3 Wire Sports

1 month ago | 3wiresports.com | Alan Abrahamson

COSTA NAVARINO, Greece – The International Olympic Committee, founded in 1894, has had nine presidents. All have been white men. Eight have been Europeans. Avery Brundage, 1952-72, was American. On Thursday, in just a single round of voting, the IOC elected Kirsty Coventry, 41, of Zimbabwe, its 10th president. She will formally take over from Thomas Bach in June in Lausanne. He was elected in 2013 and is termed out. “This is an extraordinary moment,” Coventry said as Bach, to the side, beamed.

1 month ago | 3wiresports.com | Alan Abrahamson

COSTA NAVARINO, Greece – Before Thursday’s vote here for the next president of the International Olympic Committee, it’s worth taking a moment to think about what might have been. And how one of the most shocking deaths in the Olympic scene reverberates, still – with a warning for what is to come in arguably the most consequential IOC presidential election, ever.

1 month ago | 3wiresports.com | Alan Abrahamson

Larry Buendorf, who for decades kept the U.S. Olympic Committee safe in a turbulent world, died Sunday in Colorado Springs. He was 87. Buendorf, a former U.S. Secret Service agent well known for breaking up an assassination attempt on President Gerald Ford in 1975, served as the USOC’s director of security from the early 1990s through his retirement in 2018 — seeing the athletes, team and leadership through the 1996 Atlanta Games bombing, the fraught years after 9/11 and so much more.

1 month ago | 3wiresports.com | Alan Abrahamson

Like the pretty pictures from Paris last summer, the veneer would suggest all is well in the Olympic landscape. For its part, the IOC would like you to believe everything is hunky-dory. Except:Sponsors are saying buh-bye. TV ratings are not what they were. The IOC is squeezing organizing committees. For years, the international sports federations have seen their IOC funding flatline. Athletes, purportedly at the center of the Olympics, report a struggle to buy groceries.

Jan 14, 2025 | 3wiresports.com | Alan Abrahamson

What’s happening in Los Angeles, the city I have lived in since late 1992, the city I love, is nothing less than a monumental disaster. The fires will prove a defining event in the 21st century history of Los Angeles and California. But to suggest, as some would do, that the Summer Games of 2028 are not going to happen here because of the fires – that’s just stupid. Indeed, LA28 now has a narrative – a phoenix, if you will, from the ashes.