Speaking to the General Assembly of the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC), IOC President Thomas Bach called on the audience to “respect political neutrality in everything you do”. “It is not up to sport to take political sides,” he said. “Our mission is to unite the entire world in peaceful competition. To achieve this, we must keep solidarity, political neutrality, respect and unity in everything we do and everything we say.”

For the Games of the XVIII Olympiad, Kon Ichikawa directed a film that has gone down in Olympic history. The Japanese filmmaker opted for an artistic approach to showcase the beauty and intensity of sport, its joys and exertions, and the faces of athletes from all over the world, in a lyrical work of stylistic beauty that has left a truly lasting impression.   

Olympic.org picks out some of the most eye-catching performances from former Youth Olympic Games (YOG) athletes in recent weeks, as the YOG continue to provide a springboard to the international stage.

As we celebrate the one-year anniversary of the 3rd Summer Youth Olympic Games (YOG), olympic.org highlights some of the young athletes who have gone on to make their name on the global stage since shining in Buenos Aires.

Having grown up in Lake Placid, host city of the 1932 and 1980 Olympic Winter Games, Van Ledger is fully aware of the lasting power of the Games. Now, the 16-year-old biathlete will get to experience that unique spirit first-hand as a member of the USA team for the Winter Youth Olympic Games (YOG) Lausanne 2020.

On the opening day of its first full meeting at Olympic House, the new headquarters of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Lausanne, Switzerland, the IOC Executive Board (EB) was given a report on the steps being taken in boxing on the road to the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020.

The Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Tokyo 2020) has announced that, by the close of registration, a total of 535,717 applications had been received from members of the public hoping to participate in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Torch Relay as torchbearers. 

In 2016, American shooter Kimberly Rhode achieved the unprecedented feat of winning a medal at six straight editions of the Summer Games, going all the way back to her double trap title at Atlanta 1996, aged 17. Now 40 and the skeet world no. 1, she has no intention of stopping any time soon; she is targeting a seventh consecutive medal at Tokyo 2020 and, looking beyond that, victory in front of a home crowd at Los Angeles 2028.