With the year sprinting to a close, we bring you, in pictures, some of the best action from the sports world.
To avoid any controversy on the criteria for the Arjuna award, the Sports Ministry on Friday granted 90 per cent weightage to medal winners at various international championships and sports disciplines covered in the Olympics (Summer, Winter and Paralympics), Asian Games and Commonwealth Games. The guidelines, released by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, will be applicable from 2014.
The decision follows a US-led diplomatic boycott of the Games over concerns about human rights in China
'The Olympic Spirit has been thrown to the wind in Xi Jinping's China.' 'The International Olympic Committee is ready to kowtow to totalitarian China,' notes Claude Arpi.
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Russia's invasion of Ukraine was condemned by the sporting community on Thursday, with President Vladimir Putin's country losing hosting rights for the UEFA Champions League final while Formula One drivers said it was "wrong" to race there this year.
While several international sporting events were cancelled in China because of the pandemic, the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and Paralympics were held behind closed doors under strict COVID-19 guidelines.
India on Thursday announced that its charge d'affaires in the Beijing embassy will not attend the opening or closing ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics in the Chinese capital over China honouring a military commander involved in the Galwan Valley clashes as its torchbearer for the mega sporting event.
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She added that Suga had encouraged her to make the Games successful but declined to say anything further until after a Tokyo 2020 executive board meeting later in the day, when an official announcement on the post was likely to be made.
Klitschko and his brother Vitali, also a former world heavyweight champion and now the mayor of Kyiv, have both taken up arms against invading Russian forces.
Plastic podiums, recycled medals, cardboard beds put focus on sustainability at Tokyo 2020.
Paralympics boss Andrew Parsons expressed disgust that Russian authorities had let down the country's clean athletes
Kyodo said the government had concluded that welcoming fans from abroad would not be possible given public concern about the coronavirus and the detection of more contagious variants in many countries, Kyodo cited the officials as saying.
Due to the delay the Beijing Games will now start just over six months after Tokyo.
Chosen by schoolchildren across Japan and announced before a gymnasium of cheering pupils in Tokyo, the as yet unnamed blue character will be the mascot for the Olympics and the pink cherry blossom-inspired one for the Paralympics.
Bach said Tokyo was 'the best-prepared Olympic city,' in remarks at the start of a three-day virtual IOC session.
A summary of major figures and facts at the Tokyo Games.
Although the change will have no immediate effect on current bans on the Russian federations for athletics, weightlifting and paralympics, it opens the door for their return, following the reinstatement of the Russian Olympic Committee after the country was banned from this year's Winter Games in South Korea.
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Swiss court rejects Russia's appeal against Olympic doping ban. The Lausanne-based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) said the sanctions, which also bar Russia from hosting or bidding for major sporting events during a two-year period, would come into force on Thursday and end on December 16, 2022.
A summary of sports events and sports persons, who made news on Saturday
New infections have spiked ahead of the Olympics, which are set to start in July
Sports Minister hands over trophies to 2020 National Sports Awards winners
A four-year ban would prevent Russia from taking part in next year's Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 Beijing Winter Games.
Germany is to bid to host the 2024 Summer Games in Berlin or Hamburg, the country's Olympic sports confederation (DOSB) said on Tuesday.
Budapest will bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games, the President of the Hungarian Olympic Committee and the Mayor of Budapest has announced in a joint letter to the President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
Ace Indian wrestler Vinesh Phogat has become the first Indian to receive a nomination in the prestigious Laureus World Sports Awards to be held, in Monaco, on February 18.
Russia has never had a state-sponsored doping programme, President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday, after the association of National Anti-Doping Organisations (NADOs) called for a temporary blanket ban on Russia from international sport.
Sony Corp does not plan to renew its sponsorship contract with FIFA, the governing body for world football, as the Japanese electronics maker needs to prioritise its restructuring efforts, people familiar with the matter said.
Legally blind since his late teenage years, Canada's Brian McKeever will achieve a long-cherished dream and a place in the record books when he represents his country at this month's Vancouver Olympics. The popular cross-country skier from Canmore, Alberta, will become the first athlete to compete in both a Winter Olympics and a Paralympics and he fervently hopes to inspire as many people as he can, whether they are disabled or able-bodied.
The decision not to impose a blanket ban was not uniformly welcomed with Travis Tygart, head of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, describing it as "yet another devastating blow to clean athletes."
'We are now able to confirm a cover up that dates back until at least 2011 and continued after the Sochi Olympic Games. It was a cover up that evolved from uncontrolled chaos to an institutionalised and disciplined medal-winning conspiracy'
Boston was selected on Thursday as the American candidate city that will bid to host the 2024 Olympics.
The International Olympic Committee and Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe have concluded the Tokyo 2020 Olympics must be postponed, and held no later than the summer of 2021, the IOC and Tokyo 2020 organisers said on Tuesday. After a call with IOC president Thomas Bach, Abe said the July 24-August 9 event would be rescheduled for the summer of 2021 at the latest, as proof of victory over the coronavirus.
Postponing the Rio Olympics due to fears that the event could speed the spread of the Zika virus would give a "false" sense of security because travelers are constantly going in and out of Brazil, the chair of the WHO's Emergency Committee said. Extensive travel in a globalised world is the issue, not the Games that start on August 5, said David Heymann, chair of the Health Protection Agency in Britain who also leads the World Health Organization's panel of independent experts on Zika. "The problem is not the Olympics, the problem is other travel besides the Olympics, if there is a problem," Heymann told Reuters in a telephone interview from London on Monday. "People go in and out of Brazil all the time for holiday, for business, for whatever. And the Olympics is much less travel, it would be one-time travel. It's actually in the winter months when hopefully transmission (of the virus) is less."
Several anti-doping agencies, including those of the United States and Canada, want a complete ban on Russia competing at the Rio Olympics if next week's key report into allegations of state-backed doping at the 2014 Sochi winter Olympics is damning, they said on Saturday.
'The Olympics postponement may not be a political body blow to Abe Shinzo, but it is no denying that the economic cost of the postponement of the Games will be heavy for Japan,' observes Dr Rajaram Panda.
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