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Soccer star Megan Rapinoe urged President Donald Trump “to do better for everyone,” criticizing his Make America Great Again message for “excluding people,” as she spoke out in an interview days after her team’s record-breaking victory in the 2019 Women’s World Cup.

“Your message is excluding people. You’re excluding me, you’re excluding people that look like me, you’re excluding people of color, you’re excluding, you know, Americans that maybe support you,” Rapinoe, who is gay, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in an interview Tuesday night, when asked about her message to the President. “You’re harking back to an era that wasn’t great for everyone. It might have been great for a few people, …

All hail pro basketball, the year-round usurper of news.

The latest NBA off-season stunner dropped on what was supposed to be a quiet Thursday sports night during baseball’s All-Star break (only one game, between the Houston Astros and the Texas Rangers, was on the schedule. Who won? Who cares?) ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski broke the news that 2017 NBA MVP Russell Westbrook, of the Oklahoma City Thunder, was being traded to the Houston Rockets, where he’ll pair up with 2018 NBA MVP James Harden to form the latest NBA super-team, in Texas.

This summer’s free agency has created four new NBA power tandems, at least on paper: Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, lately of the Golden State Warriors and Boston Celtics, respectively, joined forces on the Brooklyn Net…

2021 will go down as one of the worst years for LGBTQ rights across the U.S. in recent history. Over the past six months alone, over 250 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced into state legislatures and at least 17 have become law. Much of the legislation has focused on transgender youth—particularly transgender women and girls—and their ability to play on sports team consistent with their gender identity.

There’s little hard data on how many trans athletes are playing sports today. Trans rights advocates argue the bills are designed to foster a moral panic over trans people, and further stigmatize a community which already faces systemic discrimination. Advocates also note that banning trans athletes from competing under their gender identity is discriminatory …

The dream of the double is over.

Canada defeated the U.S. Women’s National Team (USWNT), 1-0, in an Olympic semifinal on Monday in Kashima, Japan, ending the squad’s quest to become the first women’s soccer team to win a World Cup and an Olympic gold medal back-to-back. The defeat also marked what could be a changing-of-the-guard for one America’s most popular, and at times polarizing, teams.

The U.S. suffered a major setback in the 20th minute, when goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher—who was essential to the team’s quarterfinal win against the Netherlands—collided with Julie Ertz, resulting in her leaving the game with a knee injury.

Early in the second half, the U.S. failed to convert on three straight corner kicks. But the team kept t…

Belgium has forfeited from the mixed relay triathlon after one of its team athletes fell ill, the country’s Olympic team confirmed in a Sunday press release. 

Claire Michel, who participated in the women’s triathlon and swam in the Seine River on Wednesday, has withdrawn from the meet because of her illness. Belgian newspaper De Standaard claimed that Michel was infected with E.coli. TIME is out to Team Belgium for comment. 

The water quality of the Seine has been subject to intense scrutiny after French officials announced it would be used for a number of Olympic events, despite a swimming ban that’s been in place because of water pollution since 1923. Organizers invested some $1.5 billion to help clean up the iconic river, prompting French Presiden…

On Aug. 23, police shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. Three days later, the Milwaukee Bucks declined to take the court against the Orlando Magic, and the NBA playoffs came to a halt. Games in the WNBA, Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer and the National Hockey League were postponed. Tennis star Naomi Osaka announced she would not play her semifinal match in the Western & Southern Open; soon, the tournament went on temporary hiatus.

The message was clear: sports are no longer some pleasurable distraction in tough times. It’s no longer acceptable to use Black Americans as entertainment but do little to demonstrate that their lives matter.

Though the strikes were short-lived–the NBA playoffs resumed a few…

The Olympics are all about the unexpected. And for marathon swimmers and triathletes, that includes a notoriously unpredictable partner—the venue, which is typically an ocean, a lake, or, in the case of the Paris Olympics, the city’s historic river Seine.

As iconic as the Seine is, with its picturesque vantage points of city landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and Musée d’Orsay, it’s also a contaminated body of water. There are enough risks to human health that the city has banned swimming in the Seine for more than 100 years.

But Olympic organizers wanted to change that, even temporarily, by staging the marathon swimming and swimming portion of the triathlon in the river, and poured $1.5 billion into building a huge tank under the Seine to hold stormwater during hea…

“When you think of swimming, you think Australia and USA,” Caeleb Dressel told reporters in Tokyo. “The two powerhouses of swimming.”

And in the final day of competition at the Tokyo Aquatics Center, that proved true as every race was won by swimmers from the two countries. While the night for Team USA ended on a high note, with gold and a world record in the men’s 4×100-m medley relay, its total swimming medal tally of 30 at the Tokyo pool fell just short of its 33 from Rio, when Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky alone contributed 11 medals to the haul.

Tokyo represents a transition year for Team USA swimming, as well as a crucible, as the first Olympics in modern history occurring in the middle of a pandemic. New leaders like Dressel emere…

WICHITA, Kan. — A rebuilt statue of Jackie Robinson in bronze will be welcomed home Monday by Little League players and former Major League Baseball All-Stars, just over six months after the original was destroyed by thieves.

The original sculpture of the baseball icon resting a bat on his shoulder was cut off at its ankles in January, leaving only Robinson’s cleats behind at McAdams Park in Wichita, Kansas.

An identical statue will return to the park, where about 600 children play in the urban youth baseball league called League 42, which was founded in 2013 and named after Robinson’s uniform number with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Playing for the Dodgers, Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s racial barrier in 1947.

The community is expected to be joined…

In the 80 years since the March Madness tournament started, it’s been a beloved and much-anticipated tradition for college basketball fans to fiercely rally for their favorite teams and celebrities are no exception.

For some, like actress Ashley Judd, being a super fan comes with longtime school spirit for her alma mater, the University of Kentucky, whose Wildcats are also a favorite for rapper Drake, who counts Coach John Calipari as a close friend and mentor. Others, like Bill Murray, don’t necessarily have an academic connection to a team, but an emotional one; Murray’s son, Luke, was an assistant coach for Xavier’s basketball program, which meant that the funnyman was a popular presence at Xavier games; for the 2019 NCAA Tournament, it appears that Murr…

It was one of the most anticipated races in the pool, billed as the “race of the century”—the women’s 400-m freestyle, featuring American Katie Ledecky, who already owns 10 Olympic medals, racing against Australian Ariarne Titmus and Canadian Summer McIntosh.

It’s Ledecky’s least dominant event; she last won gold at the 2022 world championships and lost to Titmus in 2021 at the Tokyo Olympics. But although it’s been a while since Ledecky set and broke her own world record in the event twice from 2014 to 2016, you can never count her out. In recent years, Titmus and the teen McIntosh have traded world-record times—Titmus set a new record in 2022 at the Australian championships at 3:56.40, which McIntosh bested a year later at 3:56.08. Titmus, the defending Olympic champio…

Ever since Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey unwittingly sparked an international incident with his tweet in support of protestors in Hong Kong — which compelled China to pull NBA sponsorships and cancel broadcasts of last week’s exhibition games in the country between the Brooklyn Nets and Los Angeles Lakers — fans and commentators have been awaiting a response from LeBron James. The NBA superstar hasn’t been shy about wading in political waters. He’s been a fierce critic of President Trump, a vocal supporter of payments for college athletes, and has spoken out on police violence and other issues. He also stars in an ESPN TV show called “More Than An Athlete.”

While James was in China last week, the NBA cancelled media availabil…

ESPN has taken noble swings at programming a sports network with no sports. But there are only so many airings of marbles races, old games and gabfests about the April 23–25 NFL draft—an event that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, feels as significant as a speck of sand—that viewers can take. That’s why fans clamored so hard for ESPN to move up its highly anticipated 10-part docuseries starring Michael Jordan, widely regarded as the greatest athlete ever to grace this earth, from an original airdate of June 2—coinciding with an NBA Finals series that no longer exists—to ASAP. People need a dose of nostalgia, and reason to anticipate any kind of shared cultural experience, now more than ever.

Luckily, the network listened. The first two episodes of…

The fifth episode of The Last Dance, the popular ESPN docu-series examining the impact of Michael Jordan and the 1997-1998 Chicago Bulls, touches on one of the more controversial aspects of Jordan’s legendary career: his lack of political engagement during his playing days. Back in 1990 Jordan, who grew up in North Carolina and starred for the University of North Carolina Tar Heels, refused to publicly endorse Harvey Gantt, the African-American former Democratic mayor of Charlotte, in his racially contentious Senate race versus Republican Jesse Helms. Helms’ career was marked by repeated charges that he was racist. In the 1980s, he opposed making Martin Luther King Jr. Day a national holiday.

“Republicans buy sneakers, too,” Jordan famously said by…

This profile is published as part of our TIME100 Next list, recognizing 100 emerging leaders from across the world who are shaping the future.

A few days before the start of the 2024 NBA Finals in June, Brad Stevens, the coach turned executive of the Boston Celtics, joined one of his star players, Jaylen Brown, for breakfast at the team’s practice facility. The Celtics had quickly disposed of the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference Finals—a series sweep in which Brown was named MVP—so the team enjoyed a near week and a half gap before the start of the championship round against the Dallas Mavericks.

It was a quiet moment during pre-finals downtime. But Brown suddenly looked Stevens dead in the eye.  

“Big f-cking two weeks,” Brown tol…

Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales, shared an encouraging message to Andy Murray after his Wimbledon career came to an anticlimactic end.

“An incredible Wimbledon career comes to an end,” Middleton said, via a post shared on Instagram stories on Saturday. “You should be very proud @andymurray. On behalf of all of us, thank you!”

The Instagram story was set against a plain white backdrop, and signed with the letter “C,” the first initial of her full name. Middleton also shared the message on the official X (formerly Twitter) account belonging to The Prince and Princess of Wales.

Middleton, 42, has not yet attended a match at Wimbledon 2024, but she is a known fan of the tournament and was a royal fixture there for many years, previously attending every year …

The Paris 2024 Paralympic Games kicks off tonight, with the opening ceremony beginning at 8 p.m. local time. The Games will feature 4,400 athletes representing 184 delegations who will compete in 22 different sports, including two—goalball and boccia—which are unique to the Paralympics and do not have an Olympic equivalent.

Here are some of the most anticipated events at this year’s Games. A full schedule is available on the Paralympics website.

Read More: The World War II Origins of the Paralympic Games

Wheelchair Rugby, a.k.a. “Murderball”

Wheelchair rugby, which combines elements of basketball, handball, and rugby, is one of the most high-impact sports in the Paralympics, with players frequently puncturin…

In the midst of everything else going on throughout the world, Boston sports fans now also have to deal with Tom Brady leaving the New England Patriots.

The superstar quarterback, who won six Super Bowls over the course of his 20-year tenure with the Pats, shared a two-part message on his social media accounts on Tuesday in which he thanked fans and announced that his “football journey will take place elsewhere” from here on out.

“Pats Nation will always be a part of me,” he wrote. “I don’t know what my football future holds but it is time for me to open a new stage for my life and career.”

On an early spring afternoon in 1969, John Gow climbed into a Cessna 140 fixed-wing airplane on the runway of the tiny airport in the rural logging town of Golden, British Columbia. His friend Bernard Royle sat in the pilot’s seat, preparing the little plane for flight. The snow-capped teeth of the northern Purcell range stretched out gleaming before them.

In the decades that followed, this rural region would become famous as the world’s mecca for heliskiing: downhill skiing in wild terrain only accessible by helicopter, now one of the world’s most coveted adventure experiences. But in 1969, those mountains represented a vast wilderness, and heliskiing called for pioneers to lead in this whole new sector of skiing—ones willing to accept mortal risk in excha…

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has begun to shift his messaging on the Tokyo Olympics, in a sign he may have accepted that the deadly coronavirus will make it necessary to postpone the event planned to start in July.

Abe and his cabinet, as well as the organizers and Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, had until days ago been unanimous in insisting the Games would be staged as scheduled. But, following a G-7 leaders’ video conference on the coronavirus Monday, Abe avoided comment on the timing of the event.

“I want to hold the Olympics and Paralympics perfectly, as proof that the human race will conquer the new coronavirus, and I gained support for that from the G-7 leaders,” he told reporters after the event.

Sporting events around the globe have been c…

It’s a game played by the likes of little kids and middle-aged, out-of-shape wannabe Kevin Durants, in backyards and driveways and weathered gym floors across the world. You’ve got six weekend warriors at the park, looking to get in some exercise? Play a little 3×3 basketball. If you’ve got seven … some poor soul sits and has “next.”

In Tokyo, this shrunk-down, half-court version of basketball will make its Olympic debut. On the surface, that counts as an improbable development; regular 5-on-5 basketball is pretty darn popular in its own right. Why is the makeshift version of the game worthy of a gold medal?

But in the U.S., outfits like Hoop It Up have organized 3×3 tournaments since the 1990s, and FIBA, basketball’s gover…

Saint Lucia and Dominica Just Won Their First Olympic Medal Ever—And They’re Gold

Two Caribbean athletes just made history at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympic Games—winning their countries their first ever Olympic medals. And not just any medals; both were gold.

Saint Lucia’s Julien Alfred beat out Team USA’s Sha’Carri Richardson, the reigning World Champion who was heavily favored to take home the gold in the women’s 100-m sprint on Saturday. Alfred won the race by 0.15 seconds. Another American, Melissa Jefferson, took bronze. 

“I’m still trying to think of what just happened,” Alfred said after the race in Stade de France. “It hasn’t sunk in yet.” In Saint Lucia’s capital of Castries, people gathered to watch Alfred make hist…

An all-too-long 141 days after the NBA shut down on March 11—an event that first signaled to many Americans the dire seriousness of COVID-19—the league will restart its 2019-2020 season on Thursday, with a nationally televised doubleheader: the New Orleans Pelicans and Utah Jazz face off at 6:30 p.m. eastern, while the Los Angeles Lakers take on the Los Angeles Clippers at 9; both games will air on TNT.

At one point, fans, league officials and players might have imagined a resumed NBA season to be a sign that America has emerged from the worst of the novel coronavirus. Unfortunately, tip-off is no mark of public health improvement: July has seen a record surge of new daily cases of COVID-19; on July 28th alone, more than 60,000 new COVID-19 cases were reported in the U…

The U.S. men’s Olympic basketball team won a fifth consecutive Olympic gold medal on Saturday night at Bercy Arena, besting France 98-87 in front of a raucous hometown crowd. The game was a rematch of the Tokyo gold medal game three years ago, and once again, France couldn’t match the American firepower, which is chock-full of future hoops Hall of Famers.

Stephen Curry led a balanced U.S. attack with 24 points, including four crucial 3-pointers late in the game. He simply took over the game. Curry finished with 8-threes on the night, and relished every moment of destroying France’s upset dreams.

Team USA continued its run of world dominance on the men’s side, ever since the team lost two preliminary round games at the Athens Olympics—including a blowout loss to Puer…

Football is full of unexpected action, but perhaps never more so than on Monday night when a black cat with superior athletic skills jumped into the game to offer a little more hustle.

If you were looking for an alternate player to step in during the second quarter of the showdown between the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Giants, fans didn’t have to look too far thanks to this showoff of a domestic cat who raced on to the field to score a casual “touchdown.” Announcer Kevin Harlan didn’t even miss a beat the moment the cat hopped onto the field and straight into the end zone — quickly equating the feline with two quick-footed human running backs in the game.

“Policemen and state troopers have come onto the field, and the cat runs into th…

Team USA cyclist Kristen Faulkner secured the gold in the women’s road race Sunday—though her participation in the race almost didn’t happen. 

The 31-year-old wrapped up the 158-km race with a time of 3:49:23 after charging down the final stretch, launching a counterattack, and riding away from the top three riders in the race. “I knew I had to attack them as soon as we caught them. I knew they were sprinters. But I knew they didn’t want to work together – they were [from] three different countries. I knew if I got a small gap they would have to race for second,” Faulkner said after the race.

The victory was a shock to many, especially since Faulkner was a late addition to the team. USA Cycling had secured two spots in the women’s road cycling events, for Tayl…

Each year between Sept. 15 and Oct.15 , consumer brands, nonprofits, elected officials, and media companies express celebratory words for Hispanic Heritage Month. This once annual display doesn’t come close to addressing the monumental impact of Latinos year-round. The numbers don’t lie, and they are staggering. The U.S. Latino cohort represents 63 million people, 19.7% of America and $3.6 trillion in buying power, equivalent to the world’s 5th largest economy.

One undeniable trendline in our cultural landscape is the unmatched power of sports. Sports bring people together in a common rallying cry, uplift communities, and unlock economic growth. Yet somewhat still overlooked is the massive impact Latinos have on this industry’s success.

Until recently, I was the CEO…

In February 2002, when high school junior LeBron James came into the national consciousness and Sports Illustrated ran a cover story calling him “The Chosen One,” what could any reasonable person imagine? Another young athletic phenom, for one—with the potential to fall short of the hype. It had happened many times in sports before LeBron, and many times since: the can’t-miss sports teen who struck out. In fact, America’s premier athletic hype factory, ESPN, heaped even more expectations on James in his senior year, reserving coveted airtime for his high school games.

Given the history of highly tipped athletes falling short, probably few would bet that he’d become the first player to lead three different teams to NBA titles, as LeBron …

For Nigerians, 1996 lives in cultural memory as the year its soccer team, the Super Eagles, became global icons during the Summer Olympics. And, 25 years later, it’s clear that team had an impact that stretched far beyond the nation’s borders. Nigeria’s Dream Team was responsible for cementing the country’s place as a soccer nation worthy of considerable regard to opponents beyond the continent. Moreover, the nation’s path to gold involved defeating the best soccer team in the world at the time, Brazil—a feat players and fans recall as not just a victory for Nigerians, but one for Africans as a whole.

So, though Nigeria isn’t playing soccer in Tokyo, the Olympics are still meaningful to the nation’s fans. That August day in 1996 when…

The typical 21st-century Olympics opening ceremony is a lot. Nine years ago in London, Daniel Craig appeared to parachute into the stadium with Queen Elizabeth II as the James Bond theme blared. The 2008 Beijing ceremony enlisted 15,000 performers. Sydney 2000 had giant glowing jellyfish. It’s not hard to imagine Japan—land of Studio Ghibli and avant-garde street style, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu and Nintendo, Yayoi Kusama and Takashi Murakami—one-upping its predecessors with an even more elaborate, colorful pop spectacle. Yet the Tokyo Summer Olympic Games (which we are still, confusingly, referring to with the year 2020) opened on a far more somber, muted note.

A different, older aesthetic that we associate with Japan predominated at Friday’s ceremony: mi…

One of the main attractions of the 2024 Paris Olympics is, of course, Paris. The City of Lights and its many world-famous landmarks will take center stage at this year’s Games. While equestrians will compete at Versailles, beach volleyball matches will play out in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. Swimmers will, weather permitting, race in the Seine. But it’s hard to imagine that any one event will offer as magnificent a tribute to Paris as Friday’s Opening Ceremony, which eschewed the confines of a stadium and made the entire city its stage. The ceremony, which took place in the hours surrounding sunset in France and will re-air in “enhanced” form at 7:30 pm ET on NBC, was occasionally weird, wildly ambitious, ultimately wonderful, and extremely French.

The torch relay was a…

As COVID-19 cases continue to rise around the country, especially in states like Florida—home to two NBA franchises, and most crucially the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex that is slated to host the restart of the 2019-2020 NBA season—NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a TIME100 Talks discussion that there’s no guarantee the 22 NBA teams who qualified for the relaunched season will even travel to Central Florida. Teams are tentatively scheduled to arrive in Orlando between July 7-9.

“[It’s] never ‘full steam no matter what,’” says Silver in a Talk that aired Tuesday. “One thing we’re learning about this virus is that much is unpredictable.”

Even if the teams make it to Orlando, Silver recently said that a &#8220…

On a February afternoon in Las Vegas, Harrison Butker of the Kansas City Chiefs took seven steps toward the football, as many in the crowd of 62,000 at Allegiant Stadium held their phones aloft to capture the most anticipated moment of the NFL season: Super Bowl Sunday kickoff, finally, the beginning of the big game. More than 100 million viewers also tuned in, rapt with anticipation.  

Butker proceeded to bum them all out. The ball sailed over the head of the San Francisco 49ers kick returner, out of the end zone for a touchback. Bor-ing.  

Whereas Devin Hester of the Chicago Bears started off Super Bowl XLI, in 2007, with a bang by returning the opening kickoff for a touchdown—and nine other speedsters, including Fulton Walker, Desmond Howard, and Per…

Heisman Trophy winner Kyler Murray was the first overall pick in the NFL draft on Thursday, but on Saturday morning, President Donald Trump decided to congratulate the number two pick instead.

Former University of Oklahoma quarterback Murray, who is black, was drafted by the Arizona Cardinals and reportedly offered a $35 million contact. He’s also an accomplished baseball player, and was ninth in the 2018 MLB draft.

However, on Twitter the President congratulated Nick Bosa, the second pick, who was chosen by the San Francisco 49ers.

“Congratulations to Nick Bosa on being picked number two in the NFL Draft,” Trump tweeted. “You will be a great player for years to come, maybe one of the best. Big Talent! San Francisco will embrace you but most imp…