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≡ THE 5-RING CIRCUS ≡
● Olympic Games 2028: Los Angeles ● The LA28 organizing committee named Dr. Casey Batten, the lead team physician for the Los Angeles Rams of the NFL as its Chief Medical Officer for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Batten is the Co-Director of Nonoperative Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine and director of the Primary Care Sports Medicine Fellowship in the Department of Orthopaedics at Cedars-Sinai, the Official Medical Provider for LA28.
Batten specializes in primary-care sports medicine with a focus on nonsurgical treatment of athletic-related injury and illness. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin and received his M.D. from the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. He served as the head team physician for the University of California in Berkeley prior to coming to Southern California.
● Alpine Skiing ● Italian star Federica Brignone, the seasonal World Cup women’s champion for 2024-25 and 2025 World Champion in the Giant Slalom and silver winner in the Super-G, suffered a brutal crash on 3 April at the Italian National Championships, with multiple fractures of the left calf and tibial plateau, and a tear of her anterior cruciate ligament.
Surgery followed immediately and on Tuesday, Brignone told reporters:
“We have no idea how long it will take, we will proceed step by step and then we will see. I am certainly someone who does not give up, it is not in my nature.
“I thought it would be quick, but in reality by having surgery right away I understood that they avoided complications, even for my life. Now the next step will be physiotherapy, which will start on Monday, and the second will be the first control CT scan.”
As far as the quickly-coming Milan Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games:
“Milan-Cortina is a stimulus, but it was also before. I wanted to continue my career precisely for the Olympics at home, but I don’t want this thing to destroy my path now. The goal now is to heal in the right way.”
● Archery ● With five Olympic medals already and preparing for a home Olympic Games in 2028, you would think all was rosy for U.S. star Brady Ellison.
Nope. Now 36, he’s been on a multi-year program to get thinner and stronger to fully realize his potential. He’s lost 58 pounds over the last couple of years and 30 pounds just since the Paris Olympic Games, where he won an Olympic silver After winning the AAE Arizona Cup for the 10th time last Sunday, he told USA Archery:
“The adjustment has been insane. I started to notice the difference indoors, in January, when I started rebuilding stuff.
“Things quit fitting in the way that I was used to, and I’ve been fighting my anchor and body position and trying to keep draw lengths.
“I still have a long way to go but in just the little bit that I’ve seen, I think this is going to get rid of a lot of the left and rights that I’ve had over the years. Today I didn’t have any up and downs, it was just a little bit left/right in the wind so I do think that if I can get this mastered I’m probably going to shoot better than I ever have.”
With six World Championships medals – including the 2019 men’s title – and 12 more Indoor and Field Worlds medals (seven golds), that’s not good news for his opponents.
● Athletics ● Wonderful story on Botswana’s Olympic 200 m champ Letsile Tebogo from BBC Sport Africa, where the 21-year-old explained the importance of his running career:
“Without sport, I [would] probably be a criminal by now.
“In the neighbourhood that I was growing up in, there were a lot of criminals. We thought that was the only way to survive.”
“I knew I had to go from school [to] training, and you are tired. You don’t have plenty of time to roam the streets, to go into people’s houses. Once I discovered that, I tried to pull in a few friends of mine. They are now playing football and we always talk about how if this [sport] didn’t work out, where would we be?
“Sport has really helped me a lot.”
Tebogo was initially involved in soccer, of course, but was running track in elementary school and stuck with it. He’s now a World Athletics ambassador for its Kids’ Athletics project, promoting fitness and physical activity:
“Athletics has given me so many opportunities, and I want young people to believe in themselves, dream big and enjoy the sport. It’s basically showing them direction, because if we have plenty of free time, we tend to do unlawful stuff. We start robbing, doing drugs and all that.”
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Pretty wild video from Grand Slam Track, showing a windstorm that hit Kingston (JAM) just a day before last Friday’s launch, tearing down tents and spraying equipment all over the track at the National Stadium. But:
“Thankfully, everyone on site was safe with no major injuries sustained. But we wanted to take a moment to say a big, public, and sincere thank you to the construction and venue development teams that enabled us to hold our inaugural Slam on Friday, less than 24 hours later.
“We were still able to showcase Grand Slam Track to the world. That is an incredible testament to the tireless work the on-the-ground teams put in through the night to get us event-ready. We are very grateful.”
● Shooting ● The ISSF World Cup continues in Buenos Aires (ARG), with two wins for India on the pistol range.
In the men’s 25 m Rapid-Fire Pistol final, Paris Olympic ninth-placer Vijayveer Sidhu took the title, with a 29-28 victory over Italian Riccardo Mazzetti – 12th in Paris – in the final five-shot segment.
Eighteen-year-old Inder Singh Suruchi took the women’s 10 m Air Pistol gold, scoring a 244.6-241.9 win over China’s Wei Qian, with teammate and 2023 World Champion Ranxin Jiang third (221.0).
Competition continues through the 11th.
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