1. “So Hickey’s humiliation played out to a prurient audience, unedited, unfiltered, pitiless. The pathetic image of a naked, 71-year-old Irishman turning back, visibly shaken, towards his six-star hotel room will forever more be up there in the files of Olympic infamy beside that of a black man with yellow eyes being frog-marched from a room in Seoul 28 years ago.”
Vincent Hogan in the Irish Independent offers his immediate thoughts after Pat Hickey’s arrest.
2. “Before the London 2012 Games, it was alleged by the BBC that Azerbaijan, which loaned $10m to AIBA to underwrite a professional boxing series that has not been repaid, had effectively bought medals. A thorough AIBA investigation by senior officials rejected the allegations…”
The Guardian’s Owen Gibson writes about the shadow of corruption over Olympic boxing.
3.
You are so powerful and so robust; so magnificent and so unquestionable. I think about you often. More than I think about my own right leg, I am certain.
Shea Serrano writes a string of love letters to his favourite Usain Bolt body parts, for The Ringer.
4. ”Then on Tuesday night the BBC went bananas. At 10 o’clock we were denied important news – of Anjem Choudary’s conviction, of swingeing tax fines and of possible “special status” for Britain outside the EU. Instead we had to sit for an hour and a half, waiting for three minutes of BBC pandemonium as British cyclists yet again pedalled fast. We had to watch while the BBC aired pictures of its own commentary box punching the air and howling. These were not so much journalists as state cheerleaders.”
Simon Jenkins isn’t joining in the celebrations of Team GB’s greatest Olympic medal haul, he thinks it’s all a bit soviet.
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