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The continuing saga of Ryan Lochte’s robbery/not-a-robbery in Rio continued Thursday, with police in Brazil saying he lied about being held up at gunpoint. You can read all the details here. But Lochte’s story brings to mind some great hoaxes and scams in sports history. A look at few of the highlights: The curious case of Sidd Finch In its April 1, 1985, issue, Sports Illustrated ran a story by…

Media captionFootage has been released purportedly showing four US swimmers at a petrol station in Rio Four US Olympic swimmers who said they had been robbed in Rio de Janeiro were not victims of crime, the head of the city’s civil police has said. Fernando Veloso told reporters that one or more of the men had committed an act of vandalism at a petrol station and then offered to pay…

The more I watch of NBC’s primetime Olympic coverage, the more perplexed I am by how bad it is. As I stated last week, the network’s streaming app is a terrific way to watch the Olympics, and its daytime coverage on both NBC and its various cable networks is solid too. But in the primetime hours, NBC reimagines an athletic competition as an episode of Dateline, and it just…

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In five Olympic sports, with medals in 18 events up for grabs, a net separates players from their opponents. In each case, before a point can get underway, someone has to serve. On a crucial point, as you watch the medal rounds of badminton and volleyball this weekend, would you rather see your team start with the ball or shuttlecock in its court or in its opponent’s? I tried to…

reader comments 35 Technology has changed sports by offering things like instant replay and the ability to determine precisely where a ball is relative to lines on the field and court. But these offerings don’t always sit well with players and fans, who may worry about the loss of some human influence on the run of play. It has been said that no technology is value-neutral, that it will—in undetermined…

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Listen, we know it’s tough to catch up on everything happening in the baseball world each morning. There are all kinds of stories, rumors, game coverage and Vines of dudes getting hit in the beans every day. Trying to find all of it while on your way to work or sitting at your desk just isn’t easy. It’s okay, though, we’re going to do the heavy lifting for you each…

The best stories in baseball are easy to find and easier to write about. Jose Altuve is a marvel, and I want to write about him again right now, tomorrow, and the day after that. Steven Wright is keeping the distinguished history of the knuckleball alive, reminding us that baseball is so much stranger than every other sport. And Edwin Diaz’s slider will keep us dry when the oceans rise…

Welcome to today’s daily fantasy post! Remember that you can find our posts on the DFS home page, as well as the fantasy page. Bookmark those sites now! Also, please scroll to the bottom of this article to see the latest tweets from Ryan Fowler (@FOXSportsFowler), D.J. Foster (@FOXSportsFoster), Adam Meyer (@FOXSportsMeyer) and me (@jhalpin37). That way, if information surfaces for any last minute changes, you can see our thoughts instantly….

Today, swimming has more gender mixing than ever, and most people associated with the sport embrace it. At many colleges (including my own, William and Mary), the men’s and women’s teams now compete at meets together, with the sexes alternating events. Mixed-gender relays—two men and two women—were added to the 2015 swimming world championships, and there’s talk about making them part of the Olympics. And you won’t find a sport…

Two weeks of Olympic coverage are a rare time when sustained coverage of female sports stars hits the headlines. The airwaves are full of women running, jumping, cycling and riding. Yet outside the period of major sporting festivals, evidence from the Women’s Sports and Fitness Foundation suggests that only 5% of total sports coverage relates to activities by women. Women’s sport attracts a tiny proportion of the total sponsorship and,…

Charlie Webster, a television host working with the Team GB Olympic media team, was in an induced coma in a Rio hospital on Wednesday night with a rare strain of malaria. The former Sky Sports presenter, 33, is thought to have contracted the disease on a charity bike ride. She cycled 3,000 miles from London’s Olympic Stadium to Rio to raise funds for the Jane Tomlinson Foundation, and was due to…

ENLARGE Volvo Car Corp. and ride-hailing giant Uber Technologies Inc. have signed a $300 million agreement to co-develop autonomous sport-utility vehicles that will either be used as self-driving taxis or sold to consumers. The two companies will announce the joint project Thursday, saying the Swedish auto maker will conduct much of the initial engineering on a platform for an XC90 SUV that is capable of piloting itself. At some point,…

Sports Direct is to undertake an external evaluation of its board of directors, following criticism of the retailer’s corporate governance. The company also revealed in a stock market statement on Thursday that it will publish a report into how it treats its workers before the retailer’s annual shareholder meeting next month. Mike Ashley’s retail group, which is facing a shareholder revolt over the re-appointment of its chairman, Keith Hellawell, at…

Ryan Lochte won a gold medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics, but he’s gained much more attention at the games for what happened out of the pool. Or at least what he says happened. Lochte claimed he and swimming teammates Gunnar Bentz, Jack Conger and Jimmy Feigen were robbed early in the morning of Aug. 14 in Rio. That is only the start of what has become a bizarre story…

Charlie Webster, a television host working with the Team GB Olympic media team, was in an induced coma in a Rio hospital on Wednesday night with a rare strain of malaria. The former Sky Sports presenter, 33, is thought to have contracted the disease on a charity bike ride. She cycled 3,000 miles from London’s Olympic Stadium to Rio to raise funds for the Jane Tomlinson Foundation, and was due to…

All athletes train hard and develop skills as well as endurance, but what are the toughest sports in the world? And what is it that makes them the toughest? That depends who you ask. “Regardless of what the sport is, when you’re competing at the highest levels they are all extremely difficult,” says Prof Niall Moyna, head of the school of health and human performance at Dublin City University. What…

Sports Illustrated Something fishy is going on. Eben Novy-Williams and Scott Soshnick at Bloomberg have pointed out that Under Armour’s star athlete, Michael Phelps, isn’t wearing Under Armour on the cover of Sports Illustrated. He’s wearing Nike. “This will go on the wall at Nike,” Rick Burton, who previously worked as a US Olympic Committee chief marketing officer, told Bloomberg. “Under Armour must be going wild behind closed doors.” An Under Armour representative and…