LA28 organizers said Wednesday that Peter Rice will serve as head of ceremonies and content and be responsible for the creative vision and physical production of the LA28 Games, which run July 14-30, and the Paralympics, which run Aug. 15-27.

“Peter is one of the rare individuals whose expertise seamlessly combines creativity, operational insight and production excellence to deliver Ceremonies that will captivate audiences around the world,” said LA28 president and chairperson Casey Wasserman, who will supervise Rice. ”He’s been a leading figure in shaping the modern television and film landscape and is the perfect asset to reimagining the delivery of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies for the digital age, leaving a legacy well beyond the Games.”

The opening ceremony be held July 14 at 8 p.m. ET, with events at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and SoFi Stadium in Inglewood. The closing ceremony will be July 30 at 9 p.m. ET at the Coliseum.

“I look forward to delivering Ceremonies that honor the legacy of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and celebrate the cutting-edge future of the 2028 Stadium,” Rice said. “These venues have hosted some of the most legendary moments in sports history, and I’m thrilled to deliver a powerful artistic experience that adds a new chapter to LA’s Olympic and Paralympic story.”

Rice, a British-American, began his career at 20th Century Fox in 1989, rising through the ranks before being promoted to president of 21st Century Fox in 2017. Following Disney’s acquisition of the company, Rice became chairman of Walt Disney Television and chairman of General Entertainment for The Walt Disney Co.

GENEVA (AP) — Two-time Olympic champion runner Caster Semenya won a partial victory at the European Court of Human Rights on Thursday in her seven-year legal fight against track and field’s sex eligibility rules.

The court’s 17-judge highest chamber said in a 15-2 vote that Semenya had some of her rights to a fair hearing violated at Switzerland’s Supreme Court, where she had appealed against a ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in favor of track’s World Athletics.

However, on the question of Semenya being discriminated against in Swiss courts, the European court in Strasbourg, France, did not pronounce — to the frustration of four of the 17 judges in a partial dissent to the majority view.

Her case should now go back to the Swiss federal court in Lausanne. It will be watched closely by other sports which have passed or are reviewing their own rules on eligibility in women’s events.

Semenya later posted on social media a photo of herself in the court chamber with a message a three raised fists symbolizing her fight for justice.

The original case between Semenya and track’s governing body based in Monaco was about whether athletes like her — who have specific medical conditions, a typical male chromosome pattern and naturally high testosterone levels — should be allowed to compete freely in women’s sports.

Europe’s top human rights court did not take up other aspects of the appeal filed by Semenya, who was in court Thursday to hear the judgment read. It awarded her 80,000 euros ($94,000) from the state of Switzerland “in respect of costs and expenses.”

The European court’s ruling does not overturn the World Athletics rules that effectively ended Semenya’s career running the 800 meters after she won two Olympic and three world titles since emerging on the global stage as a teenager in 2009.

Swiss court’s lack of rigor

The key legal point in Semenya’s win was that the Swiss Federal Court had not carried out a “rigorous judicial review” that was required because Semenya had no choice but to pursue her case through the CAS’s “mandatory and exclusive jurisdiction.” the Strasbourg judges ruled.

Governing bodies of sports oblige athletes and national federations to take their disputes to the sports court in the International Olympic Committee’s home city Lausanne.

“The court considered, however, that the Federal Supreme Court’s review had fallen short of that requirement,” it said in a statement.

In dismissing other elements of the South African runner’s case, including if she had been discriminated against, the court judged it “did not fall within Switzerland’s jurisdiction in respect of those complaints.”

World Athletics, led by its president Sebastian Coe, has said its rules maintain fairness because Semenya has an unfair, male-like athletic advantage from her higher testosterone. Semenya argues her testosterone is a genetic gift.

World Athletics and CAS did not immediately respond to the ruling. The IOC declined to comment on a case it is not directly involved in.

Second legal lap at Strasbourg

Thursday’s win followed a legal victory from the same court two years ago for Semenya.

That judgment which said she had faced discrimination opened a way for the Swiss supreme court to reconsider its decision to dismiss her appeal against the CAS verdict in favor of World Athletics.

At CAS in 2019, three judges ruled 2-1 that discrimination against Semenya was “necessary, reasonable and proportionate” to maintain fairness in women’s track events.

World Athletics drew up its rules in 2018 forcing Semenya and other female athletes with Differences in Sex Development to suppress their testosterone to be eligible for international women’s events.

Pro-Semenya judges

Four of the 17 judges filed a partial dissent to the majority opinion, arguing their court should have been able to pronounce on “substantive conclusions” reached by the CAS that went against Semenya.

World Athletics eligibility rules “specifically targeted the applicant, since they concerned only the events in which she competed — indeed, the fact that they amounted to a kind of ‘lex Semenya’ clearly demonstrates the arbitrariness of those regulations as a whole,” the four judges wrote.

“We are disappointed that her expectations have not been met,” said the dissenting judges, who included the chamber president, Marko Bošnjak from Slovenia.

Semenya’s track results

Semenya last competed internationally in the 800 in 2019, winning at the Prefontaine Classic meeting on the Diamond League circuit in Eugene, Oregon. It extended her winning streak to more than 30 consecutive races when the rules made her ineligible.

Her winning time then of 1 minute 55.70 seconds was faster than the gold medal-winning time at the 2024 Paris Olympics but not the 1:55.21 run by Athing Mu of the United States at the Tokyo Olympics held in 2021.

Semenya returned to Eugene in 2022 to race in the world championships over 5,000 but did not advance from the heats.

She is now 34 and has moved into coaching. She said recently her ongoing legal fight is about a principle rather than her own running career.

Imray reported from Cape Town, South Africa

AP Sports: https://apnews.com/sports

An attorney for the USOPC informed Jones, a two-time world champion in both track and field and bobsled, on July 3 that she would have access to housing, the weight room, sports medicine personnel and facilities and training table/nutrition for a USA Bobsled and Skeleton high performance camp at the OPTC starting July 24 should USABS request access for her, according to USOPC documents obtained by the SCNG.

The USOPC letter came a day before the deadline to apply for the high performance camp, eight weeks after Jones requested a mediation hearing with the USOPC,  and seven months before she hopes to compete in a fourth Olympic Games in Milan-Cortina, according to interviews with five people familiar with the case and USOC and USABS documents obtained by the SCNG.

Jones’ suspension has continued even though USOPC officials acknowledged she was wrongly denied medical treatment late on the afternoon of Feb. 28, a decision that prompted the verbal confrontation. The USOPC did not interview eyewitnesses, according to Jones, a USABS official, and three other people familiar with the case.

RELATED: SPECIAL REPORT: Lolo Jones banned from Olympic Training Center

Other Olympians, Team USA members and a USA BS official describe the suspension of Jones, 42, as excessive, arbitrary, retaliatory and based on little if any investigation by USOPC officials. The case, Jones and her supporters maintain, also raises serious questions about the medical care America’s Olympic hopefuls are receiving at the OPTC in Lake Placid.

“This case is a glaring example of the need for a complete overhaul of the USOPC’s medical system,” said John Manly, Jones’ Orange County-based attorney.

The suspension and the decision not to lift it, Manly said “comes from the very top of the Olympic committee which is Sarah Hirschland,” the USOPC’s CEO.

The USOPC has not responded to multiple requests for comment.

Manly was especially critical of USOPC board member Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, the former U.S. surgeon general.

“The USOPC has made a big deal about how ‘we care for athletes’ after Nassar,” Manly said. “In reality nothing has changed. (Murthy) has taken no active role in understanding why the (USOPC) medical system is so bad. Anybody that truly cared about the (USOPC’s) mission, which was enacted by Congress and is to take care of athletes, no competent person would think this is OK.”

Murthy’s office referred questions to the USOPC.

Under the USOPC suspension, Jones has been denied access to training facilities such as the center’s weight room, sports medicine clinic and personnel, and housing and nutritional resources at a critical training period, according to USOPC documents obtained by the SCNG and interviews with Jones and four other people familiar with the case. The suspension has created competitive, financial and emotional obstacles, Jones said, that jeopardize her bid to compete in what would be her second Winter Olympics and fourth overall. The former LSU track and field star competed in the 100-meter hurdles at the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics.

Jones has spent approximately $100,000 on medical and training expenses because of the suspension, Manly said. Jones has been training at LSU, where she was an NCAA hurdles champion, since the ban.

The two-time World champion in bobsled, suffering severe pain and incontinence from a training-related back injury, was initially banned from the OPTC sports medicine area March 1, a day after she called John Faltus, a top official at the USOPC Medical Clinic at the training center, “a horrible f—— human being,” during a verbal exchange after a previously scheduled treatment was canceled without explanation just days before the World Championships in Lake Placid, according to OPTC emails and interviews. Jones confirmed in an interview with SCNG that she swore at Faltus.

Faltus also alleges that Jones made an obscene gesture toward him, an allegation Jones denies.

“This behavior is a direct violation of the OPTC Code of Conduct,” Julie Marra, director of the USOPC Training Center in Lake Placid, wrote in a March 1 email to Jones. “This conduct is unacceptable, and I want to make it clear that such behavior cannot be tolerated.”

But Marra did not cite a specific violation of the code in the email or subsequently, according to documents and five people familiar with the case. The closest the code comes to directly addressing swearing or verbal altercations is one brief passage: “Unacceptable behavior will not be tolerated, including but not limited to, the following: Any act of violation of offenses, as listed in the USOPC Background Check Policy or adjudicated of federal, state, or local laws.”

The OPTC code, a USABS official acknowledged, “is arbitrary.”

“To this day,” Jones wrote in an email to SCNG, “no one has told me: Who found me in violation, what exact rule or code I broke, or what part of the Code of Conduct was allegedly violated.”

Marra and Faltus have not responded to multiple requests for comment.

“If we banned every Olympic athlete that dropped an F-bomb we’d be in big trouble,” Manly said.

Ben Towne, the OPTC trainer, set up an appointment with the sports medicine clinic for Jones to receive a massage, the first step in treating and diagnosing the back injury, according OPTC protocol. But Jones was informed after arriving at the clinic Feb. 28 that her appointment had been canceled without explanation.

Towne will be Jones’ point of contact with the OPTC sports medicine clinic beginning July 24.

Although Jones was told Faltus canceled the treatment because she was only entitled to one massage per week and she had already had a massage that week, she said: “I have never received a written explanation for why I was denied medical treatment? This is especially alarming given that I was recovering from an injury I sustained while representing Team USA. The USOPC claims to support athlete health, but in this case, they failed to uphold that duty of care.”

“One massage a week for 50 minutes for one of our top Olympians,” Manly said. “If you get hurt in prison, you get an MRI. The medical system in the federal prison system is literally better than the USOPC’s. What are we doing?

“Prisoners get better treatment than Olympians?”

Jones paid to have an MRI done after the World Championships, which revealed a herniated disc with a disc bulge, and tears in her L3, L4 and L5 vertebrae with spinal fluid leaking out.

Kipyegon, the Olympic 1,500-meter gold medalist from Kenya, ran in 4 minutes, 06.42 seconds — the fastest mile in history by a woman — at Stade Charléty in Paris.

Her time was better than her world record of 4:07.64 but won’t be recognized by the international federation because the Nike-sponsored event dubbed ” Breaking4: Faith Kipyegon vs. the 4-Minute Mile ” was unofficial. She was supported by pacemakers and equipped with Nike’s latest innovations, from her aerodynamic track suit to her spikes.

“I gave everything today to try, it was not about running a tactical race” Kipyegon said. “It was the first trial. I have proven that it’s possible and it’s only a matter of time. I think it will come to our way. If it’s not me, it will be somebody else. I know one day, one time a woman will run under 4:00. I will not lose hope. I will still go for it.”

The 31-year-old Kipyegon looked exhausted as she reached the finish and fell on her back as she was surrounded by photographers.

Her attempt took place on a balmy summer’s evening with a temperature of 25 degrees Celsius (77 Fahrenheit) and limited wind, in front of an audience of a few thousand people. She used a team of 13 elite pace setters made of 11 men and two women who were positioned in front and behind her to reduce drag.

She stayed on the inside of the track throughout her punishing effort. She appeared to struggle midway through the race and failed in her attempt to shave at least 7.65 seconds off her world record. To achieve the feat, Kipyegon would have needed to run each of her four laps an average of about two seconds faster.

“I think next time we will catch up with the light,” Kipyegon added, joking about the Wavelight, a pace-setting system using a series of LED lights on the inside of the track making it easier to follow whether an athlete is ahead, or falling behind.

Kipyegon also had a message for her daughter and young girls watching.

“I will tell them we are not limited,” she said. “We can limit ourselves with thoughts, but it is possible to try everything and prove to the world that we are strong. Keep pushing.”

Among the guests in Paris were Carl Lewis and Kipyegon’s fellow Kenyan runner, longtime friend and training partner Eliud Kipchoge.

It was more than 71 years ago when British runner Roger Bannister became the first man to eclipse four minutes in 3:59.4.

Kipyegon set the women’s mile world record nearly two years ago during a Diamond League meet in Monaco.

She won her third straight 1,500 Olympic title in Paris last August. A month before that, she broke her own 1,500 record on the same track where she ran on Thursday.

The 18-year-old made it three world records in less than a week when she broke her own 400-meter individual medley mark on Wednesday night.

McIntosh won at the Canadian swimming trials in 4 minutes, 23.65 seconds to lower her previous best in one of the sport’s toughest events by 0.73 seconds.

Her closest rival was 12 seconds behind.

“What a week Victoria! Had so much fun in the pool this week,” McIntosh wrote on Instagram.

McIntosh had already broken the world best mark in the 200 individual medley on Monday in 2:05.70, two days after shaving more than a second off the 400 freestyle record, completing the race in 3:54.18.

The Toronto native also set new Canadian marks in two other events: The 200 butterfly, where she was less than half a second off a record that has stood since 2009, and the 800 freestyle, where she was also just off Katie Ledecky’s world record set last month.

She is scheduled to compete in those five events at the world aquatics championships in Singapore next month.

McIntosh won three gold medals at the Paris Olympics last year, winning her three individual events of the 400 and 200 individual medleys and the 200 butterfly. She also won silver in the 400 free.

On X, the Olympic gold medalist, 28, dubbed 25-year-old Gaines “truly sick” and a “sore loser” after Gaines misgendered a high school softball player.

Gaines earlier quoted a tweet from the Minnesota State High School League, which celebrated “Champlin Park, the Class AAAA Softball State Champion for 2025.”

@Riley_Gaines_ You’re truly sick, all of this campaigning because you lost a race. Straight up sore loser. You should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports inclusive OR creating a new avenue where trans feel safe in sports. Maybe a transgender… https://t.co/pjpzuZ0AlO

— Simone Biles (@Simone_Biles) June 6, 2025

“Comments off lol,” sniped Gaines. “To be expected when your star player is a boy.”

That’s when Biles backflipped in to call out Gaines for “campaigning because you lost a race,” referring to a 2022 NCAA swimming event in which Gaines competed against trans athlete Lia Thomas.

“You should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports inclusive OR creating a new avenue where trans feel safe in sports. Maybe a transgender category IN ALL sports!!” Biles continued. “But instead… You bully them… One thing for sure is no one in sports is safe with you around!!!!!”

Though Gaines admitted she was disappointed by Biles’ response, she came back swinging, calling the gymnast a “male-apologist at the expense of young girls’ dreams.”

“It’s not my job or the job of any woman to figure out how to include men in our spaces,” she said. “You can uplift men stealing championships in women’s sports with YOUR platform. Men don’t belong in women’s sports and I say that with my full chest.”

The digital back-and-forth comes just over a year after several college athletes, including Gaines, filed a lawsuit accusing the NCAA of violating Title IX by allowing Lia Thomas to compete in the 2022 swimming national championships in Atlanta. Thomas and Gaines tied for fifth-place during the 200-yard final, though the former ultimately secured the trophy.

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.

In a statement sent to The Associated Press on Wednesday, FanDuel wrote it “condemns in the strongest terms abusive behavior directed towards athletes. Threatening or harassing athletes is unacceptable and has no place in sports. This customer is no longer able to wager with FanDuel.”

Last weekend, Thomas finished fourth in a 100-meter race won by Melissa Jefferson-Wooden. The bettor wrote in a post on social media that he “made Gabby lose by heckling her. And it made my parlay win.” He posted a picture of his parlay that had Jefferson-Wooden winning the 100.

Thomas, the 200-meter champion at the Paris Games last summer, explained the heckling incident on X. She wrote: “This grown man followed me around the track as I took pictures and signed autographs for fans (mostly children) shouting personal insults — anybody who enables him online is gross.”

Grand Slam Track, a track league launched by Hall of Fame sprinter Michael Johnson this spring, wrote in a statement it was “conducting a full investigation into the reprehensible behavior captured on video.

“We are working to identify the individual involved and will take appropriate action as necessary. We will implement additional safeguards to help prevent incidents like this in the future. Let us be clear, despicable behavior like this will not be tolerated.”

ESPN first reported the bettor had been banned by FanDuel. The Grand Slam Track season wraps up with the fourth and final meet in Los Angeles on June 28-29.

The Thomas incident is the latest in a string of stalking and abuse of female athletes. Frida Karlsson, a Swedish cross-country skiing world champion, recently brought her experience with stalking into public view when she went through a trial.

A man in his 60s was given a suspended sentence and ordered to pay 40,000 kronor ($4,100) in damages after being convicted of stalking Karlsson for a year and four months, according to Swedish news agency TT. The man, according to the indictment, called Karlsson 207 times, left her voicemails and text messages and approached her, including outside her apartment.

In February, police in the United Arab Emirates detained a man who caused British tennis player Emma Raducanu distress by exhibiting “ fixated behavior ” toward he at a tennis tournament. Raducanu had been approached by the man at the Dubai Championships where he left her a note, took her photograph and engaged in behavior that caused her distress, according to the government of Dubai’s media office.

AP Sports Writers Mark Anderson and Schuyler Dixon contributed to this report

Fellow sprinter Gabby Thomas and long jumper Tara Davis-Woodhall have also become owner-advisers of the league, set to launch next year after the World Athletics season.

Athlos was started by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, who also has ownership stakes in women’s soccer teams Angel City and Chelsea and is married to tennis great Serena Williams. The first Athlos event took place last year in New York and featured 35 athletes. The prize purse was $500,000, with 10% of the proceeds going to the athletes.

Another standalone event is set for New York’s Icahn Stadium in October before the new league kicks off with meets across the country and a series-ending championship.

“Gabby, Sha’Carri, and Tara represent a new generation of athletes who have put this sport on their shoulders and deserve to be compensated for being the standard-bearers,” Ohanian said in a statement. “We were focused on bringing them into the League as founding owners to ensure we’re building a League that our athletes will love.”

Richardson was part of the United States’ gold-medal-winning 4×100 relay and won a silver in the 100 at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Berlin sports minister Iris Spranger on Tuesday said the city wants to put on a sustainable Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2036, 2040 or 2044, by refurbishing existing sports venues.

But her announced plans to include the former airport Tempelhof are likely to be resisted by locals who already opposed any development of the popular city park in a 2014 referendum.

Spranger envisaged beach volleyball at the Brandenburg Gate, and water sports in Grünau, a riverside locality which also staged water sports in 1936.

Otherwise, Spranger gave few details during the presentation, saying the bid was still at concept phase.

“You’ll have to be patient,” she told a journalist.

Many Berliners are against the idea of staging the Olympics at all, regardless of them potentially taking place on the 100th anniversary of the Games already hosted by the Nazis. An initiative called “NOlympia Berlin” has already announced plans to block it by collecting enough signatures to force a referendum.

Munich’s bid to host the Winter Games in 2022 and Hamburg’s hopes of hosting the Summer Games in 2024 were both foiled by referendums.

Spranger said she was against a referendum, saying she preferred “dialogue with one another. Not just yes or no, but that the public really knows what we’re planning.”

But for that, Tuesday’s presentation was little help.

Local politician Klara Schedlich of the opposition Green party spoke against the bid.

“Our tax money is better spent on sports clubs than the IOC,” Schedlich said, referring to the International Olympic Committee.

Berlin’s bid — titled “Berlin+” with support from the states of Brandenburg, Saxony, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and Schleswig-Holstein — is to be presented to the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) before an end-of-month deadline.

It will be up to the DOSB to decide which Games to bid for. Los Angeles is hosting the 2028 Olympics and Brisbane the 2032 Olympics, so the next available edition will be 2036, the 100th anniversary of the Berlin Games.

“I believe that the 2036 Games, regardless of where they take place, will also focus on the Nazi Games of 1936. That’s part of history and attention will be paid to it,” Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner said. “I have to tell you, I’m proud to be the governing mayor of a city that has changed in the last 100 years, that we no longer stand for dictatorship, exclusion, and mass violence, but that Berlin is now a cosmopolitan, international metropolis, a colorful, diverse city.”

The DOSB previously said a German bid for 2040 was also possible. Munich, Hamburg and North Rhine-Westphalia also plan bids. A final decision on a German bidder is expected by fall next year.

“It’s important for Germany to make a bid. We’re making an offer here today,” Wegner said.

The formal presentation took place in the same battle-scarred stadium, Berlin’s Olympiastadion, where Adolf Hitler watched Owens, the Black American athlete, win four gold medals in the 1936 Games, dealing a blow to Hitler’s notions of racial superiority.

Hitler was personally involved in the design and construction of the 100,000-seat track-and-field stadium after the Nazis assumed power in 1933, two years after the Games were awarded to the city.