Olympics Financial News

PARIS—France’s rail network was the target of a massive act of sabotage Friday, the day of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, officials said, bringing service on several high-speed rail lines to a halt in outages that are expected to last for days. Officials said fires were set at around 4 a.m. local time at several places around the country’s rail network.

Vijender Singh feels India needs more heroes beyond cricket to inspire the future generations if the country wants to become a sports superpower by 2047. These heroes, he believes, will also drive a cultural change, encouraging more young Indians to pursue sports as a profession.

It’s the season of clear targets, quick wins and instant applause, as the Olympics of 2024 kick off in Paris, a city aflutter with flags bearing their famous ‘rings of unity.’ Among other virtues, the Olympic Games offer us a contrast with economic frames, which have complex targets, slow wins and patchy applause. So much so that our heads can begin to spin if rings get run around what’s good for the economy, as if the data overload of every budget is not heavy enough.

Paris today with an audacious ceremony on the River Seine, the 117-strong Indian contingent begins their own audacious attempt at a first-ever double-digit medal haul. It may sound ambitious, but it’s not a pipe dream.

Inshallah, the 2024 action-horror disaster film Under Paris — the original French title, 'Sous la Seine' (Under the Seine) — will remain a fictional thrill as the Olympic Games opening ceremony unfolds today. This unprecedented event — it's the first time an opening ceremony is taking place outside a stadium, along Paris' iconic river — will feature over 200 delegations gliding down the river, with thousands cheering along the banks. In the Xavier Gens movie, Lilith, a tagged shortfin mako shark — usually found in temperate and tropical seas — finds its way into the freshwater river for 'revenge'. Mayhem follows, Paris turning into a battleground. On finding out that Lilith has entered pre-Olympic Paris, scientists request the Parisian authorities to postpone the triathlon event. The mayor — not Anne Hidalgo, the real mayor — insists on going ahead, stressing the event's importance for global visibility and the billions already spent. Without giving the film away, let's just say the Olympic triathlon event in Paris becomes a veritable bloodsport. But not to worry. Instead of a rampaging shark that makes Jaws look like Nibbles, the Seine will (surely) be graced with floats and fanfare. Free of the garbage that was reportedly floating around in it till a few weeks ago, the Seine should see swimmers safe. And, hopefully, friendly fins.

On the heels of low ratings for the coronavirus pandemic-marred Tokyo and Beijing Olympics, Paris may not do much better among U.S. viewers

Workers have gone on strike at the five-star hotel in Paris where members of the International Olympic Committee are staying

Olympic tennis gold medalist Andy Murray pulled out of singles at the Paris Games on Thursday and only will compete in doubles with Dan Evans.

The chief executive of Delta Air Lines expects flight cancellations and delays that resulted from a global technology breakdown last week to be resolved by Thursday

Olympics. The duo had only two things in common — they were wrestlers and were willing to fight it out on and off the mat to represent India in 48kg category. Almost 28 years later, few in the wrestling circles would have forgotten that eventful day when the two fought tooth and nail at the IG Stadium for a place in the Indian team. Yadav won the controversial trial bout but was not allowed to participate at the Games after failing to clear the weigh-in at Atlanta.

Covalent, the leading modular data infrastructure for AI with +230 chain integrations and 1000’s of customers, is thrilled to welcome five new operators to its network: Graphyte Labs, PierTwo, StakeCraft, Sensei Node, and Matrixed Link. With these additions, the Covalent Network has expanded to include a total of 37 participants, comprising 23 Block Specimen Producers (BSPs) and 14 Block Results Producers (BRPs). This growth represents over a 42% increase, rising from 26 in May 2024 to 37 in just two months.

Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese marked the strongest first half of the WNBA season since the league's 1997 inception. Talks to finalize an «historic» WNBA media deal that press reports suggest would be around $200 million a year, up from $60 million currently, reinforces the rising popularity of the league and women's professional sports in general, Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said on Saturday. With Saturday's WNBA All Star Game followed by a month-long Olympic break, players, league executives and media partners are hoping for the momentum carry through to the second half of the season.

Indian tennis legends Leander Paes and Vijay Amritraj became the first Asian players to be formally inducted in the International Tennis Hall of Fame in a gliterring ceremony. On Saturday, in the ceremony, both players raised the Tricolour high with honour as they were formally inducted into the Hall of Fame. Now 70, Amritraj peaked at 18 and 23 in singles and doubles careers, respectively, winning 13 doubles and 15 singles titles throughout his journey as a tennis player which lasted over two decades.

India has so far won 10 gold medals in its Olympic history. With the 2024 Paris Olympic Games just a few days away, ET Sport looks back at each of those golden moments. 1928 First-ever gold It was in Amsterdam 1928 where India’s three-decade long reign over the world of hockey began. The Indians won their first ever Olympic gold in hockey by beating Holland 6-0. Dhyan Chand scored 14 of India’s 29 goals at Amsterdam. Curiously, Great Britain did not send their hockey team. Just before the Olympics, Great Britain were drubbed 4–0 by India. It gave birth to a rumour that the ‘colonisers’ were afraid of losing to their ‘colony’ on an international stage. This rumour was so wide-spread that Dhyan Chand referred to it in his recollections, “I reiterate that this is mere hearsay (that England dropped out of the Amsterdam Games fearing the Indians), although we fondly hoped that at least in future Olympics we would have the honour of meeting Great Britain and showing them how good or bad we were. It is my regret that this hope was never realized so long as I participated in Olympic events.”

Mike Conley spent most of the 1980s ranked among the top triple jumpers in the world. So, heading into the US Olympic trials in ’88, there was very little thought given to the idea he wouldn’t finish in the top three and make the trip to Seoul. In a sport embedded inside an Olympic world where medals can be won and careers can be made by the most minuscule of fractions — of seconds or centimeters — what toppled Conley’s hopes had nothing to do with a measuring tape. It was a pair of baggy shorts, the likes of which he had never worn in a track meet before, that did him in. Conley recalls video replays that showed the breeze that was kicked up by the vented flaps on the sides of his shorts created a barely perceptible mark in the sand nearly a foot behind where he landed.

Jyothi Yarraji is not new to expectations, disappointments, and glory — the constant circle of an athlete’s life. Born on August 28, 1999, in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, to parents with very limited means — father a security guard and mother a domestic help — she was never short on determination. Taking care of her family “on her own” was the biggest motivation. She had to deal with injuries and frustrations too, quite early in her career. She was denied 100m hurdles national record on two occasions.

Shoko Miyata, the 19-year-old captain of the Japan women’s artistic gymnastics team, has withdrawn from the squad for the Paris Games after violating the team’s code of conduct by smoking, the Japanese Gymnastics Association said on Friday.

Next week’s Summer Olympics in Paris will be the first in which equal numbers of female and male athletes participate. The milestone is owed in large part to an International Olympic Committee working group started in 2018 that established specific benchmarks for achieving gender parity.

The new meme coin Meme Games ($MGMES) has hit the ground running, pulling in an impressive $163,000 in just three days since its launch.

A global technology outage grounded flights, knocked banks and hospital systems offline and media outlets off air on Friday in a massive disruption that affected companies and services around the world and highlighted dependence on software from a handful of providers.

IOC president, Pierre de Coubertin, once said women competing in the Games would be «impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic and improper.» Over a century later, the 2024 Paris Olympic Games are targeting gender parity in the same city where women made their Olympic debut in 1900. The IOC set a goal of a 50-50 split among the more than 11,000 men and women, including backups, registered to compete from July 26 to Aug. 11. However, the latest numbers from the IOC suggest organizers might fall just short of that target. Slightly more medal events for men than women. There is still a slight edge toward men among the 329 medal events at the Paris Olympics. The IOC has said there are 157 men's events, 152 women's events and 20 mixed-gender events.