Pink Mask Protest... US Fencers Wear Pink Masks After Teammate is Accused of Sexual Misconduct Alen Hadzic's has been accused of impropriety by at least three women; he denies those claims Team USA fencers donned pink facemasks on Friday in support of sexual assault victims after one of their teammates was accused of sexual misconduct. The New York Times and USA Today reported that Alen Hadzic of Montclair, New Jersey, an alternate in the epee fencing team, was accused of sexual impropriety by at least three women. He was initially suspended by the U.S. Center for SafeSport in June, but an arbitrator overturned the suspension, allowing him to compete in Tokyo. In photos from Friday's events, Hadzic -- who has denied claims against him -- can be seen in a black mask; all of his teammates are wearing pink ones. #TeamUSA men’s epee team wore pink masks for their opening match at the Olympics as a show of support for sexual assault victims. Alen Hadzic— their teammate accused of rape and sexual assault— is on the left. Kudos to the team for taking a stand. #BelieveWomen pic.twitter.com/yRI4azelKN — Ibtihaj Muhammad (@IbtihajMuhammad) July 30, 2021 https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/spo...pink-mask-teammates-team-usa-protest/3188130/ ---------- I bet Alen was caught off-guard by his teammates reaction to his accusations of him sexually assaulting women. wrbtrader
Tokyo daily COVID-19 infections hit record high https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/s...ving-athletes-village-sightseeing-2021-07-31/ Newly-reported COVID-19 cases in Olympic host city Tokyo surged to a record high of 4,058 on Saturday, the metropolitan government said, exceeding 4,000 for the first time and overshadowing the Games. Nationwide cases totalled 12,341 as of 6:30 p.m. local time, public broadcaster NHK said, the highest ever for Japan and up 15% on the day, underscoring a rapid rise in infections across the country. The new records come a day after Japan decided to extend its state of emergency for Tokyo to the end of August and expand it to three prefectures near Tokyo and the western prefecture of Osaka in light of the recent spike in infections. Amid intensifying concerns, Olympics organisers said on Saturday they had revoked accreditation of a Games-related person or people for leaving the athletes' village for sightseeing, a violation of measures imposed to hold the Olympics safely amid the pandemic. read more The organisers did not disclose how many people had their accreditation revoked or if the person or people involved were athletes, but Kyodo news agency reported it was two male judokas from Georgia who had their accreditation revoked. Kyodo cited a spokesperson for Georgia's Olympic committee as saying that silver medalists Vazha Margvelashvili and Lasha Shavdatuashvili had their accreditation stripped after leaving the village to go sightseeing. Officials of Georgia's Olympic committee were not immediately available for comment. There was a media report in Japan that the two had been witnessed near Tokyo Tower, a popular tourist destination, on Tuesday night. Margvelashvili won his silver on Sunday, and Shavdatuashvili on Monday. "We took away accreditation as we believe going out of the athletes' village for sightseeing is something that should not happen," Tokyo 2020 spokesperson Masa Takaya told a daily briefing. This is the first time accreditation has been revoked since the start of the Tokyo Olympics on July 23. Without it, a person cannot enter any Olympic facilities. Residents of the athletes' village are not allowed to go out for non-Games related purposes, such as sightseeing.
Bill Maher mocked the Olympics for being too 'woke' and said cancel culture is 'insanity' https://www.insider.com/tokyo-2020-bill-maher-mocks-woke-olympics-cancel-culture-insanity-2021-7 Bill Maher criticized the Tokyo Olympics for being overly "woke" and engaging in cancel culture. He pointed to several incidents of officials being punished for decades-old mistakes. "Why do we allow the people who just want to bitch to always win?" he said. Bill Maher mocked the Olympics for being "woke" and said cancel culture is an "insanity that is swallowing up the world." The TV host commented during Friday's episode of "Real Time with Bill Maher," where he criticized the ongoing Tokyo Summer Olympics for punishing officials for minor transgressions from decades ago. "Please don't make the Olympics into the Oscars," Maher said. "Oh, what's that? They did already?" "You know back in April when the Oscars aired, I commented in this space that the theme of that evening was 'we dare you to be entertained.' Lest your mind waiver for a few hours from thinking about the sad things and bad people in the world," Maher said. "Well, thank God we found some of those bad people now in the Olympics and not a moment too soon," he continued. He listed several incidents of officials being penalized for decades-old mistakes, including a ceremony director being removed for making a Holocaust joke in 1998, a composer stepping down because of childhood bullying allegations, and another official being removed because of a fat joke made during a private conversation. "Young people have to stop flattering themselves that they're Nostradamus and would have foreseen had they been around then everything that's unacceptable now," he said. "Why do we allow the people who just want to bitch to always win?" He said that it was a "purge" mentality that belonged in Stalin's Russia. He also criticized claims that introducing surfing as an Olympic sport was cultural appropriation and insulting to Hawaiians. Maher has been known for his liberal political views and addressed accusations that his political stance has changed. "My politics have not changed, but I am reacting to politics that have," he said.
IOC admits transgender athlete policy outdated, will change after Tokyo Olympics https://sports.yahoo.com/why-io-cs-...ll-change-after-tokyo-olympics-033812786.html International Olympic Committee officials admitted here at a roundtable with reporters that the guidelines governing the participation of transgender women in Olympic sports are outdated. They also confirmed that the IOC will announce a new policy soon after the Tokyo Games. The IOC made the admission as New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard prepared to become the first openly transgender athlete to compete at the Olympics. Hubbard, who lifts in the 87+kg division here on Monday, is allowed to compete alongside women under guidelines established in 2015 by the IOC and adopted by the International Weightlifting Federation. But in recent years, many medical experts and policymakers have come to the conclusion that those rules were no longer fully supported by science. Experts who spoke with Yahoo Sports, some of whom have consulted with the IOC, identified two main shortcomings: That testosterone-related rules were too lenient, and that one set of guidelines should not apply to dozens of different sports. The current guidelines require a transgender woman to undergo hormone therapy and suppress her testosterone “below 10 nanomoles per liter for at least 12 months prior to her first competition.” Two scientists who’ve consulted with the IOC said that, based on recent evidence, they believed the 10-nanomole-per-liter threshold to be too high. It was set “based on old data, and not on the most sophisticated ways of measuring testosterone,” said Myron Genel, a Yale endocrinologist who has studied the topic and consulted with the IOC for two decades. Genel and Joanna Harper, a transgender runner-turned-scientist who is actively studying retained physical advantages in trans athletes, and who has also consulted with the IOC, both said they believed 5 nanomoles per liter to be a reasonable threshold. Richard Budgett, the IOC’s medical and scientific director, acknowledged here at the roundtable that "agreeing on another number is almost impossible and possibly irrelevant. You can debate that endlessly.” The other point several experts made was that a one-size-fits-all policy on trans inclusion fails to consider that the advantages retained by women who’ve gone through male puberty are far more impactful in some sports than others. “The difference between male and female performance varies from sport to sport,” Genel said. “Even within a sport, like in track and field, the male to female advantage may be anywhere from 5 to 12, 13%, depending upon the activity.” The changes that occur in a trans woman’s body during hormone therapy also have more impact in some sports than in others. Harper gave an example: “We've found that hemoglobin levels in trans women, when they go on hormone therapy, will go from male to female levels of hemoglobin within four months. And hemoglobin's the single most important physiological factor in endurance sports. On the other hand, it's abundantly clear that trans women won't lose all their strength advantages.” Research that Harper has reviewed suggests that those persisted after three years of therapy and beyond. “How much is retained is still largely in doubt,” she says, “but certainly there is some advantage retained.” The IOC currently allows each international sports federation to set its own rules, but many have simply adopted the IOC’s guidelines. IOC spokesman Christian Klaue said the IOC is now focused on “[providing] a framework” to help sport-specific federations develop their own regulations. Because, as he said, echoing the scientists: "It is different from sport to sport, and sometimes even from discipline to discipline, and sometimes even from event to event.” Officials said that the IOC’s new approach will be announced later this year, but also stressed the need for more science. To date, most, if not all relevant studies on retained advantages in trans women have not specifically studied athletes, just trans women in general. “The research needs to be more contextualised,” said Katie Mascagni, the IOC’s head of public affairs. "What might be true for rowing and this specific discipline — where potentially testosterone or other aspects come into play in order to justify the reasons there is a disproportionate advantage — might be totally irrelevant in another context.” Budgett also said that, in addition to balancing inclusion and fairness — which is how these policy decisions have been considered — the IOC would consider safety, especially in contact sports. The new guidelines, he said, will be a “balance between safety, inclusion and fairness.” Budgett, like many experts, also downplayed the idea that the inclusion of trans women is a broad threat to women’s sports. "[Given] there's been no openly transgender women at the top level, until now, I think the threat to women's sports in general is probably overstated," he said. "And the other important thing to remember is transgender women are women. So you’ll include all women, if you possibly can.”
We had a really good team this year but of course you need some luck as well the top 5 or 6 teams were all capable of winning this.