Man with no country to contest Games

With less than three years until the Toronto Pan Am Games, the city’s children are being recruited to design the event’s mascot. A mainstay of the Pan Am Games since Puerto Rico debuted Coqui the running frog in 1979, the character will be featured on games promotional material. More importantly, the character will be one of the games’ most important sources of revenue. In the lead-up to the Vancouver Winter Olympics, organizers estimated they would take in as much as a third of their $50-million licensing revenue from mascots.

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) — IOC leaders dropped wrestling from the Olympic program on Tuesday, a surprise decision that removes one of the oldest Olympic sports from the 2020 Games. The IOC executive board decided to retain modern pentathlon — the event considered most at risk — and remove wrestling instead from its list of 25 "core sports."

The 2008 Beijing Olympics were huge for China, a $42 billion chance to put the country on the world stage. Whether that was money well-spent has become a big question in the country.

Forty days of intensive training, up to eight sessions a day of non-stop gruelling practice -- nothing was spared to ensure the "Etiquette Angels" elevated the Asian Games to celestial heights.Just ask Ding Ling, whose hopes of becoming a "Miss Etiquette" for the Beijing Olympics in 2008 were dashed as she was only 16 at the time.Not to be deterred, Ding tried again."I feel very excited and a bit nervous," she said, after emerging successful through the 2010 Asian Games Miss Etiquette contest, which was followed by a summer training camp.

Comcast CEO Brian L. Roberts said Thursday that Comcast doesn’t expect to make a giant profit from the 2016 summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro but defended its heavy spending to acquire rights to additional Olympic telecasts. “I am so glad we stomached it,” he said of Comcast’s 2011 agreement to spend $4.38 billion to acquire additional rights.

Andrew Rose and Mark Spiegel report:

MOSCOW — It was supposed to be a thrilling ride down a ski slope inside a giant inflatable ball that is to be one of the symbols of next year’s Winter Olympics; it ended in tragedy for the two Russian men inside. The transparent plastic ball — known as a zorb — veered off course and sailed over a rock ledge in the rugged Caucasus Mountains of southern Russia. The ball picked up speed as it flew down the steep slope, rolling and bouncing. One man was killed and the other badly injured.