World Series champions the Los Angeles Dodgers are to host Olympic baseball in 2028, while surfers would hope to ride the waves to the podium in San Clemente, Los Angeles Games organizers announced on Tuesday.
The competition would be sprawled out around the greater Los Angeles region, with beach volleyball enjoying surf-side digs at Alamitos Beach and squash getting a little Hollywood razzle-dazzle for its Olympic debut on the Universal Studios Lot.
Triathlon competitors would show off their muscles at Venice Beach, while cricket makes its Olympic return after more than a century at the distant Fairgrounds in Pomona, with Anaheim hosting volleyball.
Photo: AP
Boxing returns to the Olympic lineup in 2028 with early rounds set for the Peacock Theatre and finals taking place at the Arena in downtown Los Angeles.
International Surfing Association president Fernando Aguerre applauded the selection of Trestles Beach, with its high-performance waves, as a “prime venue” for elite surfers.
The venue puts the competition about 105km south of Los Angeles, an easy commute after last year’s Paris Games, when surfing was held in Teahupo’o, Tahiti.
“Tahiti was great because the waves were great, but we were removed from ‘ground zero’ of the Paris Games,” Aguerre said.
“Southern California is where competitions, industry, some of the most famous world champions live,” he said. “Contemporary surfing today, really, the epicenter in southern California.”
The Games are to take place from July 14 to 30, 2028.
Former European champions Celtic exited the UEFA Champions League in the qualifiers after a 3-2 penalty shoot-out defeat at Kazakhstan’s Kairat Almaty on Tuesday, following two goalless legs in the playoff tie. Kairat are to compete in the competition proper for the first time, while Norway’s Bodo/Glimt and Cyprus’s Pafos also secured debut appearances after coming through the playoffs. Celtic’s night ended in disappointment as they missed three penalties in the shoot-out, Daizen Maeda failing with the decisive spot-kick. The slugfest of a match went into extra-time with neither side finding the net and few overall chances, echoing the first
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Australian Alex de Minaur reached the second week of the US Open for the third year in a row with little fanfare on Saturday and said he intended to keep winning until the tournament organizers were forced to give him better billing. Despite being the eighth seed and a quarter-finalist last year at Flushing Meadows, De Minaur’s third-round match against German Daniel Altmaier was scheduled for Court 17 — the smallest of the four stadium venues in the precinct. “It is a little bit of a headscratcher for me. I’m not gonna lie,” he told reporters after progressing 6-7 (9/7), 6-3, 6-4,
Noah Lyles on Thursday warmed up for the upcoming athletics world championships by chasing down Olympic champion Letsile Tebogo to win the 200m at the Diamond League final. Lyles trailed Tebogo at the start, but gradually erased the deficit over the final 100m and pipped the Botswana sprinter to the line by centimeters. Lyles, the Olympic 100m champion and reigning world champion in both the 100m and 200m, clocked 19.74 seconds in a slight headwind. Tebogo was 0.02 seconds behind. It was Lyles’ sixth Diamond League title, a record for track athletes. “Six, that’s a big number,” Lyles said. “Shoot, that’s another record on