The Paris Games flame rises again — but it's no longer ‘Olympic'
PARIS — The Paris Games may be over, but the flame is still rising — just don't call it Olympic.
The helium-powered hot-air balloon that lit up the French capital's skyline during the 2024 Games is making a dramatic comeback to the Tuileries Gardens, reborn as the 'Paris Cauldron.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
42 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Olympic Equestrian Heath Ryan Claims He Was Trying To Save Horse That He Whipped Continuously In Video
Olympic equestrian Heath Ryan was suspended Thursday after officials said they were 'deeply concerned' by video of him whipping a horse dozens of times. The resurfaced clip from a few years back caught the attention of Equestrian Australia's Integrity Unit, which said it is launching an investigation into the actions of Ryan, a dressage competitor at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. He finished 34th in the individual event. The disturbing footage shows Ryan continuously striking the horse as the smacking blows resonate. Nico was hit at least 40 times, according to outlets. At one point the horse begins to kick up a leg with every impact. Ryan claimed he was trying to save the uncooperative horse from the 'Knackery,' where destroyed animals are processed. On Facebook he said a friend had dropped off the horse after a serious accident riding the animal. 'I am so sad this was caught on video,' Ryan wrote on June 11. 'If I had been thinking of myself I would have immediately just gotten off and sent Nico to the Knackery. That video was a life or death moment for Nico and of that I was very aware. I felt I genuinely had to try my very hardest to see if Nico would consider other options.' Ryan said the 'problem child' animal did eventually respond without 'excessive driving aids' and he was able to find Nico a new home where he is 'thriving' with 'an exciting future.' 'If you think I did that flippantly you are wrong,' Ryan continued. 'I hated reaching out in those moments to Nico and asking the hard questions. That was the last place I wanted to be. I have never before ridden a horse that reacted like that and I certainly will never do it again. Was it worth it?? Well not for me however I am very happy for Nico. I need to add that this happened about 2 years ago and the video has been posted by an unhappy ex employee. All I can say is that this awful video was collateral damage of me from the bottom of my heart launching a rescue mission.' The sport's international body, Fédération Équestre Internationale, also suspended him. Man Busted For Animal Cruelty So Extreme That Cop Said He Had To Gather Himself Ronan The Head-Bopping Sea Lion Proves Animals Can Keep A Beat Pilot Who Flew 'Hundreds' Of Shelter Animals To Safe Homes Dies In Plane Crash
New York Times
2 hours ago
- New York Times
How do you coach a Hall of Fame basketball player? WNBA's Cheryl Reeve has the answers
Editor's Note: This story is a part of Peak, The Athletic's desk covering leadership, personal development and success through the lens of sports. Follow Peak here. If you are looking for Hall of Fame basketball players, Cheryl Reeve is a good place to start. The head coach and president of basketball operations for the WNBA's Minnesota Lynx has coached four members of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame (Seimone Augustus, Sylvia Fowles, Maya Moore and Lindsay Whalen) and her current star (Napheesa Collier) is destined for enshrinement in the future. The list grows if you include all the members of the 2024 U.S. Olympic women's basketball team that Reeve coached. Advertisement Think about this: After this year's induction ceremony, four starters from Minnesota's 2015 and 2017 championship teams will be enshrined in the Hall of Fame. In an effort to gain insight into how to coach greatness, I spoke to Reeve about what she has learned about leadership during her four-decade coaching career. You have coached multiple Hall of Famers. What have you learned that you need to do as a coach when it comes to coaching Hall of Fame-caliber players? Hold them accountable to standards even beyond their wildest imagination for their own abilities. Great players want to be coached and great players never think that they're good enough. We have the Minnesota Hall of Famers, but I've also been around other Hall of Famers, and that is the common thread. They never think that they've arrived. There is always something else that they think they're not quite good enough at. It drives them. I think accountability is the greatest thing that a leader can do for that level of player. We would be doing them a disservice if we just let their own belief and drive in themselves be the only thing that they have. That's how I've approached coaching the Hall of Famers that we've had in Minnesota. Did you always demand accountability as a coach from the beginning, or did you have to learn how to demand accountability out of great players? I don't know the reason for it, but that's something that I've innately had. Jim Peterson was a longtime assistant for the Lynx, played in the NBA, played at the (University of Minnesota) and is now a full-time broadcaster for the Timberwolves. One of the things he said to me was, 'Cheryl, I can't believe your level of accountability.' It struck me as, this isn't normal. He said how non-existent it was in men's sports, in the NBA, the communication part of it. That was probably the first time my eyes were open to maybe that wasn't the norm. So I thought, well, how else do you do it? I don't know of any other way. Advertisement It's not for everybody. I do know that. I do well with those that are accountable to themselves, have high standards and are high achieving. I relate to that the best. I'm not going to hold anybody more accountable than I hold myself. Can you give me a specific example of one of your Hall of Famers really defining accountability to you when you asked and demanded accountability? Our local beat writer after a game once said, 'Cheryl, why do you get on Maya so much?' I said, 'Do you realize how much she's doing wrong? She's an incredible player, but I need her to do this and this and this and for her to be even greater.' I have this thing where it has to look perfect. Take a DIY project. Someone will walk in and say, 'Oh, my gosh, that's amazing.' But I'm going, 'No, you don't know what it was supposed to look like.' Well, that, to me, is practices and games. The practices is where we are trying to hone our skills so that the game is the work of art. I am pretty critical of myself and of others. Again, that's me being Virgo or that's what I hide behind. I am a driver. The good, the bad, the ugly, I'm a driver. But I've learned how to drive a little more gracefully through the years than maybe my beginning days. I think the Hall of Famers now look at me and go, 'You weren't like that with us.' But times have changed, and there's an evolution there. When you are coaching someone who is a Hall of Famer or Hall of Famer-to-be that you don't know as well, which would be the Olympic team, do you coach them the same way as you would the Hall of Famers who you coached every day and knew intimately? Reeve: Bill Laimbeer was the one who brought this out of me, which was being able to be comfortable in your skin, to be yourself. That is the most important thing that you can be in any space, especially a leadership space. People allowing you to be able to be yourself is also important. In the national team space, I went into it having worked for and with Geno (Auriemma) on his staff and Dawn (Staley) on her staff. One of my biggest takeaways from that was if I get this (head coaching) opportunity, being myself is the most important thing that I could do even in that space, even though there's not those relationships that you described. Advertisement Sue Bird described this best about the national team experience and it is 1000 percent true: It's an uncomfortable space for everybody. Which is a really strange thing to say, but the national team experience is everyone not being able to fully be yourself. It's a fragmented version. So I tried to keep that component of leadership the same, which was holding them to the highest standards possible in the way that I felt like I best could do. What is one thing that you learned from Maya Moore that helped you coaching someone who is not Maya Moore? Patience. We all had to have patience with Maya. I remember playing the Phoenix Mercury at a time when they were launching 3s so the number one part of our game plan was controlling the tempo, making sure that we weren't fueling their ability to light us up. I'm a big shot-selection person. But Maya taught me that the shot selection for Maya Moore is different than shot selection for others. Now, that made some others not as happy, but that's the way it goes. So off the jump ball, Maya launches a 3 and misses. Phoenix comes back down the court, boom, they splash a 3. We come up the floor again. Maya has another bad shot. Next thing you know, we are down double figures. Time out. Maya came off the court saying, 'Oh, so that's what you meant by shot selection thing and controlling the tempo.' Maya did things that no one else in the league did, and that is a blessing and a curse at times. There had to be some give and take. It's just like Caitlin Clark. When she sprints up and shoots a 3, you gotta live with it most times. I think we all learned from Maya because she could take over a game. She could do things that nobody else could do. You might have to live through some tough times, but she was certainly going to make up for it in other ways. Maya was not just a scorer. Maya led our team in deflections and things like that. So I think what Maya taught was, I use the word patience, but it's more being open-minded about what a shot selection should be for a player like that. If you could swipe a couple of leadership attributes or traits from some of the coaches that you've either worked with or that you have seen from afar, what comes to mind? My college coach, John Miller, and (former WNBA coach) Dan Hughes were similar. They made me want to a better person. They were so patient and graceful in their criticism of a player. What we call coaching is what players call criticism. I only worked for Dan Hughes for one season, in 2003, but I felt like I worked for him for 10 years. I learned so much in a year. He would tell a player that didn't do something the way they needed to do it, and we would walk away from the conversation, and I'd go, 'I felt like you just complimented them.' He just had an unbelievable way of saying, 'Hey, you didn't do that very well.' If I could just get an ounce of that, I would feel like a far better person and a far better coach for our players. It's something I still strive for, to be better and patient and use my words better. It's been a chase for me in my life.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
A year ago Tyrese Haliburton was a punchline. Now he's the NBA's finest punch-out artist
Self-awareness may be Tyrese Haliburton's greatest attribute. That was obvious at last summer's Olympics as the 25-year-old All-Star was confined to the Team USA bench. Instead of hitting out at online fans who kept tabs on Indiana Pacers star's smiles, high fives and other displays of team spirit to make up for his lack of on-court statistics, Haliburton seized on the chance to dunk on himself. After the US pipped France in the final, Haliburton posted a selfie with his gold medal. 'When you ain't do nun on the group project and still get an A,' he wrote. Advertisement Schedule Best-of-seven-games series. All times US eastern time (EDT). Thu 5 Jun Game 1: Pacers 111, Thunder 110 Sun 8 Jun Game 2: Thunder 123, Pacers 107 Wed 11 Jun Game 3: Pacers 116, Thunder 107 Fri 13 Jun Game 4: Thunder at Pacers, 8.30pm Mon 16 Jun Game 5: Pacers at Thunder, 8.30pm Thu 19 Jun Game 6: Thunder at Pacers, 8.30pm* Sun 22 Jun Game 7: Pacers at Thunder, 8pm* *-if necessary How to watch In the US, all games will air on ABC. Streaming options include or the ABC app (with a participating TV provider login), as well as Hulu + Live TV, YouTube TV, fuboTV, DIRECTV STREAM, and Sling TV (via ESPN3 for ABC games). NBA League Pass offers replays, but live finals games are subject to blackout restrictions in the US. Advertisement In the UK, the games will be available on TNT Sports and Discovery+. As for streaming, NBA League Pass will provide live and on-demand access to all Finals games without blackout restrictions. In Australia, the games will broadcast live on ESPN Australia. Kayo Sports and Foxtel Now will stream the games live, while NBA League Pass will offer live and on-demand access without blackout restrictions. This year, however, Haliburton has proved that he's no joke. His late-game heroics are the main reason why the Indiana Pacers are just two wins from the NBA title. Time and again during these playoffs Haliburton has snatched the Pacers back from what had looked like certain defeat – and with every M Night Shyamalan twist he orchestrates on court, he shows that no moment is ever too big for him. Where another player might struggle to add one clutch playoff bucket to his highlight reel, Haliburton has made a game-tying or game-winning shot in every round of this year's postseason – a heady accomplishment only Reggie Miller, Haliburton's Pacers archetype, can match. In the first round against Milwaukee, Haliburton beat Giannis Antetokounmpo for a layup to steal Game 5 in overtime and close the series. Late in Game 2 of the conference semi-finals versus Cleveland, Haliburton sank a three-pointer off his own missed free-throw to stun the home crowd and take a 2-0 series lead. In the opening game of the conference finals, Haliburton not only bounced in a buzzer-beater three to force overtime against New York. He celebrated by grabbing his neck and reprising Miller's notorious choking gesture from the 1994 conference finals series, triggering Knicks fans all over again as Miller looked on approvingly. Then, in the Game 1 victory over the Thunder in the NBA finals, the Pacers achieved their only lead when Haliburton hit the game's last shot with 0.3 seconds left to cap his team's fifth comeback while trailing by 15 points or more these playoffs – the most since Miller's Pacers stormed through the brackets in 1998. Advertisement Related: The unsinkable Pacers don't need the lead. They just need the last word | Claire de Lune Counting the regular season and the playoffs this year, Haliburton is a robust 86.7% on shots taken inside the final two minutes (including overtime) to tie or take the lead. The same fans who once joked about Haliburton's smiles-per-game at the Olympics have shifted to likening his uncanny talent for upending win-probability trend lines to basketball terrorism. Nicknames for Haliburton on social media include The Haliban and, when he beat Thunder in Game 1 of the finals, Himothy McVeigh, a play on the Oklahoma City bomber (It should go without saying that such wordplay is in questionable taste.) All of this has put the league, already under fire for its muted NBA finals spectacle, in the unfortunate position of having to astroturf another Haliburton nickname, The Moment, in hopes of stopping the more charged ones from spreading further. (Newsflash: it hasn't caught on with fans.) That Haliburton has suddenly emerged as the man for the moment is a development few outside Indianapolis saw coming. At the Olympics, Haliburton struggled to break a Team USA point guard rotation that included all-time great shooter Steph Curry and Derrick White, the freshly minted NBA champion from the Boston Celtics. Altogether, Haliburton sat out three of six games and played 26 total minutes in Paris – the fewest of anyone on the team. Speaking to ESPN's Jamal Collier last month, he'd call his Olympic experience an 'ego check' and said the online jokes hurt. (The smile, it turns out, was just a cover.) 'It got to the point where all that conversation was weighing on me in a negative way for the first time in my life, which was weird,' Haliburton said. 'Basketball has always made me happy. And for the first time I wasn't happy.' Adding to the insults: Haliburton was nursing a hamstring injury suffered during a Cinderella run through the 2024 playoffs that was cut short when the top-seeded Celtics swept the sixth-seeded Pacers in the conference finals. Advertisement The hits didn't stop there. As the playoffs began in April, The Athletic asked NBA players who they considered the league's most overrated player. With 158 anonymous replies (or more than a quarter of the locker room population), Haliburton won handily – with 14.4% of the vote – over Minnesota big man Rudy Gobert and Atlanta pest Trae Young. But Haliburton, who further confessed to learning a lot from how USA teammates Jayson Tatum (who also went overlooked in the Olympic rotation) and Joel Embiid handled criticism on their respective NBA squads, didn't let the disrespect get him down this time. 'I must be doing something right,' Haliburton said in response to the poll. 'My focus is on this locker room and securing victories. I know who I am. I'm confident in myself and not concerned with what others think.' Haliburton has shown as much throughout the season, wearing a goofy smile as he rips hearts out from coast to coast. All the while he has navigated the ancillary controversies around his game – from the NBA banning his father, John, from attending games as punishment for taunting Antetokounmpo; to Haliburton himself nearly upstaging Pascal Siakam's acceptance of the conference finals MVP award – with grace and maturity. 'When we brought him here, we had a vision,' Haliburton said of Siakam, shrugging off his unwitting echo of a popular meme from a past NBA All-Star celebrity game. 'We envisioned doing something like this, doing something special.' It just confirms what teammates already know about Haliburton: he's not playing for the spotlight. That was obvious again in the Pacers' 116-107 victory over the Thunder on Wednesday night – a nip-tuck affair in which Haliburton made the difference with his defense and distribution of the ball, and Indiana's bench carried the day. In one late-game sequence, he managed to outfox Gilgeous-Alexander – a solid off-ball defender – in a clever half court set piece from the left elbow. Instead of dishing the ball off to a cutting Miles Turner, who only had SGA to beat in the lane, Haliburton fired the ball past Turner to Aaron Nesmith on the opposite wing – who then buried a three over a wrongfooted Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to give the Pacers an eight-point lead with three minutes left. No, the play wasn't as sexy or as seismic as a Haliburton desperation heave. But there's no doubt it was clutch. 'I mean, I was like three months old last time they made the finals,' Haliburton joked to NBA TV while considering the significance of helping the Pacers to their first finals trip first finals trip in 25 years. 'As a group, every year we've taken a jump. We're here now, and we don't want to take this time for granted.' Now two wins from delivering the Pacers' first ever NBA championship (they had previously won three titles in the defunct ABA), Haliburton is on the brink of turning a series that began with low expectations into one that may forever live in NBA lore. It's quite the turnabout for a player who seemingly couldn't make the grade.
