President Barack Obama is traveling to Copenhagen this week to speak in support of Chicago’s 2016 Olympic bid. The International Olympic Committee votes Friday on where the Summer Games will go for 2016. Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo also are in the running for what is expected to be a tight vote of IOC […]

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Michelle Kwan probably will be remembered as the best skater of the last half-century who didn’t win Olympic gold. The most popular, too. Five world championships. Nine U.S. championships. Zero Olympic gold medals. And apparently, Kwan, 29, will end her career with Zero in Olympic Gold, having announced Friday that she will not attempt to […]

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I don’t mind the concept. Organize the world’s baseball talent along national lines and have yourselves a soccer World Cup-style tournament. See who comes out at the end. Turns out, it’s just not really workable and certainly not very compelling. The issues with the WBC? Well, gee, let us enumerate the primary ones.

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The place isn’t quite like I envisioned it. It is far more economically advanced that I imagined. The infrastructure here in Beijing, anyway, puts the U.S. to shame. The airport, the roads, the hotels, most of the big buildings …most of them are modern. Our cities are falling apart, in many cases, but in China, […]

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It’s interesting how the so-called extreme sports bleed back over into the Olympic movement. Thinking snowboarding, short-track speedskating, in the Winter. Triathlon, open-water swimming and, now, BMX, in Summer. BMX is short for “bicycle moto-cross” … the pedaling version of motorcycle motocross. Riding over rough terrain. Basically, we’ve got 16 men and 16 women out […]

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Diana Taurasi is the shooting guard from Chino who figures to be one of the leading figures for the U.S. women’s basketball team as it makes a run for another gold medal, here at Beijing. The women’s team passed through the Main Press Center today, and Lisa Leslie — who hopes to win her fourth […]

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I sometimes like to think of myself as “well-traveled” … and in a touristy, middle-America way I suppose I am. It’s not as if I’ve lived abroad, that is. But I’ve spent at least a year outside the U.S. (between World Cups and Olympics, I’ve gotta be close). Thing is, a lot of that year […]

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I wish I had thought of this first, because the more I think about it the more I’m convinced the author has the right idea: The “modern” Olympic games should be ended. This op-ed piece, by Buzz Bissinger, appeared in the New York Times on Sunday. He makes a compelling case that the Olympics we […]

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The L.A. News Group is sending no one to the Beijing Olympics, barring some late change of heart. Meaning that the MediaNews-owned ring of suburban dailies has gone from three reporters at both the Sydney and Athens games (of 2000 and 2004) … to two at the Torino winter games (2006) … to zero at […]

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