The World Snooker Tour (WST) has confirmed that planned editions of the Saudi Arabia Snooker Masters will not take place, with the tournament cancelled.

https://www.wst.tv/news/2026/april/25/saudi-arabia-snooker-masters/

There are few things that have been so consistently political as football. This is true of the sport’s early folk origins, in which village-wide kick-abouts became an excuse to destroy fences threatening to enclose common agricultural land. It is true of the mid-nineteenth century, when—expunged of its plebeian elements and codified along a clear set of universal rules—football turned into a tool to enlist future members of Britain’s ruling class in the project of empire and initiate them to the amateur athletic cult of the Victorian gentleman.

However, soccer is even more political today. Not only is the beautiful game a multibillion-dollar industry and the playground for all sorts of economic and political interests from Gulf States’ sovereign funds to American private equity firms, but it is also the most popular spectacle on the planet. This has made the game a catalyst for political struggles of all kinds.

The historian of football, David Goldblatt, will be giving a series of seminars on the history of the game for Equator magazine. Ahead of these talks, he sat down with Bartolomeo Sala to talk about how, despite the best efforts of the monied interests behind the sport, elites just can’t kick politics out of football.

Ketel Marte & Freddie Freeman, from a recent baseball game.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/44390064

[a video about Cuba from the news collective Belly Of The Beast]

​​Cuba is once again exceeding expectations in the World Baseball Classic. The Cuban team is one victory away from reaching the quarterfinals. It was unclear a few months ago whether Cuba would even play in the WBC. Not because of baseball — but because of U.S. policy.

“We were aware that there could be denials due to the United States’ aggressive policy toward Cuba,” said Juan Reinaldo Pérez, the president of the Cuban Baseball and Softball Federation. In the end, the players were granted the visas, but eight Cuban staff, including a scout and a pitching coach, were denied visas.

The Trump administration last year blocked visas for some 100 Cuban athletes and sports officials.

Cuban athletes also face pressure from right-wing activists and politicians in Miami. In the last WBC in Miami, Cuban players and their family members were harassed and had objects thrown at them.

👉Check out our article “Playing Dirty: Rubio’s War on Cuban Athletes”: https://www.bellyofthebeastcuba.com/rubios-war-on-cuban-athletes

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/44405034

March 10, 2026

PHOENIX, Arizona — As baseball fans around the world geared up for the Sixth World Baseball Classic, eight members of the Cuban team, along with their pitching coach and other support personnel, were denied visas to come to the United States. As a result, just 11 players were left to face a roster of 37 from the Kansas City Royals on March 3, 2026, and 33 from the Cincinnati Reds the following day.

The visa denials were a blow not just to the Cuban team, which was forced to play at a considerable competitive disadvantage; this was a blow to baseball fans across the board. And it ran counter to the goodwill of Major League Baseball and the organizers of the Classic, which draws together talent from around the globe.

The basis for the visa denial was simple; under the Immigration and Naturalization Act, Washington can deny visas to individuals from countries that it holds under sanctions. On January 29, the White House issued an executive order calling Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat.” This designation was the basis used by the administration of U.S. president Donald Trump to blockade ships carrying oil to Cuba and threaten to impose tariffs on any country daring to sell oil to the Caribbean nation.

Heading into the Milan-Cortina 2026 Olympics, skiers and snowboarders were already adjusting to a ban on fluorinated waxes long prized for making their equipment faster. This week, the Winter Games saw their first enforcement of that rule, which is aimed at protecting public health and the environment.

South Korean cross-country skiers Han Dasom and Lee Eui-jin were disqualified from the women’s sprint event on Tuesday. That came one day after Japanese snowboarder Shiba Masaki was disqualified from the men’s parallel giant slalom. In all three cases, routine testing found banned compounds on their equipment.

For decades, elite snow sports athletes have relied on waxes with fluorocarbons that are exceptional at repelling water and dirt. Former U.S. cross-country racer Nathan Schultz told Grist the so-called “fluoro” waxes provide a “really ridiculous speed advantage,” especially in warmer conditions like those experienced at these Games.

But these waxes also contained PFAS, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. This class of 15,000 so-called “forever chemicals” are notorious for never breaking down. Studies have linked exposure to PFAS to thyroid disease, developmental problems, and cancer, and research has found elevated levels in ski technicians who regularly handled the waxes. PFAS have also been detected in soil and water near ski venues, including wells drawing from aquifers in Park City, Utah, suggesting broader environmental contamination.

Amid growing concern over the environmental impacts and the risks to skiers, their technicians, and others, the International Ski and Snowboard Federation, or FIS, called for a ban in 2019. The prohibition took effect in 2023, and applies to all events governed by the federation, including nordic, alpine and freestyle skiing, ski jumping, and snowboarding.

taging future Winter Games as early as January and the Paralympic Winter Games in February is a possibility because of the effects of warmer temperatures, the International Olympic Committee said Wednesday.

Every Winter Games medal was won in February since the 1964 Innsbruck Olympics opened Jan. 29, and moving to January would likely disrupt scheduling of storied World Cup races and events. It also would more directly clash with NFL and NBA schedules. The IOC is now reviewing Olympic Games issues in the first year of Kirsty Coventry’s presidency and changing the winter edition dates is an option.

“Maybe we are also discussing to bring the Winter Olympics a little bit earlier,” the IOC member overseeing the sports program review, Karl Stoss, told reporters. “To do it in January because it has an implication for the Paralympics as well.”

The Milan Cortina Paralympic Winter Games will be held March 6-15.

Happy Holidays Everyone! I would have stepped in for Mr. Joshua for Beer & Pizza as a payout.

Not really a sport, but in lack of better i shoot blindy out in the night, any nordic skaters out there in lemmyverse?

A joint statement by the Australian Paralympic Committee and Australian cycling federation said that Greco "passed away in her Adelaide home after experiencing a sudden medical episode" on Sunday.

Greco, who was born with cerebral palsy, won the first gold medal of the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Paralympics in 2021, breaking her own world record in the women's C1-3 3,000-meter individual pursuit.

She went on to add bronze medals in the road race and time trial.

Greco also won multiple world championship titles and World Cup medals, after bursting onto the para-cycling scene with three world records, two gold medals and a silver at the 2019 track world championship — just a year after switching to cycling from para-athletics.

Mark Williams has withdrawn from the International Championship due to illness.

After Jack Lisowski’s victory in the Northern Ireland Open final, the snooker tour heads to Nanjing in China for the International Championship.

Taking to social media, Williams wrote: "Man down. No International Championship for me. Respiratory infection. "Another week then doing nothing. "Champion of Champions next stop, fingers crossed."

Italy will host the Winter Olympics for a third time - after Cortina in 1956 and Turin in 2006 - but Milano Cortina 2026 is uniquely ambitious: it is the first edition to truly operate as a multi-territory event, with clusters in Milan, Cortina and beyond.

Milan will host the majority of ice sports - figure skating, ice hockey, short track and speed skating - while the Dolomites and Italian Alps will carry the snow events, including alpine skiing, cross-country and the debut of ski mountaineering.

The Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Games take place from Friday, February 6 to Sunday, February 22.

However, the Games technically begin on Wednesday, February 4 with the curling mixed doubles round-robin, while there are also women's ice hockey preliminaries and men's snowboard big air qualification before the opening ceremony.

On securing the title, the champion added: "I feel like I'm dreaming. I've thought about this moment since I was six or seven years old and it's probably taken me longer than I'd have liked.

"When my dad died I said to my friend that he would never see me win a title. But my friend said I could still do it for my mum. This is for him and for my mum."

Trump said: "I'm so pleased for Jack. I'll never take it for granted winning in the final, but I'm probably a lot happier than if I'd won, to be honest."

"I gave it my absolute all but it wasn't to be. Jack fully deserved the win and there's no person happier for him than me. It's so nice that he can shut everyone up."