Olympic rowers train in waters near Rio. The lack of sufficient treatment has raised health concerns for athletes.
Carlos Barria/Reuters
Expecting the rest of the world to adopt expensive, centralized sewage treatments systems common in the U.S. is not realistic.
Diego Azubel/EPA
Unravelling the common assumption that runners from Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia have a natural advantage.
Usain Bolt: breaking records.
PA
… and how wind played its part.
Urban planning was once an Olympic event, although the first gold medal – awarded to Germany’s Alfred Hensel for the Nuremberg stadium – turned out to be an unfortunate choice.
Imagine cities competed to eliminate hunger, poverty, unemployment, crime and greenhouse emissions, and to offer housing and transport for all. Don’t scoff – urban planning was once an Olympic event.
The 100m final in Rio will be won in a time that would have seemed impossible to the athletes competing in Athens in 1896.
As the track and field events are about to start in Rio, we look at how some athletic events have changed since the first Olympics in 1896.
Olympic authorities were quick to deny that the green pool posed a risk to divers’ health, but that actually depends on why the water changed colour.
Reuters/Antonio Bronic
The possible culprits are: a sudden algae bloom; a change in pool alkalinity; or a chemical reaction in the water. How do these cause a change in the colour of the water?
Athletes must execute their individualised race plan to the best of their ability to win.
Reuters/Michael Dalder
Races at the international level are often decided by as little as 0.01 of a second.
Protesters wearing masks of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin take part in a demonstration against the country’s ‘anti-gay’ laws outside the Embassy of the Russian Federation in London, February 2014.
Reuters/Neil Hall
Sport remains “one of the last bastions of cultural and institutional homophobia” in Western societies. But there is progress.
Patrick B Kraemer/EPA
Women’s football was introduced in the Olympics a staggering 96 years after the men’s event – and some sports still struggle with gender inequalities.
duncan c
They’re a global phenomenon – but gangs are so varied that they barely merit the same name.
Bolting past the finish line.
ave Thompson / PA Archive/Press Association Images
In order to become a better runner, you need to consider these factors first.
Jim Thorpe and Ben Johnson were both banned from the Olympics. But if each had played at different points in history, they would have been allowed to compete.
Nick Lehr/The Conversation
In sports, what’s considered fair play has changed throughout history. At one point, even looking ‘too poor’ was grounds for exclusion.
Will the Winning Edge strategy impact sport participation and limit sports’ abilities to develop Olympic champions?
reuters photographer/reuters
Australia has had a good start to the Rio Olympics. But does that mean that the strategy created in response to Australia’s poor Olympic performance in 2012 is working?
A TV cameraman shoots a Madame Tussauds Museum figure of US Olympic gold medal swimmer Michael Phelps at Banneker Pool in Washington, to coincide with the opening of the Rio Olympics on August 5.
Gary Cameron/Reuters
Business Briefing: the big bucks of broadcasting the Olympics
The Conversation 16 Mo (download)
The amount broadcasters will pay for the rights to the Olympics keeps going up, but is the value of the rights changing?
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Sprinters may be able to power through, but endurance athletes could suffer from hyperthermia and dehydration.
Going for gold.
Abdelhak Senna/EPA
After much suspicion and derision, women with hyperandrogenism can compete in international events.
US swimmer Michael Phelps with tell-tale cupping marks.
Bernd Thissen/EPA
They look sore but it’s fairly harmless – and the effect may really be a placebo.
Gold medal winner Mack Horton (centre) said he had no time or respect for drug cheats in reference to silver medallist Sun Yang.
Dominic Ebenbichler/Reuters
Rarely do we see such unscripted individual honesty on difficult topics such as doping, right in the middle of arguably the biggest international sporting stage.
Rugby Sevens serves as the perfect example of how lifelong dedication to a single sport might not be the only pathway to Olympic success.
Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters
The gold medal-winning Australian women’s rugby Sevens team is a shining example of talent transfer from other sports.
Once the pageantry is over, many Olympic athletes have to return to normal life – which means figuring out how to make a living.
Tony Gentile/Reuters
A former Olympic gold medalist reflects on his own financial struggles as he trained and competed for the 1984 Games. Decades later, not much has changed for many Olympians.