ATHLETICS

Photo Credit: Natasha Pisarenko

The city itself will be one of the brightest stars at the Paris Olympics, with ceremonies on the Seine, beach volleyball by the Eiffel Tower and a marathon route that passes through Versailles.

In the end, though, it will be the 10,500 athletes who will grab the spotlight once the festivities begin one year from Wednesday (July 26). Simone Biles is on a comeback, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone never left. A skateboarder who also likes to surf named Sky Brown is in contention to win gold medals in two events some 9,000 miles apart (more on that in a moment) and Katie Ledecky is still swimming strong heading into her fourth Olympics.

Some athletes to watch next year in Paris include:

Photo Credit: Martin Divisek / EPA

Europe’s top human rights court has ruled in favour of Olympic champion Caster Semenya, saying courts in Switzerland should give her a new chance to fight a requirement that female athletes with high natural testosterone take drugs to lower it.

The South African double Olympic 800m champion, 32, had approached the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in February 2021 after losing appeals to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), sport’s highest court, and the Swiss Federal Tribunal (SFT) in a long-running legal battle.

On Tuesday, the ECHR ruled, by a slender majority of four votes to three, that Semenya’s original appeal against World Athletics regulations had not been properly heard.

Photo Credit:AP

Eight days before her first ultramarathon, South Africa’s infamous 87km (54-mile) Comrades, Ashleigh Adams is on stage at a party for her running club, reciting her poem about how she got here.

“I am trying to give myself a second chance,” the 35-year-old says, leaning towards the microphone in front of her.

Photo Credit: Fredrik Persson / TT News Agency via AP

Olympic champion Karsten Warholm won his 400-meter hurdles race on Sunday and then turned to join in the crowd booing environmental protesters who disrupted the Diamond League event near the finish.

Three people kneeled on the track about eight meters (yards) from the line holding two banners that spanned from lanes one to six, forcing runners to break through them. No athlete appeared to be hurt.

Photo Credit:AFP

Eric Lira, a "naturopathic" therapist based in the city of El Paso, is the first individual to be convicted under a new US law introduced in the wake of Russia's state-backed Olympic doping scandals, the Department of Justice said in a statement.

The 2020 law, named after Russian whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov, enables US authorities to prosecute individuals involved in international doping fraud conspiracies.