Black History Month: Celebrating Team GB trailblazers

Building on the success of recent years, athletes on the UK Athletics' Futures Programme, supported by Nike, have continued to impress across Olympic and Paralympic cohorts in 2023. On the Olympic Programme, 23 athletes were selected to represent Great Britain and Northern Ireland (GB & NI) teams - including seven who earned senior vests at the…

The World Aquatics Swimming World Cup competition this week is being held in the same venue that housed water polo at the 2004 Olympics. Warm-up sessions for the meet were held at the outdoor pool that hosted swimming. Although none of the athletes in attendance competed at the 2004 Olympics, many of the athletes were aware of the history of the…

New Zimbabwe Olympic Committee (ZOC) chief executive Marlene Chiedza Gadzirayi has revealed that she wants to raise people's awareness of the Olympic Games in the periods between them taking place. Gadzirayi officially took up her role on September 1 as the permanent replacement for Stephen Mudawarima, who had resigned in March. Gadzirayi, who has…

Arriving back at Paris Orly airport from the World Athletics Championships in Budapest I felt almost guilty speaking to some of my friends from L'Equipe. With ten medals won, including golds from Josh Kerr in the men's 1500 metres and Katarina Johnson-Thompson in the heptathlon, Britain had enjoyed its most successful Championships since the 1993…

Ever since the Soviet Union disintegrated, the US has owned the Summer Olympic podium, outpacing the rest of the planet at the last seven Games. That won't change when the XXXIIIrd edition begins in Paris a year from Wednesday. The Americans could exceed the 130-medal mark and once again will finish comfortably ahead of the Chinese, who have become…

Dutchwomen Suzanne Schulting and Xandra Velzeboer broke short track speed skating world records in the heats of a World Cup stop outside Salt Lake City on Friday. Schulting, the two-time reigning Olympic 1000m champion, clocked 1 minute, 25.958 seconds at that distance. That smashed her own record time of 1:26.514 from the Olympics in February,…

Olympic 800m champion Athing Mu is moving from Texas to Los Angeles to be coached by Bobby Kersee, who already coaches fellow Olympic track gold medalist Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. "Coach Kersee has the ability to further enhance my running skills and implement the tools needed to reach my potential," Mu, 20, posted on social media. Mu's partner,…

Gustav Iden won the Ironman Kona World Championship in a course record time, becoming the second consecutive Norwegian to win the men's world title and the first to do so in Kona. Iden, 26, clocked an unofficial 7 hours, 40 minutes, 24 seconds for the 140.6-mile race (2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike, 26.2-mile run) with temperatures in the 80s on the…

Simone Biles plans to be at the 2024 Paris Olympics, but whether that's as a competitor or a spectator is to be decided. Biles, asked in multiple interviews over the last week about a possible gymnastics comeback, repeated that she will attend the next Olympics in the French capital. "I'm still taking time for myself just to work on myself,…

Connor Fields, who in 2016 became the first American to win an Olympic BMX title, announced his retirement a little more than one year after a life-threatening crash at the Tokyo Games. "I wanted to go out on my own terms, and in a way, I still am, despite the thing that I love most nearly ending my life," Fields said in a social media video…

Sydney McLaughlin ran the sixth-fastest 400m hurdles time in history in what she said beforehand was her last race of the season. McLaughlin, who lowered her world record at June's USATF Outdoor Championships (51.41) and July's world championships (50.68), ran 51.68 at a Continental Tour meet in Hungary on Monday. McLaughlin, who turned 23 on…

With five gold medals already in the bag from the first two days of competition, New Zealand's cyclists are only one shy of the record six golds they won in Glasgow in 2014. The eight medals captured on the bike so far have already surpassed cycling's total from 17 of the past 21 Commonwealth Games. New Zealand is the leading performer on the bike…

You wonder what Northern Ireland will consider to have been a successful Games once the dust settles on Birmingham 2022. It's fair to imagine a considerable part of the debrief will centre around the medals table; a tangible measure of regression, consistency or progress when compared to Games gone before. The Gold Coast in 2018 yielded 12 medals…

Michael Phelps, Lindsey Vonn, Natalie Coughlin, Mia Hamm and Michelle Kwan headline the 2022 U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Hall of Fame class. The first class to be inducted since 2019 also includes an Olympic team (the 1976 U.S. women's swimming 4x100m freestyle relay), a coach (Pat Summitt), two legends (Alpine skier Gretchen Fraser and…

Erriyon Knighton, who last year at age 17 broke Usain Bolt junior sprint records, shattered his own U20 record in the 200m and became the fourth-fastest man in history on Saturday. Knighton clocked 19.49 seconds in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the world's fastest time since the 2012 Olympics, to move behind Bolt (19.19 world record), Yohan…

They've called recent months the Great Resignation but, perhaps, Sir Jason Kenny has pulled off the'greatest resignation' yet. Sports stars often aspire to that prized idiom of'quitting while ahead', though in truth very few actually achieve it, expectation and reality rarely aligning. Kenny has ticked in the box - and in some style, though he…

The Association of National Olympic Committees held their Tokyo 2020 award ceremony over the weekend to honour some of the top athletes who competed at the Olympics. The committee gave out 9 main awards including the Best Female Athlete of Tokyo award, which went to Canadian swimmer Maggie MacNeil. MacNeil swam her way to an Olympic gold medal in…

After a dramatic evacuation from Taliban-held Kabul and a secret operation to fly him to Tokyo, Afghan Paralympian Hossain Rasouli beat the odds on Tuesday to compete in the long jump. It was not the event he had been expecting to contest, after qualifying for the 100m T47, but then just about everything in his world was turned upside down with the…

Day five brought three more medals for Team GB in Tokyo, with swimmer Tom Dean making history in the pool and Charlotte Dujardin in the dressage. Dean, 21, became the first British male swimmer to claim two golds at the same Olympics in 113 years after he and his teammates won the 200m freestyle relay. The 21-year-old, along with Duncan Scott, 24,…

The 1948 Summer Olympic Games officially known as the Games of the XIV Olympiad were held from July 29 to August 14, 1948 in London, United Kingdom. Following a 12-year interruption caused by the outbreak of World War II, these were the 11th occurrence of the modern Olympic Games. It was the second hosted by London, having previously hosted in…

Pita Taufatofua, the Tongan flag bearer who went viral for his shirtless, oiled-up Opening Ceremony entrances in Rio and PyeongChang, said he has qualified for a third straight Olympics. Taufatofua won an Oceania continental Olympic taekwondo qualifier. He benefited from there being just one other entrant in his weight division for the one…

A look at the Stockholm-Åre 2026 Winter Olympic bid ahead of the IOC's vote on Monday to choose the host city … By the stats, Sweden is a very deserving Winter Olympic host candidate. It owns the most Winter Games gold medals (61, according to Olympic historians) of any nation yet to host a Winter Olympics and the second-most total medals of…

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - In the end, it was a tale of two Games. The yin and yang Olympics, one of stark contrasts between the feats on the field of play, and regrettable actions off it. Staged despite a lack of funds, deep recession and social turmoil, Rio de Janeiro unfurled South America's first Olympic Games hoping against hope that the power…

Alev Kelter and Team USA women's rugby begins its quest for a medal with sevens matches against Fiji and Colombia on Saturday. Kelter, the women's Olympic hockey hopeful who became a USA rugby mainstay in quick fashion, will see her Pool A match take place in the morning before meeting Colombia in the afternoon. 10:00 a.m.: France vs. Spain (Pool…

Put Nairo Quintana down for the Tour de France and the Rio Olympics next year. "I'll do both Tour and the Olympics," Quintana said, according to Cycling Weekly. Quintana, 25, finished second to Chris Froome in the 2013 and 2015 Tours de France and won the 2014 Giro d'Italia. The 2016 Tour de France, covering three weeks and usually 2000 miles, will…