Free Republic

It's been nearly half a century since the term "agony of defeat" joined the lexicon of American sports. To this day, the phrase remains a broadcasting staple, whether it's coverage of the Olympics or any number of sports. A Google search for "agony of defeat" returns nearly 500,000 results. With that in mind, we revisit the viral video that made an indelible mark on the sports world long before the era of social media -- the frightful ski jumping crash from the opening montage of "ABC's Wide World of Sports."

If anyone deserves a beach day, it's Simone Biles and her Final Five teammates. The US gymnasts traded their leotards for bikinis and enjoyed a day out at Rio's Barra da Tijuca beach Saturday. Biles, Aly Raisman and Madison Kocian — part of the Final Five team that took nine medals in Rio — frolicked on the sand and took a dip in the ocean. Laurie Hernandez posed for a poolside picture with Biles earlier in the day. And Gabby Douglas, 20, who was not at the beach, posted a picture on Instagram of herself golfing with friends. Biles, 19...

Watching the awards ceremony and I notice not a single white guy on the team. Usually I wouldn't care and I'm all for putting the best players on the team but after all the whining we heard about no black nominees during the Academy Awards this must be asked.

South African runner Caster Semenya dominated the women’s 800-meter final Saturday in Rio, finishing well ahead of the competition to take home the gold medal. Semenya is widely believed to be “intersex,” defined by the United Nations as people born with sex characteristics “that do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies.” The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) last summer suspended International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) rules prohibiting athletes who exceed a testosterone threshold from competing in women’s track and field events, clearing the way for Semenya to compete in Rio. The CAS ruling claimed...

How Ryan Lochte turned a drunken, frat-boy night into an international mess Yeah, it’s come to this: The story of the Olympics, a likely fake claim of robbery at the end of a drunken night of debauchery turned into global story courtesy of a publicity-mad swimmer-turned-reality-TV-star who, unlike his three buddies – teammates Jimmy Feigen, Jack Conger and Gunnar Bentz – is home safe in the United States. This is likely bad news for Ryan Lochte, who appears to have found his three compatriots throwing him under the bus to authorities. At least two of the swimmers are at the...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Former NFL star Darren Sharper has been sentenced to 18 years and four months in prison in a case where he was accused of drugging and raping as many as 16 women in four states.U.S. District Judge Jane Triche Milazzo sentenced Sharper on Thursday, telling him she couldn't understand how he did what he did, since he was college educated and obviously had grown up "in one of the most loving households." "We can never ignore the damage you inflicted on those women and society at large," she said.Sharper had pleaded guilty in federal court in...

ESPN’s Around the Horn has gone from one of the best, longest running panel shows the network has ever had, to an absolutely farcical flagship of left-wing lunacy. Yesterday, the panel at ATH lamented the fact that Cam Newton didn’t feel racially persecuted. Because, apparently, that’s bad. On Tuesday’s edition of the show, the panel discussed really silly comments made by the Packers’ Aaron Rodgers, who said the NFL’s culture makes players not speak publicly on cultural issues, out of fear of repercussions.

a golden oldie of Usain Bolt from 2012

For some reason, playing a song in which 50 percent of the lyrics are the exact phrase “smack my bitch up” for an accused domestic abuser didn’t quite sit right with people, leading the Cubs to issue the following formal apology: "The selection of this track showed a lack of judgment and sensitivity to an important issue. We have terminated our relationship with the employee responsible for making the selection and will be implementing stronger controls to review and approve music before public broadcast during our games."

Gymnastics isn't What It Used to Be...and That's a Good Thing.

Superstar swimmer Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympic athlete of all time, nearly committed suicide two years ago. His athletic prowess and success had brought him so much attention over the last decade that sports media nearly worshiped him as a kind of god, but Phelps was struggling to find peace in his heart. He felt empty inside and sought to fill his pain with drugs and alcohol, which sent him into a downward spiral. In 2009 he was suspended from swimming for three months after a photograph of him using a bong went viral, but that didn’t stop him...

The U.S. Marine Corps is looking for a few more good women. And this time the campaign is a bit different. Marine recruiters are turning to girls high school sports teams to find candidates who may be able to meet the Corps' rigorous physical standards, including for the front-line combat jobs now open to women. Marine Commandant Gen. Robert Neller says he wants to increase the number of women in the Corps to 1 in 10. "I've told them that 10 percent is where we want to go and they're working on it," Neller told The Associated Press in an...

...Yet, the big-money swimsuit companies — so crucial to the sport's financial viability — are always pressing to show off their high-tech chops, which are severely crimped by rules that restrict the size and fabrics for competition swimsuits...

EXCERPT: "Part of the issue here is that there are not a ton of alternatives. The village has a cafeteria in a big tent — plus a “casual dining” restaurant with Brazilian food — but the reviews have been well short of glowing. The crush of people in the cafeteria, trying to figure out in a babel of languages what is being served, can make for a frenzied meal...."

We know that America is feeling like a cancer patient at the moment. Doctors explain that there are only two options: amputate a limb or go through chemotherapy, which might save the limb, but also might kill us. We shuffle around in a daze, scarcely believing that there are no good exits from this house of mirrors. So, in the spirit of escapism from our national crisis, let's turn to the Olympics. It's not that the Olympics have exactly been a beacon of righteousness through the years. In 1936, Adolf Hitler did his best to make the games an infomercial...

It is likely that on the night of Saturday, Aug. 20, in the Olympic Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, a 25-year-old South African woman named Caster Semenya will win a gold medal. Her victory will come in the 800 meters, a race in which her times have been approaching a decades-old world record thought by many in the sport to be unapproachable. Her performance will be stunning: She is 5'10" and weighs 161 pounds, with muscular arms, broad shoulders and narrow hips. She has a severe jawline, hard and strong, and a competitor's unflinching eyes. In a 2009 article, Ariel...

The Olympics are only the latest event where our elites mistake diversity for "history." One breakout star across the TV networks is Ibtihaj Muhammad, a 30-year-old fencer from New Jersey. While a traditional Catholic woman from Maryland would register a collective yawn, a black Muslim woman in a hijab gets a perfect 10 from the diversity judges. ABC reporter Matt Gutman gushed: "(She is) set to become the first U.S. woman ever to compete at the Olympics wearing a hijab. And she wasn't at all en garde, sorry for the pun, for breaking barriers and slashing her way into history."...

He had a $20.5 million contract, but is now out of the league — and millions of dollars... “I looked at my bank statement and thought, ‘where did this come from?’ they took advantage of me,” he said of his friends and family members. They had paid for 11 Netflix accounts and eight Hulu accounts in his name. They also made many purchases on Amazon and charged him for bottle service at bars.

BOSTON - The Boston Red Sox canceled a David Ortiz bobblehead promotion Tuesday night when the figurine turned out to be "racially insensitive," said team president Sam Kennedy. The bobblehead depicts Ortiz addressing fans at Fenway Park following the Boston Marathon bombings, but Kennedy said it didn't much resemble the retiring slugger and was not fit for distribution. Kennedy saw the final version of the bobblehead for the first time Tuesday afternoon after they were delivered. "My two immediate reactions were first, it was a really inaccurate portrayal of what he looks like," Kennedy told The Associated Press. "My personal...

The grander point was missed then. The most popular athlete in the world wanted to play baseball. If he defied all odds and succeeded, great, then the most popular athlete in the world was playing baseball. And if he failed, he a) brought attention to the game; b) used his very loud megaphone to profess his love for the sport to his millions of fans around the world; and c) accentuated just how tough it is to play major league baseball, because the greatest athlete in the world would have failed at it. But even if it was a publicity...