Olympics
RUSSIA ESCAPES TOKYO OLYMPICS 2020 BAN
BY DUNCAN MACKAY, EDITOR, INSIDETHEGAMES.BIZ
International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach has signalled that Russia will not be banned from Tokyo 2020 even if a suspension is reimposed on the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA).
Access to the Moscow Laboratory before December 31 was a compulsory condition set when the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Executive Committee controversially lifted the suspension of RUSADA on September 20.
Yesterday’s deadline was missed, leading to calls for RUSADA to be suspended again, which it had been speculated could lead to the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) being banned from Tokyo 2020.
WADA today officially confirmed that its team of experts, led by Dr. José Antonio Pascual, had failed to access the Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) and the underlying data from the Laboratory in Russia’s capital.
In November, WADA President Sir Craig Reedie had claimed they had “an absolutely written guarantee that this will happen”.
“I am bitterly disappointed that data extraction from the former Moscow Laboratory has not been completed by the date agreed by WADA’s ExCo in September 2018,” Sir Craig said today.
“since then, WADA has been working diligently with the Russian authorities to meet the deadline, which was clearly in the best interest of clean sport. The process agreed by WADA’s ExCo in September will now be initiated.”
RUSADA is now facing the threat of being declared non-compliant again when WADA’s independent Compliance Review Committee (CRC) meets in Montreal on January 14 and 15.
Russia was denied the right to compete under its own flag at last year’s Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang and its athletes had to compete under the banner of “Olympic Athletes from Russia”.
But Bach has claimed that the ROC have already been punished enough after a report commissioned by WADA claimed Russia had been involved in state-sponsored doping.
“In Pyeongchang, we sanctioned the systematic manipulation of the anti-doping system in Russia during the Olympic Winter Games Sochi 2014,” Bach said in a New Year’s message published today.
“The IOC sanctioned those entities involved, proportional to their levels of responsibility.
“At the same time, we upheld the principle of individual justice to which every human being is entitled.
“This
is why we created a pathway for clean, individual Russian athletes to compete
in Pyeongchang, but only under the strictest conditions.
“In this way, we did justice to all athletes, regardless of their passport.
“With its suspension from the Olympic Winter Games Pyeongchang 2018, the Russian Olympic Committee has served its sanction, while in other organisations procedures are still on going.”
Bach’s comments are certain to anger many athletes and administrators calling for Russia to be punished after missing the key deadline.
United States Anti-Doping Agency chief executive Travis Tygart has described the episode as “a total joke and an embarrassment for WADA and the global anti-doping system”.
The WADA team of five experts had left Moscow on December 21 without the raw data they had been promised after Russian authorities claimed that the inspection team’s equipment to be used for the data extraction had not been certified under the country’s law.
“WADA has now written to Russia’s Minister of Sport, Pavel Kolobkov, and the director general of RUSADA, Yury Ganus, to officially notify them of the situation and to remind them of the next steps in the process,” WADA said in a statement.
They,
however, appeared to throw Russia a lifeline that another ban can be avoided if
the information is provided to WADA by the time of the CRC meeting.
“Given the importance for clean sport of access to, and subsequent authentication and analysis of, the data from the former Moscow Laboratory in order to build strong cases against cheats and exonerate other athletes, WADA experts continue to be ready to proceed with extraction of the data should the issue reported upon on 21 December be resolved by the Russian authorities,” WADA said in its statement.
An added complication, however, could be that Russia is now entering a period of shutdown while it celebrates Christmas.
The country is not due to return to work until January 8.
Tickets for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games will go on sale to the general public on April 9, organisers said on Monday, as LA28 also moved to reassure fans over ticket security by naming a group of verified resale platforms that will begin operating in 2027.
A presale for residents in qualifying areas of Los Angeles and Oklahoma City will begin on April 2, with notification emails for selected buyers set to roll out from March 31 through April 4, LA28 said.
On April 7, the organising committee will notify remaining registrants whether they were selected for a purchase window in the first general sales round, known as Drop 1.
“This week marks the first opportunity for fans to claim a seat at the LA28 Olympic Games,” LA28 Chief Executive Officer Reynold Hoover said in a statement.
LA28’s ticketing programme will include 1 million tickets priced at $28, the lowest price point. Roughly 5% of the Olympic tickets will cost over $1,000, while more than 75% of all tickets, including finals, will be under $400 and nearly 50% of all tickets will be under $200.
“Tickets are comparable to and in many cases well under what we see for other professional sporting and major entertainment events in the U.S.,” Allison Katz-Mayfield, LA28 Senior Vice President, Games Delivery Revenue, told reporters on a call.
RESALE PROGRAMME
Separately, LA28 said its verified multi-platform resale programme would open in 2027, with AXS and Eventim serving as the official secondary ticket marketplace and Ticketmaster and Sports Illustrated Tickets also designated as verified resale platforms.
The announcement comes as organisers prepare for the first ticket drop and seek to warn fans against buying from unauthorised sellers before the resale programme launches.
LA28 said primary tickets would only be sold through its official ticket service providers, AXS and Eventim. It added that any LA28 tickets offered for resale before 2027 should not be considered verified.
“While LA28’s resale platforms will not be launched until 2027, having a variety of platforms was critical to providing fans multiple points of access to verified tickets,” Hoover said.
LOCAL PRESALE
Fans who registered for the LA28 ticket draw and whose billing postal codes fall within qualifying counties were automatically entered into the local presale draw. Those selected will receive 48-hour purchase windows running from April 2 through April 6 and must use a payment method tied to a billing postal code in an eligible county to complete their purchase.
For both the local presale and Drop 1, selected buyers will have 48 hours to purchase tickets, while any tickets placed in a cart must be checked out within 30 minutes. Buyers may complete multiple transactions during their allotted window until they reach the ticket limit.
LA28 said tickets would be available across all Olympic sports, as well as for the opening ceremony at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood and the closing ceremony at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
Fans selected for time slots may buy up to 12 tickets for Olympic events, plus up to 12 tickets for the soccer tournament that will not count toward the general Olympic-event limit. Ceremony tickets will be capped at four per buyer and will count towards the 12-ticket maximum.
Registrants who are not assigned a time slot in either the local presale or Drop 1 will be automatically entered into future draws, LA28 said. Paralympic tickets are due to go on sale in 2027.
Ticket-inclusive hospitality packages from official provider On Location are also expected to go on sale in April. Visa will be the official payment method for purchases.
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Organizers of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic and Paralympic Games unveiled the event’s official visual identity on Monday, a floral-themed design system meant to reflect the city’s landscape, neighbourhoods and cultural character.
The branding will appear across competition venues, fan areas, citywide installations, signage, digital platforms and broadcast presentations during the Games, LA28 said.
At the centre of the design is the “Superbloom,” a reference to the bursts of wildflowers that can blanket parts of Southern California after periods of rain.
LA28 said the concept was intended as a metaphor for the Games, with years of preparation culminating in a short, high-profile global event.
The core graphic is built around 13 individual blooms, which organizers said represent different elements of Los Angeles, from its entertainment culture to its neighbourhoods, people and native landscape.
The colour palette draws on the Bird of Paradise, the official flower of Los Angeles, and is grouped into four families – Poppy, Scarlet Flax, Bluebell and Sagebrush – to evoke the region’s terrain and vegetation.
Organizers said the typographic style was inspired by Los Angeles street signage, including strip mall and hand-painted storefront lettering, in an effort to give the identity a distinctly local feel.
LA28 said the design was developed to work across a wide range of settings, from nearly century-old venues to new facilities, while also accounting for broadcast requirements, digital formats and lighting conditions. The organising committee partnered with design studio Koto on the project.
The identity was unveiled more than two years before the Olympic opening ceremony in what organizers described as an unusually early rollout, allowing partners and stakeholders more time to incorporate the branding into their materials.
Los Angeles will host the Olympics for a third time in 2028, after staging the Games in 1932 and 1984. It will also host the Paralympics for the first time.
-Reuters
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Organisers of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics said on Monday that registration for the first ticket draw will close on March 18, as the Games begin to take shape with the first baseball qualifiers confirmed and the soccer tournament schedule expanded.
More than five million fans from 197 countries and territories have registered at tickets.la28.org since January for a chance to buy tickets, LA28 said, underscoring strong early demand for the Summer Games, which are due to open on July 14, 2028.
Fans who register by the March 18 deadline will be eligible for a lottery to receive a purchase window for the first ticket release, scheduled for April 9-19.
There will also be a local presale running from April 2-6 for eligible residents in parts of Southern California and Oklahoma. Oklahoma City will host softball and canoe slalom.
LA28 said selected applicants would be notified by email between March 31 and April 7. Fans picked for the first sale window will be able to buy up to 12 tickets for Olympic events, subject to availability, with a four-ticket cap for each of the opening and closing ceremonies.
BASEBALL RETURNS
The ticketing update comes as the first teams booked places in the Olympic baseball tournament through the 2026 World Baseball Classic. The Dominican Republic and Venezuela secured qualification spots from the Americas, joining host United States in the six-team field.
Baseball, one of the sports added to the LA28 programme, will return to the Olympics for the first time since the Tokyo Games and will be played at Dodger Stadium from July 13-19. The remaining three places will be decided through international qualifying tournaments in 2027 and 2028.
LA28 also confirmed that the Olympic soccer tournament will begin on July 10, four days before the opening ceremony, following a decision by the International Olympic Committee Executive Board to extend the competition window.
Organisers said the longer schedule would give teams two additional rest days compared with previous Games.
Group-stage and quarter-final matches will be staged in seven U.S. cities – New York, Columbus, Nashville, St. Louis, San Jose, San Diego and Pasadena – with the men’s and women’s gold medal matches to be played at the Rose Bowl.
LA28 said kickoff times and the full schedule would be released later this year.
-Reuters
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