Bans on transgender women in international swimming and rugby this week opened the door for track and field to consider following suit in what could turn into a wave of policy changes in Olympic sports.
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Australian basketball great Lauren Jackson is set to rejoin the national team at the age of 41 in a bid for another world championship medal.
Jackson, a seven-time WNBA All-Star who led Australia to a world championship title in 2006 and won four Olympic medals, hasn’t played for the Opals for nine years but was tempted to return for a women's World Cup on home soil in September.
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Italy’s Thomas Ceccon set a world record in the men’s 100 backstroke and Katie Ledecky claimed yet another gold at the swimming world championships on Monday.
Ceccon stunned the competition in Budapest by clocking 51.60 seconds to shave 0.15 seconds off the previous best mark set by American Ryan Murphy at the 2016 Olympics.
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Katie Ledecky started the United States’ medal collection at the world swimming championships with a gold by reclaiming her title in the women’s 400 meters on Saturday.
The Americans finished the first day of racing with two gold, one silver and three bronze.
ADELAIDE, Australia (AP) — Cody Simpson was part of the entertainment lineup in the buildup for the last Commonwealth Games.
He’ll be on the program again for the 2022 edition, this time as a member of Australia’s swim team.
The Champagne showers from Team Australia’s Season 2 championship have barely dried and SailGP is already starting another dash for $1 million in cash.
The third season of tech tycoon Larry Ellison’s global league begins this weekend on the turquoise waters of Bermuda’s Great Sound.
BRISBANE, Australia (AP) — IOC president Thomas Bach was in Brisbane on Saturday for the first time since the Queensland state capital was awarded the 2032 Olympics.
Bach flew into Australia last weekend to attend a testimonial dinner for outgoing Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates and spent this past week visiting several Pacific island countries.
Han Xu feels much more comfortable in her second WNBA stint with the New York Liberty.
The 6-foot-10 center from China missed the last two WNBA seasons. She stayed in China amid COVID-19 lockdowns and training for the Olympics.
SYDNEY (AP) — Ian Chesterman has moved up from vice president to president after voting was held Saturday to replace departing Australian Olympic Committee chief John Coates.
Chesterman defeated former Olympic swimmer Mark Stockwell 67-26 in the vote held during the AOC's annual general meeting.
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Seven-time LPGA major winner Karrie Webb has been nominated to captain Australia's golfers at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Golf Australia said Friday that Webb would replace 1991 British Open winner Ian-Baker Finch, who captained Australia at the sport's inaugural appearance at Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and again at Tokyo 2020.
John Landy, an Australian runner who dueled with Roger Bannister to be the first person to run a four-minute mile, has died. He was 91.
Landy's family on Saturday said the former athlete, who also became governor of Australia's Victoria state, had died at his home in Castlemaine after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease.
Zhou Jun remembers the run-up to the 2008 Summer Olympics, when it seemed like everyone was learning English to be able to communicate with the foreign visitors about to descend on the city.
Athletes and foreign fans roamed the city throughout the Games.
BEIJING (AP) — The Latest on the Beijing Winter Olympics:
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The International Olympic Committee says there will be no repercussions for the Ukrainian skeleton athlete who flashed a small sign urging peace in his homeland at the end of a run.
ZHANGJIAKOU, China (AP) — Ayumu Hirano saved his best for last. By doing so, the Japanese rider might have saved snowboarding from a good, old-fashioned judging mess.
Hirano linked his trendsetting, once-thought-impossible triple-cork trick to four more rock-solid jumps to win gold on the Olympic halfpipe Friday.
ZHANGJIAKOU, China (AP) — Shaun White bent down to one knee, set his snowboard on its edge and raised his left hand toward the sky.
The crowd, never huge to begin with in this pandemic era, had thinned to four or five dozen — most of them who knew him, or loved him, or had been around over the past 20 years to watch him take snowboarding on a wild ride to the Olympics and beyond.
BEIJING (AP) — The last time Australia won an Olympic medal in a sliding sport? That would be never.
Never even been close, with the country’s best result in any bobsled, skeleton or luge race being a 10th-place showing in 2010.
ZHANGJIAKOU, China (AP) — When bad things happen at the Olympics, no one ever lets it go.
Nobody’s learned that lesson the hard way more than Lindsey Jacobellis.
A full 16 years and a world removed from the day the American snowboardcross racer gave away the gold medal with a showboat move near the finish line, Jacobellis rode hard to the end and won it.
ZHANGJIAKOU, China (AP) — Australian snowboarder Scotty James calls the process of perfecting his signature trick on the halfpipe akin to a right-handed person “trying to write a thesis with your left hand.”
BRISBANE, Australia (AP) — Fiji’s national women’s rugby team is set to join Australia’s Super W league in the 2022 season.
The Fijiana will be based in Australia and play against Australia’s five Women’s Super Rugby franchises as preparation for the Women’s World Cup, which kicks off in October in New Zealand.
There is a photograph from the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics that captured curling fans’ hearts worldwide. In it, Canadian curler John Morris and American rival Matt Hamilton sit side by side, arms draped around each others’ shoulders, grinning faces inches apart, beer cans mid-clink.
BEIJING (AP) — Just because he made an early exit from the Olympic mixed doubles curling tournament doesn’t mean the week has been a waste for American Chris Plys.
Although the second-time Olympian failed to qualify for the playoffs in the two-person, coed event in Beijing, Plys is also in the men's field — one of a handful of curlers with a second chance at a medal.
BEIJING (AP) — The Latest on the Beijing Winter Olympics:
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The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations says China’s selection of a Uyghur athlete to help deliver the Olympic flame in Beijing was an attempt by Chinese officials to “distract” from global attention on its human rights violations.
ZHANGJIAKOU, China (AP) — Jakara Anthony doesn't watch anyone race before her. She avoids glancing at any scores, too.
The approach keeps the stress away and frees her up to ski like this: to a gold medal.
BEIJING (AP) — After getting a devastating morning phone call that she had tested positive for COVID-19, Tahli Gill and her Australian mixed doubles curling teammate Dean Hewitt were out of the Beijing Olympics.
BEIJING (AP) — The land of the long white cloud has its first gold medal in Winter Olympics history.
Zoi Sadowski Synnott of New Zealand threw down a thrilling run on her last trip down the Secret Garden Olympic Slopestyle course on Sunday to claim the gold medal for her island nation.
His collar turned up against the cold, the head of the International Olympic Committee looked out over the stadium and spoke of the ideals that had brought together athletes from all over the world.
BEIJING (AP) — Chinese President Xi Jinping declared the Winter Olympics open Friday night, inviting the world back — sort of — for the pandemic era’s second Games, this time as an emboldened and more powerful nation whose government’s authoritarian turn provoked some countries’ leaders to stay home.
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Alone among his fellow European Union leaders, Poland's president was in Beijing Friday for the Winter Olympics opening in what his office said was a bid to maintain good ties with China and lobby for an easing of Russia-Ukraine tensions.
ZHANGJIAKOU, China (AP) — Before her qualifying round, moguls skier Jaelin Kauf put on a pair of necklaces — one silver, the other gold — custom-made by her mom.
Then, she went out and put herself in the mix for more hardware this weekend.
Dan Hicks had a short drive from his home to NBC Sports headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut, the past two years to call the French Open and some World Cup skiing events. He didn't imagine he would be doing it for an Olympics, though.
SYDNEY (AP) — In a sunburned country, with no ice to call their own, Australian curlers Tahli Gill and Dean Hewitt were left to practice their sport’s legendary sweeping in the most ironic of places: Their kitchens.
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Even as he was being ejected from the Australian Open for wearing a white T-shirt with a “Where is Peng Shuai?” slogan in black letters, Max Mok saw an opportunity to amplify the message of concern for the Grand Slam doubles champion and Olympian from China whose well-being has come into question.
SYDNEY (AP) — Australia will send 44 athletes to the Winter Olympics beginning Feb. 4 in Beijing — 23 women and 21 men in 10 disciplines.
The Australian Olympic Committee said Monday that snowboarder Scotty James and mogul skier Britt Cox will compete at their fourth Olympics, joining just six other Australians to compete at four or more Winter Games.
ASPEN, Colo. (AP) — On a private halfpipe in Switzerland, Scotty James schemed for the future.
The location became his own secret lab, t he Australian snowboarder joked, where he was free to experiment with new tricks and combinations, and keep everything under the radar.
BEIJING (AP) — Former NBA great Yao Ming said Monday he and others had a pleasant talk when they met last month with Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai, whose disappearance after making a sexual assault allegation against a former government official raised international concern.
Shaun White finished third at the Laax Open in Switzerland, marking his first podium finish since he won his third Olympic gold medal in 2018 and all but cementing his spot at next month's games in Beijing.
The nicknames are retired. The mop of red hair that once served as Shaun White's signature look more than a decade ago is long gone.
The torch the now 35-year-old snowboarding icon carried so capably for so long since his first gold-medal-winning run down the halfpipe in Torino 16 years ago has been picked up by a series of newcomers who grew up watching him.
The Beijing Winter Olympics are fraught with potential hazards for major sponsors, who are trying to remain quiet about China's human rights record while protecting at least $1 billion they've collectively paid to the IOC.