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When a Chinese clothing company swooped in and offered to sponsor Kenya’s famed runners, Nike panicked, Kenyan officials say.

Kenya’s athletics federation — has led to a major scandal in Kenya, a country in the midst of its biggest war against corruption in years.

In a contract signed several years ago, Nike agreed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in honorariums and a one-time $500,000 “commitment bonus,” which the former employee called a bribe.

Athletics doping crisis: UK Athletics wants to reset world records

The sport's governing body has made 14 proposals, among them longer bans for drug cheats and a public register of tested athletes.

UKA chairman Ed Warner said it was time for "radical reform", adding: "The integrity of athletics was challenged as never before in 2015."

Some Games, such as the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Berlin, saw countries (including the U.S. and the U.K.) threaten to pull out, before deciding to participate. World Wars I and II forced the cancellation of three Olympic Games—in 1916, 1940 and 1944. And other countries have been banned for a variety of reasons: Germany and Japan in 1948 because of their roles in WWII, South Africa during the era of apartheid and Russia in 2020, due to a doping scandal (although individual athletes were ultimately allowed to compete.)

The Details: Australia’s first hosting stint also marked the first Olympic boycott, with numerous countries withdrawing for a variety of political reasons. Less than a month before the opening ceremony, the Soviet Union invaded Hungary to stop the Hungarian Revolution against the Communist regime; in protest, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland all refused to participate. Meanwhile, the People’s Republic of China also withdrew—and would not return until the 1980 Winter Games—because Taiwan, which it considers a breakaway province, was allowed to participate as a separate country. And, finally, Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon boycotted the 1956 Olympics due to the Suez Canal Crisis following the British-Israel-French invasion of Egypt to control the waterway.

‘Blood in the Water’: Despite other countries’ boycott against the Soviets, Hungary competed in the Olympics, and its athletes received support from fans, while Soviet athletes faced boos. A violent water polo match between the two teams left one Hungarian player bleeding from the head and led to a fight among spectators and athletes. Hungary, up 4-0 at the start of the brawl, was named the winner and the team eventually won the gold medal. The Soviets, for their part, went on to win the most medals for the first time. Of Note: In a show of peace, the Olympic athletes, for the first time, marched into the closing ceremony mixed together, rather than as separate nations—a tradition that continues today.

When Naomi Osaka dropped out of the French Open on Monday, after declining to attend media interviews that she said could trigger her anxiety, she wasn’t just protecting her mental health. She was sending a message to the establishment of one of the world’s most elite sports: I will not be controlled.

This was a power move — and it packed more punch coming from a young woman of color. When the system hasn’t historically stood for you, why sacrifice yourself to uphold it? Especially when you have the power to change it instead.

Now Ms. Osaka, who at 23 is the top-earning female athlete in history, is part of a growing group of female athletes who are betting that they’ll be happier — and maybe perform better, too — by setting their own terms.

Tennessee state Rep. Bruce Griffey (R), who has a cisgender daughter on a school golf team, is co-sponsoring a bill that would allow school competition only based on the sex listed on one’s birth certificate.

“What if one of the boys is not doing well, so he pretends to be transgender to win?” he asked. “I’m protecting a discriminated class: that’s girls and women in sports.”

But detractors say arguments about biological advantages among transgender athletes are based on limited research and put an outsize focus on a tiny fraction of young competitors. About 2 percent of high school students in the United States identify as transgender

Jamaica's most senior drug tester says the country's recent rash of failed tests might be the "tip of an iceberg".

Asafa Powell, the former 100m world record holder, was the biggest name to test positive, but four others including Powell's training partner - the Olympic relay gold medallist Sherone Simpson - also failed tests at the country's national trials in June.

Wada officials are due to discuss their visit to Jamaica at an executive board meeting in Johannesburg on Tuesday and could make a series of recommendations to improve the country's anti-doping policies.

The recruitment of athletes in such sports may be an even bigger factor in the admissions process at colleges in the N.C.A.A.’s lowest tier, Division III, where athletic scholarships are forbidden.

Division III is also the largest tier, with nearly 450 institutions, including many of the country’s most selective small liberal arts colleges, where acceptance rates can be as low as 15 percent. These colleges might field as many as 30 teams from enrollments as small as 2,000, with varsity athletes, many of them afforded an advantage in admissions, making up 30 percent to 45 percent of the student body.

The cost of fielding a successful sports team in the ultracompetitive college athletic landscape often leads to other troubling conflicts of interest.

Trump’s problem isn’t with athletes being political. It’s with athletes speaking out against racism.

Despite President Trump's harsh words about NFL players protesting racism, there's one thing you aren't likely to hear him say: “Stay in your lane.”

Trump respects — even invites — athletes to weigh in on political matters, as long as they are pro-Trump policies.

Even as their spending on instruction, research and public service declined or stayed flat, most colleges and universities rapidly increased their spending on sports, according to a report being released Monday by the American Association of University Professors.

Inflation-adjusted athletic spending also increased, by 24.8 percent, at public four-year colleges in all divisions in those years, while spending on instruction and academic support remained nearly flat, and public service and research expenditures declined

this report suggests that our worst fears are coming to pass,”

Michigan, once the class of the college football landscape, suddenly embodies the struggle between athletics and academics playing out at universities throughout the country. Michigan’s new president, Mark Schlissel, has suggested that academics may have taken a back seat in the athletic department and made it clear that the university’s sports culture concerned him.

“We have to get this right,” said Mark Bernstein, a university regent. “I believe the stakes at this university are unusually high in the sense that this university aspires to be exceptional academically and with respect to athletics. If those two worlds can coexist without comprising the integrity and values of the university — that’s our goal. If they can’t coexist, then intercollegiate athletics is truly an illusion.”

“The incentives are really strong for them to be as successful on the field as possible, and some of those are in dollars and others are in performance,” said Schlissel, according to the student newspaper, The Michigan Daily. “If we had won Nobel Prizes this year, we wouldn’t have gotten as much attention as did our A.D. It’s sad, but it’s really true.”

Will the Olympics Finally Embrace Trans Athletes?

The International Olympic Committee (IOC), which previously required transgender athletes to undergo gender-reassignment surgery in order to compete, is now expected to recognize that distinction by allowing all transgender men to compete in the male category “without restriction” and allowing transgender women to compete in the female category after a year of hormone replacement therapy (HRT).

To date, no openly transgender athlete has competed in the Olympics,

Among richer families, youth sports participation is actually rising. Among the poorest households, it’s trending down. Just 34 percent of children from families earning less than $25,000 played a team sport at least one day in 2017, versus 69 percent from homes earning more than $100,000. In 2011, those numbers were roughly 42 percent and 66 percent, respectively.

This isn’t a story about American childhood; it’s about American inequality.

“Kids’ sports has seen an explosion of travel-team culture, where rich parents are writing a $3,000 check to get their kids on super teams from two counties, or two states, away,”

The U.S. Supreme Court announced Wednesday that it would review a case testing whether the NCAA's limits on compensation for student athletes violate the nation's antitrust laws.

The court's unusual expedition into sports law comes amid an increasing national battle between athletes and the schools they play for over player compensation. On one side, the NCAA says it is just trying to protect amateurism, and to maintain a basic competitive equality between schools that play each other. On the other side, players argue that the top athletic teams are operating a system that acts as a classic restraint of trade in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

And at the heart of the case, says sports law expert Gary Roberts, is this question: Are these young men and women "employees or are they students?"

Russian Sports Agent and U.S. Marathon Officials Under Federal Investigation

Officials are scrutinizing the agent, Andrey Baranov, for bribery and corruption, according to several people familiar with the case who requested anonymity because the investigation was continuing.

The investigators are looking into whether Mr. Baranov conspired with American marathon organizers — including New York City Marathon officials — to allow athletes using banned substances to compete in their events.

for nearly two decades two employees in the African and Afro-American Studies department ran a “shadow curriculum” of hundreds of fake classes that never met but for which students, many of them Tar Heels athletes, routinely received A’s and B’s.

Nearly half the students in the classes were athletes, the report found, often deliberately steered there by academic counselors to bolster their worrisomely low grade-point averages and to allow them to continue playing on North Carolina’s teams. The existence of the classes — though not necessarily how blatantly nonexistent they were — was common knowledge among the academic counselors, and in some cases among coaches of the university’s sports teams

Until now, the university has been at pains to emphasize that the scandal was a purely academic one; on Wednesday, for the first time, it acknowledged that it was also an athletic one, with athletes being steered specifically into and benefiting disproportionately from the fraudulent classes.

Florida's Republican governor signed a bill Tuesday barring transgender females from playing on public school teams intended for student athletes born as girls, plunging the state into the national culture war over transgender rights.

"In Florida, girls are going to play girls sports and boys are going to play boys sports,"

The NCAA, which oversees college athletics, has said it has "a long-standing policy that provides a more inclusive path for transgender participation in college sports." The NCAA currently requires transgender women to get treatment to lower their testosterone levels before they can compete in women's sports.

This year, lawmakers in more than 20 states have introduced legislation to ban transgender kids from girls’ sports, under the guise of protecting women and girls. Bills have already passed in Mississippi and Idaho.

The quest to block trans girls from competition has some prominent supporters.Former President Donald Trump embraced female athletes in February, declaring at the Conservative Political Action Conference that it was “so important” to “protect women’s sports.”

The cause is catching on: One recent Politico poll found that 46 percent of women support a ban on transgender athletes (as do 43 percent of young adults born since 1997).

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah lawmakers voted Friday to override GOP Gov. Spencer Cox's veto of legislation banning transgender youth athletes from playing on girls teams — a move that comes amid a nationwide culture war over transgender issues. Before the veto, the ban received support from a majority of Utah lawmakers, but fell short of the two-thirds needed to override it. Its sponsors on Friday successfully flipped 10 Republicans in the House and five in the Senate who had previously voted against the proposal.

Salt Lake City is set to host the NBA All-Star game in February 2023. League spokesman Mike Bass has said the league is "working closely" with the Jazz on the matter.

I cannot support this bill. I cannot support the veto override and if it costs me my seat so be it. I will do the right thing, as I always do," said Republican Sen. Daniel Thatcher. With the override of Cox's veto, Utah becomes the 12th state to enact some sort of ban on transgender kids in school sports. The state's law takes effect July 1.

Charges are also being brought against 13 college coaches, including Yale’s head women’s soccer coach, who allegedly accepted a $400,000 bribe to admit a student as one of his recruits even though the student had never played competitive soccer.

“Every year, alumni contribute to their alma matters with the expectation of special treatment for their children,”

“This more genteel form of bribery is considered perfectly legal. Not only that, the donors get a tax break to boot, undercutting the fundamental legal principle that a charitable donation should not enrich the donor.”

Admissions professionals have long acknowledged that recruited athletes get special handling. A federal trial — in a separate civil lawsuit over affirmative action — revealed last fall that Harvard gives a significant admissions edge to recruited athletes. More than 80 percent of its applicants with top athletic ratings in a recent six-year period were admitted, an analysis showed. The university’s overall admission rate in that time was about 7 percent.

In exchange for the alleged bribes, prosecutors say, Ernst named at least 12 applicants as recruits, including some who did not play tennis competitively, easing their path into Georgetown.

the “most insidious model” is when coaches are given “slots” to recommend filling with little oversight or internal checks. “They get a certain number,” he said, “and sometimes it’s just up to the coach to decide how to play these cards.”