Yes, Seb Coe will alomost certainly go for the position of IOC president after Thomas Bach steps down next year, and yes, he'll take steps to protect women's sport. Oliver Brown in the Telegraph: Sebastian Coe has given his strongest indication yet that he intends on running to become the next president of the International…

A panorama of four 8×10 inch glass negatives stitched together. "Mississippi River, Algiers Point (at right), steamship Excelsior – New Orleans riverfront panorama." [Photo: Shorpy/Detroit Publishing Co.] As ever, click on th image to see the full-size Shorpy original.

So farewell then Thomas Bach. The beleaguered IOC president is stepping down next year, after presiding over the Olympics boxing farce. Oliver Brown in the Telegraph: To Bach and his IOC acolytes, in hock to a belief that your sex is whatever you say it is, womanhood can be determined by passport status. Except athletes…

Given Rod Liddle's chosen vocation as something of a shit-stirrer against liberal pieties – tongue-in-cheek but calculatedly provocative – this piece in today's Sunday Times is a surprisingly (to me) fine piece of reporting. He goes back to his home town of Middlesborough after the riots: The march was predicated upon a falsehood which everyone…

Hadley Freeman in the Sunday Times: Should women ever trust the Olympics again? This is what many will be asking themselves tonight as the closing ceremony plays out. But this is the wrong question. The correct one is, how much longer will women put up with the International Olympics Committee punching them in the face?…

Look at the tattoos on his arm—Mohammad Mehdi Karami’s only dream was to compete in the Olympics. But the Islamic Republic executed him for joining the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests after #MahsaAmini’s murder. Yet, this regime still participates in the Olympics as if it’s a… pic.twitter.com/2E4qrnRjfi — Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) August 10, 2024 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js…

Helen Joyce has a long piece  – the "weekend essay" – in today's Times, on the threat by new Labour education secretary Bridget Phillipson to abandon the recently introduced law to protect free speech in universities. I’ve lost count of the academics — and journalists, teachers, medics and others — who have told me they…

Oliver Brown in the Telegraph: The smouldering scandal of these Paris Games has reached the most explosive possible conclusion, with a biologically male boxer winning an Olympic gold medal as a female. Imane Khelif, the 25-year-old Algerian whose DNA tests have shown the male pattern of XY chromosomes, has swept all the way to the…

Manhattan ca. 1913. "Suburban concourse with ramp, Grand Central Terminal, New York Central Lines." A surreal image of spectral figures populating the Grand Central concourse, thanks to the flash-powder time exposure. It helps that the men with moustaches and hats look to be straight out of a Rene Magritte painting. [Photo: Shorpy/Detroit Publishing Company]

Women of WRN Afghanistan stand with all women being disadvantaged by males in their sports. We are XX not XY. Men will use their strength to try to keep us down but women will always fight on @WomensRightsNet #XX#SaveWomensSport pic.twitter.com/EuHn7qLi3I — WRN Afghanistan (@WRNAfghanistan) August 9, 2024 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js