Johannes Vetter continued a U.S. roadtrip.
Loic Meillard and Yaroslava Mahuchikh drop into NYC.
Arturas Seja wanders high.
Lea Friedrich takes to the court.
Checking Out Olympic Sports Athletes' Socials...
Marco Odermatt recaps the last few days.
Christos Volikakis gets stretchy.
Katerina Johnson-Thompson is in St. Lucia...and I spy Andrew Pozzi...
Iivo Niskanen goes high....
...as do Eric Frenzel and Michael Schwaiger...
A Roundup of Recent News Features on the Stars of Olympic Sports
'Full of ambition', Team Ukraine's track cyclist Alla Biletska takes advantage of a unique training opportunity in Switzerland.
Chilean Tokyo 2020 Olympian Manuel Selman offers his own four tips to 'surf travel'.
"I love training." Canoe slalomist Maialen Chourraut is tackling a sixth Olympics qualification season. Lisa Hirner is 'determined' to show what Nordic combined athletes can do this season in the wake of Milan Cortina 2026 disappointment. Will archers Marcus d'Almeida and Lee Woo-seok renew their (Youth) Olympic rivalry at Paris 2024? Who are FIFA's 'best' men's and women's soccer players for 2023? Voting is open... Queerty looks at Beijing 2008 soccer player Robbie Rogers, and how he is part of the 'cutest Hollywood power couple'. The 'Messi Effect'? Soccer superstar Lionel Messi inadvertently starts his own pizza-gate drama. 'Affable and hard-working Trinidadian' Dylan Carter catches up with World Aquatics as he prepares for the upcoming swimming world cup. â CBC: Judoka Shady El Nahas had a 'soul searching journey' to recover from Tokyo 2020 disappointment. Take a peek at retired judoka-turned-artist Neil Eckersley's new We are Olympians poetry collection. On the heels of a World Championship medal, New Zealander Thomas Mackintosh is World Rowing's latest 'Rower of the Month'. Will it be Rebecca McGowan or Bianca Cook to represent Team Great Britain at Paris 2024 in the women's -67kg category in taekowndo? How have Team Sweden's biathletes fared in a high-altitude camp in France ahead of the 2023/24 season? Olympic champion Mariama Jamanka transitions away from bobsled and into a television career. Can the 'young blood' challenge the 'old guard' in Greco-Roman at this week's World Wrestling Championships in Belgrade? Get to know 'game changer' Mao Shimada as she prepares for the new junior figure skating season. Ice dancer Margarita Dobriazko finds herself in trouble in Lithuania for her appearances within Russia amidst the latter's aggression in Ukraine. How high can pole vaulter Armand Duplantis go? "At the end of my career, I hope to definitely have the highest bar that I think I could have achieved." Freestyle skier Gus Kenworthy gets personal in Attitude about body issues, new projects, and even more. Kim Astrup and Anders Skaarup Rasmussen "hope to continue the Danish (badminton) men's doubles legacy for a while", as they hope to ride current success to Paris 2024. FIBA: Meet Team Japan's 14-year-old 'confident and ambitious' basketball star Chusonjakku Shiratani. Team USA stars Breanna Stewart and A'ja Wilson are named the WNBA's basketball Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year, respectively, by the AP. (And Olympic teammate Brittney Griner shares the Comeback Player of the Year honors.) The path to growth runs through a retirement home for Team New Zealand's men's curling squad. Wrestler Shota Phartenadze pays a price for his medal-winning effort at the World Championships. How did Rizabek Aitmukhan go from a volunteer at the 2019 World Wrestling Championships to a landmark Kazakh champion himself in 2023? Gymnast Melanie de Jesus dos Santos is "so happy" as she focuses on Paris 2024 even while training 'far from France'. Gymnast Salvatore Maresca got down on one knee after success at the recent World Challenge Cup. Never Enough? That's Right For Netflix's Documentary On A Cycling GreatMark Cavendish: Never Enough (2023) A Quick TV Review Mark Cavendish is a modern cycling great - an Olympic medalist (silver, Rio 2016) across three Summer Games, and a renowned road sprinter who sits as the joint all-time leader in Tour de France stage wins (34, with legend Eddy Merckx). He's also well-known for a reputation as "obsessive", a perfectionist who "needs control", and, well, "of being an asshole" - someone who never had a symbiotic relationship with media or the wider peloton. Which all makes him a prime subject to get to know better. Netflix's Mark Cavendish: Never Enough, released earlier this month, offers an opportunity for viewers to do just that. Frustratingly, the hour-and-half-long documentary isn't actually enough, and I found myself wanting. Cavendish certainly comes off as sincerely committed to his sport, and colorful enough to deserve his brash public persona, but Never Enough doesn't serve a deep look at the start of his career, and his development to become the person he is generally known for today. While viewers intimate with cycling and/or in the United Kingdom may be familiar with his successes and tribulations, those elsewhere - like me in the U.S. and casual observers who have just a general name recognition - would be better served with perhaps a multi-part documentary series. (Granted, coming off a viewing of just such an effort in Max's Shaun White: The Last Run has given me bias.) Don't get me wrong...the perspective on Cavendish's struggles to return to form - through multiple crashes, an Epstein-Barr virus diagnosis, depression, and subsequent doubts amongst cycling's pundits - is presented thoughtfully and with engaging presentation. And, he is the hero of the story - despite his penchant for crashes and brushes with orneriness - one roots for him as he comes back to just almost surpass Merckx's stage win record. But I'm left curious as to more of his background other than the fleeting mentions offered. Why did he switch from track (where he found Olympic success in the omnium)? What got him started in the sport in the first place? How did his career start, way back when at age 20 in 2005? How does he see his career as having been crafted, from track to road success, and back, and back again? Glaring is the omission of mentioning any effect on his career a noted robbery and assault case where he and his wife were victimized. So maybe the documentary was finished at the end of the 2022 season - with Cavendish acknowledging "there's no number that's enough" as he contemplates that tied record of 34 stage wins. But a release date of this August also misses his retirement announcement from this spring. You'd have to be an extremely casual sports fan to not have been aware of that. Turns out, there's even a new subplot on his maybe -just, maybe - return to chase that one more Tour de France win. Now that would be a great postscript. The Social Media Lives Of Olympic Sports Athletes...
|
Above: Athens' Kallimarmaro, the site of the 1896 Summer Olympics
About This BlogAn Olympics fan blog celebrating all things Olympic sport athletesRead about me.
Navigate ItCelebrating Olympic sport athletes with news links, social media peeks, and more, seen through the cheeky lens of this particular, passionate fan.
Check out: A Little Roundup
Get to know the athletes of Olympic sports through a collection of links to recent news and feature stories Let's Get Social Take a look at what some of your favorite Olympic sport athletes are up to on social media, away from competition. They are the Champions Who made the podium in Olympic sports' world championships? Athletes Worth Watching Who are some emerging Olympic sport athletes worth keeping an eye on for the future? Ramblings and Things I have my own comment and opinions sometimes! A Quick Review Quick thoughts on Olympic sports-related films, art, books, TV, etc. that I've come across . p.s. see my Bookshop! Me at Rio 2016's Barra Olympic Park
Follow MeFavorite SitesThe IOC Categories
All
Archives
March 2024
To opt-out of cookies, and to read this site's privacy policy, read the Policy page.
The following link is listed for Mastodon site verification purposes only:
|