Twelve Olympic champions are part of the list of nominees for the 2024 World Athletics Track Athletes of the Year. They include 100-meter gold medalists Noah Lyles and Julien Alfred. The sport’s international federation named six male and six female nominees for the awards.
In addition to winning gold in the Olympics, five of the twelve athletes (three women and two men) set new world records this year. According to bookie pay per head experts, each category will have two finalists and the chance to be the overall World Athlete of the Year.
That is the question of many Olympic fans all over the world and the more we look at the news, the more we are convinced that if the Rio Olympic Games are not the worst Olympics ever, then they must be in the top three of the worst Olympics of all times.
Since Rio de Janeiro, Brazil was chosen as the Olympic site for the 2016 Summer Olympics on October 2, 2016, it became the first South American city to host the Summer Olympics. It was chosen because of several factors which included a $14.4 billion budget.
Since then, Rio has been plagued with one problem after another assuring it a spot in the top worst Olympics of all times.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is once again on the news to complain. This time it is about the upcoming Summer Olympic that will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil this summer.
The complaint stems from a speech he made to 100 Russian athletes this past Wednesday concerning the Russian track and field team being banned from this year’s Olympic Games.
This comes in the wake of the World Anti-Doping Agency placing a ban on the entire Russian Olympic track and field as well as several other athletes. In addition, WADA even suggest that all Russians Olympic athletes should be banned as they said that an independently commissioned report found evidence of a four year , state-run “doing program” across the “vast majority” of Olympic sports.
After a rough month of July for the Russian Olympic athletes it looks like there is a bright like for them as the IOC(International Olympic Committee) has just announced that it will clear 271 Russian athletes to compete in the 2016 Rio Olympics.
This news comes after Russian President Putin claimed that Russian athletes were unfairly targeted in a sting by the World Anti-Doping Agency banning the Russian Olympic track and field team and several other athletes from the Rio Olympics for using banned enhancement drugs.
In the press release from the IOC, the 271 athletes represent 70% of the total Russian athletes(387) that were to compete in the Summer Olympics.