The IOC president sought to get close to Putin even after the Sochi Doping Games. He fraternised with Xi Jinping. He politicised the 2018 Games in South Korea, driven by the dream of the Nobel Peace Prize. All a miserable failure that dragged the Games deeper into a political quagmire. A commentary.
After refusing to wear jerseys flocked with the slogan Visit Rwanda, the Burundian basketball club Dynamo BBC was eliminated from the Africa League by general forfeit. The case symbolizes the tensions in the Africa of the Great Lakes and the links between world basketball and the Rwandan regime.
For several weeks now, an online petition has been calling for "Suspend Israel from International Sports". The appeal was launched by the left-wing collective movement DiEM25. In the petition paper, fundamental facts are being omitted or deliberately distorted.
The news behind the news on the 2030 World Cup is that the 2034 World Cup will go to the sporting rogue state of Saudi Arabia and the chainsaw monster MBS. It sounds weird: FIFA does not act worse in awarding its mega-events than the IOC does with the Olympics, but comparatively transparently.
One of the biggest crime stories in the Olympic world takes another surprising turn. The Executive Board of the IOC has suspended the highly influential Sheikh Ahmad Al-Sabah as an IOC member for three years. The consequences are hard to foresee. It has the potential to blow up the Olympic family.
