fresh music as Greece looks to revamp the traditional ceremony.

The flame will be lit on April 16 in ancient Olympia, birthplace of the Games. In a traditional ceremony, actress Mary Mina playing the high priestess for the first time will use a parabolic mirror and the sun's rays to ignite the torch.

"This is big honour for me. I hope to live up to the trust you placed in me," Mina said in the ceremony's presentation on Tuesday. "I am very lucky to now take the reins."

The costumes Mina and her priestesses will wear also break with past ceremonies and will be two-toned -- black and white -- as opposed to the monochromatic white or light blue costumes of the past.

After the traditional lighting ceremony Mina will then pass the flame to the first torchbearer, Olympic rowing champion Stefanos Douskos, at the edge of the ancient Olympic stadium for the start of an 11-day Greek relay.

The flame will then be handed over to Paris Games organisers in Athens on April 26 before spending a night at the French Embassy in the Greek capital and then departing the next day for France on board a three-masted ship, the 'Belem'.

The Olympic flame will arrive in Marseille on May 8, with up to 150,000 people expected to attend the ceremony in the southern city's Old Port before the French leg of the relay begins.

Marseille, founded by the Greek settlers of Phocaea around 600 BC, will host the sailing competitions.

The French torch relay will last 68 days and will culminate with the lighting of the Olympic flame at the Games' opening ceremony on July 26.

(Reporting by Karolos Grohmann; Editing by Toby Davis)

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Olympic commission suggests wide-ranging changes to SafeSport and USOPC

FILE - A participant hangs from the Olympic rings while posing for a teammate at Olympic Park ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2014, in Sochi, Russia. A commission charged with reviewing the Olympic system in the United States recommended in a report Friday, March 1, 2024, that Congress rework key facets of the U.S. Center for SafeSport, including making it completely independent of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and reimagining the way it deals with cases in the grassroots. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, File)

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A panel charged with reviewing the Olympic structure in the U.S. is calling for Congress to consider wide-ranging changes, including government funding of the U.S. Center for SafeSport, severing grassroots from the elite sports system and even removing the word “amateur” in a potential rewrite of the 1978 law that created the modern-day Olympic landscape.

The Commission on the State of U.S. Olympics & Paralympics , established by Congress in 2020, released its 275-page report on Friday, concluding in part that “we need a better long-term vision for how we organize Olympic- and Paralympic-movement sports in America.”

The tension between grassroots and elite sports is a common theme throughout the document. Untethering the two, the report argued, could benefit its two main targets for reform — the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and the SafeSport center.

A big focus of the report was on the Denver-based center, which was established in 2017 to oversee sex-abuse cases in Olympic sports. It receives around $20 million annually from the USOPC and its sports affiliates, though the report called for a rethinking of the revenue stream, including having the government fund it. The center has long been dealing with an overload of cases and has been criticized for taking too long to resolve them.

Center CEO Ju’Riese Colon said the current funding level “is insufficient to meet the growing demands on the Center.”

“Regardless of whether the additional funding continues to come through the USOPC as required by federal law, or directly from Congressional appropriations, it needs to increase substantially to allow the Center to better fulfill our mission of keeping America’s athletes safe,” she said.

But some data embedded in the report suggested the center has bigger issues than mere funding . The report published polling information, previously reported by The Associated Press , that found 25.4% of 1,752 respondents to a commission survey found the SafeSport Center to be “not so effective” or “not effective at all.” Another 41.4% said it was only “somewhat effective.”

The report suggested the center “reimagine” the way it operates at the youth and grassroots level — a move that could significantly decrease its workload.

While the center took a big portion of the heat, the USOPC also was criticized for being an unwieldy, not-too-transparent organization that would benefit from increased oversight and a streamlining of its mission. It seized on a long-running complaint about the committee — executive compensation.

“The stark difference ... between incomes for executives and support for athletes was alarming,” the report read.

It called for complete independence of the Team USA Athletes Commission, which now runs under the umbrella of the USOPC; an overhaul of governance processes; better access for Paralympic athletes; and a rethinking of the U.S. bid process for Olympic Games. Los Angeles will host the Summer Games in 2028 and Salt Lake City is all but assured to host the Winter Games in 2034.

USOPC CEO Sarah Hirshland sounded largely receptive to working with those who created the report, but also expressed frustration in a letter she sent to Olympic insiders that was obtained by AP.

“A significant aspect that was not acknowledged is the profound evolution that has taken place throughout the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Movement since the Commission’s inception,” she said.

Prodded by Congress, the USOPC has, in fact, rewritten key portions of its bylaws to try to ensure better oversight of the more than four dozen sports organizations that fall under its umbrella and more rights and representation for athletes.

The commission suggested some changes might be easier if a new federal office was created to oversee grassroots sports that are now largely under the auspices of the USOPC. It would presumably free up the USOPC to focus solely on its central objective of supporting high-performance athletes and Olympic teams.

“It is time for Congress to accept that, while we will never have a ‘ministry of sport’ model in this country, the federal government has more of a role to play in ensuring safety, equity, accessibility, and accountability in sports than it has so far acknowledged and accepted,” the report said.

All of that suggests a possible overhaul of the 1978 “Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act,” which set the template for the modern-day Olympic movement in the United States. Among its key tenets is that the government not fund Olympic athletes, which makes the U.S. an outlier among the 200-plus countries that field Olympic teams. Another was that Olympic athletes were, by their very nature, amateurs — a reality that has long since passed.

One recommendation is that any rewrite of the law exclude the word “amateur,” so as to remove any inference that athletes aren’t the key cogs of the multibillion-dollar business the Olympics have become.

“Words matter, but actions matter more,” the report said in commenting on this proposal. “That is why Congress should use this opportunity to recognize under law that American athletes ... have certain fundamental rights, including a safe and abuse-free environment, name-image-likeness (NIL) rights, freedom from retaliation, an affordable fee structure for national-team-selection competition events, and a timely dispute-resolution process as it relates to competition and team selection.”

AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games

The 1980 Moscow Games: An Olympic controversy which split Ireland, and the world

Jim Tunney could have hardly been clearer when he addressed a gathering of top athletes at a meeting in the Ballinteer Sports Complex. This was six months before the Games would begin in Moscow and less than one since the USSR had launched its shock Christmas Eve invasion of Afghanistan and, with it, talk of boycotts and sanctions.

“Athletes must not use the current controversies concerning the Olympics as an excuse for letting up in training,” said the then Minister of State at the Department of Education. “Time lost now can never be regained.” 

That seemed to be that but the waters were only just being muddied and it would be May before most of Ireland's finest could wash any of the doubt from their minds.

Jimmy Carter would call for a US boycott just days after Tunney's pronouncement in South Dublin and the White House followed it up with letters urging other heads of state to do the same. Charles J Haughey among them. By February, the European Parliament was urging EEC governments to stay away and, in the end, 66 nations stood themselves down while 88 pressed ahead.

Consensus defied regions, nationalities, and even Cold War frontlines.

West Germany pulled out, for instance, but France travelled. The Australian government declared an intention to ignore the Games, their Olympic committee voted narrowly in favour of participating, and then some of their athletes pulled out while the rest competed under an Olympic flag.

In that, it was a story of its times, one echoed many times over.

The Moscow question threw up all manner of unlikely contributors to the debate in Ireland. A body calling itself the Women's Campaign for Soviet Jewry protested at a national sports show at the RDS while members of Fine Gael picketed the Soviet Embassy in Rathgar. The Dublin Council of Trade Unions, meanwhile, voted to give £50 to the Olympic Council of Ireland (OCI) for expenses.

Not an ideal backdrop for those aiming to compete.

“We as athletes didn't get caught up in it,” says Eamonn Coghlan. “Our biggest concern was 'will it happen, won't it happen?' That was on a daily basis. We didn't have the luxury of social media and the amount of information that is around the world at an instant now so we were able to hide ourselves from that. That's the way we dealt with it in our own little cocooned way back then.” 

The question was what the Government's official stance would be.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Brian Lenihan told the Dáil in February that he would like to see an Irish team travel as long as the Games remained meaningful but, while public support for that stance grew in opinion polls through the spring, the mood was changing inside Government Buildings and the decision was ultimately made to support the US-led boycott on May 17.

That was far from that. The Olympic Council of Ireland met just days later and decided that it would push on regardless with its plans to compete. Nineteen governing bodies were on board with three abstaining and only one falling the other side of the fence. Problem was that the naysayer was the Irish Amateur Boxing Association (IABA).

This was not good news. Barry McGuigan was among the country's top hopes. In Rimini for the European Juniors when the IABA made its call to stay at home, the Monaghan man took the news like a right-hand to the solar plexus but there were others besides with solid ambitions of a podium place.

“That put the frighteners on as to whether it was going to happen at all,” Russell remembers. “Our coaches at that stage were always telling us that we would have to prepare with the mindset that it was happening. We went into a training camp in Drogheda, all seven boxers on the team, and just got on with what we had to do.” 

The AIBA would change its mind soon enough but the Government wasn't for turning. There would be no ban on civil servants competing but the OCI, already down a six-figure sum from commercial sponsors due to concerns over a boycott, was deprived of the vast majority of an £80,000 grant from the public exchequer. A public appeal for funds would still leave them short £40,000 after the Games.

Russell would return to Dublin a hero where he was met by his father and mother at the airport. So would David Wilkins and James Wilkinson who had claimed a silver in sailing's Flying Dutchman class but the Government's objection to it all was apparent even then. The only official figure to welcome the team home was Fergus O'Brien, the Lord Mayor of Dublin.

It was a sour postscript with the athletes stuck in the middle of a wider, messier conflict, one which had far more grey area to it than the morally obvious case to be argued over tours to apartheid-era South Africa, and a debate which had divided opinion along all manner of lines and affiliations.

Mel Christle, the heavyweight boxer, had it right when he quoted Aristotle earlier in 1980 and observed that all acts are in some way political. They were words that would be echoed on the eve of the Games when Lord Killanin, the International Olympic Committee president, addressed members of the movement at the renowned Bolshoi Theatre.

“I deeply regret that many athletes, either through political dictation or the dictates of their own consciences, are not with us at the Games,” said the Irishman. “Let me stress again... I believe the athlete is frequently the victim of sports administrators.”

More in this section

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