Shalane Flanagan sees this Boston Marathon as a finale

By Nick ZaccardiApr 13, 2018, 11:44 AM EDT

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BOSTON — Shalane Flanagan may run another marathon after Monday, but she does not plan to race the Boston Marathon as an elite again.

“I don’t know if this will be my last marathon, but I think this will probably, most likely, be my last Boston as an elite runner,” the Boston area native said Friday, three days before she starts the world’s oldest annual marathon for the fourth time. “I just feel like it’s the time. It’s an instinctual, intuitive moment for me. I just feel like putting that pressure on myself that it’s my last is kind of a good mentality, too.”

Flanagan, 37 and a four-time Olympian, said before the New York City Marathon on Nov. 5 that she might retire if she pulled off the upset and won the five-borough event. Flanagan did win, the biggest victory of her career, and soon after decided to keep on going.

In part because she wanted to rewrite her last Boston Marathon memory, what she has called “a stinker” of a ninth-place finish in 2015.

What happens if Monday’s race (8:30 a.m. ET, NBCSN and NBC Sports Gold) — which appears likely to be run in similar rainy, windy conditions as 2015 — doesn’t go as hoped, either?

Flanagan doubled down.

“I think I’m going to make my peace with Boston on Monday,” she said. “If I come back, it’s going to be to support other runners and other people and foundations like Meb [Keflezighi] is doing.”

Flanagan didn’t close the door on trying to make a fifth Olympic team in 2020.

“I don’t know about that,” she said. “I have no idea.”

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Flanagan is coming off training in Colorado Springs and Portland, Ore. She took no vacation or significant break after the New York win, but she is healthy.

“I knocked off a huge goal of mine [winning a major marathon],” she said. “I feel really at peace with my career. Coming here and racing is more like a personal event for me.

“I want this race so badly, I almost have to pretend like I don’t want to win it in order to do well. It’s a reverse psychology for sure because this is home. These are the people that I want to make the most proud.”

Flanagan likes the fact that she isn’t the only one with a chance to end the 33-year drought since the last American female runner won on Boylston Street. The younger Desi Linden, Molly Huddle and Jordan Hasay have all finished in the top three of major marathons and are among the favorites.

“What happened in New York with myself I think has allowed the Americans to say, I’ve beaten Shalane, I’m just like Shalane,” she said. “If Shalane can do it, why can’t I do it?”

One of the first things Flanagan noted in Friday’s media session was the 100th Boston Marathon in 1996, when she stood on the corner of Hereford and Boylston at age 14 and watched her dad run this race.

“It’s a full-circle moment, coming back to where it all started,” she said. “I’m hoping to have my best Boston on Monday.”

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Football takes significant step in Olympic push

By OlympicTalkMar 29, 2023, 2:18 PM EDT

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Football took another step toward possible Olympic inclusion with the IOC executive board proposing that the sport’s international federation — the IFAF — be granted full IOC recognition at a meeting in October.

IOC recognition does not equate to eventual Olympic inclusion, but it is a necessary early marker if a sport is to join the Olympics down the line. The IOC gave the IFAF provisional recognition in 2013.

Specific measures are required for IOC recognition, including having an anti-doping policy compliant with the World Anti-Doping Agency and having 50 affiliated national federations from at least three continents. The IFAF has 74 national federations over five continents with almost 4.8 million registered athletes, according to the IOC.

The NFL has helped lead the push for flag football to be added for the 2028 Los Angeles Games. Flag football had medal events for men and women at last year’s World Games, a multi-sport competition including Olympic and non-Olympic sports, in Birmingham, Alabama.

Football is one of nine sports that have been reported to be in the running to be proposed by LA 2028 to the IOC to be added for the 2028 Games only. LA 2028 has not announced which, if any sports, it plans to propose.

Under rules instituted before the Tokyo Games, Olympic hosts have successfully proposed to the IOC adding sports solely for their edition of the Games.

For Tokyo, baseball-softball, karate, skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing were added. For Paris, skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing were approved again, and breaking will make its Olympic debut. Those sports were added four years out from the Games.

For 2028, the other sports reportedly in the running for proposal are baseball and softball, breaking, cricket, karate, kickboxing, lacrosse, motorsports and squash.

All of the other eight sports reportedly in the running for 2028 proposal already have a federation with full IOC recognition (if one counts the international motorcycle racing federation for motorsports).

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Helen Maroulis stars in wrestling documentary, with help from Chris Pratt

By Nick ZaccardiMar 29, 2023, 10:05 AM EDT

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One of the remarkable recent Olympic comeback stories is the subject of a film that will be shown nationwide in theaters for one day only on Thursday.

“Helen | Believe” is a documentary about Helen Maroulis, the first U.S. Olympic women’s wrestling champion. It is produced by Religion of Sports, the venture founded by Gotham Chopra, Michael Strahan and Tom Brady. Showing details are here.

After taking gold at the 2016 Rio Games, Maroulis briefly retired in 2019 during a two-year stretch in which she dealt with concussions and post-traumatic stress disorder. The film focuses on that period and her successful bid to return and qualify for the Tokyo Games, where she took bronze.

In a poignant moment in the film, Maroulis described her “rock bottom” — being hospitalized for suicidal ideations.

In an interview, Maroulis said she was first approached about the project in 2018, the same year she had her first life-changing concussion that January. A wrestling partner’s mother was connected to director Dylan Mulick.

Maroulis agreed to the film in part to help spread mental health awareness in sports. Later, she cried while watching the 2020 HBO film, “The Weight of Gold,” on the mental health challenges that other Olympians faced, because it resonated with her so much.

“When you’re going through something, it sometimes gives you an anchor of hope to know that someone’s been through it before, and they’ve overcome it,” she said.

Maroulis’ comeback story hit a crossroads at the Olympic trials in April 2021, where the winner of a best-of-three finals series in each weight class made Team USA.

Maroulis won the opening match against Jenna Burkert, but then lost the second match. Statistically, a wrestler who loses the second match in a best-of-three series usually loses the third. But Maroulis pinned Burkert just 22 seconds into the rubber match to clinch the Olympic spot.

Shen then revealed that she tore an MCL two weeks earlier.

“They told me I would have to be in a brace for six weeks,” she said then. “I said, ‘I don’t have that. I have two and a half.’”

Maroulis said she later asked the director what would have happened if she didn’t make the team for Tokyo. She was told the film still have been done.

“He had mentioned this isn’t about a sports story or sports comeback story,” Maroulis said. “This is about a human story. And we’re using wrestling as the vehicle to tell this story of overcoming and healing and rediscovering oneself.”

Maroulis said she was told that, during filming, the project was pitched to the production company of actor Chris Pratt, who wrestled in high school in Washington. Pratt signed on as a producer.

“Wrestling has made an impact on his life, and so he wants to support these kinds of stories,” said Maroulis, who appeared at last month’s Santa Barbara Film Festival with Pratt.

Pratt said he knew about Maroulis before learning about the film, which he said “needed a little help to get it over the finish line,” according to a public relations company promoting the film.

The film also highlights the rest of the six-woman U.S. Olympic wrestling team in Tokyo. Four of the six won a medal, including Tamyra Mensah-Stock‘s gold.

“I was excited to be part of, not just (Maroulis’) incredible story, but also helping to further advance wrestling and, in particular, female wrestling,” Pratt said, according to responses provided by the PR company from submitted questions. “To me, the most compelling part of Helen’s story is the example of what life looks like after a person wins a gold medal. The inevitable comedown, the trauma around her injuries, the PTSD, the drive to continue that is what makes her who she is.”

Maroulis, who now trains in Arizona, hopes to qualify for this year’s world championships and next year’s Olympics.

“I try to treat every Games as my last,” she said. “Now I’m leaning toward being done [after 2024], but never say never.”

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