The unique perspective and provocative opinions of Joe O’Neill
Sports Shorts
Clearwater native Bobby Finke, Countryside High grad and current Florida Gator, won two Olympic gold medals in swimming. Fellow GatorCaeleb Dressel, America’s newMichael Phelps, earned five golds.
According to the IOC, approximately 49 percent of the nearly 11,000 Tokyo Olympic athletes are women. That number was 45.6 percent at the 2016 Rio Games.
Russia is officiallybanned from the Olympics—over state-sponsored doping—but more than 300 Russian athletes are competing in Tokyo. The Russians—without their flag or anthem—compete under the ROC (Russian Olympic Committee) banner. Some “ban.”
The next Olympic Games will be in Beijing this winter. The IOC’s (Hobbs?) choice: It was either Beijing or Almaty, Kazakhstan.