(NEW YORK) — American Katie Ledecky is looking to further cement her name in swim history with a race making its Olympic debut in Tokyo.
The 1,500-meter freestyle had previously only been available to men at the Olympics. But this year, as the Games became more gender-equal, the distance race was opened up to women.
Ledecky is a favorite to win the race. During qualifiers Monday, she set the official Olympic record at 15:35:35. That was about 15 seconds slower than the world record — which she set in 2018.
The 24-year-old has already medaled once in Tokyo, winning the silver in the 400-meter freestyle. Australian Ariarne Titmus took home that gold.
“I can’t be disappointed with that,” Ledecky said of that race, according to Team USA. “It was my second best swim ever, and I fought tooth and nail. That’s all you can ask for.”
As a distance freestyle swimmer, her bigger events are the 800- and 1,500-meter races.
The heavily decorated Olympian won one gold in 2012 and four golds and one silver in 2016 at the Games. In addition to the 1,500 and 400, she’ll look to add to her count with the 200-meter and 800-meter freestyle races.
The Olympics have made the competition more gender-equal by incorporating new events for women and more mixed-gender teams in various sports. This impacts athletes in sports like boxing, rowing and shooting, in addition to swim.
Tokyo marks a “turning point” for the elite international sporting competition as the most gender-equal Olympics in the Games’ history, organizers said, with women accounting for nearly 49% of the 11,090 athletes.
(DALLAS) — The University of Texas and the University of Oklahoma have notified the Big 12 that they will not renew its grant of media rights in 2025, according to a joint statement.
“Providing notice to the Big 12 at this point is important in advance of the expiration of the conference’s current media rights agreement,” the statement said. “The universities intend to honor their existing grant of rights agreements. However, both universities will continue to monitor the rapidly evolving collegiate athletics landscape as they consider how best to position their athletics programs for the future.”
Multiple media reports have said Texas and Oklahoma are looking to move to the SEC.
“Although our eight members are disappointed with the decisions of these two institutions, we recognize that intercollegiate athletics is experiencing rapid change and will most likely look much different in 2025 than it does currently,” said Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby in a statement. “The Big 12 Conference will continue to support our member institutions’ efforts to graduate student-athletes, and compete for Big 12 and NCAA championships. Like many others, we will use the next four years to fully assess what the landscape will look like in 2025 and beyond. The remaining eight institutions will work together in a collaborative manner to thoughtfully and strategically position the Big 12 Conference for continued success, both athletically and academically, long into the future.”
According to ESPN, next up for Texas and Oklahoma will be to let the SEC know they want to join the conference. 11 of the conference’s 14 schools would then need to vote them into the league.
(INDIANAPOLIS) — Indianapolis Colts head coach Frank Reich has tested positive for COVID-19 and will miss the start of training camp, the team announced Monday.
The first practice of training camp is on Wednesday.
“I’m excited for training camp, however, I’m disappointed I won’t be there with the team as we start,” Reich said in a statement. “I’m fortunate to be fully vaccinated and I’m asymptomatic. I’m feeling well and I’m looking forward to returning as soon as I’m medically cleared.”
Reich is entering his fourth year with the team and has a 28-20 record.
Colts general manager Chris Ballard told reporters Reich will still be involved with the team when quarantining.
“Frank’s still a part of it,” Ballard said. “With everything we learned a year ago with Zoom, he’s still involved. He’s in meetings through Zoom, he’ll be in team meetings through Zoom, he’s in contact with the coaches, we have staff meetings every morning, and he’s in constant contact with everybody.”
Ballard did not give a timeline for Reich to return to the team.
According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, this month 13 staffers and four players across the NFL have tested positive for the coronavirus.
(TOKYO) — Three of the four members of Team USA have advanced to the quarterfinals of surfing’s debut at the Tokyo Olympics with Caroline Marks and Kolohe Andino emerging from the waters off Japan’s Shidashita Beach with the highest scores in the opening heats.
For Andino, 27, of San Clemente, California, who holds seven USA Surfing Champion titles, victory was bittersweet because he knocked teammate John John Florence, 28, of Oahu, Hawaii, out of the competition during a head-to-head faceoff on Monday.
Andino earned the highest score in the first two days of competition with an 8.5 out of a possible 10 from the judges on a ride he described as “really rad and one for the history books.”
With waves churned up to 7 feet by a developing typhoon far north of Shidashita Beach, Andino nailed what an announcer described as a “slob frontside air reverse” in which he caught air off the lip of a wave, grabbed onto his surfboard with one hand and landed on the face of the wave in a reverse position before spinning forward.
On the women’s side, Team USA’s 19-year-old Caroline Marks and Carissa Moore, 28, of Honolulu, the world’s No. 1 ranked surfer, both moved on to the quarterfinals.
Moore, who holds four World Surfing League titles, narrowly defeated Peru’s Sofia Mulanovich, 38, in a one-on-one competition on Monday.
Marks, the sixth-ranked female surfer in the world, enters the quarterfinals after achieving the highest overall score of any woman or man in the third round of the inaugural surfing event. In her two best heats she scored an 8 and 7.33 for a combined total of 15.33.
Organizers of the first-time event have scheduled an eight-day waiting period — July 25 to Aug. 1 — to squeeze in up to four days of competition based on daily conditions — wave heights, direction, wind strength.
Kurt Korte, the international surf forecaster for the Olympic surfing event, told ABC News that conditions off the Pacific Coast of Japan are looking good for the remainder of the week. In his latest forecast for Surfline.com, Korte said surfers can expect smaller waves for the quarterfinals on Tuesday, with “peaky swell mix in the head-high range with well overhead sets.”
Korte said Tropical Cyclone Nepartak well off Japan’s Pacific Coast was easing up and not producing the bigger more challenging waves competitors saw over the weekend.
16 to surf it out in quarterfinals
Sixteen of the 40 surfers from 17 countries who qualified for the Olympics move onto the quarterfinals. But big stars in the surfing world like Florence and Australia’s Stephanie Gilmore, a seven-time world champion, were eliminated in the earlier rounds.
“It wasn’t my best performance but sometimes you’ve just got to take those heat wins and roll with it,” Moore, now the heavy favorite to win gold, said after squeaking into the quarterfinals. “It was crazy to see some top seeds bow out earlier this morning. It just goes to show that these conditions are very tricky.”
How the competition will work
The surfers qualified for the Olympics based primarily on how well they did at previous major competitions, including the 2019 World Surfing League Championship Tour, where Florence and Moore each came out on top.
The Olympic Games are exclusively a shortboard affair, meaning surfboards are less than 7 feet long, with pointy noses and usually three small fins on the underside.
A five-judge panel bases scores on a scale of 1 to 10 that can include decimal points. Competitors are judged on speed, power, snap turns and how seamlessly they flow on a wave. Judges also look for difficulty, risk and innovation of maneuvers performed, such as a barrel, or riding through the tube a curling wave makes, and aerials in which surfers ride up the face a wave and catch air at the lip.
In April, Moore wowed spectators at the Rip Curl Newcastle Cup, the second leg of the World Surf League’s Championship Tour, by nailing an aerial where she landed a reverse on the face of a wave before spinning another 180 degrees forward. The judges gave her a near-perfect score of 9.9.
Surfing fans are watching to see if Moore will perform the maneuver again on the world’s biggest stage.
In each heat, surfers are given a 30-minute window to catch as many waves as possible but must go one at a time, with the surfer closest to the peak of a wave given preference to catch it. Participants can be docked points for violating surfing etiquette by cutting in line.
The best two scores from each surfer will decide who moves on to the semifinals round and, eventually, the medal round.
Following her first day of competition on Sunday, in which Moore won a tough battle with Teresa Bonvalot of Portugal, Moore admitted to having Olympic jitters.
“I actually had a little mini-meltdown because of all the nerves and the anxiety and stuff that had built up,” Moore said during a press conference.
Since then she said she has felt a “sense of calm” with each round of surfing.
“Whatever happens, I’ve done everything I could, and now it’s time to have fun,” Moore said.
(NEW YORK) — As American gymnasts prepare to dazzle on the Olympic stage in Tokyo this month, the sport is still struggling to shake off the specter of the Larry Nassar sex abuse scandal.
It’s been five years since the first women came forward publicly in 2016 to accuse the former USA Gymnastics national team doctor of sexual abuse under the guise of medical treatment.
Since then, hundreds of young women and girls have come forward. In 2017, Nassar pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 60 years behind bars for child pornography and other charges. One year later, he again pleaded guilty and was sentenced to an additional 40 to 175 years for multiple counts of sexual assault of minors.
While Nassar, 57, remains behind bars, the scars of his abuse linger on.
In wake of the crisis, USA Gymnastics, the national governing body for U.S. gymnastics, and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committees have scrambled to repair their reputations and the trust of athletes, all while juggling multiple lawsuits. USAG also faces a threat from the USOC to decertify it as the organization overseeing the sport.
Despite touting reforms, athletes like Simone Biles and Aly Raisman have actively called out the organizations and distanced themselves from them for letting Nassar carry out his years of abuse.
This year, Biles, the most decorated gymnast of all time, will headline her own post-Olympic tour, which USAG usually runs, along with other elite female gymnasts.
At the U.S. Championships in 2019, she called out the organization in front of reporters while standing next to a USAG spokesperson.
“It’s hard coming here for an organization, having had them fail us so many times,” Biles said, tears welling in her eyes.
So, what has changed since then?
Reforms in the gymnastics world
Since the Nassar scandal, USAG has overhauled its leadership and went through four new presidents and CEOs in 23 months.
Current President Li Li Leung said USAG has gone in a new direction since 2016, and is focused on “creating a safe, inclusive and positive culture.”
“We recognize how deeply we have broken the trust of our athletes and community, and are working hard to build that trust back,” Leung said in a statement to ABC News. “We know that this kind of meaningful and lasting culture change does not happen overnight.”
Following a damning 2017 independent investigative report that found USAG had “significant gaps regarding the prevention and reporting of child sexual abuse,” the organization said it would adopt 70 recommendations, such as improving the screening of coaches, training to combat sexual abuse and the process for filing misconduct reports. USAG told ABC News “a vast majority” have been implemented already.
Since the Nassar scandal, USAG now requires 33% athlete representation on all boards and committees and created an Athlete Bill of Rights that focuses on protecting athletes from all forms of abuse.
The organization also created platforms for athletes to express their views and report concerns anonymously, without fear of retribution. Furthermore, a bill was passed in Congress in 2017 naming Safesport as an independent organization to respond to reports of sexual misconduct.
Vince Finaldi, an attorney representing about 300 Nassar survivors in a pending lawsuit against USAG and USOC, told ABC News that none of these efforts “really matter.”
“They had policies and procedures before; they didn’t follow them. They tightened up the policies and procedures, but unless they’re followed, kids are going to be vulnerable and kids are going to get abused,” Finaldi told ABC News.
Even with reforms, the relationship between USAG and its athletes is “forever damaged,” Finaldi said.
Calls for ‘the truth’
USAG told ABC News that it has participated in “at least six independent investigations” led by several congressional committees; the Indiana attorney general; Walker County, Texas; and the independent law firm of Ropes & Gray to look into the abuse of athletes, but some gymnasts say those probes were not truly independent.
Aly Raisman, who was captain of the 2012 and 2016 U.S. women’s Olympic gymnastics teams and is now retired, has repeatedly said those probes aren’t enough.
“I don’t know why USAG is saying they’re cooperating. I’ve spoken to many members of law enforcement who have said they’ve been extremely difficult, they’re not handing over all their documents and data,” she told CNN in a March interview. “Until we understand everything that happened — we have access to every single email, phone calls, data, every single thing you can imagine, we can’t believe in a future that’s safe for the sport.”
The saga continued last week with the release of the bombshell Department of Justice’s Inspector General report, which pointed to widespread failures within the FBI in investigating Nassar allegations. The report was released just before the 2021 U.S. Olympic gymnastic teams jetted to Tokyo for the games.
Complaints were first made against the doctor in 2015, but it took months for FBI agents to act on it, according to the report. In that time, “approximately 70 or more young athletes were allegedly sexually abused by Nassar” between July 2015, when USA Gymnastics first reported allegations about Nassar to the Indianapolis Field Office, and September 2016, according to the report.
Legal challenges drag on
For many Nassar survivors, there has been no closure as lawsuits against USAG and the USOC drag on in court.
Michigan State University, where Nassar was employed, agreed to a $500 million settlement with 332 Nassar survivors in 2018. However, a lawsuit is still pending in the case against USAG and USOC, which has about 550 claimants who claim they were abused by Nassar, due to USAG’s bankruptcy declaration also in 2018.
Leung said in June that the COVID-19 pandemic has prolonged the mediation process, but she’s hopeful it’ll be settled soon.
“Obviously, we would love to be out of bankruptcy [so] that we can be able to more freely move forward with all of the things that we have been working on and to not have this be a part of the narrative,” Leung told The Associated Press.
In 2020, USAG offered a $215 million settlement, but an agreement has yet to be reached. Even that proposal was ripped as a “cover up” by athletes like Raisman as the deal would release several people and groups from liability, including former USAG President and CEO Steve Penny, who was in power at the time of the Nassar scandal.
John Manly, an attorney who works with Finaldi to represent Nassar survivors, including Biles, said when it comes to USAG “largely the rhetoric has changed,” but there has been little other meaningful movement.
“The changes that matter to the athletes honestly are because Simone insisted on it. The fact that the Karolyi Ranch closed, USA Gymnastics didn’t do that voluntarily,” Manly told ABC News, citing the national team training camp site in Texas where Nassar worked.
“I continue to believe that this is an organization that is incapable of putting athletes first. Its set up and its senior staff is focused on two things: money and medals,” Manly said. “Until you begin to focus on athletes’ well-being as your primary goal, and until we have a full accounting of what happened, there’s no moving forward.”
Sarah Klein, a former competitive gymnast and survivor of Nassar’s abuse, told ABC News that U.S. gymnastics hasn’t turned over a new leaf.
“No athlete that I know has anything but disdain for USAG and USOPC. How could you believe in organizations who have the blood of little girls on their hands?” she said. “My heart goes out to the athletes competing at these Olympics who deserved — and deserve — more. Nothing has changed for the better. As the lies and cover-up continue to be unpacked and exposed, it is fair to say that things are far worse.”
Heading into the 2021 Games while moving past the abuse and USAG turmoil isn’t easy.
The “Fierce Five” team — Raisman, Gabby Douglas, McKayla Maroney, Kyla Ross and Jordyn Wieber — that won gold at the 2012 London Olympics, as well as some members of the 2016 Games’ “Final Five,” including Biles, achieved top honors in the sport despite the abuse they suffered.
“They all won gold, despite having to endure what [Nassar] did to them,” Manly said. “You think about that, in the context of Simone Biles and what she’s been able to achieve despite that, [it] is nothing less than heroic.”
Earlier this month, Biles opened up about the depression she suffered after she was abused by Nassar in an episode of her Facebook Watch show, “Simone vs. Herself.”
“With gymnasts, if you get injured … your ‘heal time’ is four to six weeks. But then with something so traumatic that happens like this, there’s no four to six weeks,” she said. “There’s like actually no time limit or healing time for it.”
(TOKYO) — The U.S. men’s gymnastics team came in fifth in the team competition at the Tokyo Olympics on Monday.
The athletes were up against powerful teams from Japan and China, as well as athletes from Russia competing under the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC). After going into the final rotation in fourth place, the U.S. dropped to fifth in the final scoring. Great Britain took fourth place.
It was a tight fight for the gold between the ROC team and Japan. The Russian athletes won in the end, with the last score determining who would come out on top. The difference between gold and silver was about two-tenths of a point.
China took home the bronze.
The U.S. team consisted of Brody Malone, Yul Moldauer, Shane Wiskus and Sam Mikulak, a 28-year-old veteran who returned for his third Olympics.
The group has become tight-knit and exuberantly supportive of each other as they sought success at these Games. After qualifying for the finals, Mikulak told his teammates in a huddle he had “never been on a team like this and he’d just had the time of his life out there,” Malone told People magazine.
Their strong finish featured impressive performances especially from Moldauer on floor and Mikulak on parallel bars.
An American men’s team has not medaled at the Olympics since 2008.
Although this was the final for the team competition, the men still have opportunities to medal in individual events.
Malone will compete in the all-around and horizontal bar event, Moldauer in floor, and Alec Yoder — who was not part of the official team but is competing as an individual for the U.S. — qualified for the pommel horse event final.
Of course, Mikulak is looking to bring home an elusive Olympic individual medal. He qualified for the finals in the individual all-around, taking place Wednesday, and in the parallel bars.
(TOKYO) — Each day, ABC News will give you a roundup of key Olympic moments from the day’s events in Tokyo, happening 13 hours ahead of U.S. Eastern Standard Time. After a 12-month delay, the unprecedented 2020 Summer Olympics is taking place without fans or spectators and under a state of emergency due to the coronavirus pandemic.
U.S. men’s swimming takes gold, Ledecky settles for silver
American swimmer Caleb Dressel led the men’s team to a gold model in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay on Monday, marking Team USA’s second gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics. Dressel is on a quest to win six gold medals at the Games and is often referred to as the successor to Michael Phelps, the most successful and most decorated Olympian of all time with 28 medals.
Katie Ledecky on the U.S. women’s swimming team, another decorated champion, was bested in the 400-meter freestyle by Australia’s Ariarne Titmus, nicknamed “The Terminator.” Ledecky’s silver increased U.S. swimming’s current medal total at the Tokyo Olympics to 8.
13-year-old Nishiya Momiji of Japan wins gold medal in women’s street skateboarding
Team Japan has now claimed both gold medals in the first two events of skateboarding at the Tokyo Olympics, as Nishiya Momiji won the women’s street final after compatriot Yuto Horigome had won the men’s. Momiji, 13, was joined on the podium by another 13-year-old, Rayssa Leal of Brazil, who won silver, and 16-year-old Nakayama Funa of Japan, who took home the bronze.
COVID-19 cases increase to 153 among Olympic athletes and personnel
There were 16 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 among people at the Tokyo Olympics on Monday, including three athletes and one personnel member staying at the Olympic Village. The total now stands at 153, according to data released by the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee.
Meanwhile, the city of Tokyo reported 1,429 new cases on Monday, an increase in the rolling seven-day average of 141.2%, according to data released by the Tokyo metropolitan government.
There were no confirmed cases among the 1,144 U.S. Olympic delegates in Japan as of Sunday.
U.S. softball defeats Japan in warmup for gold medal game
The U.S. softball team defeated Japan 3-1 to keep their perfect 5-0 record, finishing the group stage. The two teams will face off again in the final on Tuesday, a gold-medal rematch of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing where Japan defeated Team USA 3-1.
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Sunday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE
Baltimore 5, Washington 4
NY Mets 5, Toronto 4
Chi White Sox 3, Milwaukee 1
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Cleveland 3, Tampa Bay 2
Boston 5, NY Yankees 4
Kansas City 6, Detroit 1
LA Angels 6, Minnesota 2
Houston 3, Texas 1
Seattle 4, Oakland 3
NATIONAL LEAGUE
Philadelphia 2, Atlanta 1
Miami 9, San Diego 3
St. Louis 10, Cincinnati 6
Chi Cubs 5, Arizona 1
San Francisco 6, Pittsburgh 1
LA Dodgers 3, Colorado 2
MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER
New England 2, CF Montreal 1
New York City FC 5, Orlando City 0
Philadelphia 1, Miami 1 (Tie)
D.C. United 1, New York 0
Sporting Kansas City, 3 Seattle 1
(PHOENIX) — Arizona Cardinals defensive end Chandler Jones requested a trade from the team this offseason, according to ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler.
Fowler says Jones has not been happy with his contract and future with the team. Jones is coming into his final year of his deal and will make $15.5 million this season.
In his first four season’s with the Cardinals, Jones had 60 sacks. Last season, the 31-year old only played in five games because of a season-ending torn bicep and had 1 sack.
Fowler reports the team does not want to trade Jones and except him to report to training camp.
(TOKYO) — Up until last year, the Olympic games had never been postponed for any other reason than a world war. Then the coronavirus pandemic swept across the world, putting the dreams of over 10,000 Olympic hopefuls on pause.
The Summer Olympics in Tokyo are now set to begin in less than two weeks, nearly 500 days after the International Olympics Committee announced the postponement of the Games on March 24, 2020.
After a year of extraordinary planning, the Tokyo Olympics will be different than any other Olympics Games before it: As the worldwide vaccination effort against COVID-19 continues, all spectators will be banned from attending the Games, the athletes will be isolated from one another, and all coaches, trainers and participants will be tested rigorously for COVID-19.
After going through what they called unprecedented training, three athletes spoke to ABC News about what it took for them to get to the Olympic stage while a global pandemic ravaged the world.
LILLY KING, USA SWIMMING
Two-time Olympic gold medalist Lilly King was a breakout star at the Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics in 2016 when she won first place in the 100-meter and 200-meter breaststroke. When she heard the postponement news, King said she was at home training in Evansville, Indiana — it was just one of many training sessions she’d had over the previous months. Yet still, she said the reality of the situation didn’t sink in until some time later.
“I heard the Olympics were postponed and I didn’t really know what to think. I’m kind of … a serial under-reactor,” King told ABC News. “[Five months later], my mom actually got my Olympic flag framed from 2016… I saw the flag and that was kind of the moment, I was like, ‘Oh, my God, we’re not going right now. This is not fun.’”
“[I had] my little meltdown that I had been waiting to have for five months… I got it out eventually and I think that was good,” she added.
In April 2020, King was forced to adapt her training routine to a world in which pools were closed due to COVID-19.
“I was sitting at home one day and my coach called me and said, ’Do you have a wetsuit?’” King said. She told him she didn’t. “He said, ‘Well, you better get one because we’re gonna swim in a pond.’ It was probably mid-April, but we started swimming in the pond in Indiana. It was freezing.”
King said she and her teammates bonded over the brutally cold days in the pond and the long drives across the state to access the few pools that had begun to reopen.
“If one of us came to practice with a bad attitude one day, it would ruin the rest of it for the other nine of us. … You had to be really conscious about what you were saying out loud, or what you were thinking, because it was very noticeable to the people we were training with since we are a small group,” said King.
King said that with her previous Olympics experience, she has looked forward to the Tokyo Games as a chance to step into a role as a leader and mentor to her teammates, many of whom are young.
“Having a long career in this sport is just having a good outlook and a good attitude about things and that’s what I tried to do,” said King. “It is the Olympics, but in the end it’s just another swim meet. Hopefully that’ll be helpful to those younger athletes and I know that would have been very helpful advice to me whenI was in their shoes.”
Hungry to compete, King said that the yearlong wait will only make competing at the Olympic Games that much sweeter.
“We still have an incredible team here and they’re ready to compete and ready to go,” said King. “Hopefully I can be that mentor that I had to those younger kids on the team and just come out and swim fast and have fun.”
MARIAH DURAN, USA SKATEBOARDING
In March 2019, professional skateboarder Mariah Duran was named one of 16 inaugural members comprising the USA Skateboarding National Team in the first Olympics Games to ever feature the sport.
Two years later, she is the leading female skateboarder in the U.S. and will compete against 26 nations in her Olympic debut.
“It was big to just be a part of [the Olympics] and work towards something and to have that extra goal set in front of me as a skater,” said Duran.
“It’s going to make the conversation for younger girls who want to pick up a board, their parents might be more down to let them do it,” she added.
After a whirlwind 2019 during which she competed in qualification rounds and traveled, Duran said she used the extra time from postponement to reconnect with her love for skating.
“[This year], I would have to say I really fell in love with skateboarding even more, and that aspect of when all this other noise is canceled, I still love skating and I would do it regardless of whether the Olympics happened or not,” Duran told ABC News. “I’ve been skating for about 14 years. So all those other years, I was just doing it because I love doing it.”
Duran, who is from Albuquerque, New Mexico, said she used the city as a training ground by finding outdoor parks, stairs, ledges and other obstacles in town.
“I just want longevity in the sport. So what can I do to create that? I was able to get two trainers [to focus my training] and we would do Zoom calls. … I would have [the weekend] just to myself and skate all day if I wanted to,” she said.
Along with practicing yoga regularly to help with her flexibility, Duran said she also used the postponement to slow down and focus on mental training, including being present in the moment.
“When you’re competing at such a high level, or you’re pushing yourself to do such an extreme [trick]… getting in tune with your mental space is so important because once you can control that. You can control the outcome if you know the position you put yourself in.”
Duran said she hopes that the game’s global spotlight on skateboarding will inspire other people, especially women, to get involved in the sport and continue to push their limits.
“Skating is so empowering and amazing that, when you step on a board, you don’t feel like a girl or a boy. At that point, you’re just a skater,” said Duran. “I really hope that people just look into the sport a little bit more and it sheds a light and it helps grow the sport.”
DAVID BROWN, USA PARALYMPIC TRACK & FIELD
Two-time Paralympian David Brown runs in the 100-meter and 200-meter sprint alongside a sighted guide in the T11 sports class, which includes all athletes who have a visual field of less than 10 degrees diameter. Brown said the past year has helped him to grow more in tune with his own body as an individual runner — one who doesn’t necessarily need help.
“What inspired me to actually start running was me starting to go blind when I was 6-years-old. … I started being able to just run fast,” Brown told ABC News. “Even though I am blind, I’m not going to let you take advantage of me. If you’re going to beat me, you’re going to have to work for it and it doesn’t matter if I can see or not.”
Since 2014, Brown has held the world record as the fastest totally blind athlete in the world.
Brown, who began competing in the Paralympics in 2012 and secured a gold medal in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro games, said that the extra time that he spent training last year gave him the chance to better understand his muscles, timing and pace.
Brown said that training by himself allowed him to focus inward and find his own step rather than sync his stride to another person’s.
“I’ve been running for some years now, but I never knew the technicality of sprinting. … Especially when it comes to running with someone else,” said Brown. “Sometimes, not knowing what to do or how to do certain things, you end up molding yourself to the runner that you’re running with.”
“I don’t know how to walk in a straight line or let alone run in a straight line, but I was able to learn,” he added.
The extra time also allowed Brown to realize his athletic potential.
“It’s odd for me to say this but for the postponement … It was a blessing overall for me because I was able to find myself as an athlete [after] being tethered to somebody all the time,” said Brown. “I was able to train as an individual, I was able to pretty much untether myself from my guide and find myself as an individual runner.”
The Paralympic games begin on Aug. 24, 2021 in Tokyo. In a year filled with novel protocols and critical improvisions, Brown said he’s ready for whatever happens.
“At the end of the day, we’re not going to leave anything on the table,” he said. “The fact of the matter is, I made it here, I made it this far, which is a huge blessing and a huge accomplishment in itself.”
Brown said his goal is to inspire future athletes to test the limits of their own abilities.
“That’s what it’s all about, giving inspiration to the future athletes,” he said. “And then showing the ones that come after us what is possible.”
