Guinea’s under-23 football team have secured their place in the 2024 Olympic Games, where they will play the USMNT in Group A.

Guinea defeated Indonesia 1-0 in Thursday’s play-off — Ilaix Moriba scored the only goal of the game from the penalty spot — in Clairefontaine to become the 16th and final qualifier for the men’s tournament in Paris.

The match was a play-off between the sides from the African and Asian federations, with Guinea joining fellow African nations Egypt, Morocco and Mali in the finals.

The U.S. will play Guinea in their third group stage match in Saint-Etienne on July 30, after opening their campaign against hosts France in Marseille on July 24 and playing New Zealand in Marseille three days later.

In the women’s tournament draw, the USWNT have been drawn in Group B alongside Germany, Australia and Zambia.

However, Zambia’s women’s team may be prevented from participating due to an ongoing political crisis within the country’s football association.

FIFA, world football’s governing body, has said the Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) faces being suspended — and therefore Zambian…

The Olympics kick off in 80 days, and Team USA’s women’s basketball roster is still TBD. The final pre-roster-announcement training camp was held in Cleveland during the Final Four in April, and whispers are that the final roster could hit by early June.

With the depth of talent in the U.S., the selection committee has the challenging job of putting together the best 12-person team — not just the 12 best players — because this is about Team USA winning its eighth consecutive gold medal and 10th overall. Chemistry and filling specific needs are key.

The committee tends to bookend the rosters with veterans, who might not play as much as they did a cycle or two before, and one or two young players, who also aren’t likely to be high-usage contributors but are seen as the future of the program.

In between, there are “locks,” the players who are the best in the world. Then, there is the pool of players who fill a need on the roster and have also been consistent performers at the training camps Team USA hosts throughout the year.

Despite how straightforward that might seem, there’s no exact science for the committee. One of Team USA’s biggest challenges is that their depth changes the training camp roster from camp to camp. Elsewhere, countries have more of the same…

President Joe Biden named sports icons Katie Ledecky and Jim Thorpe among the 19 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Friday.

Ledecky, the most decorated women’s swimmer in history, has won seven Olympic gold medals and 21 world championship gold medals. She holds the record for men and women for the most individual gold medals at the world championships with 16. Ledecky is slated to compete for the United States at the Paris Olympics this summer.

Thorpe, who died in 1953, was the first Native American to win an Olympic gold medal for the U.S. A multi-sport athlete, Thorpe won two Olympic golds in the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm — one in decathlon and one in pentathlon. He also played professional football, baseball and basketball.

Thorpe is among three honorees to posthumously receive the medal, along with former civil rights leader Medgar Evers and former New Jersey Senator Frank R. Lautenberg.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is considered the nation’s highest civilian honor. It is presented to individuals “who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors,” an announcement from the White House said.

Other awardees this year…

The Department of Justice reached a $138.7 million settlement Tuesday with the victims of former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar over the FBI’s initial failure to adequately investigate sexual abuse allegations against him.

“For decades, Lawrence Nassar abused his position, betraying the trust of those under his care and medical supervision while skirting accountability,” acting Associate Attorney General Benjamin C. Mizer said in a statement. “These allegations should have been taken seriously from the outset. While these settlements won’t undo the harm Nassar inflicted, our hope is that they will help give the victims of his crimes some of the critical support they need to continue healing.”

The DOJ said the settlement agreement resolves 139 claims against the FBI and the money will be distributed to the claimants.

Nassar sexually abused over 300 female gymnasts under the guise of medical treatment, and more than 150 women and girls spoke out publicly against him. The disgraced sports doctor pleaded guilty in 2018 to seven counts of criminal sexual conduct and was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison. The year prior, he was sentenced to 60 years in federal prison on child pornography charges.

In June 2022, Nassar had a final appeal rejected by the Michigan…

Peres Jepchirchir won the London Marathon in a women’s only record time of 2:16:16, while fellow Kenyan Alexander Mutiso Munyao won the men’s race in 2:04:00.

Jepchirchir, 30, finished narrowly ahead of Ethiapian Tigst Assefa (2:16:23) in second and Joyciline Jepkosgei (2:16:24), also of Kenya, in third.

All three racers’ time bettered the previous women’s only record of 2:17:01 set by Mary Keitany at London in 2017.

Assefa’s time of 2:11:53, set in a mixed gender race at the 2023 Berlin Marathon, remains the standard women’s world record.

Men’s champion Munyao, 27, finished ahead of 41-year-old three-time Olympic long distance champion Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia (2:04:14) in second and Briton Emile Cairess, who finished third with a personal best of 2:06:46.

Ahead of the race, tributes were paid to 2023 men’s champion and course record holder Kelvin Kiptum following his death in February at the age of 24. The world record holder, who became the first man to run under 2:01 in a record-eligible marathon in Chicago last October, died in a car accident in his native Kenya.

Women’s champion Jepchirchir finished third at London last year and Sunday’s victory is her third major marathon win,…

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — The U.S. Olympic Team for wrestling is set. The Olympic Trials wrapped up Saturday night in the Bryce Jordan Center on Penn State’s campus.

On the men’s side, the U.S. has already qualified for the Olympics in four of the six weight classes in freestyle. It’s qualified in three of the six weight classes in Greco-Roman. The U.S. women have all six weight classes qualified.

While Spencer Lee and Zain Retherford are both Olympic Trials champions, they both still must qualify the weight class by finishing among the top three during the World Olympic Games Qualifier which runs May 9-12 in Istanbul.

Men’s freestyle

57 kg: In the competition of four-time Iowa All-America honorees it was Lee who defeated Thomas Gilman in two consecutive matches. Lee won 6-3 and then pinned Gilman, the 2020 Olympic bronze medalist, in the second match in 5:58. In order to wrestle in Paris, Lee must now qualify the weight.

65 kg: Retherford swept his training parter and former Penn State teammate Nick Lee, 2-1 and 5-0. He called the win “bittersweet” because he had to beat his close friend to do so. Retherford said he wasn’t sure he was even going to wrestle this cycle as he eyes a future in New York working with a financial firm. In January, Retherford decided he…

Aleah Finnegan was on the verge of tears the moment her feet hit the mat following her balance beam routine in the anchor spot of LSU’s lineup.

The Tigers entered the final rotation of the NCAA women’s gymnastics championship Saturday trailing Utah by .037, and though the Utes left the door open with a few mistakes on vault, LSU needed Finnegan to put up a clutch performance to replace the 9.3875 Savannah Schoenherr received after an uncharacteristic fall. Fellow Tigers Konnor McClain, Kiya Johnson and Haleigh Bryant recorded three straight scores of 9.950 or better to get the Tigers back on track, but the margin of error remained slim after Utah rallied to a strong finish.

With a shot at clinching LSU’s first national title teetering on the four-inch width of the beam, Finnegan delivered.

The 21-year-old, who will represent the Philippines at the Paris Olympics this summer, was rock solid from the moment she jumped to perch sideways for her mount. She floated through her difficult backhand spring, layout step-out, layout step-out series, tossed a front aerial with ease and capped the title-winning performance by drilling her full-twisting gainer dismount.

LSU started celebrating before the judges flashed Finnegan’s score, and when her 9.950 sealed the deal, there were…

BOSTON — Even at the two-hour mark, the leaderboard in the women’s division of Monday’s Boston Marathon resembled a Green Line car pulling out of Park Street during the morning rush.

Twelve women were packed in a tight, jostling pack, and yet there was a oneness to it all, all those elbows, all those knees, moving as if choreographed. You’ll see these kinds of groupings at the starting line. You’ll see them in 5K’s. You just don’t see this many world-class runners sharing an elevator at the two-hour mark of a marathon.

But then there were only two runners. And then, one. That’s when Hellen Obiri of Kenya broke away from the pack, and then she broke away from countrywoman Sharon Lokedi, crossing the finish line in 2:22:37 to win Boston for a second straight time.

GO DEEPER

Boston Marathon: Lemma wins men’s race

What a finish. What a day. For while many of the half-million fans who attended the 128th Boston Marathon on this warm, sun-splashed day were mainly there for the tradition and pageantry of it all — and to cheer on their friends who were competing as cause-driven “charity runners” — this edition of the Hopkinton-to-Copley Square road race had so much more. It had mid-marathon drama. It had an upset. And it had that steel-cage match of a women’s…

Sisay Lemma ran a stunning race to win his first Boston Marathon (2:06:17), while Hellen Obiri triumphed to win her second straight title in the women’s race (2:22:37).

The Ethiopian runner had an impressive lead throughout most of the race when he took over the lead pack and hit the 5K marker at 14:21. Lemma kept up a blistering pace and was projected to finish at 2:00:06 after the 10K mark — a pace that would have broken the course record.

Although Lemma did not break the course record, he recorded the 10th-fastest time in race history and was proud of his win after not finishing the marathon in 2022. Lemma, 33, did not finish in two of his three prior Boston appearances and finished 30th in 2019.

“My plan was to break the course record, but it’s so hilly up and down and that made me tired a little bit,” Lemma said through an interpreter.

Lemma finished 41 seconds ahead of Mohamed Esa, who moved up from fourth over the final mile to finish second in 2:06:58. Evans Chebet, last year’s winner, finished third in 2:07:22.

Shortly after that, Obiri crossed the finish line to win the women’s race with a similar time as her debut mark of 2:21:38.

The women’s competition featured a unique situation of a lead pack of 20 runners, including Obiri, through the first 13.1…

In August 2019, two swim coaches at San Jose (Calif.) State reported allegations they had heard about University of Kentucky head swimming coach Lars Jorgensen to a Title IX officer at their school. The allegations were that Jorgensen had been in a relationship with one of his swimmers at an earlier coaching stop and that he had sexually assaulted a woman on the swim staff at Kentucky. The Title IX officer at San Jose State then alerted a counterpart at Kentucky.

It was at least the third time Kentucky was made aware or should have been aware of an allegation of misconduct by Jorgensen.

In June 2012, Mark Howard, a former assistant swimming coach at the University of Toledo, sent separate emails to Gary Conelly, then Kentucky’s head swim coach, and UK athletic director Mitch Barnhart. “This is no joke at all and I cannot stomach the fact that (Jorgensen) will be coaching women again,” Howard wrote to Conelly, who had recently added Jorgensen as an associate head coach. He informed both men that a swimmer had told him that she had been in a sexual relationship with Jorgensen while he coached her at Toledo.

In October 2014, a former Toledo softball coach repeated the allegation that Jorgensen had been in a “long-term romantic relationship” with a student-athlete in a…