Category Archives: Olympics

Paris 2024 Olympics: Parisian landmarks to serve as competition venues

The city last hosted in 1924, and it received these Olympics in 2017 as part of a double award with Los Angeles, which will host in 2028.

Sandy Hooper, USA TODAY

Notice that Shaun White said he was training for what would be his fifth Olympic Games, not his last one.

The three-time gold medalist said Tuesday he has no idea whether Beijing will be the end of his Olympic career. Hes said that before, only to find himself back in the halfpipe at the next Winter Games.

I always say it might be just because thats how it feels. And then time keeps moving on and Im thinking, 'Gosh, Im feeling pretty good, Im motivated, Im excited, and then boom! Im at the next one, the 35-year-old said Tuesday during an appearance at the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees media summit for the Beijing Games.

So I wouldnt count the next one out after this.

After winning gold again in Pyeongchang, Whites original plan for this quadrennium was the Summer Olympics. Hes equally successful as a skateboarder, and the idea of competing in his other sport when it made its Olympic debut in Tokyo was appealing.

But when the Tokyo Games were delayed by a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, White decided he didnt want to hurt his chances for Beijing by trying for Tokyo.

Am I ready to walk away from snowboarding yet? And I just wasnt, White said of the decision. So I obviously switched gears, focus, everything back to the winter sports, and its so exciting. I cant believe were … back at it again. But it feels really good.

MORE: What Simone Biles learned from the Tokyo Olympics

MORE: COVID protocols will be strict for 2022 Beijing Olympics

Shortly after White announced that decision, in March 2020, the world effectively shut down because of COVID. Trips he would normally make to Australia and New Zealand to train werent possible because of travel restrictions.

He couldnt even get into Canada to see girlfriend Nina Dobrev, who was filming a movie there.

I tried! I was turned around, White said. I said 'Look, come on! I was at the Olympics here, you remember! I cut my hair.

Despite the disruptions it caused, White said he grew to appreciate the unexpected downtime he had during the early days of COVID. Instead of his time being consumed by training, commitments to sponsors or media interviews, he got to spend time with his family and friends.

He discovered he was handy around the house, even convincing Dobrev that they should paint their place themselves.

When youre forced out of that churn of the daily obligations and plans and all these things, youre stuck with this stillness. Gosh, I really appreciated that lesson and I think Ive carried that on with me, where Im really content where Im at, White said.

I found a lot of (contentment) during that time period. Once things started to open up again, I just felt like I still have that stillness, he added. I think Im just operating on a level of appreciation just to be back here at this.

Dobrev plays a big role in that.

White and The Vampire Diaries actress began dating in early 2020. Asked about her Tuesday, White talked about this beautiful relationship Im in.

Nina is incredible. What an influence on my life, he said. She runs her own show and her own world and companies she's involved in and things she's producing, all this stuff going on, and holds me to the same high standard, which is so wonderful to have in a partner.

Shes also a pretty good snowboarder herself.

White said hes not the best teacher or explainer of how to snowboard. Their first ride together, he took off and, when he turned around, discovered Dobrev wasnt behind him. He figured she had fallen, and was trying to decide whether he needed to hike back up the mountain to find her.

Turns out, she had passed him.

She was way faster than me! White said.

I told her, I was like, `I dont know how the field is for Bulgaria, you may have a shot. Just saying. Just saying, White said, referring to the country where Dobrev was born. Last-minute entry, Nina Dobrev, Bulgaria.

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Will this be Shaun White's last Winter Olympics? Maybe. Or maybe not. - USA TODAY

NBC Bay Area will host an eventtocelebrate 100 days until the start of theBeijing Winter Olympic Games on Wednesday, October 27, 2021 from 11 a.m. to noon at the Union Square Ice Rink in San Francisco.

The event will bestreamed live onnbcbayarea.com.

NBC Bay Area anchor Janelle Wang will emcee the ceremony to honor local heroes who have shown exceptional courage and strength during the past year to help Chinatown and the greater community with essential services during the COVID-19 pandemic, including providing safety for the elderly.

The media event marks 100 days until the start of the Winter Games and is hosted by NBC Bay Area to inform the public of the much-anticipated Beijing Winter Olympics The location was selected for its proximity to Chinatown and for the opportunity to showcase Winter Olympic alumni, community heroes, figure skaters and cultural performances.

The event will also feature a performance by the Yerba Buena Figure Skating team and "LionDanceME," a traditional Chinese lion dance troupe.

The ceremony will include remarks from Supervisor Aaron Peskin, representing District 3, which includes Chinatown, Fisherman's Wharf, and Union Square, CA State Assemblymembers Phil Ting and David Chiu, and San Francisco Chamber of Commerce president Rodney Fong, whose family has deep roots in Chinatown and Fishermans Wharf.

The media event is not open to the public.

The event will bestreamed live onnbcbayarea.com. NBC Bay Area is the Bay Area's exclusive home for the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, February 4 to 20, 2022.

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100 Days to the Beijing Winter Olympics - NBC Bay Area

Special Olympics athlete Chris Nikicbecame the first man with Down syndrome to complete an Ironman triathlon when he finished the grueling race last November at Panama City Beach.

The Maitland resident's mantra of becoming "1%better every day" struck a chord with many people and put a spotlight on how Special Olympics can help individuals with disabilitiesfind inclusion and acceptance through athletics.

A race later this month in Pensacola will benefit Special Olympics Florida, providing the funding that helps athletes like Nikic to reach their dreams.

The Pensacola Race for Inclusion, whichis open to both people with and without disabilities, aims toraise awareness toward ending discrimination against people with intellectual disabilities.

The 5K walk/run on Oct. 30 is one of many local and regional fundraisers to help in the organization's nine-month campaign to provide a more welcoming and inclusive society.

Damien McNeil, regional director for the Northwest region with Special Olympics Florida, sees thefundraiser as a way to both benefit Special Olympics and help people with disabilities be included and feel part of a community.

"Many of these people with intellectual developmental disabilities don't have a lot of outlets," McNeil said. "The Special Olympics is truly one of the very few outlets that they have to engage with the community in meaningful ways. So that's really our goal, is just to be that bridge and help provide awareness for these people."

Making Pensacola Beach more accessible: What would make Pensacola Beach more accessible for people with disabilities?

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The money raised will benefit Special Olympics, allowing the organization to provide health care screenings and programs, as well asdental and psychiatric screenings.

It will also fund the sports that happen year-round for athletes. There are upwards of 20 sports going on in any community where athletes must train, travel, stay in hotels, pay for food and cover other related costs. Special Olympics pays for everything, which is funded by these fundraisers.

All of that ensuresSpecial Olympic athletes have the same opportunities to find an outlet and know they are capable of doing anything they set their sights on.

"They just want to be treated exactly the same as you and me and that's truly the No. 1 thing that I see," McNeil said. "They just want the same opportunities that you and I have. That's a big part of what we do, is we are attempting to provide any resource we can to help them progress and have access to those same opportunities."

The Pensacola Race for Inclusion starts at 8 a.m. Oct. 30 at Bayview Park. Registration the day of the race starts at 6:30 a.m. The race is open to the public and will include a free race for children under age 8 featuring local mascots.

Prior registrants can pick up their race packets between 3 and 6 p.m. Oct. 29 at Running Wild, 3012 E. Cervantes St.

For more information and to sign up, visitspecialolympicsflorida.org

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Pensacola Race for Inclusion aims to end discrimination against people with disabilities - Pensacola News Journal

ATHENS The world is filled with problems, and while there are always good ideas and solutions floating around, it is a tragic fact that the latter seldom see the light of day, let alone implementation. Thankfully, there are people who emerge to spearhead movements that result in real change. In these complex days, one of them is Theotoki Titi Ntolaptsi, Founding President of OlympicoVision.

Among the disruptions caused by the COVID pandemic was postponement of the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo which brought the issues of the modern Olympic movement into the spotlight including new calls for the Summer Olympics to be permanently hosted in Greece. That is the cause championed by OlympicoVision, which was established on December 8, 2020.

Ntolaptsi told The National Herald that she is picking up the ball tossed into play in 1976 by Konstantinos Karamanlis when he was prime minister. He wrote to then-president of the International Olympic Committee, Lord Killanin about the idea, but the IOC said the idea was unacceptable, arguing that the principles of the Olympic spirit impose its dissemination in all countries and their permanent performance in one country would be an obstacle to the widespread dissemination of Olympic ideals, according to the group's website, http://www.olympicovision.com.

Ntolaptsi has a strong response: while Greece will be the Permanent Host Country, a different country would be the organizer each time, putting its cultural stamp and infusing its national flavor into the games. She said, while those countries won't be making money off ticket sales, they will benefit from the prestige of the games and the projection of that country's image around the world, though their association with the renaissance of the Olympic games.

This is the ideal time, she said, when a pandemic and economic crisis has disrupted the whole planet, when it became clearer than ever that even rich countries which will have new post-pandemic priorities struggle with Olympic cost and debt.

It must also be noted that the Olympics have lost their glamor and charm through the years. There are even movements being formed against the Games the bonds of Olympism have weakened and the games have lost their role of bringing people together.

Because that goal is now more important than ever, she believe the Olympics, which have become mired in politics and commercialism, must return to the principles of Olympism and where can that happen? Here in our country. They must return here.

OlympicoVision currently has a three-person Board: Ntolaptsi is the president, Lamprini Poligeni is Vice president, and Effrosyni Kitzoglou serves as secretary.

Among the influencers who have embraced the idea is Paul Glastris, editor-in-chief of Washington Monthly, who has devoted numerous interviews on the topic in the podcasts of the Hellenic American Leadership Council (HALC). But he emphasizes that if the Greek Government and party leaders don't make the demand, and if the media does not promote the issue, the goal will not be achieved.

Again, Ntolapsi has a response: For this reason, we will strive with all our might and in the most dynamic way to attract the interest of the world public opinion with the collaboration of celebrities, Greeks and foreigners, academics, artists, scientists, Olympians and all prominent figures of international culture but mainly with the support of all citizens, in order to convince the competent bodies that our proposal is moving in the right direction as the time has come for the Olympic Games Institution to be renewed and reborn in its place of birth.

Since OlympicoVision's official registration as a culture body of the Ministry of Culture in 2021, Ntolaptsi has met with many current and former minsters and elected officials and leaders organizations in Greece, including AHEPA. Letters have been sent to all member of Parliament, as well as mayors throughout the country, and she has also given numerous interviews.

With origins in an agricultural family in the region of Drama, she and her brother accompanied their parents when they emigrated to Germany. She returned to Greece for university studies in psychology on Crete. Her first job demanded more administrative than clinical work, which disappointed her but the experience prepared her for her then-unexpected future, including running for parliament with the Potami party.

Because it was her first exposure to politics, she felt she needed to present herself to the public by undertaking community initiatives, such the organization `Invitation to Prevention' which organized doctors to offer free medical tests to citizens in cooperation with municipalities, churches, and societies all over Greece, especially remote areas like the island of Patmos. They also distributed food to the needy.

She impressed leaders in New Democracy, who invited her to join the now-governing party.

The National Herald

DISPORA INTEREST AND GRASS ROOTS EFFORTS VITAL TO THE ENDEAVOR

One of the ways to nudge the IOC is to mobilize grass roots efforts by Hellenes and Philhellenes thought the Diaspora. Existing organizations and newly formed committees would lobby their local Olympic committees, supplementing communications with the IOC.

Indeed, the idea has often come up among members of influential Diaspora organizations in the past and today they could add their numbers, political strength, and funds to the effort.

We see there is interest in the Diaspora and their support is very important for our mission, she said, adding, we want to create an international current of supporters who will project the idea into the public space.

She is even hopeful of gaining the support of President Joe Biden, perhaps the most philhellenic occupant of the White House in the past century.

We must visit Dispora Greeks, and we must get to know each other. We will inform them and stay in touch with them. Yes, it is a difficult challenge, but as we discuss it, we strengthen the movement and it will bring us to the negotiating table.

Europe, the United States, Canada, and Australia are on her list of places to visit. As president of OlympicoVision, wherever I am invited, I will go to talk about our mission.

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An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Bring the Olympics Home - The National Herald

On Friday, Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles reflected on her decision to withdraw from the Tokyo Olympics this year to focus on her mental health during an Instagram Q&A with her fans. Now 24-years-old, Biles said that she would never have been able to put herself first as a teenager.

What Olympic moment has marked you the most in your career? asked a follower.

Biles replied, 2021. having the courage to take care & put myself first. 16 yr old simone would never.

During 2020's Summer Games in Tokyo, Biles came down with the twisties, meaning she was becoming disoriented while up in the air during her routines. This can be a deadly issue, because a gymnast moves at high speeds and could easily land in an incredibly damaging position if their body and mind are not in sync. Biles removed herself from four out of five event finals to focus on getting her mental health back on track.

This year, Biles was also dealing with the very public trial against convicted child abuser Larry Nassar, a former doctor who was given charge of Biles and a number of other prominent Olympic athletes. Biles testified at his trial about her own abuse and the complicity of the system that allowed him access to so many girls for so long.

I blame Larry Nasser, and I also blame an entire system that enabled and perpetrated [sic] his abuse, she said. If you allow a predator to harm children, the consequences will be swift and severe.

In Tokyo, Biles still took home a bronze medal in the balance beam final and a silver medal in Team USA's all-around final.

She told People in August that it's been a really challenging year to say the least, but it has also allowed her to live more honestly.

Sometimes when we speak on these things, then we become the face of it. I'm not sure if I'm completely ready for that aspect of it, she said. Over the years, obviously, since I've been so dominant everybody supports the gymnastics and praised me for what I've done in the gym and not really outside. Then once I took a step back, I obviously was expecting to feel a lot of backlash and embarrassment. But it's the complete opposite. That's the first time I felt human. Besides Simone Biles, I was Simone, and people kind of respected that.

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Simone Biles Reflects On Withdrawal From Tokyo Olympics - ELLE.com

Grab your magnifying glass and get ready to investigate as Mashable uncovers Big/Little Mysteries.

Who doesn't like a good fictional detective? The genre, which sprang out of nowhere in the 19th century, has become arguably our most enduringly popular over the last 120 years. Sherlock Holmes spawned armies of imitators, many with quirks as curious as his coke habit. The amateur sleuth begat the PI, the superhero detective, and more police inspectors, pathologists and lieutenants than you can shake a rumpled trenchcoat at.

Personally, my tolerance for detective fiction is limited. I can take a story or an episode at a time but in a binge watch or binge read, the unreality of endless mysteries leaves me cold. How many murders are taking place in this sleepy town? What grim dystopia is this, with crime rates far higher than our real-world average? Why we love paranoia-inducing stories about nice people turning out to be stone-cold killers: this itself is a mystery.

But hey, since we're apparently never going to lose the cultural obsession, why not lean in and celebrate the bload-soaked ridiculousness of it all? What follows is a kind of fictional detective Olympics. Here we award medals to the meddling kids and other gumshoes who achieved the most unrealistic superlatives: worked for the most decades, solved the most cases, found themselves dealing with the most inexplicably large body count over their inexplicably long careers.

We examined dozens of beloved and historically important detectives from TV, movies, books and comics over the last 180 years. Our definition of detective: a main character who investigates crimes. Yes, Batman fans, this includes the superhero who got his start in Detective Comics and styles himself the "world's greatest detective;" whether his Olympic performance lives up to the hype remains to be seen.

Where a detective is popular in multiple media, which is pretty much all of the heavy hitters, we've entered the version with the most stories or episodes into consideration. (For example, Agatha Christie wrote 88 novels, plays and short stories featuring Hercules Poirot, which beats the 77 episodes of the Poirot TV show.)

But let's begin at the beginning, with a winner you've probably never heard about.

Gold medal: C. Auguste Dupin (1841). Silver: Sherlock Holmes (1880). Bronze: Father Brown (1910).

Timeline featuring a sample of our contenders: Detective books and shows are a mostly 20th-century phenomenon.Credit: BOb Al-Greene / Mashable

Sorry, Sherlockians. Arthur Conan Doyle may have created the best-known detective in history (with 60 stories and novels to his name, plus dozens of TV adaptations and movies), but an American author got there first.

Edgar Allan Poe wrote his short story "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" in 1841, in which a Frenchman named C. Auguste Dupin methodically solves the grisly killings of a mother and daughter in a room that was locked from the inside. That plot isn't the only element that sounds like it was ripped from today's crime dramas: there are also clueless police officers, a wrongful arrest, and a twist ending. (Spoiler alert: An orangutan did it.)

These days, Poe's pilot would have networks scrambling to pick it up for a full season. As it was, he penned just two more Dupin tales before he died. But the stories influenced Conan Doyle, as well as fellow Victorian author G.K. Chesterton, who created the crime-solving Catholic priest Father Brown (53 stories, expanded to 80 by a BBC adaptation in 2012).

What's way before Watson? Brother Cadfael (left, played by Derek Jacobi in the ITV adaptation)Credit: ITV PLC

Honorable mention: Shout-out to Cadfael, a murder-solving monk from the 12th century. He's far from the first in our world (Historian Edith Pargeter, writing as Ellis Peters, created him in 1977). But he is first in the fictional timeline of detectives, beating Friar William of Baskerville (played by Sean Connery in The Name of the Rose) by all of two centuries.

The Hardy Boys in their very first adventure, 1927. Franklin Dixon is a pseudonym for many authors over the years.Credit: penguin group

Gold medal: Frank & Joe Hardy (94 years). Silver: Nancy Drew (91 years). Bronze: Dick Tracy (90 years).

Here's the first event where you might expect Batman, created 82 years ago and still not looking a day over 30, to romp to victory. Bad news, Bats: There are four detectives as ageless as you, who started life before you did, and have also been solving crimes constantly ever since. Some small consolation for Bruce Wayne: he comes in fourth rather than fifth, because two of the characters ahead of him are effectively joined at the hip.

We speak of course of the Hardy Boys, those forever adolescent sleuths from the fictional town of Bayport. Their multiple book series' began in 1927, and haven't slowed down since; even in the 21st century, Hardy Boys adventures sell more than a million copies a year. Nancy Drew was created by the same publisher in 1930, and has also starred in endless books, some of them co-starring her elder crime-fighting brethren. But Nancy was no mere knock-off. She went on to appear in more TV and movie adaptations than the relatively bland brothers, and became far more of a cultural icon.

And then there's Dick Tracy, the daily comic strip character created by Chester Gould in 1931. One of the earliest fictional police detectives, Tracy was created as an homage to real-life Chicago investigator Eliot Ness. But he soon became known for his array of crime-fighting technology, years before Batman arrived on the scene. And as if to rub it in the Caped Crusader's face, Tracy's most famous gadget actually anticipated the future. That two-way wristwatch radio is very Apple Watch.

Retired and loving it: David Suchet, the longest-running Poirot on screen.Credit: lwt / photoshot / getty images

Gold medal: Hercules Poirot (59 years). Silver: Sherlock Holmes (34 years). Tied for bronze: Philip Marlowe and Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins (29 years).

Sometimes, fictional detectives actually grow old and die even when their age stretches beyond the bounds of reason.

Case in point: Hercules Poirot. Agatha Christie's fastidious Belgian investigator first appeared in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, published in 1920 but set in 1916. A World War I refugee, Poirot was already supposed to be retired at this point. But he went on to assist the British police (and to solve murders whenever he went on vacation, on the Orient Express, on the Nile) for decades in real time until the publication of Curtain in 1975, where Christie finally killed off the detective she'd come to loath. "What a mistake I made there," the author said of Poirot's first retirement, admitting that it made him well over 100 years old at his death.

At least Christie wasn't forced to bring her creation back. That was famously the fate of Conan Doyle, who bowed to public pressure and brought Sherlock Holmes back after sending him to his apparent death at Reichenbach Falls in 1893. Holmes would go on to investigate cases through His Last Bow, a series of stories set during his retirement. Though we never see Holmes' actual death, His Last Bow ends in 1914.

We also never saw the ends of our bronze medalist book detectives, Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe and Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins. Mosley, at least, is still alive, and once suggested he'd bring Rawlins' story (which so far covers 1939 through 1968) closer to the present day. If he does, Rawlins America's most famous African American detective could slide past Marlowe in the longevity stakes, moving up to challenge the most famous detective of all.

Munch and Benson: Longest careers, TV detective subcategory.Credit: Will hart / NBC universal

Honorable mentions: On the television side of detective life, we must give shout-outs to Olivia Benson and John Munch. The two stars of the Law & Order franchise have recently become the longest-lasting prime-time TV characters of all time. Benson wins, with an astonishing 505 episodes to her credit since she first hit our screens in 1999.

Meanwhile, the Baltimore-based Munch (370 episodes) has the distinction of appearing in more series than any other detective ever. He began in Homicide in 1993, and now you can catch him in shows as varied as The Wire, X-Files and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

"Excuse me, Mr. Olympic Judge, just one more thing. Are you aware that your gold medalist ... is a killer?"Credit: NBCUniversal via Getty Images

Gold medal: Dexter Morgan (138). Silver: Lt. Frank Columbo (92). Bronze: Adrian Monk (82).

Again, Batman should romp to victory in this category. He's been around for roughly 2,500 issues in various comic book titles; even if the average is way less than one murder per issue, there must have been many hundreds of killings coming to the Dark Knight's attention in Gotham during all that time.

But any judge of a fictional detective Olympics will run into a couple of problems here. The first is that Batman has been rebooted enough times in the comics (in 1956, 1986 and 2011, we literally started following alternate universe Bruce Waynes) that you're not sure which Batman we're dealing with. The second is that no reader, to our knowledge, has ever take on the daunting task of reading every Batman comic and counting the number of murders.

The same holds true for Batman rival Dick Tracy and his decades of appearances. So until a comics nerd can come forward and give us definitive body counts, we are reluctantly forced to disqualify them both.

In their absence, the gold medal goes to a vigilante detective who's actually creating the body count himself: Dexter. (The character is about to return to Showtime, so expect this number to climb.) Columbo racked up an impressive 92 murders solved in his decade on screen, and Monk comes in third with 82. Though given that Monk had less time on TV (7 years) and lived in San Francisco, which is smaller than Columbo's LA or Dexter's Miami, you could say Monk has solved the most city murders per capita.

But, uh, just one more thing. Neither of them hold a candle to the most blood-soaked TV detective of all time, a resident of the tiny fictional Maine town of Cabot Cove.

Don't let the smile fool you. Jessica Fletcher has solved more confirmed killings than any other detective, real or fictional.Credit: CBS via Getty Images

Gold medal: Jessica Fletcher (274). Silver: Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby (210). Bronze: Father Brown (71).

Step forward to receive your medal, Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury), star of Murder She Wrote. In fact, we could easily give her two gold medals. The 274 slayings she solved over 268 episodes isn't just a TV record. It's also a per capita record. Cabot Cove has a mere 3,500 residents, which according to one calculation, gives it a murder rate more than twice that of the most murderous countries in the world.

Solving this many murders in a small town likely puts Fletcher ahead of any other detective in the world, living or dead, real or fictional. She has a good claim to be the world's greatest murder detective. Which begs an unsolved mystery that was occasionally, briefly referenced in the show: how come all these murderers tend to congregate around Fletcher, anyway?

As for the unknown Batman and Dick Tracy murder numbers: Gotham is said to have 10 million residents, and Chicago has nearly 3 million, so even thousands of deaths over those series' would not make their locations as deadly per year as Cabot Cove, 1984-2003.

The silver medal goes to the star of Midsomer Murders, a UK show little known in the U.S. outside of hardcore PBS viewers. Technically, it has starred two consecutive detectives but since Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby's successor was Detective Chief Inspector John Barnaby, his cousin, we're going to give them a Hardy Boys-style pass. Midsomer has been on TV for 24 years and still going strong, which should give the Barnaby boys time to catch up to Fletcher's total body count.

Another case of cloning: The 'Inspector Morse' series (right) was replaced on TV by a prequel about his younger years, 'Endeavour' (left)Credit: ITV PLC

Midsomer is a fictional county roughly the size of Oxfordshire. Which, as we saw in the multiple Inspector Morse series, was pretty murdery in itself. Again, Morse is mostly known to the PBS crowd but as a student in Oxford during the years he was most active on British TV, I can confirm that there are not that many Oxford professors mysteriously falling from bell towers. Midsomer was clocked at murder rates three times higher than the Oxfordshire average.

Ultimately, the case of Cabot Cove and Midsomer's 2.6 murders per episode are prime examples of the strange inversion of detective fiction: the more charmingly rural a location, the more likely it is to kill you. This is why, if you ever enter the alternate universe of murder mysteries and get invited to a country estate for the weekend, you should run as far away as possible.

The LA PI: Denzel Washington as Watts' own Easy Rawlins in "Devil in a Blue Dress" (1995.)Credit: sony pictures

Gold medal: Los Angeles. Silver: New York City. Tied for bronze: London, San Francisco and Miami.

It wouldn't be an Olympics without the opportunity for team sports. When applied to detective fiction, this raises the question: Which city has the largest number of famous fictional detectives?

There's no question about the answer: It's Los Angeles, home of the hardboiled. Columbo, Marlowe and Rawlins all ply their trade in the city of angels, as do Perry Mason, Jim Rockford (The Rockford Files) and Alex Delaware (hero of the Jonathan Kellerman novels). New York City can be proud of its strong showing too, with Olivia Benson and fellow Law & Order franchise star Robert Goren leading the charge alongside other famous fictional detectives like Jessica Jones.

London (Holmes, Poirot), Miami (Dexter, Crockett & Tubbs) and San Francisco (Sam Spade, Adrian Monk) had two famous fictional detectives each in our list, so we're giving them all bronze medals. Each location could make the argument that they deserve more detectives included, but let's leave that debate to the next fictional detective Olympics.

In the meantime, let's give a special global Olympics commendation to Mma Precious Ramotswe of Botswana, star of the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series over the last 23 years. She's the hardest-working detective who doesn't work the mean streets of the U.S. or Europe. And sure, let's give a shout-out to that one lonely contender waving the flag for somewhere called Gotham City. He really did try his hardest.

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Fictional detective Olympics: The oldest, the best, the most murdery - Mashable

CARLSBAD, Calif. - Kaillie Humphries, the world's most successful female bobsled driver, lives an American life with her American husband in an American townhouse on an American cul-de-sac about a mile from the first American Legoland. A Team USA flag flutters beside her front door.

She is the reigning world champion in the monobob and the two-woman bobsled, and she would be among the favorites to win two gold medals at this winter's Beijing Olympics. She could be the next big American Olympic star . . . except she's not a U.S. citizen.

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Humphries, 36, is from Canada, which she represented as she won two gold medals and a bronze in three Olympics before leaving in 2019, a year after filing a complaint alleging verbal and mental harassment by Canada's bobsled coach. And while she since has been allowed to compete for the United States at most international events, the International Olympic Committee requires athletes to be citizens of the countries they represent.

Less than four months before the Winter Games, she is essentially a woman without a country, divorced from a Canadian team with which she says she felt unsafe but unable to get a U.S. passport in part because of laws that require a three-year wait for citizenship by marriage. Because she has been married for just two years, she has been told to expect a passport sometime in 2023.

That leaves Humphries "living in limbo," unsure if she will be competing for gold in Beijing or staying at home in this beach town north of San Diego.

She said she has been offered instant citizenship from other countries, including China. But she doesn't want to represent China or anywhere else.

"The country where I live, where I am married to, where I will get citizenship, I can't compete for because [citizenship] won't come in time," she says.

Story continues

She sighs. She needs to be a citizen by early January to have a shot at Beijing.

"I'm between a rock and a hard place," she says.

Video: Top moments from the Tokyo Olympics

- - -

Tattoos cover Humphries's arms, back and much of her legs. One side of her head is shaved close while the rest of her blond hair flows dramatically past her shoulders. People double-take when she walks into a restaurant for lunch. She looks like an athlete. She is not easy to intimidate.

As a teenager in Calgary, she was a competitive ski racer before leg injuries forced her to give up the sport and eventually turn to bobsled, where she started as a brakeman before switching to driving in 2007. By 2010, she was one of the best drivers in the world, winning gold in the two-woman bobsled at that year's Olympics and then again in 2014.

Using her platform as a top bobsledder, Humphries began pushing to have mixed-gender four-person bobsleds added to the Olympics.

"She's focused and knows what she wants to accomplish," says Aron McGuire, the CEO of USA Bobsled/Skeleton and a former U.S. bobsledder.

Yet even with her success, Humphries has been insecure about her huge, muscle-filled legs, built from years of training. Sometimes she hears people commenting on them when she walks down the street. "Jeans shopping is the worst for me," she says.

She says her tattoos provide armor against that insecurity, each one making her "feel more complete as a person" and giving her power over the worry that her body, made for sports, isn't perfect. Her most recent is the word "strength." It's etched across her hamstring on the back of one leg.

"I feel happier with myself in the way that I look the more [tattoos] I get," she says. "I feel more self-acceptance with each tattoo, and they help me overcome certain stuff."

Sitting on her living-room couch, Humphries looks down at her legs.

"I've always been very strong for a female, and that isn't always looked upon positively," she continues. "Having big muscles can be very masculine, and I can go into a gym, I can hold my own, especially compared to most guys and most other women, and it's not seen as the most feminine or girly.

"It's very important for women to realize there are multiple different types and that beauty exists in those. We're all different. We're all made to be different. We achieve different things, different goals, beliefs, skin color, eye color, hair color, what we like and what we want to portray and how, you know, the body we were given - it can be utilized for good, but we should accept it."

For much of her adult life, Humphries has been trying to understand what it means to fit a certain expectation of a female athlete. She's fiercely competitive, and she knows that often puts people off. She says she can't help her fiery glares and purposeful struts around the weight room. When she was a young ski racer, teammates and competitors avoided hanging out with her. She remembers riding the ski lifts alone - often. She also wasn't close with many of the other Canadian bobsledders.

"Unapologetic" is the word she uses to describe her approach. As a woman in a sport dominated by men, she has come to learn that being "unapologetic" is "a big red flag."

Before the 2010 Winter Olympics, Humphries was part of an anti-bullying campaign in which athletes picked words that had been used against them. Hers was "bitch." For a time, she hated being called that, yet as she has gotten older, she has come to see the power it gives her against competitors.

She thought she was strong; she thought she could recognize bullying.

No way it could happen to her.

Then, she says, it did.

- - -

Bobsledding is a small world, so when Bobsleigh Canada hired Todd Hays as coach in the lead-up to the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics, Humphries had heard some things from sledders in the United States, where Hays had been the women's coach from 2011 to 2014. In a recent interview, one U.S. female bobsledder who competed for Hays described him as "charming" but also an "obsessively controlling" coach who often blew up at sledders and used his 6-foot-3 frame and his "intensity" as intimidation. The sledder spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution.

Still, Humphies said, she was determined to give the coach a chance.

"I like to believe in the good in people," she says.

That changed about a week after Hays started, when Humphries says he yelled at her in a "very public scenario," bringing her to tears. Soon there were more incidents of what she calls "displays of being yelled and screamed at, intimidated, being lorded over and me feeling like I didn't know who I was and being told how to think, how to operate."

The incidents left her "feeling less than human, let alone an athlete."

Hays has denied the allegations to investigators.

Distraught, Humphries went to Bobsleigh Canada leaders a few weeks before the Olympics and asked to be sent home. The leaders, she says, worked out a deal in which Hays would not coach her during the Games, a period she describes as "the best part" of that year. A month after the Olympics, Humphries repeated her concerns about Hays to Bobsleigh Canada President Sarah Storey, who she said told her Hays would remain in his position.

Humphries went home to Carlsbad. Shortly thereafter, she experienced strange headaches and rashes that covered her body. She locked herself in her home, dreading the thought of going back to a coach she feared.

"The thought of having to go through not just another year like that but for a four-year stint, my body and my brain could not comprehend it and it started to freak out," she says.

That July, in a 12-page complaint to Bobsleigh Canada, she alleged verbal and mental abuse by Hays as well as retaliation for reporting her concerns to officials; in the complaint, she described several incidents in which she says Hays berated her. The complaint called for the firings of Hays as well as of Storey and high-performance director Chris Le Bihan for retaining him despite prior complaints.

Bobsleigh Canada hired an independent firm to investigate Humphries's claims, and for the next year, Humphries did not compete for Canada. Hays, Storey and Le Bihan denied her allegations to the investigator, and the report, completed in September 2019, found no evidence to support Humphries's charges.

By then, the relationship between Humphries and Bobsleigh Canada was broken, and she approached U.S. bobsled officials, who told her she was welcome to join as long as she went through the same qualification process as any other new U.S. bobsledder: buying her own sled and earning her way onto the team. She quickly agreed.

She hired Jeffrey Rath, a Calgary attorney, and sued Bobsleigh Canada in September 2019, asking for her release. The organization let her go later that month, days after she married Travis Armbruster, a former U.S. bobsledder. She also appealed the findings of the Bobsleigh Canada report to an arbitrator who, in a ruling this past July, threw out the bulk of the original report, saying the investigator did not thoroughly examine her claims before dismissing them.

Bobsleigh Canada is in the process of commissioning another investigation. Citing that fact, it did not make Hays, Storey or Le Bihan available for comment but did send a statement that said the organization "respects the decision" of the arbitrator to "request a reinvestigation of certain complaints" and that "his decision confirmed that there was no retaliation" by Bobsleigh Canada. The statement added that the organization "denies any breach of policy on its part."

Last year, Hays sued Humphries for defamation, demanding $250,000, claiming that by filing her complaint and then repeating her charges in the media she damaged his reputation and caused him to "lose out on the opportunity to receive a substantially higher salary" from Bobsleigh Canada.

- - -

In her living room, Humphries pulls her Olympic medals from a cloth sack; the clunky, misshapen gold from Vancouver, the gold with the small built-in window from Sochi and the simpler bronze from PyeongChang. She holds them in her palm, each with a story so special she can't pick a favorite.

Even the bronze is precious, she says, because after everything that happened before those Olympics, she feels elated to have won any medal at all.

She lays the medals on an ottoman and looks blankly across the room. In Colorado Springs, McGuire and U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee officials have been fighting to find a way to get her a passport. McGuire said he has begged U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for a solution - even a two-month provisional passport for January and February - and pleaded with the IOC to make an exception.

The IOC, wary of opening a door that might be impossible to close, has been unwilling to grant exceptions to Rule 41 of the Olympic Charter, which says all athletes must be a "national" of the country they represent. In a statement, the IOC acknowledged it "is aware of the case which is being discussed with the [International Bobsleigh & Skeleton Federation] and the USOPC" and then referred to Rule 41.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said "privacy implications" keep it from commenting directly on her case.

The solution does not seem easy.

Humphries puts the medals back in the bag and heads with Armbruster to a beach a few blocks away.

"For the last year, every spare minute has been a conversation about something," Armbruster says, "whether it's about citizenship, the team, the arbitration, finishing up the arbitration, finishing up the other investigation and what did the arbitrator say? [Or the] citizenship test."

He stops, and they fall silent. The citizenship test - they've been preparing for it every night lately, memorizing all 100 questions from which 10 will be randomly selected for the actual quiz, a final step toward becoming a citizen.

Suddenly they start firing questions to each other: "Who was the president during World War I?" "Name three of the original 13 colonies."

On the beach, the sun is setting, dousing the sky in a rosy hue. The color is stunning. Gazing at it, Armbruster says he is optimistic his wife will go to the Olympics.

"You have to be," he says. "Otherwise, what's the point?

"Now maybe it's wishful thinking," he adds. "There are pathways there. If there weren't pathways there, I'd be less hopeful. All we need is one yes."

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Bobsledder Humphries left Canada over alleged abuse. The move might cost her an Olympics. - Yahoo! Voices

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The 2028 Los Angeles Olympics are still nearly seven years away. But the city council has set a self-imposed deadline of November 1 to come up with an agreement with the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee and LA 28, the private nonprofit consortium responsible for running the games as to how the city will host the event. The city, whose outgoing mayor, Eric Garcetti, has been an outspoken supporter of the Olympic bid, has also determined that by that date it will make a decision on whether to expand LAX airport to accommodate the anticipated Olympic crowds. The council is also slated to decide whether to expand a loophole in the Citys housing codes to allow up to 14,000 more short-term rentals in a city that already has a vast number of unhoused residents. Why would the City do this? One answer is that AirBnb is one of the corporate sponsors of the 2028 Olympics.

So far, the negotiations around what the agreement will look like have all been done behind closed doors. There has been no real public input.

Thats not a good thing. In fact, given the amount of financial, housing, and security resources that host cities end up devoting to the Olympics, freezing the public out of discussions like this is an act of extreme hubris. The agreement around the Tokyo games ran to 185 pages; assuming LAs agreement is as detailed, that suggests that an awful lot of big-picture decisions that will affect the citys future are being decided in secret.

Making a bad situation worseand fueling the notion that LAs power brokers are hoping to set the terms for the games out of sight and out of mindthe city has, according to Unite Here Local 11 Copresident Kurt Petersen, stonewalled multiple Public Records Act requests for information from the union. In response to this, Unite Here recently launched a campaign urging the council to delay a vote on the agreement until the public has had more of a say in what it looks like.

Unite HERE represents workers in hotels, airports, and sports stadiumsall of which will, of course, be directly affected by the gamesand it also works closely with housing activists, who fear the Olympics will open up even more of the city to short-term rentals, and will place even greater stresses on the citys dysfunctional housing market. The union fears that absent a public campaign around equity principles, Los Angeles might end up repeating some of the same mistakes made by other recent host cities, such as London. In those instances, residents of poor neighborhoods were displaced to make way for new Olympic infrastructure, and, despite large-scale infusions of public cash, the games didnt generate long-term employment gains. A recent report found that the promised income and lifestyle benefits for residents of Londons East End simply didnt materialize. In Rio de Janeiro, in 2016, roughly 22,000 residents were displaced to make way for the Games. Five years later, the 2021 Games in Tokyo were responsible for the forcible relocation of hundreds of households.

Hoping to convince the city to learn from prior examples, Unite HERE local 11 is pushing for the Olympics agreement to include a binding promise of more long-term, benefited, hospitality industry jobs; for an employment diversity commitment, in which the Olympics organizers promise to hire and retain more African American workers; and for significant investments in housing as part of a larger effort to end the citys staggering homelessness crisis.

Petersen is hopeful that over the coming weeks and months public pressure will be brought to bear on city councilors to lock in place a number of guarantees around housing access, particularly in the period surrounding the Olympics. That, he says, would make him cautiously optimistic about long-term trends and about the ability to modify the Olympic Agreement even after the November 1 deadline has come and gone. But, in the short term, he fears that the 2028 Olympics will end up representing another missed opportunity for progressive change in the City of Angels.

These Olympics should be transformative for Los Angeles in a way that no other city has been able to do, if we focus on housing, on jobs, on inclusion, says Petersen. But, he continues, theres no evidence theyre doing it. Theres a complete lack of vision. It needs a lot more attention. Its a real shame whats happening now.

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The LA Olympics Are Being Planned Behind Closed Doors - The Nation

Connor McDavid:At 24 years old, McDavid has already established himself as the best hockey player on the planet. The Edmonton Oilers captain has been playing at a level rarely seen in the NHL since his rookie campaign, but his performance during the 2020-21 season was nothing short of astonishing. In just 56 games, McDavid logged a ridiculous 105 points (33 goals, 72 assists) en route to winning the Hart Memorial Trophy for the second time in his already illustrious career. McDavid is a hockey phenom, and he'll have a chance to add to his legacy with a strong showing in Beijing.

Sidney Crosby:Years before McDavid's emergence, it was Crosby who was widely considered the top hockey player in the world. The longtime Pittsburgh Penguins captain has done it all he's a three-time Stanley Cup champion and an eight-time NHL All-Star, and he's also won theConn Smythe Trophy, theMaurice "Rocket" Richard Trophy, theArt Ross Trophy and theHart Memorial Trophy two times apiece. Oh, and he's a two-time Olympic gold medalist as well. Barring an injury (which Crosbyhasbeen prone to throughout his career), he'll be looking to add a third gold medal to his Olympic resume this February.

Alex Pietrangelo:There aren't many Canadian defenseman better than Pietrangelo right now, if any. Not long after leading the St. Louis Blues to their first Stanley Cup championship in franchise history,Pietrangelo took his talents to The Strip in Las Vegas and continues to play at a high level.Pietrangelo is no spring chicken at 31 years old (he turns 32 just before the start of the Olympics), but he remains one of hockey's top two-way defensemen and is likely to serve as one of the Canadians' first-pair rearguards.

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Tracking all the NHL players selected to Olympic hockey rosters - NBC Olympics

A column by Len Johnson

No doubt about it: ask any athlete what is the biggest thing in an Olympic year even an Olympic year which wasnt going to be an Olympic year until the Covid-postponement made it one, and they will almost certainly reply: the Olympic Games.

Every athlete wants to do well at an Olympic Games. Unless and until they make a second, third or even fourth Olympic team, it is the most important event of their career. If doing well at an Olympics is the most important thing, then getting to the line in good shape is the second most important and getting in the Olympic team third. Its daylight fourth.

Years ago, American marathon ace Bill Rodgers described the feeling of bombing out at an Olympic Games. Rodgers, arguably the best marathoner in the world from 1975 through to the 1980 Olympics, went to only one Games, Montreal in 1976. Hobbled by an injured foot, he finished a dispiriting 40th.

When Rodgers was in Australia for the 1982 Melbourne marathon. I interviewed him for Australian Runner. Bill always spoke quietly, but when I asked him about his performance in the Games, his hushed tones heightened the sense of the dramatic in his reply.

There is no depression, Rodgers observed, other than the death of a close relative or something, that hits you as hard as having a terrible, terrible race in the Olympics.

Oh well, theres always next time. Right? Wrong, wrong, wrong. Next time, there was US president Jimmy Carter whose ill-advised imposition of a boycott of the Moscow Olympics cost a generation of US athletes their chance to become Olympians. There was still a faux marathon trial for the faux Olympic team which never went, but a devastated Rodgers could not bring himself to run it. By 1984, he was well past his peak. Going to Montreal and gutsing out a terrible, terrible experience had at least made him an Olympian.

Getting to the final camp before the summit is way better than being stuck at base camp, a point we should remember in assessing the performances of our Tokyo 2020-in-2021 Olympians. The Olympics may have been the biggest thing in 2020-21, but they were not the only thing. Terrible, terrible in Tokyo can be mitigated by performances before and after.

Some, of course, had both. High jumper Nicola McDermott, for example, could scarcely have had a better year. She set a national record in making the team for Tokyo, another on the way to the Games and a third in the Olympic final. Only one thing could have improver her year a gold medal, rather than a silver.

Likewise Ashley Moloney, our bronze medallist in the decathlon. Moloney set a national record in Tokyo adding some 157 points to his previous best. At 21, and in his first major outdoor championships, Moloney could scarcely have done better.

Kelsey-Lee Barber, on the other hand, produced a bronze medal in the javelin which had never seemed likely throughout the rest of the year. World champion in Doha in 2019, Barber struggled even to approach the 60-meter mark for most of 2021. Her trajectory was improving as Tokyo drew close, but not steeply enough to suggest she might contend for the medals. But there she was, in the final, roducing a 64.56 final throw to take third place and falling just five centimetres short of the silver medal.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the Australian athletes who had set national records in 2021. Not even all of those had the success they were after in Tokyo. McDermott and Moloney medalled, Peter Bol was outstanding in finishing fourth in the 800 metres and Stewart McSweyn, Linden Hall and Jessica Hull were all finalists. Nina Kennedy and Catriona Bisset, however, could not convert strong seasons into a satisfying Olympic performance.

Nonetheless, each had an outstanding year. Bisset reduced her national record in the 800 to 1:58.09, one of her six sub-2 minute performances for the year (only Tamsyn Manou, with seven in 2000, has exceeded that tally), gained entre into the best of the Diamond League meetings and reached the Diamond League final.

Kennedy had seven competitions at 4.70 or higher, topped by her national record 4.82 at the Sydney Track Classic. Not a bad year, notwithstanding Tokyo. Alana Boyd, fourth in Rio five years ago, had only five competitions over 4.70, but one of them was her 4.80 in the Olympic final.

Sticking with the vault, Kurtis Marschall experienced the good and the bad in Tokyo. Good when, as expected, he qualified for the final; bad terrible, terrible even when he failed to clear a height in said final. He then rode out a couple of ordinary competitions in Europe before closing out his season with an outdoor personal best of 5.82. You cant wipe out a no-height in an Olympic final, but a PB is some consolation.

The reality is that many more athletes will lose at an Olympics than will win. Some will have the consolation of doing better than they had dared hope, or achieving a personal best or doing the best they could do on the day. The thing none of us should do is let a bad Olympics even a terrible, terrible one condemn a whole year as bad.

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The Olympics Might Be The Biggest Thing, But They're Not The Only thing - Runner's Tribe