Sport

Iceland’s improbable run in soccer’s European Championship has drawn parallels with Leicester City’s remarkable Premier League title win. And like it was for the English champion, the Nordic country is finding it hard to meet unexpected demand for its jerseys. Iceland, a country the size of Leicester with a population of about 300,000, is playing in its first major soccer tournament. It shocked the world on Monday by eliminating heavily…

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email print comment OMAHA, Neb. — Michael Phelps surged to the wall and then whipped around to spot his time. That number wasn’t really important. The only thing that mattered was No. 5. The most decorated athlete in Olympic history is Rio bound. The Twitterverse weighs in on Michael Phelps’ historic night The cyberspace weighed in on Michael Phelps’ history-making night at the U.S. Olympic swimming trials,…

For U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps, the Rio Olympics represent a chance to end his record-breaking career on his own terms. No one has won more than his 18 gold medals or the eight he won in a single Olympics in 2008 in Beijing.  But his golden image took a hit after the 2012 Olympics in London with two arrests for driving drunk.  He stepped way from swimming…

Michael Phelps qualified for his fifth Olympics with a win in the 200-meter butterfly at the U.S. Olympic swimming trials Wednesday. Phelps finished his first final of the trials in 1 minute, 54.84 seconds. Tom Shields of Huntington Beach placed second in 1:55.81. “That was probably harder than any swim in my life,” said Phelps, who set the world record in the event in 2009. Dara Torres is the only…

Parts of a mutilated body have washed up on the sands of Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro just meters from where beach volleyball athletes will compete in the upcoming Olympics. The discovery is the latest to unnerve the city as it grapples with rising crime, a recession and exhausted state finances at a time when it hoped to be celebrating the first Olympics ever held in South America. It…

Olympic organizers are battling to save the $10 billion Games from becoming a fiasco, Daily Mail Online can reveal. The games are engulfed in a desperate last-minute building and repair operation as the first of more than 10,000 athletes begin to arrive in Rio. Daily Mail Online discovered the Rio Olympic authorities have their work cut out for them with only five weeks and two full days to go before…

Carmen Small and her lawyer Howard Jacobs intend to fight the USA Cycling’s Selection Committee’s decision to exclude her from the four-woman team which will compete at the Rio Olympic Games in an arbitration hearing, according to an ESPN report. Related Articles Olympic prospects look good for Evelyn Stevens USA Cycling announces discretionary picks for Olympic road teams Small heartbroken over missing out on US selection for Rio Olympics Megan Guarnier: Rio…

x Embed x Share How a Rio community was destroyed and displaced by Olympic development. Sandra Souza fought for months to save her home at the Vila Autódromo but was overtaken by developers and Olympic interests.(Photo: Sandy Hooper, USA TODAY Sports) RIO DE JANEIRO – The video presentations used to pitch for hosting rights to an Olympic Games are glossy and sparkling and bursting at the seams with the same…

Your teams. Your favorite writers. Wherever you want them. Personalize SI with our new App. Install on iOS or Android.​ OMAHA, Neb. — New blood has been ruling the pool so far at the U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials as emerging stars made their first teams and veterans struggled to keep pace on Tuesday. Here are five observations from the trials. New faces thrive Sure there will be some familiar names in Rio, but through…

Serena Williams thinks athletes skipping out on the Olympics because of the Zika virus are missing an incredible experience. “I think it is sad,” she told USA Today. “But at the same time I obviously understand where they’re coming from and how they feel. Part of me feels that way, too, which is why I’m going in, you know, with a whole mindset of how do I…

Cadel Evans AM. Stuart O’Grady OAM. Bradley McGee OAM. Katherine Bates. These are just some of the high-achieving former Australian cyclists whose images adorn the Champions Walk at the High Performance Unit (HPU) in Adelaide. Every day, when Australia’s current generation of cycling stars arrive at their training base, they must pass these photos as they descend into the bowels of the velodrome. Inspiration and pressure, in equal measure. Run…

With the Summer Olympics in complete disarray, Stephen Colbert examined the mess in Rio: “I am pumped for the Rio games. They are less than two months away … or never,” Colbert said. Sidebar Zika: The Epidemic at America’s Door » “Just yesterday, Rio’s acting governor warned ‘The Olympics could be a big failure,’ which is actually an improvement because until yesterday, it looked like a massive catastrophe,” Colbert said….

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Take a trip. Go around to every swimming pool, track, gymnastics practice, fencing academy, dojo, wrestling tournament and (sighs) dive meet in your town and ask the kids, the ones who haven’t hit their teenage years and figured out their own athletic limitations, what they want to do in their sport. Where do they want to be? What’s the ultimate goal? “The Olympics,” is all you’ll hear. It won’t be “gold medal…

Several of the NBA’s best American-born players elected to skip the 2016 Olympics in Brazil due to various reasons (the need for rest, injury recovery and the impending birth of their children among them). Naturally, some brave soul with a byline is willing to shame those stars for daring not to don the stars and stripes in Rio. And that brave soul is Brian T. Smith of the Houston Chronicle….

What is gender? It might sound like the kind of question that college students debate in a liberal arts class.1 But for the International Olympic Committee, it’s a practical question that demands a hard and fast answer. As at previous Olympic Games, athletes competing in Rio de Janeiro will be segregated into women’s events and men’s events, and that means the IOC needs a way to sort women from men….

If this were anywhere in the world but a well-to-do American suburb, the sight wouldn’t have seemed so odd: a pack of children of varying ages and abilities playing soccer on their own without a peep of direction from coaches or parents. Of course, this being suburbia — Evanston, specifically — this form of pickup soccer wasn’t exactly what you’d find in the streets of Rio de Janeiro. A coach…