Is this Jessica Springsteen’s year to make the Olympic team?

By Nick ZaccardiMar 3, 2020, 4:18 PM EST

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Jessica Springsteen climbed to second in U.S. Equestrian show jumping rankings this winter, her highest standing in years, at an opportune time. The Olympics are in four months.

Springsteen, the 28-year-old daughter of rocker Bruce Springsteen, hopes to make a finalist list of at least 10 rider-horse combinations for the Olympics. The last cut for the Games will be to three entries plus an alternate eligible for the team event in Tokyo.

In 2012, Springsteen was the 14th-ranked rider in the final standings when the four-rider Olympic team was announced. In 2016, she didn’t make the finalist list of 10 after her top horse was sidelined by leg tendon problems. two years after rising to No. 2 in the U.S. rankings.

“My dream is always to represent the United States in championships, so I am definitely always working toward that,” Springsteen said after winning a February competition, according to the Palm Beach (Fla.) Post. “I feel like I have a really good group of horses jumping great right now.”

However, the Olympic team will not necessarily be chosen straight from the aforementioned rankings. Instead, the finalists will be evaluated at competitions between May 1-June 21 and the Olympic team chosen via discretion using criteria including other recent performances.

“Jessie has as good of a chance as anybody right now,” NBC Olympics equestrian analyst Melanie Smith Taylor said. “With everybody, it’ll be up in the air depending on how the horses are going into the final trials. In this sport, the horses are such a huge component. Horses can get hurt. Horses can be unsound. You don’t really know until the last month or so before the Olympics who’s peaked and who’s really ready to go.”

The first four finalists were due to be named from a U.S. ranking list on Dec. 20. Springsteen was sixth on that list. The top four were Olympic veterans Beezie Madden, Kent Farrington, McLain Ward and Laura Kraut, all at least 10 years older than Springsteen in a sport where riders in their 50s can earn medals.

It might be difficult to break up such an experienced top group. Then again, Smith Taylor noted that the U.S. took two riders without Olympic experience to the 2018 World Equestrian Games — Devin Ryan and Adrienne Sternlicht — along with Kraut and Ward.

“Beezie’s in the No. 1 spot, probably followed by McLain,” Smith Taylor said. “Kent Farrington doesn’t really have an Olympic horse right now. He has horses that are winners, but he doesn’t have anything new that’s really knocking the socks off. Jessie, or even any of those younger riders, they have a chance.”

Springsteen was recently part of a victorious U.S. team at a Nations Cup stop in Florida, along with Madden, Kraut and Margie Engle, the U.S.’ fifth-ranked rider.

“Jessie was the leadoff rider. They put a lot of faith in her going first, and she really came through,” Smith Taylor said. “She has really moved up, and her level of riding has really been impressive this last year. She has really become a winner.”

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U.S. women’s rugby team qualifies for 2024 Paris Olympics as medal contender

By OlympicTalkMar 31, 2023, 1:31 PM EDT

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The U.S. women’s rugby team qualified for the 2024 Paris Olympics by clinching a top-four finish in this season’s World Series.

Since rugby was re-added to the Olympics in 2016, the U.S. men’s and women’s teams finished fifth, sixth, sixth and ninth at the Games.

The U.S. women are having their best season since 2018-19, finishing second or third in all five World Series stops so far and ranking behind only New Zealand and Australia, the winners of the first two Olympic women’s rugby sevens tournaments.

The U.S. also finished fourth at last September’s World Cup.

Three months after the Tokyo Games, Emilie Bydwell was announced as the new U.S. head coach, succeeding Olympic coach Chris Brown.

Soon after, Tokyo Olympic co-captain Abby Gustaitis was cut from the team.

Jaz Gray, who led the team in scoring last season and at the World Cup, missed the last three World Series stops after an injury.

The U.S. men are ranked ninth in this season’s World Series and will likely need to win either a North American Olympic qualifier this summer or a last-chance global qualifier in June 2024 to make it to Paris.

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Oscar Pistorius denied parole, hasn’t served enough time

Associated PressMar 31, 2023, 1:05 PM EDT

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Olympic and Paralympic runner Oscar Pistorius was denied parole Friday and will have to stay in prison for at least another year and four months after it was decided that he had not served the “minimum detention period” required to be released following his murder conviction for killing girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp 10 years ago.

The parole board ruled that Pistorius would only be able to apply again in August 2024, South Africa’s Department of Corrections said in a short, two-paragraph statement. It was released soon after a parole hearing at the Atteridgeville Correctional Centre prison where Pistorius is being held.

The board cited a new clarification on Pistorius’ sentence that was issued by South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal just three days before the hearing, according to the statement. Still, legal experts criticized authorities’ decision to go ahead with the hearing when Pistorius was not eligible.

Reeva Steenkamp’s parents, Barry and June, are “relieved” with the decision to keep Pistorius in prison but are not celebrating it, their lawyer told The Associated Press.

“They can’t celebrate because there are no winners in this situation. They lost a daughter and South Africa lost a hero,” lawyer Tania Koen said, referring to the dramatic fall from grace of Pistorius, once a world-famous and highly-admired athlete.

The decision and reasoning to deny parole was a surprise but there has been legal wrangling over when Pistorius should be eligible for parole because of the series of appeals in his case. He was initially convicted of culpable homicide, a charge comparable to manslaughter, in 2014 but the case went through a number of appeals before Pistorius was finally sentenced to 13 years and five months in prison for murder in 2017.

Serious offenders must serve at least half their sentence to be eligible for parole in South Africa. Pistorius’ lawyers had previously gone to court to argue that he was eligible because he had served the required portion if they also counted periods served in jail from late 2014 following his culpable homicide conviction.

The lawyer handling Pistorius’ parole application did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.

June Steenkamp attended Pistorius’ hearing inside the prison complex to oppose his parole. The parents have said they still do not believe Pistorius’ account of their daughter’s killing and wanted him to stay in jail.

Pistorius, who is now 36, has always claimed he killed Steenkamp, a 29-year-old model and law student, in the pre-dawn hours of Valentine’s Day 2013 after mistaking her for a dangerous intruder in his home. He shot four times with his licensed 9 mm pistol through a closed toilet cubicle door in his bathroom, where Steenkamp was, hitting her multiple times. Pistorius claimed he didn’t realize his girlfriend had got out of bed and gone to the bathroom.

The Steenkamps say they still think he is lying and killed her intentionally after a late-night argument.

Lawyer Koen had struck a more critical tone when addressing reporters outside the prison before the hearing, saying the Steenkamps believed Pistorius could not be considered to be rehabilitated “unless he comes clean” over the killing.

“He’s the killer of their daughter. For them, it’s a life sentence,” Koen said before the hearing.

June Steenkamp had sat grim-faced in the back seat of a car nearby while Koen spoke to reporters outside the prison gates ahead of the hearing. June Steenkamp and Koen were then driven into the prison in a Department of Corrections vehicle. June Steenkamp made her submission to the parole board in a separate room to Pistorius and did not come face-to-face with her daughter’s killer, Koen said.

Barry Steenkamp did not travel for the hearing because of poor health but a family friend read out a statement to the parole board on his behalf, the parents’ lawyer said.

Pistorius was once hailed as an inspirational figure for overcoming the adversity of his disability, before his murder trial and sensational downfall captivated the world.

Pistorius’s lower legs were amputated when he was a baby because of a congenital condition and he walks with prosthetics. He went on to become a double-amputee runner and multiple Paralympic champion who made history by competing against able-bodied athletes at the 2012 London Olympics, running on specially designed carbon-fiber blades.

Pistorius’ conviction eventually led to him being sent to the Kgosi Mampuru II maximum security prison, one of South Africa’s most notorious. He was moved to the Atteridgeville prison in 2016 because that facility is better suited to disabled prisoners.

There have only been glimpses of his life in prison, with reports claiming he had at one point grown a beard, gained weight and taken up smoking and was unrecognizable from the elite athlete he once was.

He has spent much of his time working in an area of the prison grounds where vegetables are grown, sometimes driving a tractor, and has reportedly been running bible classes for other inmates.

Pistorius’ father, Henke Pistorius, told the Pretoria News newspaper before the hearing that his family hoped he would be home soon.

“Deep down, we believe he will be home soon,” Henke Pistorius said, “but until the parole board has spoken the word, I don’t want to get my hopes up.”

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