With gold haul from world meets, Biles and Dressel get more as best of international sports in 2019

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With gold haul from world meets, Biles and Dressel get more as best of international sports in 2019

In Globetrotting’s 33rd annual international sports awards to athletes for whom an Olympic gold medal is the ultimate prize, Simone Biles and Caeleb Dressel are the big winners.

That caveat about the highest goal and the development of the World Cup into the most important event in women’s soccer means Team USA’s brilliant championship performance in France, with Megan Rapinoe the high scorer (Golden Boot) and best player (Golden Ball), is outside the parameters applied since I began these awards in the pages of the Chicago Tribune.

But it goes without saying that the soccer team deserves a loud shout-out.

And now the medalists:

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Hanyu, Ledecká rise above it all in a year when world sport needed them - and other athletes - as salvation from scandal and cowardice

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Hanyu, Ledecká rise above it all in a year when world sport needed them - and other athletes - as salvation from scandal and cowardice

In international sports, 2018 was a year of courage and cowardice and common sense in seeing through a con.

And, as usual, it was a year of athletes of all colors, backgrounds, nations, shapes and sizes rising above the inanity, craven callousness and amorality of the old, white men who run global sports.

To which one can only say this:  Thanks, Yuzuru Hanyu and Simone Biles, thanks Ester Ledecká and Chloe Kim, thanks Eliud Kipchoge and Team Shuster. . .thanks to you and more for the achievements and goodwill that made us remember that sport, for all its ugly, scandalous warts, can show humankind at its most attractive.

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Athletes save the Olympics from their leaders' big lies

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Athletes save the Olympics from their leaders' big lies

Oh, how the International Olympic Committee must yearn for the good old days of 1999, when revelations of bribes for bid city votes led to the worst scandal in the hoary (or should that be whorey?) history of the IOC.

Because as bad as that was, 2016 was even worse.

That is a painful irony given that years with an Olympics usually leave enough good recollections to wipe the seamier ones from the public memory bank.

Not so in 2016, even if the underlying point of this column, as it has been in each of the 30 years for which I have given international sports awards, still is to celebrate the best athletes in sports for whom an Olympic gold medal is the ultimate prize.

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Athletes should just say no to flawed anti-doping system

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Athletes should just say no to flawed anti-doping system

Some thoughts while waiting for the lowlife Russian hackers whom Russian officials say have no ties to the government (hoo-hah!) to follow through on their announced intention to dump the next bunch of Olympians’ private medical records in an effort to convince people that athletes are doping even when they have violated no anti-doping rules...

...The overriding point in all this: as U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun has said repeatedly in recent months, the global anti-doping system is broken.

It includes unconscionable conflicts of interest, which included IOC vice-president Craig Reedie (whose IOC term ended in August) serving as WADA president.  And now the IOC dismay that the WADA-initiated McLaren report called for a ban on all Russian athletes in Rio.  Are they in this fight together or each defending a bailiwick?

The TUE regulations are just one of the many complicated, probably unworkable pieces in a well-intentioned but impossibly compromised and Sisyphean effort at doping control.

It is sad that this has led a group of ethically and morally bankrupt Russian hackers to pervert reasonable questions about flaws in the system by violating the privacy of individuals who have violated no rules.

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Of The Golden Stars Of Rio – And Those Who Made All Medals Shine Brighter

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Who was the biggest star of the 2016 Olympics?

It depends on your point of view.

From a global perspective, the answer is undoubtedly Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, because track and field is one of the two most widely followed and played sports in the worlds (soccer is the other). And the world’s fastest man is the most prized Olympic distinction. And Bolt’s triple-triple, consecutive Olympic golds in the 100, 200 and sprint relay, may last as long as our galaxy.

From the host nation’s perspective, it would have to be Neymar, who scored the lone goal and the decisive penalty kick as Brazil won its first Olympic title in soccer. Neymar was Sidney Crosby 2010 redux: the athlete assuring soul-salving gold in his country’s national sport.

From a U.S. perspective, the choice isn’t as clear-cut, as Sports Illustrated showed with a cover featuring swimmers Katie Ledecky and Michael Phelps and gymnast Simone Biles, whom it called, “The Greatests.” Plural.

While that SI issue focused on just the first week of Olympic action, the three cover athletes essentially played a successful game of “Can you top this?” Ledecky won four gold medals and a silver and set two world records; Phelps won five golds and a silver, improving his record Olympic totals to 23 golds and 28 total; Biles won four golds, a bronze and the acclaim of venerable coach Martha Karolyi as the greatest gymnast of all time.

Whether you think someone topped those three as the No. 1 Team USA athlete will depend on whether you think an athlete who did brilliantly in his or her only Olympic event should get equal credit with athletes whose sports provide the opportunity to win multiple medals.

I tend to come down on the side of multiples, especially when the achievements were as remarkable as those of Ledecky, Phelps and Biles. If forced to pick one, I would go for…nope, not doing that. Sorry. Don’t want to be trolled to distraction.

FOR THE WHOLE STORY ON TEAMUSA.ORG, CLICK HERE