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Nine synchronized swimmers underwater in a pool.
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Why No Men Will Compete in Synchronized Swimming in Paris

For the first time, men are permitted to compete in artistic swimming at the 2024 Olympics. But none will.
Parade of U.S. Olympic team members, 1960.

At the 1960 Olympics, American Athletes Recruited by the CIA Tried to Convince Soviets to Defect

Al Cantello, a star of the U.S. track and field team, arranged a covert meeting between a government agent and a Ukrainian long jumper.
Runners on a track and crowds in the stands at the All Africa Games, 1973.
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Afraid of an Inspiring Olympics Story

How Europe reacted when Ethiopia tried to join the famed global sporting tradition at the 1924 Paris Olympics.
Zdeněk Koubek running.

Human Velocity

“The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports” upends long-held assumptions about trans people’s participation in sports.
Erin Jackson of the United States holds an American flag after winning the gold medal in the speedskating women's 500-meter race at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, on Feb. 13.
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The Hidden History That Explains Why Team USA is Overwhelmingly White

Exclusion and violence in Western U.S. states help explain the Whiteness of winter sports.
Tommie Smith on podium receives gold medal with fist raised, holding shoe.
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Rule 50 and Racial Justice

The long history of the international olympic committee's war on athletes' free expression.
Olympic surfer
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Centuries of U.S. Imperialism Made Surfing an Olympic Sport

With an eye toward U.S. power, Americans spread the sport making its Olympic debut.

The 1904 Olympic Marathon May Have Been the Dumbest Race Ever Run

While we're missing three weeks of sporting endeavors due to the Tokyo Olympics, we can revisit one of the most bizarre races in modern Olympic history.

The 1952 Olympic Games, the US, and the USSR

The Olympics have long enabled global superpowers to enact their political and ideological conflicts in sport.
Two paintings of sports: Jean Jacoby's Corner, left, and Rugby. At the 1928 Olympic Art Competitions in Amsterdam, Jacoby won a gold medal for Rugby.

When the Olympics Gave Out Medals for Art

In the modern Olympics’ early days, painters, sculptors, writers and musicians battled for gold, silver and bronze.
A newspaper clipping with the headline "Norway Makes Skateboarding Against Law"

Skateboarding: From Criminal Offense to Olympic Sport

Skateboarding was considered a silly and childish phenomenon for much of its existence.
The Phrygian cap derives its name from the ancient region of Phrygia, in what is now Turkey. Also known as a liberty cap, it inspired revolutionaries in both the Colonies and France.

The Paris Games' Mascot, the Olympic Phryge, Boasts a Little-Known Revolutionary Past

The Phrygian cap, also known as the liberty cap, emerged as a potent symbol in 18th-century America and France.
Zdeněk Koubek.

A Forgotten Athlete, a Nazi Official, and the Origins of Sex Testing at the Olympics

In 1936, the Czech track star Zdeněk Koubek became world-famous after undergoing surgery so that he could live openly as a man.
Silver medalists Karen Chen and Nathan Chen pose for a photo after the team event in the figure skating competition at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Feb. 7, 2022, in Beijing.
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The ‘Miracle on Ice’ Shaped the Olympics Coverage We’re Seeing Every Night

How rooting for American athletes became part of Olympic TV coverage.
Tommie Smith holding shoe
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Amateurism, Sneaker Money, and the Forgotten Protest of the 1968 Games

One of the most audacious examples of product placement at the Olympics was staged by John Carlos and Tommie Smith.
Tsökahovi "Louis" Tewanima became an Olympian while being forced to attend the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

The Olympic Star Who Just Wanted to Go Home

Tsökahovi Tewanima held an American record in running for decades, but his training at the infamous Carlisle school kept him from his ancestral Hopi lands

How Wilma Rudolph Became the World’s Fastest Woman

Wilma Rudolph won three Olympic golds and was among the first athletes to use her celebrity to fight for civil rights.

A Brief History of Women’s Figure Skating

You might be surprised to learn that this sport where women now shine was initially seen as solely the purview of male athletes

How the National Anthem Got Tangled Up With American Sports

Like most relationships, it’s complicated.

The Drugs Won: The Case for Ending the Sports War on Doping

Two former anti-doping professionals think the fight against performance-enhancing drugs is doing more harm than good.
Soldiers around tanks on the street.

Want to Understand the 1992 LA Riots? Start with the 1984 LA Olympics

The causes were many, but police brutality and economic insecurity were supercharged in Los Angeles after the 1984 Olympics. 
Zdeněk Koubek's ID card.

Discrimination Against Trans Olympians Has Roots in Nazi Germany

1934 world champion runner Zdenek Koubek, boxer Imane Khelif, and how far we haven’t come on gender in sports.
Skateboarder doing trick on ramp.

How a Generation of Women and Queer Skateboarders Fought for Visibility and Recognition

On defying gender norms and expectations in extreme sports.

American Exchanges: Third Reich’s Elite Schools

How the Nazi government used exchange student programs to foster sympathy for Nazism in the United States.
Painting of a girl with a basketball looking out a window.

Lady Vols Country

How college basketball coach Pat Summitt transformed women's sports.
A pole vaulter pointing the end of the pole at the camera.
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Pole Vaulting Over the Iron Curtain

When it became clear that the United States and its allies couldn’t “liberate” Eastern Europe through psychological war and covert ops, they turned to sports.
Photo of Jackie Robinson and Jacki Robinson Jr at the Youth March for Integrated Schools demonstration in Washington DC with Harry Belafonte.

Jackie Robinson, Pioneer of BDS

The Dodgers great didn’t just break Major League Baseball’s color line. He was also an activist whose legacy reaches from Brooklyn to South Africa to Palestine.
Diagram of a man swinging a wooden club.

Eastern Sports and Western Bodies: The “Indian Club” in the U.S.

Although largely forgotten today, exercise by club swinging was all the rage in the 19th century.

Agency, Order and Sport in the Age of Trump

Jim Thorpe, Jack Johnson, and the sporting middle ground.

What Thomas Jefferson’s Daughters Can Teach Us About the False Promises of Patriarchy

Women have always come to the aid of men in power, but the costs of such actions have not always been immediately apparent.

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