Yet there is significant uncertainty regarding visa policies for foreign visitors planning trips to the U.S. for the two biggest events in sports.

Trump’s latest travel ban on citizens from 12 countries added new questions about the impact on the World Cup and Olympics, which depend on hosts opening their doors to the world.

Here’s a look at the potential effects of the travel ban on those events.

What is the travel ban policy?

When Sunday ticks over to Monday, citizens of 12 countries should be banned from entering the U.S.

They are Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

Tighter restrictions will apply to visitors from seven more: Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.

Trump said some countries had “deficient” screening and vetting processes or have historically refused to take back their own citizens.

How does it affect the World Cup and Olympics?

Iran, a soccer power in Asia, is the only targeted country to qualify so far for the World Cup being co-hosted by the U.S., Canada and Mexico in one year’s time.

Cuba, Haiti and Sudan are in contention. Sierra Leone might stay involved through multiple playoff games. Burundi, Equatorial Guinea and Libya have very outside shots.

But all should be able to send teams to the World Cup if they qualify because the new policy makes exceptions for “any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role and immediate relatives, traveling for the World Cup, Olympics or other major sporting event as determined by the secretary of state.”

About 200 countries could send athletes to the Summer Games, including those targeted by the latest travel restrictions. The exceptions should apply to them as well if the ban is still in place in its current form.

What about fans?

The travel ban doesn’t mention any exceptions for fans from the targeted countries wishing to travel to the U.S. for the World Cup or Olympics.

Even before the travel ban, fans of the Iranian soccer team living in that country already had issues about getting a visa for a World Cup visit.

Still, national team supporters often profile differently to fans of club teams who go abroad for games in international competitions such as the UEFA Champions League.

For many countries, fans traveling to the World Cup — an expensive travel plan with hiked flight and hotel prices — are often from the diaspora, wealthier and could have different passport options.

A World Cup visitor is broadly higher-spending and lower-risk for host-nation security planning.

Visitors to an Olympics are often even higher-end clients, though tourism for a Summer Games is significantly less than at a World Cup, with fewer still from most of the 19 countries now targeted.

How is the U.S. working with FIFA and Olympic officials?

FIFA President Gianni Infantino has publicly built close ties since 2018 to Trump — too close according to some. He has cited the need to ensure FIFA’s smooth operations at a tournament that will earn a big majority of the soccer body’s expected $13 billion revenue from 2023-26.

Infantino sat next to Trump at the White House task force meeting on May 6 that prominently included Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. FIFA’s top delegate on the task force is Infantino ally Carlos Cordeiro, a former Goldman Sachs partner whose two-year run as U.S. Soccer Federation president ended in controversy in 2020.

Any visa and security issues FIFA faces — including at the 32-team Club World Cup that kicks off next week in Miami — can help LA Olympics organizers finesse their plans.

“It was very clear in the directive that the Olympics require special consideration, and I actually want to thank the federal government for recognizing that,” LA28 Chairman and President Casey Wasserman said Thursday in Los Angeles.

“It’s very clear that the federal government understands that that’s an environment that they will be accommodating and provide for. We have great confidence that that will only continue. It has been the case to date and it will certainly be the case going forward through the games.”

In March, at an IOC meeting in Greece, Wasserman said he had two discreet meetings with Trump and noted the State Department has a “fully staffed desk” to help prepare for short-notice visa processing in the summer of 2028 — albeit with a focus on teams rather than fans.

IOC member Nicole Hoevertsz, who is chair of the Coordination Commission for LA28, expressed “every confidence” that the U.S. government will cooperate, as it did in hosting previous Olympics.

“That is something that we will be definitely looking at and making sure that it is guaranteed as well,” she said. “We are very confident that this is going to be accomplished. I’m sure this is going to be executed well.”

FIFA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the new Trump travel ban.

What have other host nations done?

The 2018 World Cup host, Russia, let fans enter the country with a game ticket doubling as their visa. So did Qatar four years later.

Both governments, however, also performed background checks on all visitors coming to the monthlong soccer tournaments.

Governments have refused entry to unwelcome visitors. For the 2012 London Olympics, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko — who is still its authoritarian leader — was denied a visa despite also leading its national Olympic body. The IOC also suspended him from the Tokyo Olympics held in 2021.

AP’s Beth Harris in Los Angeles contributed.

Cheating by Norway team officials manipulating ski suits has shaken a national reputation for fair play and high-minded principles at their home Nordic world championships, where the host team dominated the medal table.

Two Olympic gold medalists, Marius Lindvik and Johann André Forfang, had denied involvement since the allegations emerged at the weekend but were suspended Wednesday and put under formal suspicion in an investigation overseen by the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS). They now cannot compete in a World Cup event in Oslo that starts Thursday.

Lindvik and Forfang already had been disqualified from the large hill event in Trondheim held Saturday, days after Lindvik soared to become world champion on the normal hill.

Though both athletes were backed by the Norwegian team insisting they knew nothing about deliberately altered ski suits, their head coach Magnus Brevig and equipment manager Adrian Livelten confessed and were stood down from their jobs.

“FIS has provisionally suspended three Norwegian team officials and two athletes who are being investigated for their alleged involvement in illegal equipment manipulation,” the Switzerland-based governing body said in a statement.

An assistant coach, Thomas Lobben, also is part of an investigation in which FIS-appointed investigators have seized all the home Norway team’s suits used at the worlds.

The scandal has shocked the ski jumping world, raising questions about how widespread this practice is, and tarnished Norway’s standing for honesty in sports.

What has emerged involves team officials manipulating pre-approved and microchipped suits to increase their size and improve aerodynamics to help athletes fly further.

It was revealed in footage secretly filmed from behind a curtain then sent by a whistle blower to international media. A FIS official said the illegal alterations were only subsequently confirmed by tearing apart the seams of the crotch area on the offending Norwegian ski suits.

The scandal has unfolded in Norway which always scores high in Transparency International’s anti-corruption index, tied for fifth in the most recent global ranking.

Norwegian sports officials also led on controversial issues by taking public positions in 2022 in refusing to host Russian athletes days after the full invasion of Ukraine and challenging soccer World Cup host Qatar on human rights.

The same Norwegian ski federation that helped push FIS to exclude Russians three years ago now finds its staff and star athletes under investigation by the governing body.

“The only thing that matters for FIS is to leave this process 100% convinced that the sport is free from any form of manipulation,” its secretary general Michel Vion said in a statement.

Athletes and officials from across the world left Trondheim on Sunday sad and disappointed, FIS race director for men’s ski jumping, Sandro Pertile, told The Associated Press in an interview.

“Norway is a country that we all know as a leader in human rights, in equality, integration. I cannot believe that there is a (cheating) system,” Pertile said in an online call Tuesday, suggesting there was “a few individuals that went really far over the limits.”

If the infractions seemed obscure and technical to non-fans, the breach of trust was severe: “This action was somehow killing our principles, our style, our joy for our discipline,” Pertile said.

The Norwegian federation acted when FIS officials found evidence that proved what the secret footage alleged, and had led to formal protests from Austria, Slovenia and Poland.

Norway men’s head coach Magnus Brevig and equipment manager Adrian Livelten admitted they had cheated, though just on one occasion, ahead of the large hill event held Saturday.

“We regret it like dogs, and I’m terribly sorry that this happened,” Brevig said. “I don’t really have anything else to say other than that we got carried away in our bubble.”

Livelten apologized to the disqualified athletes plus “sponsors, the jumping family and the Norwegian people” for an act of cheating he said was “completely unacceptable.”

How did Norway cheat?

“It was an extremely high level manipulation,” race director Pertile said of the Norwegian actions that were “absolutely by far the worst” in his five years in the job. “We destroyed the suit to be able to find this adjustment.”

The Italian official said alterations were not detected by eye and only were revealed by examining the seams of the crotch area of the ski suits after the competition.

Extra material in the same color had been inserted that added weight and helped to lower the material between an athlete’s legs as they took off into the flight phase. More surface area hitting the air helps add to flight time, Pertile said.

FIS previously said a 5% bigger surface area of a suit helps an athlete fly further, though the exact distance added is not known, Pertile said.

What are the rules?

FIS has an extensive 11-page document of rules for measuring and verifying ski jumpers’ suits during the season. Multiple RFID chips are attached and noted on a FIS register, after which a suit must not be altered. Any attempt to remove a chip should make the suit ineligible and the chips are deactivated.

One suit is allowed at World Cup events and two more for a world championships or Winter Olympics, though just one is used on each competition day.

What is the investigation about?

FIS investigators now have seized all Norwegian suits used in men’s and women’s ski jumping and Nordic combined at the world championships.

Lindvik’s gold medal in normal hill is sure to be looked at, though it is unclear how far back an investigation could reach for results at World Cup events this season or beyond to previous seasons. Lindvik was Olympic champion in large hill at the 2022 Beijing Winter Games.

The ski jumping World Cup season continues for three more weekends, starting Thursday in Oslo.

The stunning swath of punishments include a 200,000 Swiss francs ($226,000) fine for the Canadian soccer federation in a case that has spiraled at the Summer Games. Two assistant coaches were caught using drones to spy on opponent New Zealand’s practices before their opening game last Wednesday.

Head coach Bev Priestman, who led Canada to the Olympic title in Tokyo in 2021, already was suspended by the national soccer federation then removed from the Olympic tournament. Canadian officials suspect the spying has been systemic over years.

Priestman and assistant coaches Joseph Lombardi and Jasmine Mander are now banned from all soccer for one year.

FIFA judges said Priestman and her two assistants “were each found responsible for offensive behavior and violation of the principles of fair play.”

The case is likely now heading for the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s special Olympic court in Paris. That tribunal is set up for urgent hearings and verdicts at the Olympics, such as the coaches and Canadian federation challenging their sanctions.

The points deduction, if upheld by the CAS judges, does not eliminate Canada from the tournament. It could mean the team must win all three games in Group A and hope to advance with three points to the quarterfinals that start next Saturday, even as the third-place team in the standings.

Canada plays group leader France on Sunday in Saint-Etienne, then faces Colombia on Thursday in Nice.

Docking a team so many points is almost unprecedented in the middle of an international tournament.

The case is a further embarrassment for the Canadian federation which is FIFA’s close partner in helping organize the biggest-ever men’s World Cup in 2026 across North America.

Two Canadian cities, Toronto and Vancouver, will stage some of the 104 games at a tournament expanding to include 48 teams instead of 32. Games also will be played in 11 cities in the United States and three in Mexico.

In the compact 17-day women’s soccer tournament at the Olympics, FIFA fast-tracked its own disciplinary process by asking its appeals judges to handle the Canadian case.

The Canadian federation was held responsible for not ensuring its staff complied with tournament rules.

There is no suggestion that the players were involved in the spying.

“At the moment we are trying to directly address what appears to look like it could be a systemic ethical shortcoming, in a way that’s frankly, unfortunately painful right now, but is turning out to be a necessary part of the rehabilitation process,” Kevin Blue, Canada Soccer’s CEO, said previously at the Olympics.

The 38-year-old Priestman is from England and was hired in 2020 to coach the Canada team. She is under contract through the 2027 Women’s World Cup.

She had stepped aside from the defending champion’s Olympic opener against New Zealand on Wednesday after the scandal was revealed.

Her two staffers were sent home for allegedly using a drone to spy on New Zealand in training. Canada won the game 2-1 with interim coach Andy Spence in charge.

Blue said that after the opener he was made aware of new information related to the drone scandal, which led to Priestman’s suspension.

The Canadian federation has not yet commented on Saturday’s ruling.