Category: SportsTravel Archives

Olympic Park in the Barra section of Rio de Janeiro opened for events yesterday and was full of activity through midnight, when the first of the swimming finals on the program concluded. (But if you were so inclined, you could see still events at that hour local time as across the city in Copacabana, Americans […]

SportsTravel caught up with U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun, who was attending the debut of rugby sevens at Deodoro Stadium, watching the U.S. women’s team lose a close match to Fiji in their opener. IOC President Thomas Bach was also in attendance. We had a chance to chat with Blackmun about the event and […]

Rugby last appeared in the Olympics in 1924 in its more traditional 15-a-side rugby union format. In 2016, it’s rugby sevens that is on the program, a quicker more high-scoring version of the sport. The United States won the last gold medal when the sport was on the program and has qualified both its men’s […]

Rio 2016 promised to deliver an Opening Ceremony fitting of the city’s journey to host the Olympic Summer Games and delivered in memorable fashion. According to organizers, this was their goal for the ceremony: “We want to change some paradigms of the Olympic ceremonies. We replaced the high-tech approach, the dependence on major electronic and […]

The scene outside Maracanã stadium for the Opening Ceremony was a mix of fun and a reminder that high-profile events such as this require an extraordinary amount of security. Outside the stadium, Brazilian military were guarding every highway overpass for several miles out, and troops could be seen doing a different kind of Opening Ceremony […]

Representatives of the Paris 2024 bid committee also met with the press on the eve of the Opening Ceremony, including French President François Hollande. The president spent his time reassuring the Olympic movement that the city could still be a viable host despite several recent terrorist attacks in the country. As evidence of that, he […]

Top executives of the U.S. Olympic Committee held a press conference at the Olympic Park media center and said they were pleased with the athlete’s village, venues and cooperation they have received from the Rio 2016 Organizing Committee. “Things are going really well for our team,” said Alan Ashley, the USOC’s chief of sport performance and […]