Author: Sean Ingle

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Kirsty Coventry’s in-tray: six big issues facing IOC’s new president

From protecting women’s sport to the return of Russia and keeping the Olympics relevant, the former gold medallist has tough challenges ahead

As a seven-time Olympic swimming medallist, Kirsty Coventry knows a thing or two about navigating choppy waters. But the new International Olympic Committee president now faces the biggest set of challenges to global sport since the 1980s, when boycotts rocked the Moscow and Los Angeles Games. As the 41-year-old prepares to take over from Thomas Bach in June, what issues will she face?

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Sent to Coventry: how Bach’s power helped Zimbabwean’s shock IOC win

Poll result defied candidates’ calculations and illustrated outgoing president’s influence but change may yet come

It might sound beyond ridiculous, given the scale of Kirsty Coventry’s seismic victory in the International Olympic Committee presidential election. But as the various royals, sporting dignitaries, politicians and billionaires left the Costa Navarino resort on Friday, some really believed the result could have turned out very differently.

Yes, the 41-year-old Zimbabwean ex-swimmer had won in the first round with 49 votes to become the first woman to lead the IOC. And yes, Juan Antonio Samaranch and Sebastian Coe, the other members of the “Big Three”, had come away with just 28 and eight votes respectively. But in the postmortem there were several stories about how the IOC machine had powered Thomas Bach’s chosen successor over the line.

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‘Transformational’ maternity leave scheme unveiled for top tennis players

  • Saudi Public Investment Fund pays for programme
  • 320 players can take up to 12 months off and access IVF

The Women’s Tennis Association has become the first international sports body to introduce up to 12 months of paid maternity leave for players, in what it has hailed as a defining moment for women’s sport.

Under the new policy, funded by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, players will also get access to grants for fertility treatments, including egg freezing and IVF.

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‘A sad day for tennis’: critics round on Sinner after three-month ban agreed

  • Italian will be suspended from the sport until 4 May
  • Kyrgios and Henman among those critical of decision

Jannik Sinner has agreed to accept an immediate three-month doping ban from the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) – a decision that was quickly met with criticism from inside the game, with Nick Kyrgios calling it “a sad day for tennis”.

Sinner, who successfully defended his Australian Open title last month, tested positive for the anabolic agent clostebol last year which he said had entered his system from a member of his support team through massages and sports therapy.

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ECB urges cricket’s leaders to take action over ‘gender apartheid’ in Afghanistan

  • England face Afghanistan in Champions Trophy
  • ICC called on to ‘intervene and show global leadership’

The England and Wales Cricket Board has called on cricket’s governing body to show leadership by taking coordinated action to stop “the gender apartheid facing the 14 million women in Afghanistan”.

In a letter to the International Cricket Council on Friday, the ECB’s chief executive, Richard Gould, also urged it “to find a solution that provides hope that the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan can be restored”.

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Paris Olympics were great, so why not hold summer Games every two years? | Sean Ingle

The average sports fan is increasingly a big-eventer and there is a risk of the Games losing out in the attention economy

We are knee-deep in Twixmas: that twilight zone between Christmas and new year, excess and reflection, lists and yet more lists. Over the past week there have been many saluting the best sporting moments of 2024. Yet across the globe there is one constant: these lists are dominated by a Paris Olympics seared into the memory. Nothing else came close.

Pick your day, relive the moment. Keely Hodgkinson, Alex Yee, Simone Biles, Léon Marchand, Mondo Duplantis, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and a men’s 1500m final for the ages; I was fortunate to see them all up close. But even that list still barely scratches the surface. As Christophe Dubi, the executive director of the Olympics, put it to me recently, Paris 2024 was like the Dude in the Big Lebowski: the right Games at the right time and place.

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Paris was the Dude: 2024 Olympics were right Games at perfect time

The French capital overcame issues including an opening ceremony deluge to deliver 17 days of joyous madness

Four months after Paris 2024’s spectacular finale, starring Tom Cruise abseiling off the top of the Stade de France and hurtling out of a plane above Los Angeles, the executive director of the Olympics is mulling over the lasting impact of the Games. Albeit with the help of a rather different cinematic icon.

“I was making a presentation to Deloitte executives recently,” says Christophe Dubi, the man responsible for planning and delivering the Olympics. “And I started by paraphrasing the Stranger in The Big Lebowski: ‘Sometimes, there is a man, he’s the man for his time and place, he was The Dude.’ Because Paris really was the right Games, at the right time and place.”

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Sebastian Coe pledges radical reform in race to become next IOC president

  • Manifesto to share power and ‘safeguard’ female sport
  • World Athletics head highlights London 2012 track record

Sebastian Coe has promised to radically transform the International Olympic Committee if he is elected its next president in March – and says his track record of delivering at the London 2012 Games and at World Athletics shows he is the right choice for the leading job in sport.

In launching a manifesto that positions him as a reform candidate who will ensure the IOC does far more to innovate, protect female sport, allow more debate, and get more young people into Olympic sport, Coe took himself back to the early 2000s when he was able persuade the IOC to bring the 2012 Games to London.

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‘Big dreamer’ Keely Hodgkinson named BBC Sports Personality of the Year

  • Olympic 800m champion rewarded for remarkable year
  • Darts prodigy Luke Littler, 17, second; Joe Root third

No one could stop Keely Hodgkinson on the track in 2024 – or, as it turned out, the battle for public opinion as the Olympic 800m champion lifted the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award.

“As a little girl, I dared to dream big,” said the 22-year-old from Atherton, near Wigan, after being rewarded for a remarkable year, in which she won Olympic and European gold, obliterated her own British record, and remained unbeaten over two laps.

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Athletics the biggest loser in funding cut of nearly £1.75m for LA 2028 Olympics

  • UK Sport denies athletics is on the ‘naughty step’
  • 8% cut despite best Olympic performance since 1984

UK Sport has denied putting UK Athletics on the “naughty step” after slashing its funding for the Los Angeles Olympic cycle by nearly £1.75m. The shock decision comes despite Team GB’s track and field stars winning 10 medals in Paris – their best performance since 1984.

UKA has struggled with financial and governance issues in previous years, while UK Sport is also understood to have questioned whether UKA’s chief executive, Jack Buckner, is too involved on the performance side.

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Luke Littler named on six-strong Sports Personality of the Year shortlist

  • Teenager could become youngest winner since 1958
  • Hodgkinson, Yee, Bellingham, Root and Storey included

Luke Littler will have a shot at becoming the youngest winner of the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year award for more than 60 years, after being named on a six-strong shortlist headed by the Paris 2024 Olympics stars Keely Hodgkinson and Alex Yee.

The England footballer Jude Bellingham, the cricketer Joe Root and the Paralympian Sarah Storey make up the list. But, surprisingly, there is no place for Mark Cavendish, in a year when he broke Eddy Merckx’s record for Tour de France stage wins.

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‘A great man, a great player’: Stephen Hendry leads tributes to Terry Griffiths

  • Hendry among many coached by 1979 world champion
  • Mark Allen ‘heartbroken’ after mentor’s death aged 77

The seven-time world snooker champion Stephen Hendry has led the tributes to Terry Griffiths, who has died aged 77, calling him “a great man and a great player”.

Griffiths worked as a miner, postal worker and bus conductor before turning professional in 1978 and winning the world snooker title at his first attempt aged 31, beating Dennis Taylor in the 1979 final. The Welshman then became one of the most identifiable players in the 1980s snooker boom alongside Steve “Interesting” Davis, Alex “Hurricane” Higgins and “the Whirlwind”, Jimmy White, reaching No 3 in the world.

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Katherine Grainger makes history as BOA’s first female chair in 119 years

  • Former rower will succeed Hugh Robertson in new year
  • Grainger is currently in second term as chair of UK Sport

One of Team GB’s greatest ever athletes, Dame Katherine Grainger, has become the first female chair of the British Olympic Association in its 119-year history.

Grainger, who is the only British woman to win medals in five separate Olympic Games, beat the BOA’s vice-chair, Annamarie Phelps, in a vote of the organisation’s 46 members on Thursday. She will take over from Hugh Robertson, who has helped lead the organisation since 2012, early in the new year.

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Fifth athlete disqualified from one of dirtiest races in Olympic history

  • Tatyana Tomashova loses London 2012 1500m silver
  • Russian banned for retrospective doping offences

The London 2012 race regarded as one of the dirtiest in history has expunged yet another name from the record books after Tatyana Tomashova was stripped of her women’s Olympic 1500m silver medal. The Russian becomes the fifth out of 12 finishers in the final to be disqualified for retrospective doping offences.

The race was questioned almost immediately with Britain’s Lisa Dobriskey telling the BBC straight after the race: “I’ll probably get into trouble for saying this, but I don’t believe I’m competing on a level playing field.” History, though, has slowly proven Dobriskey correct.

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Mike Tyson v Jake Paul is the apex event of content masquerading as sport | Sean Ingle

Like most boxing fans I hate the idea of this deluded nonsense but there certainly seems to be a market for it

Mark Borkowski is the public relations maestro who has worked with everyone from Mikhail Gorbachev to Diego Maradona to Jim Rose, an American exhibitionist who used to hang weights from his penis. Borkowski also helped Ian Botham recreate Hannibal’s walk across the Alps with elephants, and, for his sins, was the mastermind behind Cliff Richard’s Saviour’s Day reaching Christmas No 1, despite minimal radio play. So who better to talk about the biggest sporting stunt of the year, Mike Tyson’s fight against Jake Paul, which will be streamed into 300m homes via Netflix this weekend?

Instinctively, as I told Borkowksi, I hate the idea. Most boxing fans do. It sells a myth that wasn’t even close to being a reality in 2004, let alone 2024: namely that Tyson is one of the most ferocious warriors alive, not a 58-year-old who lost 26lb in May after an ulcer flare-up that left him throwing up blood and defecating tar. It risks Tyson’s boxing reputation and his health. And, Netflix’s lavish promotion aside, it feels more like a sham or a circus than a genuine sporting event.

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