Olympics
AT LAST, WADA TEAM GAINS ACCESS TO RUSSIA ANTI-DOPING LABORATORY
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has confirmed their three-person team has started work to retrieve crucial data from the Russian Anti-Doping Agency’s (RUSADA) Laboratory in Moscow and have reported “no issues” so far.
In a statement sent to insidethegames the global anti-doping body confirmed their team have successfully gained access to the facility in the Russian capital and have begun retrieving data from the Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS).
WADA had initially hoped to take control of the LIMS before a December 31 deadline, on the assumption it will help catch more cheats.
According to Russian state news agency TASS, Russia’s Sports Minister Pavel Kolobkov has said several Russian officials are also working alongside WADA in the lab.
“WADA experts arrived yesterday and today they have started their work jointly with a group of Russian experts,” he said.
“Representatives of the Russian Investigative Committee and of the laboratory are also participating in this process.
“They have started work on the installation of the equipment and of the data transfer block.
“The work is done under a complete coordination as we have previously discussed all technical and organisational details, which are in full compliance with the criminal procedure code and all WADA procedures.
“The work is in full swing at the moment.”
On their first attempt to retrieve the data last month, WADA’s five-person team was blocked by the Russian authorities who claimed their equipment had not been certified under the country’s law.
Access to the facility before December 31 was a compulsory condition set when the WADA Executive Committee controversially lifted the suspension of RUSADA on September 20 and with the deadline having now elapsed, calls have been made for them to be declared non-compliant again.
A smaller expert team returned to Moscow yesterday as the Kremlin announced an “understanding” had been reached.
WADA have now confirmed their team have gained access to the lab 10 days after the initial deadline, but there are still fears that the data could have been manipulated.
Sir Craig Reedie, the WADA President, has said that if the trip is successful “it will break a long impasse and will potentially lead to many cases being actioned”.
He added, however, that the organisation is still working on the basis that the December 31 deadline was missed and he appeared to suggest RUSADA could still be declared non-compliant even if the data is acquired this time.
WADA are considering “all the consequences” that missing the deadline could bring, he said.
Critics have raised concerns that even if WADA do leave with the LIMS data this time around, it may have been tampered with by the Russian authorities.
“This appears to be the sequel to the cat and mouse game between WADA and Russia that we have unfortunately come to expect,” Travis Tygart, chief executive of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, said in a statement.
“We are all holding our breath this is not going to be a whitewash and WADA actually gets the data on the roughly 9,000 presumptive positive test results on over 4,000 Russian athletes that hopefully have not been destroyed.”
Irrespective of the condition of the data, WADA’s Compliance Review Committee (CRC) is set to meet to discuss the situation on Monday and Tuesday (January 14 and 15) in Montreal, after which they will make a recommendation on whether to declare Russia non-compliant once again to WADA’s Executive Committee.
The Executive Committee will then consider the recommendation via a conference call.
There have been widespread calls for the CRC to meet sooner than January 14 and 15, with critics suggesting Russia have been handed a “two-week extension” in which to comply.
Those calls have been dismissed by the CRC’s head Jonathan Taylor, though, who claimed that by following “due process” and giving Russia time to respond there will be less risk of legal challenges.
Tickets for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games will go on sale to the general public on April 9, organisers said on Monday, as LA28 also moved to reassure fans over ticket security by naming a group of verified resale platforms that will begin operating in 2027.
A presale for residents in qualifying areas of Los Angeles and Oklahoma City will begin on April 2, with notification emails for selected buyers set to roll out from March 31 through April 4, LA28 said.
On April 7, the organising committee will notify remaining registrants whether they were selected for a purchase window in the first general sales round, known as Drop 1.
“This week marks the first opportunity for fans to claim a seat at the LA28 Olympic Games,” LA28 Chief Executive Officer Reynold Hoover said in a statement.
LA28’s ticketing programme will include 1 million tickets priced at $28, the lowest price point. Roughly 5% of the Olympic tickets will cost over $1,000, while more than 75% of all tickets, including finals, will be under $400 and nearly 50% of all tickets will be under $200.
“Tickets are comparable to and in many cases well under what we see for other professional sporting and major entertainment events in the U.S.,” Allison Katz-Mayfield, LA28 Senior Vice President, Games Delivery Revenue, told reporters on a call.
RESALE PROGRAMME
Separately, LA28 said its verified multi-platform resale programme would open in 2027, with AXS and Eventim serving as the official secondary ticket marketplace and Ticketmaster and Sports Illustrated Tickets also designated as verified resale platforms.
The announcement comes as organisers prepare for the first ticket drop and seek to warn fans against buying from unauthorised sellers before the resale programme launches.
LA28 said primary tickets would only be sold through its official ticket service providers, AXS and Eventim. It added that any LA28 tickets offered for resale before 2027 should not be considered verified.
“While LA28’s resale platforms will not be launched until 2027, having a variety of platforms was critical to providing fans multiple points of access to verified tickets,” Hoover said.
LOCAL PRESALE
Fans who registered for the LA28 ticket draw and whose billing postal codes fall within qualifying counties were automatically entered into the local presale draw. Those selected will receive 48-hour purchase windows running from April 2 through April 6 and must use a payment method tied to a billing postal code in an eligible county to complete their purchase.
For both the local presale and Drop 1, selected buyers will have 48 hours to purchase tickets, while any tickets placed in a cart must be checked out within 30 minutes. Buyers may complete multiple transactions during their allotted window until they reach the ticket limit.
LA28 said tickets would be available across all Olympic sports, as well as for the opening ceremony at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood and the closing ceremony at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
Fans selected for time slots may buy up to 12 tickets for Olympic events, plus up to 12 tickets for the soccer tournament that will not count toward the general Olympic-event limit. Ceremony tickets will be capped at four per buyer and will count towards the 12-ticket maximum.
Registrants who are not assigned a time slot in either the local presale or Drop 1 will be automatically entered into future draws, LA28 said. Paralympic tickets are due to go on sale in 2027.
Ticket-inclusive hospitality packages from official provider On Location are also expected to go on sale in April. Visa will be the official payment method for purchases.
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Organizers of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic and Paralympic Games unveiled the event’s official visual identity on Monday, a floral-themed design system meant to reflect the city’s landscape, neighbourhoods and cultural character.
The branding will appear across competition venues, fan areas, citywide installations, signage, digital platforms and broadcast presentations during the Games, LA28 said.
At the centre of the design is the “Superbloom,” a reference to the bursts of wildflowers that can blanket parts of Southern California after periods of rain.
LA28 said the concept was intended as a metaphor for the Games, with years of preparation culminating in a short, high-profile global event.
The core graphic is built around 13 individual blooms, which organizers said represent different elements of Los Angeles, from its entertainment culture to its neighbourhoods, people and native landscape.
The colour palette draws on the Bird of Paradise, the official flower of Los Angeles, and is grouped into four families – Poppy, Scarlet Flax, Bluebell and Sagebrush – to evoke the region’s terrain and vegetation.
Organizers said the typographic style was inspired by Los Angeles street signage, including strip mall and hand-painted storefront lettering, in an effort to give the identity a distinctly local feel.
LA28 said the design was developed to work across a wide range of settings, from nearly century-old venues to new facilities, while also accounting for broadcast requirements, digital formats and lighting conditions. The organising committee partnered with design studio Koto on the project.
The identity was unveiled more than two years before the Olympic opening ceremony in what organizers described as an unusually early rollout, allowing partners and stakeholders more time to incorporate the branding into their materials.
Los Angeles will host the Olympics for a third time in 2028, after staging the Games in 1932 and 1984. It will also host the Paralympics for the first time.
-Reuters
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Organisers of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics said on Monday that registration for the first ticket draw will close on March 18, as the Games begin to take shape with the first baseball qualifiers confirmed and the soccer tournament schedule expanded.
More than five million fans from 197 countries and territories have registered at tickets.la28.org since January for a chance to buy tickets, LA28 said, underscoring strong early demand for the Summer Games, which are due to open on July 14, 2028.
Fans who register by the March 18 deadline will be eligible for a lottery to receive a purchase window for the first ticket release, scheduled for April 9-19.
There will also be a local presale running from April 2-6 for eligible residents in parts of Southern California and Oklahoma. Oklahoma City will host softball and canoe slalom.
LA28 said selected applicants would be notified by email between March 31 and April 7. Fans picked for the first sale window will be able to buy up to 12 tickets for Olympic events, subject to availability, with a four-ticket cap for each of the opening and closing ceremonies.
BASEBALL RETURNS
The ticketing update comes as the first teams booked places in the Olympic baseball tournament through the 2026 World Baseball Classic. The Dominican Republic and Venezuela secured qualification spots from the Americas, joining host United States in the six-team field.
Baseball, one of the sports added to the LA28 programme, will return to the Olympics for the first time since the Tokyo Games and will be played at Dodger Stadium from July 13-19. The remaining three places will be decided through international qualifying tournaments in 2027 and 2028.
LA28 also confirmed that the Olympic soccer tournament will begin on July 10, four days before the opening ceremony, following a decision by the International Olympic Committee Executive Board to extend the competition window.
Organisers said the longer schedule would give teams two additional rest days compared with previous Games.
Group-stage and quarter-final matches will be staged in seven U.S. cities – New York, Columbus, Nashville, St. Louis, San Jose, San Diego and Pasadena – with the men’s and women’s gold medal matches to be played at the Rose Bowl.
LA28 said kickoff times and the full schedule would be released later this year.
-Reuters
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