The Year Ahead in Olympic Sports

By Rachel ThompsonDec 31, 2018, 2:26 PM EST

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Sandwiched between two Olympic years, 2019 won’t host the Games, but will provide plenty of anticipated competition in Olympic sports. Below is a look at the year ahead and a few of the top storylines at the start of 2019.

Lindsey Vonn chases Ingemar Stenmark’s World Cup record

In what she has said will be her final full competitive season, Lindsey Vonn will try to complete one thing left on her career bucket list: topping the legendary Swedish skier’s all-time record of 86 World Cup wins. The start of Vonn’s season was delayed after she sustained a knee injury in November, but the 34-year-old announced earlier this month that she will begin competing in January. Vonn is currently four victories short of Stenmark’s record.

An Olympic preview at swimming Worlds in South Korea

After a World Championships hiatus in 2018, the new year will provide the best glance at what’s to come in Tokyo as the world’s top swimmers convene in Gwangju, South Korea, in July. Five-time Olympic gold medalist Katie Ledecky won three golds, a silver and a bronze at the 2018 Pan Pacific Championships, the largest international meet in a year without a Worlds or Olympics. After winning seven gold medals at the 2017 World Championships (tying a record set by Michael Phelps), Caeleb Dressel had a quieter year in 2018, winning one national title (in the 100m fly) and collecting one individual title at the Pan Pacific Championships in the same event. Several other Rio medalists continued to impress in 2018: three-time Olympic gold medalist Ryan Murphy had the world’s top time this year in the 100m backstroke, and won both backstroke events at Pan Pacs. Chase Kalisz posted the fastest times of 2018 in the individual medleys and also won both at Pan Pacs, and Kathleen Baker set the world record in the 100m back at nationals. Simone Manuel, who won four medals in Rio, claimed the 50m and 100m freestyle titles at nationals, and finished second to Australia’s Cate Campbell in both events at Pan Pacs. Eight-time Olympic medalist Allison Schmitt shrugged off retirement plans to finish second to Ledecky in the 200m free at Nationals, posting her fastest time (1:55.82) since setting an Olympic record at the London Games. Also to watch in 2019: Michael Andrew, who surprised at nationals with four titles and won the 50m free at Pan Pacs.

Several notable U.S. swimmers will not be at Worlds: 12-time Olympic medalist Ryan Lochte was suspended for 14 months earlier this year after receiving an intravenous infusion that exceeded the legal limit, though he has said he still plans to train for Tokyo. Lochte posted on social media last month with the announcement that he and his wife are expecting their second child, “Can’t wait to bring my fam of 4 to #tokyo2020.”

Dana Vollmer, a seven-time Olympic medalist, will miss the World Championships after skipping nationals last season (which served as a qualifier for Pan Pacs and Worlds). Vollmer, who won three medals at the Rio Games after giving birth to son Arlen in March 2015, welcomed a second son, Ryker, in July 2017. She returned to competition for the first time in almost a year in November, finishing fourth in her signature 100m butterfly at winter nationals, and has said she will aim for a fourth Olympics in Tokyo.

Five-time Olympic gold medalist Missy Franklin announced her retirement from swimming earlier this month. After a dominant performance at the London Games, where she collected four titles, Franklin dealt with chronic shoulder pain as well as anxiety and depression in the lead-up to Rio. She was part of the gold medal-winning U.S. team in the 4x200m free relay at her second Olympics, but swam only in the heats. The 23-year-old wrote in an essay published by ESPN, “This is by no means the end. Rather, I choose to look at this as a new beginning. Swimming has been, and always will be, a big part of my life and I absolutely plan to stay involved in what I believe is the best sport in the world, just in a different way.”

Biles still dominant at 2018 Worlds with a kidney stone; what could she do without one in 2019?

Despite a trip to the emergency room less than 24 hours before her first day of competition in Doha, Qatar, Simone Biles won the all-around by 1.693, the largest margin of her four such titles, despite a few uncharacteristic mistakes. Biles’ all-around win came just one day shy of a year of full-time training after a post-Rio hiatus. Her accolades in Doha proved how far ahead Biles is over the rest of the world – and what could come in 2019 at a kidney stone-free Worlds. She now has a medal in every event at the World Championships after winning her first on the uneven bars in 2018 (silver), which have typically been her weakest event. The U.S. should have dual all-around contenders in 2019: Morgan Hurd won her second straight world all-around medal in 2018, a bronze, after claiming the the world title in 2017. While the U.S. women have already qualified a team for the Tokyo Games by winning the team competition at 2018 Worlds (their fourth straight), the American men, who finished fourth in Doha, should qualify easily at Worlds in October, as long as they finish within the top nine teams (excluding those already qualified). They’ll likely be led by two-time Olympian Sam Mikulak, who won his first individual medal at a Worlds or Olympics in 2018, a bronze on high bar.

Americans aim for fourth Women’s World Cup title

Already the most decorated nation in tournament history, the U.S. will look for a second straight and fourth total Women’s World Cup title in 2019. The Americans coasted through a perfect qualifying campaign (5-0-0) and a team that will likely include U.S. veterans Alex Morgan and Carli Lloyd will be the favorite to win again in France. The U.S. was drawn into a group with Thailand, Chile, and Sweden, a team that defeated the Americans on penalties in the quarterfinals at the Rio Games, marking the first time the U.S. women missed a medal at the Olympics. The tournament runs from June 7 through July 7.

U.S. likely to hone a star-studded team at basketball World Cup

The U.S. qualified for the 2019 World Cup thanks to a roster compiled of mostly G-league players. But the makeup of the team will look quite different next year: Gregg Popovich, who will coach the U.S. men at that tournament and at the Olympics, is likely to bring a team of notable NBA names to China in an attempt to win a record third straight World Cup, which also serves as a qualifying opportunity for Tokyo. A squad led by Kyrie Irving, James Harden and Stephen Curry brought the U.S. victory at the 2014 World Cup, and this year’s preliminary pool of players includes all three, as well as Team USA veterans LeBron James and Kevin Durant (the actual roster won’t be announced until closer to the tournament, which runs from late August through mid-September).

Who will be crowned at this year’s World Figure Skating Championships?

The post-Olympic season offered a shake-up of sorts in the ladies’ field: reigning Olympic gold medalist Alina Zagitova finished fifth at Russian nationals (all three medalists are too young to compete at senior international events) and was topped by Japan’s Rika Kihira at the Grand Prix Final. Olympic silver medalist Yevgenia Medvedeva, once seemingly unbeatable during a two-year win streak, hasn’t won in over a year. And after missing both the 2014 and 2018 Olympic teams, 2015 world champion Yelizaveta Tuktamysheva has had a resurgent season, winning Skate Canada and placing third at the Grand Prix Final (Russia has not yet named a team for Worlds). The U.S. women have no frontrunners for Worlds, which will be held in Japan in March: Bradie Tennell was the only American with a podium finish on the Grand Prix circuit (third at Grand Prix France) and no U.S. women qualified for the Grand Prix Final.

Nathan Chen, now balancing skating with studies at Yale, won his second straight Grand Prix Final in 2018, topping PyeongChang silver medalist Shoma Uno of Japan. The event lacked two-time reigning Olympic gold medalist Yuzuru Hanyu, who was out with an injury. Hanyu is expected to compete at the World Championships, where he’ll be on home soil in Japan, and it’s hard not to pick him as a favorite if he is healthy. Chen and Hanyu have not gone head-to-head since the Olympics, where Chen finished fifth.

Madison Hubbell and Zach Donohue won the Grand Prix Final in December, though none of the PyeongChang medalists were competing. The field at Worlds is likely to be more challenging, since Olympic silver medalists Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron are expected to compete. The French duo, who train with Hubbell and Donohue in Montreal, won Grand Prix France earlier this season but skipped their first Grand Prix assignment due to a minor injury to Cizeron, making them ineligible for the Grand Prix Final. It looks unlikely if the French compete, but if Hubbell and Donohue can pull off a win at Worlds, they’d be the first Americans to do so in ice dance since Meryl Davis and Charlie White in 2013.

U.S. track prospects – strong in 2018 – will be tested at Worlds in Doha

Usain Bolt’s retirement in 2017 posed the question of who the next men’s sprinting star could be. U.S. men dominated that conversation in 2018, with Rio Olympian Christian Coleman posting the world’s fastest 100m in three years, a 9.79 at an August Diamond League event in Brussels. In fact, the four fastest men in the 100m in 2018 were all American: Coleman, Ronnie Baker, Noah Lyles and Mike Rodgers. All four faced off at a June Diamond League event in Morocco, with Coleman topping the field in a race that separated the top three (Baker and Lyles were second and third) by just .01.

On the distance side, Shelby Houlihan was among the most exciting revelations of the 2018 season. The 25-year-old won both the 1500m and 5000m at the U.S. Outdoor Championships in June, and set an American record in the 5000m in July. Houlihan, who missed the podium at the World Indoor Championships in March (she placed fourth in the 1500m and fifth in the 3000m), will aim for her first medal at a World Championships in 2019, when the event will be held in Doha, Qatar, from late September through the first week of October.

The past 14 months were also notable for American women in marathons: in November 2017, four-time Olympian Shalane Flanagan became the first U.S. woman in 40 years to win the New York City Marathon, and Desiree Linden ended a 33-year drought for U.S. women at the Boston Marathon in 2018. Flanagan has hinted at retirement and has not specified on whether she will try for a fifth Olympics in Tokyo, which would be a record for U.S. distance runners.

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Britton Wilson doubles like nobody else in track and field

By Nick ZaccardiJun 8, 2023, 6:49 AM EDT

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Sprinter Britton Wilson regularly updates a vision board in her apartment living room. As of last week, there were two numbers on it among a collage of pictures: 48 and 52.

The 48 is for the 400m. Wilson’s short-term goal is to become the third U.S. woman to break 49 seconds in the one-lap event after Olympic gold medalists Sanya Richards-Ross and Valerie Brisco-Hooks.

The 52 is for the 400m hurdles. She wants to become the 10th U.S. woman to break 53 seconds in that event.

They are not far-fetched ambitions. Wilson, a University of Arkansas junior, has already run 49.13 in the flat 400m and 53.08 in the 400m hurdles. She is the only woman to rank among the 25 fastest in history in both events. She is the fourth-fastest American all-time in the flat 400m, passing Allyson Felix last month.

At this week’s NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Austin, Texas, Wilson will bid to become the first person to win Division I titles in the same year in both the 400m and the 400m hurdles.

On Thursday night, she will race the 400m semifinals just after 9 p.m. local time. A half-hour later, she will race the 400m hurdles semifinals. If she advances, she will race the two finals Saturday with a scheduled 24 minutes in between.

In most cases, a runner would only race twice in that short of a turnaround for the 100m or 200m. Wilson is not only attempting a rarity, but she is also the clear top seed in both events.

Last year, Wilson won both at the SEC Championships with about an hour in between the finals, then entered only the hurdles at the NCAA Championships. She won all of those races. This year, Wilson again won both at SECs. Afterward, she met with coach Chris Johnson, who asked what she wanted to do at NCAAs. Wilson chose both.

“I wanted to see how much I can challenge myself and how far I can push myself,” she said.

Ask those who know Wilson best, and they will tell you that her plan, while unprecedented, is not audacious for her.

Her high school coach will tell you that Wilson ran a nation-leading 300m hurdles time on a Friday night in Richmond, Virginia. She got home around 11. The next morning, she went to another meet and ran the fastest flat 400m in Virginia high school history.

Her mom, who nicknamed her “baby giraffe” in middle school for her early running form, will tell you about the 2018 state championships. Wilson stopped en route to the meet at a CVS to pick up medication for a stomach virus. Once they arrived, nobody could find her. Wilson was in a portable bathroom. When she got out, she looked so out of sorts that adults told her not to race. She checked herself in anyway, then won the 400m and the 200m.

Wilson herself will tell you about the 2017 state championships race the family has come to call by the first two words of its YouTube title.

“So I run track, and if you’re wondering if I’m good or not, here’s one of my highlights,” she said, setting up the story in a TikTok video.

Wilson, then a sophomore, was desperately trying to catch a senior in the adjacent lane in the home stretch of the 400m final. Feet from the finish line, Wilson fell. She scraped her knee (above her tall, pink Victoria’s Secret socks), shoulder (there’s still a scar) and head. For a moment, her legs flung above her body. Wilson then crawled across the finish line to secure second place.

Mom LeYuani rushed from behind a fence to find her daughter under a tent. Nearly as quickly, the finish was already spreading on social media.

LeYuani watched the video in sight of her daughter, but didn’t tell her about it. Determined, Wilson said she was staying in the meet to race the 200m later that day. She did. She won in a personal-best time.

LeYuani remembers Wilson moaning in the backseat of the car on the two-hour drive home. Tylenol lessened the suffering, but didn’t eliminate it.

Wilson has athletic genes. Her mom, a second-grade teacher who has worked in classrooms for 26 years, was a long jumper in school. She taught her kids that event by sprinting from the dining room, through the kitchen, into the family room and then launching nearly into the fireplace.

Her dad, Vince, started at point guard for Virginia Commonwealth, then was the first American to play in the top Russian professional basketball league, according to a contact with the current iteration of the league. Wilson, while on an international exchange program in Russia, said he was asked to play for Spartak Leningrad in 1990 by its head coach, Vladimir Kondrashin. Kondrashin was also the head coach of the 1972 Soviet Olympic team that beat the U.S. in that infamous final.

Wilson, whom the family calls by her middle name, “Rose,” was all-state in track and all-county in chorus and taught herself how to play the guitar.

She first matriculated at the University of Tennessee in 2019. Her freshman year coincided with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which wiped out the outdoor season. In her down time, she auditioned virtually for “American Idol” and made it as far as seeing Ryan Seacrest on a screen.

As a sophomore, she was running slower than she was in high school. Looking for solutions, Wilson stopped eating.

“A lot of things contributed to my mental health not being the best,” she said on a University of Arkansas athletics podcast. “I had a lot of physical issues. I was in and out of doctors.”

She confided in her parents and decided to transfer. She said that if it wasn’t for Arkansas, the first and only school that she visited, she probably would have quit the sport.

“You have athletes that compete at a very high level, but you also have those athletes that are so mentally strong, they can overcome a lot of things,” Vince said.

Wilson has thrived under coach Chris Johnson, whose older brother, Boogie, coaches 2016 Olympic 400m hurdles champion Dalilah Muhammad.

“[Johnson] is always listening to how we feel, and he hears us instead of just dismissing it,” Wilson said. “He knows he’s a great coach, and he knows his training works, but he’s also going to hear me out if something doesn’t feel right.”

Last year, Wilson’s first in Fayetteville, she chopped two seconds off her 400m personal best and three seconds off her 400m hurdles personal best. She capped a full NCAA indoor and outdoor slate by winning the NCAA 400m hurdles title. She then went eight tenths faster at the USA Track and Field Outdoor Championships, which is normally where collegians run slower after exhausting seasons. Wilson placed second to Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone to make the world championships team.

Then at worlds, Wilson was fifth in the 400m hurdles. Two days later, Wilson was thrilled to be picked for the women’s 4x400m relay the day of the final. She handed the baton to McLaughlin-Levrone — whom she raced once in high school, when Wilson was a sophomore and McLaughlin-Levrone was a senior — and won a gold medal.

“She admired and adored Sydney,” Scott said. “You remember the old commercial, ‘Be Like Mike?’ She wanted to be like Sydney.”

After this week’s NCAAs come the USATF Outdoor Championships in early July. There, the 400m final and 400m hurdles semifinals are 15 minutes apart. Told of that schedule, Wilson said running both is “doable,” but she’d probably race just one event this year. Her coach said they’ll decide after NCAAs.

Wilson is ranked second in the world in 2023 in both events.

At NCAAs, USAs and worlds (if she makes the team), Wilson will get into the blocks and look down. If she peeks inside her right hand, she will see a tattoo on the inside of one finger reading “24K.” Wilson and her mom both got that tattoo — the first for each — to commemorate the world championships relay gold medal.

After worlds, Wilson spent about two months in a boot and on crutches to alleviate stress reactions in both shins, pain that she raced through last summer. She had messed up her kidneys and stomach by taking four ibuprofen a day. She swam, biked and tread carefully on a treadmill while unable to run last fall.

This spring, she got another tattoo — the word “Baby” in memory of her half Pekingese, half poodle that died last summer. She got it on her left hand, “so when my hands are in the blocks, if somebody takes a picture of me, you’ll see it,” she said.

On Saturday, Wilson plans to put her hands on the track twice in a span of 25 minutes. Many will watch.

“She wants to accomplish something that’s never been done before,” Johnson said.

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2023 French Open men’s singles draw

By OlympicTalkJun 7, 2023, 5:18 PM EDT

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The French Open men’s singles draw is missing injured 14-time champion Rafael Nadal for the first time since 2004, leaving the Coupe des Mousquetaires ripe for the taking.

The tournament airs live on NBC Sports, Peacock and Tennis Channel through championship points in Paris.

Novak Djokovic is not only bidding for a third crown at Roland Garros, but also to lift a 23rd Grand Slam singles trophy to break his tie with Nadal for the most in men’s history.

FRENCH OPEN: Broadcast Schedule | Women’s Draw

But the No. 1 seed is Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz, who won last year’s U.S. Open to become, at 19, the youngest man to win a major since Nadal’s first French Open title in 2005.

Now Alcaraz looks to become the second-youngest man to win at Roland Garros since 1989, after Nadal of course.

Alcaraz missed the Australian Open in January due to a right leg injury, but since went 30-3 with four titles. Notably, he has not faced Djokovic this year. They meet in Friday’s semifinals.

Russian Daniil Medvedev, the No. 2 seed, was upset in the first round by 172nd-ranked Brazilian qualifier Thiago Seyboth Wild. It marked the first time a men’s top-two seed lost in the first round of any major since 2003 Wimbledon (Ivo Karlovic d. Lleyton Hewitt).

All of the American men lost before the fourth round. The last U.S. man to make the French Open quarterfinals was Andre Agassi in 2003.

MORE: All you need to know for 2023 French Open

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2023 French Open Men’s Singles Draw

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