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VICTORIA MBOKO SUFFERS DEVASTATING SETBACK AS 1,000 RANKING POINTS DISAPPEAR AFTER MISSING CANADIAN OPEN

IMAGO

A massive blow for Victoria Mboko. The 19-year-old has been forced to withdraw from the Canadian Open, thus failing to defend her title and set to lose a whopping 1000 points in the process, with a ranking drop imminent.

It has been a very promising season for Mboko who has again lived up to the hype since that stunning breakthrough tournament in Montreal. She stunned the tennis world that week enroute to WTA 1000 glory but has since backed it up with a string of eye-catching performances and runs.

She has backed it up with a plethora of WTA finals and more deep runs in big tournaments, cementing herself as a top 10 player and a force to be reckoned with on court. She was hopeful of debuting in the WTA Finals at the end of the year while challenging for more silverware. The chances of that happening has diminished vastly.

It was a special moment for Mboko to step out onto court alongside 23-time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams, partnering the American on her return to action following a four-year spell away from the court. After their win, all focus was on the singles for the time being. She was taking on Karolina Pliskova, but their contest would be halted following a nasty slip.

Mboko was on the ground in a lot of pain as fans feared the worse. Her tournament ended on the spot as she struggled to walk and put too much pressure on it. She would soon pull out of all the grass tournaments, most notably Wimbledon, but it gets worse for Mboko.

Confirming the news as fellow WTA players respond

The way the Canadian Open works, it is split between Montreal and Toronto, with the men playing in one city and the women the other. Having grown up near Toronto, this would be as home of an event as possible for Mboko.

This was firmly on her mind going into 2026 as she looked to build up a points buffer in case she was not able to defend all the points won when going back to participate. It was one of the most unlikely WTA runs witnessed.

She was ranked outside the top 300, but defeated the likes of Coco Gauff and Elena Rybakina before taking down Naomi Osaka in the final to seal the title on home soil. It was a huge moment as she well and truly burst onto the scene, rising into the top 32 as an 18-year-old.

Victoria Mboko won the 2025 Canadian Open, but due to injury will not be able to defend it. Proshots

Any ambitions of defending that title have been extinguished. In a video posted on her Instagram, she had a knee brace on her left knee while walking gingerly. She said: “Everything kind of happened so fast. There were so many emotions going through my mind. It’s only a little setback, and I want to be a better person out of this. Toronto was a tournament that I always went to growing up. The National Bank Open also holds a special place in my heart. Knowing that I won’t be able to play this year is very saddening, but I feel like l have so many more years ahead of me to play this tournament.”

She has seen a huge amount of support coming in. Gauff, Eva Lys, Marta Kostyuk, Peyton Stearns, Sloane Stephens and Carson Branstine have all sent comments underneath the post. The event, which takes place from August 2-13, is too soon for Mboko who will continue to sit on the sidelines.

Ranking drop on the horizon

The harsh reality is that now Mboko is in danger of losing a number of ranking points. What she earned last year got her very far up the order, but it could also push her down it.

With the latter stages of Wimbledon set to be played out, Mboko is currently sitting in 10th. Her top 10 status is very much under threat as Kostyuk and Noskova lurk behind. If she was to lose 1000 points now, that would leave her with 2,580 points. That is sufficient enough for a drop of six places to 16th in the current WTA Live Rankings.

WTA Live Rankings as of 8/7 - if Mboko loses 1000 points

It could have been a lot worse if it was not for her good form this year. She has made three WTA finals, losing them all, including the Qatar Open. A brace of quarter-finals in the Sunshine swing has also helped her progress, but it is still a bitter blow for Mboko.

She will be hoping to come back stronger than ever. Tournaments like the Cincinnati Open and US Open are also huge doubts with the Asian swing also under threat depending on how serious the injury is.

- Lucas Michael

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FIVE THINGS TO LOOK OUT FOR AT THE F1 CANADA GP

Formula 1 returns this weekend with the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal. Here are some of the key storylines to keep track of

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images via Getty Images

Three weeks on from the events in Miami, the Canadian Grand Prix marks Formula 1's second North American visit at one of its most unique and quietly beloved venues. The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve may not offer a high-octane combination of fast corners, but with its unpredictable weather, long straights and the punishing proximity of its many walls, the race on the picturesque Ile Notre-Dame has delivered more than its fair share of classics.

For the first time in its history, Montreal will also host a sprint weekend, and rain appears to be on the horizon, too. With all that in mind, here are five things to look out for in Montreal.

Will Russell strike back as Montreal's defending winner? 

Getty Images 

The current Formula 1 championship picture is arguably misrepresenting the battle between the dominant Mercedes duo of Kimi Antonelli and George Russell. They occupy the top two positions with Antonelli on 100 points, 20 clear of his more experienced team-mate after three consecutive victories in Shanghai, Suzuka and Miami. 

Antonelli is the only driver with a podium at every grand prix this season, having finished second at the Melbourne opener to Russell, who has since taken second, fourth and fourth again. So looking on paper, Antonelli has been the better driver and is rightfully the bookies’ favourite for the title heading into Canada this weekend - but this writer wholeheartedly disagrees.

That’s because Miami is a bogey track for Russell, who struggles with its low-grip nature and it was even witnessed last year. In 2025, when the Briton was significantly better than his rookie team-mate, he was still outqualified for both the Miami sprint and grand prix so Russell getting beat last time out was no surprise. 

Fans should therefore expect the 28-year-old to come back fighting in Canada and for two reasons: a, he won from pole in 2025 and, b, Miami was the first time this year Antonelli held the upper hand throughout after Russell was hit by ill fortune in Shanghai and Suzuka.

So, in this writer’s mind, nothing has really changed since pre-season and surely last year taught us that title fights constantly ebb and flow…

- Ed Hardy

Will Mercedes restore its dominance as upgrades hit Canada?

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That´s, of course, if Mercedes gets its own way in Canada as it has done at the majority of 2025's races so far. In Miami, McLaren took a big bite out of the Brackley squad's lead thanks to the first of a two-pronged upgrade package - with reigning world champion Lando Norris winning the sprint event from pole. 

Meanwhile, Mercedes kept the vast majority of its novelties back for Montreal, which has made Antonelli's convincing pole-to-flag win during the Miami grand prix somewhat ominous.

Both teams are now bringing a suite of upgrades to Canada, with McLaren teasing "new components across the floor, chassis, front and rear wings, bodywork, halo and roll hoop." According to our information, it's still a significant package though not quite as massive as its Miami update. Mercedes hasn't shown its hand yet, but expect the Silver Arrows to be strong at a circuit Russell drove its predecessor to victory last year from pole.

Can Alpine continue to lead the midfield? 

TWJB Photography 

Alpine had already shown in China and Japan that it has the pace to lead the midfield fight this season, but in Miami it appeared to hold an almost surprising advantage over its direct rivals.

The team comfortably placed both cars inside the top 10 in both qualifying sessions, while Franco Colapinto finished seventh in the grand prix, 20 seconds clear of the next midfield runner. Pierre Gasly’s true potential, meanwhile, remained unclear after his race ended upside down on the opening laps after being tagged by Liam Lawson.

What is certain is that Alpine’s standout weekend in Miami coincided with the introduction of a significant upgrade package – with more developments expected in Montreal – while rivals such as Haas are set to roll out major updates of their own over the Canadian weekend.

That poses an intriguing question heading into round five. During a season where teams are unlocking performance at a rapid rate under this year’s major regulation overhaul, there is no guarantee Alpine can sustain this performance level. If it does in Canada, the Enstone-based outfit could begin to establish itself as the enduring midfield benchmark.

- Federico Faturos

Will Canada be more of the same for Aston Martin? 

Getty Images 

It was probably a surprise when, in Miami - after a month without racing - Aston Martin was the only team that didn’t submit updates in the document the FIA releases before each grand prix. The team and its engine supplier, Honda, focused on eliminating vibrations caused by the power unit and improving driveability. And while they seem to have put the vibrations behind them, another problem with the gearbox became more evident, and ultimately the result was similar, with Aston seemingly only able to spar with newcomer Cadillac.

Fernando Alonso dashed any optimism in front of the media when he all but confirmed his team's fortunes would remain unchanged for at least another couple of months, and that he does not expect major progress until after the summer.

Now, Aston and Honda have continued working on improving the car’s stability and gaining experience on the test bench in Japan, Canada can be a first opportunity to at least focus on squeezing more performance out of its flawed package, which would already be a step forward. Can the stop-start, traction-heavy Gilles Villeneuve circuit work in the team's favour?

It remains to be seen whether the team will introduce changes on the aerodynamic side or if its upgrade sheet will once again be completely blank. If that's the case, we’ll have to see if the progress in terms of deployment and driveability is enough to start seeing some light at the end of the tunnel, or if Canada is more of the same for Aston Martin, Alonso and local driver Lance Stroll.

Will the weather spring a surprise?

2026 will mark the earliest Canadian Grand Prix in Formula 1 history, taking place on 24 May – as opposed to the previous ‘record’ of 2 June in 1991. Spring can be quite chilly in that part of the world, but the forecast is looking decent for this weekend, with 15C to 19C (59F to 66F) expected for the grand prix’s competitive sessions.

It should be mostly dry, too – with an important caveat: rain is forecast on Sunday, which might spice things up and provide a first picture of wet-weather racing with 2026-spec machinery. For the record, only one of the last 10 Montreal races took place on a wet track – the 2024 round, won by Max Verstappen.

Regardless, the freezing (figuratively speaking) cold of the very first grand prix at Ile Notre-Dame, with 5C (41F) on 8 October 1978, won’t be an issue this weekend. It will get pretty close to this temperature in some mornings, but the track action is scheduled late enough in the day.

-  Ben Vinel

- Motorsport.com

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GEORGE RUSSELL REACTS TO MAX VERSTAPPEN SOCIAL MEDIA PAST: 'I WAS A BIT SURPRISED'

Max Verstappen took accountability for causing the clash with George Russell in Barcelona via an Instagram post a day after the Spanish Grand Prix.

George Russell has reacted to Max Verstappen's post-Spanish Grand Prix social media post in which he took accountability for causing the controversial clash with the Mercedes driver.

Ahead of this weekend's Canadian Grand Prix, the Briton has confirmed that he was a "bit surprised" to read the Dutchman's words a day after the incident in Barcelona, which moved Verstappen just a penalty point away from a ban.

The four-time F1 champion received three penalty points and a 10-second time penalty for driving directly into Russell at Turn 5 of the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, demoting him to 10th at the chequered flag. 

Despite the aggressive move, which some believe should have seen Verstappen black-flagged, Russell is confident the Red Bull driver was not trying to cause a crash.

"He was trying to run me off the road. I don’t think he was trying to intentionally crash into me," Russell told the media in Montreal. "He wanted to just sort of scare me a bit, but he just misjudged it.

"Again, it wasn’t going to scare me, it was just all a bit surprising. I’m not looking for an apology. His actions cost him, and they benefited me. So I should be almost thanking him. 

"Obviously I’d be feeling very differently if it took me out of the race. But it is good to see that he took accountability. I was a bit surprised about that."

Verstappen's initial response in the media pen after the race caused further debate. 

Sarcastically, the 27-year-old offered his rival a tissue once informed of Russell's criticism. Remarkably, Russell was humoured by the comment and recently spoke to Verstappen at an airport.

"That was quite funny to be fair and I did have a giggle about that. We bumped into each other at the airport a few days ago on Sunday morning when I was going to Roland Garros," he revealed.

"To be honest, I totally forgot about Barcelona because he was there with his newborn. And we were at the security machine. So he just had a quick chat and then he was busy folding the pram down to put it through the machine."

- Nick Golding

FANS IN MONTREAL LOUDLY BOO U S. ANTHEM PRIOR TO AMERICANS' 4 NATIONS GAME VS. CANADA

Players and fans stand for the U.S. national anthem prior to the first period of 4 Nations Face-Off hockey game between Canada and the United States in Montreal on Saturday, Feb. 15, 2025.

Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press via AP

 MONTREAL — Fans in Montreal loudly booed the U.S. national anthem prior to the 4 Nations Face-Off game between the Americans and Canada on Saturday night.

It's the second time "The Star-Spangled Banner" drew that reaction in two games the United States has played at the NHL-run international tournament.

And it came after public address announcer Michel Lacroix asked the crowd, in French and English, "In the spirit of this great game that unites everyone that you kindly respect the anthems and the players that represent each country."

This time, far more of the fans at Bell Centre booed than Thursday night before the U.S. beat Finland. The booing began when warrant officer David Grenon of the Royal Canadian Air Force Band started singing and lasted the entire length of the song.

"We knew it was going to happen," U.S. defenseman Zach Werenski said after beating Canada 3-1 and quieting the crowd of over 21,000. "It happened the last game, it's been happening in the NHL before this and we knew tonight was going to be the same way. We obviously don't like it."

U.S. players have been trying to tune it out. After beating Finland 6-1 on Thursday, goaltender Connor Hellebuyck said he "paid no attention to" the booing.

"You have free speech," Hellebuyck said. "You can do whatever you want. If you're going to boo the anthem, we sing it for the troops that protected our freedom. That doesn't really mean anything to me. You can do whatever you want. But I don't use it at all."

Werenski said it provided some fuel with the U.S. serving in the villain role in Canada.

"It is what it is," Werenski said. "We kind of had an idea. We used it as motivation the best we could and found a way to get a win. But we had an idea going into it, so it wasn't a surprise. Definitely don't like it, though."

U.S. forward Matthew Tkachuk, who fought Canada's Brandon Hagel off the opening faceoff, setting off a series of three bouts in nine seconds, said it had nothing to do with the anthem booing. If anything, players felt it added to the fun of the night.

"It's just unbelievable, the atmosphere, to play on this stage in Canada, that was pretty cool for all of us I think," said winger Jake Guentzel, who scored twice, including the empty-netter that sealed it. "There's a lot of excitement from our team coming out for warmups and just seeing how packed it was. That was pretty special."

Fans across Canada have booed the U.S. anthem at NHL and NBA games since President Donald Trump began making repeated references to the country becoming "the 51st state." Trump also threatened tariffs against the country, prompting backlash from a close neighbor and longtime ally.

Asked Friday at practice about fans booing the U.S. anthem, veteran Canada defenseman Drew Doughty voiced opposition to it.

"Obviously, I know what's going on, and I understand the Canadians' frustration, but I think we should respect the anthems and stuff like that," Doughty said. "I don't think anyone should be booing."

- The Associated Press

The miracle of 1984: How Los Angeles saved the dying Olympics

 Four decades ago, Peter Ueberroth transformed the Games from an unwanted burden to a coveted entertainment behemoth.

Illustration by Michael Domine/The Washington Post; Getty/AP/iStock)

When the International Olympic Committee met in 1978 to pick a host for the 1984 Summer Games, it had just one candidate, Los Angeles, after the only other bidder, Tehran, dropped out during the early days of Iran’s Islamic revolution.

No one else wanted the Olympics.

The costs were seen as prohibitive — and with good reason. Financial problems forced Denver to give back the 1976 Winter Olympics, and Montreal’s 1976 Summer Games left the city a then-astronomical $1.5 billion in debt.

The Games’ ideals of peace and unity had frayed as well. Terrorists had attacked the 1972 Munich Olympics, leading to the deaths of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches. Two years after Los Angeles landed the Olympics by default, the United States led a boycott of more than 60 nations at the 1980 Moscow Games to protest the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. Many of the Soviet countries threatened to do the same in 1984.

Two months before the Olympics, a Newsweek cover story asked what then felt like an appropriate question: “Are the Games Dead?”

“The general view was that the Olympics had been good for the 20th century but were too big and too costly to continue,” said sports consultant Michael Payne, who had been hired by the IOC in 1983 to revise its marketing strategy.

Approximately 1,200 helium balloons were released at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum as part of the Opening Ceremonies for the 1984 Olympics. (Dave Tenenbaum/AP)

Benita Fitzgerald-Brown won the gold medal in the 100-meter hurdles, part of a huge haul for the United States. (David Cannon/Getty Images)

Steve Lundquist set a world record in the 100-meter breaststroke in Los Angeles. (Tony Duffy/Getty Images)

Mary Lou Retton became one of the breakout stars of the Games. (Bob Thomas Sports Photography/Getty Images)

The L.A. Olympics were the first to truly benefit from 1972’s Title IX ruling (Georges Bendrihem/AFP/Getty Images)

Then came Los Angeles with an Olympics run by a young travel executive named Peter Ueberroth, who brought new funding ideas built on television deals and corporate sponsorships.

The success was transformative. For two weeks in the summer of 1984, the Los Angeles Games boomed as a nonstop celebration of the United States. Without the Soviet Union, East Germany and other eastern powers that did indeed boycott, the United States won four times as many gold medals as anyone else, turning the first Summer Games in the country since 1932 into a chest-pounding demonstration of American might.

Ueberroth’s financial model was a runaway success, not only covering the costs but yielding a $233 million profit.

Other cities around the world watched what happened in Los Angeles and decided they, too, could pay for their own Olympics. Instead of being one of the final editions of a moribund movement, the 1984 Olympics ignited a four-decade explosion that has turned the Games into biennial extravaganzas that only recently have shown signs of flagging, placing this summer’s Paris Olympics at a similar inflection point

The L.A. Coliseum, which had been constructed for the 1932 Summer Games, underwent an extensive renovation. (Bob Galbraith/AP)

Ueberroth reinvents the financial model

California was in the middle of a tax revolt around the time Los Angeles was awarded the Olympics. In June 1978, the state’s voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 13, a groundbreaking initiative that limited property taxes. Later that year, Los Angeles residents — afraid the Games would be another Montreal — passed their own referendum, Proposition N, that blocked the city from using public funds for the 1984 Olympics.

Into this climate walked Ueberroth in March 1979. The newly elected president of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee was 42 and had little experience with sports aside from being a college water polo player. He, too, had voted for Proposition N. Though he ran one of the country’s largest travel companies, most people in the Olympic world had never heard of him. On his first day, he was handed a cardboard box with bills costing $300,000. He used $100 of his own money to open a checking account for the committee.

The official Olympic report from 1984 would note that Ueberroth was “disheartened” to learn that 90 percent of the previous two Summer Olympics had been state-funded. But he had one advantage: While much of Montreal’s debt came from the construction of an elaborate Olympic stadium, Athletes’ Village and facilities, Los Angeles already had stadiums, starting with the Coliseum, which had been constructed for the 1932 Summer Games. The LAOOC would have to build only a swimming facility, velodrome and shooting center.

Still, without government money, Ueberroth had no traditional way to pay the bills in the cardboard box, let alone for an entire Olympics. It soon became clear to him and his core group of leaders — attorney Harry Usher, marketing director Joel Rubenstein and television executive David Wolper — that they would need to commercialize their Olympics.

To get started, Ueberroth and Wolper attacked the way television rights were sold for the Games. Host cities always had negotiated their own broadcast deals but hadn’t been savvy about it. In 1976, ABC paid just $25 million for the Montreal Games.

The Olympics elicited a wave of patriotism amid the Cold War. (Georges Bendrihem/AFP/Getty Images)

Certain the American networks would spend far more for the country’s first Summer Olympics in 52 years, Ueberroth and Wolper attempted to stage a bidding war among ABC, CBS, NBC, ESPN (then a fledgling cable channel) and Tandem Productions (a production company co-founded by sitcom creator Norman Lear), requiring each to deposit $750,000 for a seat at the table. This gave the LAOOC more than $3 million that Ueberroth invested in short-term funds that generated nearly $1,000 per day in interest.

“Those were the kinds of brains we were working with,” said Rich Perelman, who ran the Los Angeles Games’ media operations. “With the money paid from the TV deposits and [later] ticket deposits, we operated off the interest all the way into 1983.”

In the fall of 1979, ABC agreed to pay $225 million for the rights to broadcast the Los Angeles Olympics and another $100 million to handle television production for the rest of the world — a cost host cities had absorbed previously. The $325 million was so far beyond what the IOC had imagined that it had negotiated in advance to take just $33 million of Los Angeles’ TV money.

“That was a blockbuster,” Richard Pound, a longtime IOC member who at the time was among a small group trying to modernize the organization.

Ultimately, Ueberroth and Wolper got another $61.7 million in rights from the world’s other broadcasters.

Ueberroth, now 86 and largely out of public view in recent years, did not respond to multiple interview requests made through intermediaries. But in his memoir, “Made in America,” he writes that he believed he would need at least a half-billion dollars to run the Games, so he looked toward corporate America.

Much like with television rights, the IOC had no marketing strategy. To that point, Games organizers cut tiny sponsorship deals with hundreds of companies, who paid almost nothing for the right.

Rubenstein came up with an idea: Instead of making small deals with several sponsors pitching similar products, why not seek higher fees for the exclusive rights? He and Ueberroth set a minimum bid of $4 million, far more than the companies were accustomed to spending for Olympic sponsorships. But Coca-Cola and Budweiser quickly agreed to be the official soft drink and beer companies of the Games. McDonald’s soon followed.

Brazil's Joaquim Cruz, in blue, won the 800 meters over a talented field. (Tony Duffy/Getty Images)

When others balked, Ueberroth stood firm. In his book, he tells of how Kodak, long affiliated with the Olympics, offered just $2 million, so he gave Japanese rival Fuji three days to present a better offer. Fuji did, eventually agreeing to pay $7 million. Kodak was irate.

“Time and time we went back to [sponsors] and asked for more,” Ueberroth writes. “They always gave. We had them. They knew it.”

Though Ueberroth was an Olympic outsider, he had a remarkable understanding of exactly what the Los Angeles Games needed. Those who were around him describe a buttoned-up and reserved man whose sharp stare and slightly ajar nose, broken in his water polo days, made him quietly intimidating.

“An intense guy,” said Terrence Burns, a sports marketing consultant who has worked for the IOC and has co-written several cities’ bid proposals in recent years. “Very good at eye contact. He’s creative. He’s a very precise guy. He doesn’t have a lot of time, to be honest with you, for chitchat or wasting anyone’s time. He gets right down to business.”

“There were people who were absolutely afraid of him,” Perelman adds. “Most people, I think, found him to be demanding.”

Ueberroth’s frugality became an obsession. He boasts in his memoir about delaying the first $25 million television rights payment to the IOC for a day to get an extra $9,000 of interest. He pushed corporate sponsors to help pay for upgrades to existing facilities such as the Coliseum and convinced McDonald’s to fund the construction of an outdoor swimming stadium. He convinced 7-Eleven to come up with money for the velodrome. Both companies got to put their names on the new facilities — the kind of naming-rights deals that are now commonplace.

Renata Simril, the CEO of the LA 84 Foundation, a nonprofit started with the Games’ surplus, said Ueberroth told her years later that he required Usher to approve any expense more than $1,000.

They “were certainly frugal and checking every dollar,” Simril said.

But Ueberroth surprised employees with cash rewards when they did something especially well and often walked around the offices chatting with workers at day’s end.

Edwin Moses, then the world’s best hurdler and a member of the IOC’s Athletes Commission, said Ueberroth was the first official related to the Olympics who urged athletes to market themselves.

Perelman said Ueberroth was “ahead of his time” for believing diverse office staffs make businesses better and actively seeking women and people of color for leadership positions. He also instructed his staff to use contractors and vendors from underserved and often ignored south Los Angeles.

“He wanted the Games to look like the city and the surrounding neighborhood,” said David Simon, who ran government relations for the Games.

With so much money pouring in, Ueberroth decided to sell the torch relay as well. Ueberroth hoped a circuitous 9,300-mile run from New York to Los Angeles would ignite nationwide enthusiasm for the Games. He convinced AT&T to pay the operational costs and got each runner to donate $3,000 to charity for their one-kilometer segment carrying the torch.

Ueberroth’s great plan was actually working.

Swimmers Chris Cavanaugh, Robin Leamy, David McCagg and Rowdy Gaines celebrate their 4x100 relay victory. (Tony Duffy/Getty Images)

A Soviet boycott spurs a patriotic response

Two hours after the torch relay began, the Soviet Union announced it was boycotting the Olympics.

“That was a gut punch,” Simon said.

The Soviet government said it was pulling out over security concerns and the threat of anti-Soviet protests in the United States, but the move was understood to be retaliation for the U.S.-led boycott of the Moscow Games four years earlier. Soon, other Soviet-bloc nations joined the boycott. A clause in the ABC deal allowed the network to renegotiate if there was a boycott. Ueberroth was worried.

He and Simon worked frantically, even flying to Havana in hopes of convincing Cuba to attend the Games despite Soviet pressure. Ultimately, 14 countries, including Cuba, skipped the Olympics. Romania was the only Soviet-affiliated country to defy Moscow. ABC did not ask for money back.

The boycott did a strange thing, however. It didn’t cause Americans to lose interest; it made them want the Games even more. The Cold War was at its peak, and President Ronald Reagan had packed his 1984 reelection campaign with anti-Soviet rhetoric. Movies such as “WarGames,” “Red Dawn” and “The Right Stuff” stoked a patriotic fever. And as the torch began moving across the country, people filled roadsides and highway shoulders just to catch glimpses of it.

When the torch finally got to Los Angeles in late July, it seemed as though the whole country was talking about the Olympics. Pound, who carried the torch for a segment in the Los Angeles enclave of Pacific Palisades, was overwhelmed by the size of the crowds, several rows deep on the sidewalks who watched him run. Many held their hands over their hearts. Pound, a Canadian, choked up at the site.

“It was an emotional experience,” he said.

The Games began July 28 with Opening Ceremonies, orchestrated by Wolper, designed to show all of America’s technological might. A man in a jetpack flew around the Coliseum, dozens of doves were released, and the more than 101,000 in the stands at one point held up colored cards that turned the stadium’s stands into a sea of flags from the participating countries.

Rafer Johnson, the 1960 decathlon gold medalist who had been a college star at UCLA, was the last to carry the torch, running it up a mechanical staircase that rose from the stadium’s east plaza, so he could light the cauldron atop the Coliseum’s gothic peristyle.

From the stadium’s press box, Reagan declared the Games open. Later, he told ABC the Soviets “are the losers” for their boycott.

American runner Joan Benoit-Samuelson, who a week later would win the first Olympic women’s marathon, remembers many of the world’s athletes rushing to embrace the Romanian athletes as they waited to walk into the Coliseum.

“To thank them for coming,” she said.

After winning the gold medal, the U.S. women's basketball team carried off Coach Pat Summitt. (Pete Leabo/AP)

Gold medals all around

Then the United States started winning. And winning. And winning. Carl Lewis was the biggest star, taking gold in the 100 and 200 meters, the 4x100-meter relay and the long jump. Moses won his 105th consecutive 400-meter hurdles race. Mary Lou Retton became the first non-Eastern European to win the gymnastics all-around competition. Greg Louganis won two diving golds.

Most of them probably would have won with the Soviets or East Germans competing, but dozens of other American took golds they might not have otherwise, such as the nine U.S. boxers who won their weight classes, the seven American wrestlers who took gold in a sport usually dominated by the Soviets or even the men’s basketball team, a unit of college stars led by Michael Jordan, who had just been drafted by the Chicago Bulls.

Chants of “USA! USA!” filled the venues as American athletes paraded to the top of medal stands.

Synchronized swimmer Tracy Ruiz, center, enjoyed the Closing Ceremonies with her coach, Charlotte Davis. (Tony Duffy/Getty Images)

The Los Angeles Olympics were the first to truly benefit from 1972’s Title IX ruling as a generation of girls who had more equitable opportunities to play sports reached adulthood. In addition to Benoit-Samuelson, U.S. women such as cyclist Connie Carpenter-Phinney and swimmer Tracy Caulkins won gold. The U.S. women’s basketball team took the first of its nine golds in 10 Games.

When she ran through the Coliseum’s tunnel at the end of the marathon, Benoit-Samuelson was stunned to find more than 77,000 people roaring as they watched on the stadium’s video boards.

“I just didn’t think there’d be a lot of people wanting to spend their Sunday morning watching a bunch of women run 26.2 miles,” she said. “And there are a lot of pundits who thought that women really couldn’t handle that distance.”

All of it played out as a prime-time television drama in the golden late-afternoon California light known in Hollywood as the “magic hour.”

“It was the beginning of the television sports empire, so it was huge [and] live,” Moses said. “People didn’t have to stay up late at night. It was in L.A. Hundreds of thousands of people had the opportunity to go. My family was there. My high school track coach was there; friends were there. And people were just enthusiastic about it.”

Many in Los Angeles, including Ueberroth and the Games organizers, had worried the Olympics would be marred by the area’s usual summertime ailments: traffic, smog and heat. But amazingly, most residents stayed home for those two weeks, easing congestion on the freeways. Without so many cars, there was little smog, and the ocean breezes kept the temperature down.

“People were just giddy, like, ‘How cool is this?’” said longtime ABC and later NBC broadcaster Al Michaels, who has lived in the Los Angeles area for much of his life and did all the track and field television commentary. “So L.A. looked a little different then, just for those two weeks, and [that] obviously had a lot to do with the spirit of the Games and the enthusiasm and the excitement that surrounded those Games. It was a different time. It was almost like nirvana in Los Angeles.”

Rafer Johnson lit the cauldron during Opening Ceremonies. (Eric Risberg/AP)

The Olympics’ new world, for better and worse

When the Olympics were over and the LAOOC determined it had made $232.5 million, Ueberroth took the profits and started what first was called the Amateur Athletic Foundation, known now as the LA84 Foundation. The nonprofit gave 60 percent of the Games’ surplus to the U.S. Olympic Committee and used the remaining $93 million to help fund and expand youth sports in Southern California, something it continues to do today.

“I think Ueberroth believed in the city, and he believed he could do it,” Burns said. “The ethos of California in the ’80s was optimism. He ran [the Olympics] like a business. The IOC didn’t understand this; they had no choice but to go along with it.

“L.A. basically created Olympic marketing. It became a business — a very professional business.”

The $325 million the LAOOC wrangled from ABC had stunned the IOC and its president, Juan Antonio Samaranch, who had been elected in 1981 with the mandate to modernize the Olympics. About a year before the Games, Adidas chairman Horst Dassler told IOC members, “You, the IOC, are the most valuable and sought-after trademark in the world, yet the Olympic rings are the most-exploited trademark in existence.”

For IOC officials looking for ways to make the Olympics work financially, Ueberroth essentially gave them a blueprint.

“Once we saw the L.A. [television] number, we said, ‘This is the way we can finance the Olympic movement, and we need to take control,’” Pound said. “We had to evolve in the sponsorship business, and we had to figure out what was the Olympics brand? What assets did we have? How do we get ourselves off the companies’ donation budgets and into the C-suite?”

Payne later wrote a book about that time called “Olympic Turnaround.” In it, he tells how Samaranch quickly took away the television rights from the host cities and put them in the IOC’s control, overseeing the bidding for the 1988 Winter and Summer Games broadcast rights months before the Los Angeles Games even happened.

For two weeks, the Olympics stoked a fervor and celebration among U.S. fans. (Getty Images)

Samaranch also led the creation of the IOC’s own exclusive corporate sponsorship program, much like Ueberroth did in Los Angeles. The program still exists, guaranteeing the IOC a significant amount of money from a small group of companies, separate from the sponsorships each Games’ host sells as well.

The IOC now uses some of this money to help hosts pay for their Olympics. In the ensuing four decades, several cities have held Games that either made money or helped revive their images, including Barcelona, Salt Lake City, London and Beijing, whose 2008 Summer Games were seen as the opening of China to the rest of the world.

Ueberroth and his Olympics were the inspiration for all the Games have become.

But at what cost?

Commercialization might have saved the Olympics and even democratized them by funding sports in countries that might never have been able to afford Olympic teams, yet the costs of the Games have soared, leading to an arms race in which hosts willing to spend heavily have built new facilities that since have been orphaned. The 2014 Sochi Winter Games cost $55 billion. And while Paris 2024 Olympic leaders expect to have raised enough money to cover their bills, the Games still will cost over $9 billion.

Though the Los Angeles Games are widely portrayed as uniting the vast and divergent sprawl of communities for two weeks, the city’s police accumulated an arsenal of weapons to secure the Olympics that it would use in those same south Los Angeles neighborhoods that Ueberroth tried to involve in his Games. Some have connected aggressive law enforcement tactics in south Los Angeles to the police department’s preparations for the 1984 Olympics.

Ueberroth, himself, was never bigger than in the summer of 1984. Time magazine named him its man of the year, and Major League Baseball hired him as commissioner weeks before the Games started, though he didn’t start until after the Olympics. The frugality that worked so well with the LAOOC didn’t translate to baseball. He urged team owners to spend less on players, a mandate that helped teams become more profitable but also led to sloppy collusion cases designed to suppress free agent markets. A series of arbitration rulings against baseball led to the owners having to pay the players $280 million in damages.

Ueberroth resigned as baseball commissioner in 1988, months before the end of his first term. He then served as head of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s board for four years and ran unsuccessfully for governor of California. Even his financial savvy drew some criticism in the aftermath. In his book, Payne writes that several of the sponsors whom Ueberroth cajoled to spend heavily were irked when the Games wound up with a profit, saying they felt tricked into writing bigger checks to promote Ueberroth’s image.

But at a time when the Olympics looked to be done, the Games that Los Angeles won by default had a transformative effect.

“You can’t overestimate how important those Games were to the [Olympic] movement,” Burns said. “They saved it.”

Lionel Richie performed a nine-minute version of his song 'All Night Long' at the Closing Ceremonies. (Steve Powell/Getty Images)

- Les Carpenter

AS RIVALS CLOSE IN, VERSTAPPEN FINDS WAY TO WIN IN MONTREAL

Max Verstappen overcame tricky conditions and revitalised rivals to win his sixth grand prix of the 2024 F1 season. Chris Graythen/Getty Images

 MONTREAL -- If Max Verstappen secures his fourth Formula One world championship with multiple races remaining at the end of this year, it might be easy to forget just how hard he had to fight for it at races like the Canadian Grand Prix. Sunday's result may have looked routinely predictable to anyone glancing at the results after the chequered flag, but the reality was that it was among the most hard fought of Verstappen's 60 career wins.

The key to results like Sunday's -- and a Verstappen trait that is so easily overlooked -- is his ability to avoid mistakes on an afternoon when tripwires seem to lurk around every corner. Even a rogue groundhog -- the likes of which have been known to destroy a front wing at previous Canadian Grands Prix -- couldn't put Verstappen off his stride as he deftly swerved past the startled critter under braking at the end of Lap 31.

As always, credit has to be shared with his Red Bull team, who helped Verstappen negotiate the changing conditions and safety car periods Sunday, but on a weekend when at least six drivers had a car capable of winning, it was once again the runaway championship leader who came out on top.

Did McLaren throw away victory?

In the immediate aftermath of the race, Lando Norris was happy to accept his second-place finish. Just before the first safety car period, he had led the race by more than 10 seconds, only to be shuffled back to third when he missed the opportunity to pit on the first lap under the safety car period.

At first it seemed like simple bad luck. Just as Norris had benefited in Miami when Verstappen had missed the chance to pit under a safety car and the McLaren driver had gone on to win, it seemed like the racing gods had dealt out a remarkably even level of karma to favour the Red Bull driver in Montreal.

As it transpired, though, Norris had not yet passed the pit lane entrance at the moment the safety car period was announced, meaning he had a narrow but sufficient window of 1.5 seconds in which a call could have been made for him to pit and retain the lead of the race.

"We should have won the race today and we didn't, so frustrating," Norris said in the postrace news conference. "We had the pace, probably not in the dry at the end, but it turned out it didn't really matter too much.

"But yeah, we should have won today. Simple as that. We didn't do a good job, I think, a good enough job as a team to box when we should have done and not get stuck behind the safety car.

"So I don't think it was a luck or unlucky kind of thing. I don't think it was the same as Miami. This was just making a wrong call. So, it's on me and it's on the team and it's something we'll discuss after.

"We should have won today. I think we're at a level now where we're not satisfied with a second, like the target is to win. And we didn't do that. So, frustrating, but a tough race and still to end up in second when it could always finish and could be worse is still a good result."

Those points were put to McLaren team boss Andrea Stella after the race, who admitted the team should have acted differently with the benefit of hindsight.

"We took a look back at it and there was 1.5 seconds from the time when you need to either turn or go straight [when the safety car was called," he said. "In hindsight, we could have told the driver that in case of safety car, pit, so he would have just reacted instinctively, but we were monitoring the intensity of the rain, and this intensity in the last few minutes was reducing. So we didn't want to pit unnecessarily for a new set of inters when this set of inters could have been very good enough in case of very light rain. I think it was much easier for the car behind to do the opposite, for instance, of Lando.

"So I think that is a little bit unlucky, not only with when the safety car was deployed with respect to Lando's position on track, but also the time of the safety car in the race, because by that time Lando was by far the fastest car on track."

But Stella believes there was a team that dropped the ball more than McLaren. He pointed to the pace advantage Mercedes had in dry conditions at the end of the race and what that could have resulted in had George Russell exercised a bit more caution over the 60 laps prior.

"Actually I think Mercedes should have finished ahead of Lando today," he said. "If anything we maximised what was available after the safety car. Without the safety car, Lando could have accumulated such a large advantage that then we could have tried to make it to the end on the dry tyres, but I think Mercedes could have caught up, because they were a few tenths of a second faster today.

"So we really needed a decent advantage to make it safely to the end. But obviously this is a little bit academic, because in a race like this with two or three safety cars, you have to assume that will happen and the weather was around, so we knew it was going to be a race decided by different scenarios."

George Russell earned his best finish of the season by taking home third place in Montreal. Bryn Lennon - Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images

Could Mercedes have won?

In the right conditions, the Mercedes was the fastest car in Canada. Verstappen may have been able to match Russell's pole position time down to a thousandth of a second in qualifying, but in Q2 both Mercedes drivers set times that would have been the standalone fastest (Russell's by more than 0.25 seconds) had they repeated them in Q3.

In the race, the two Mercedes drivers set fastest laps 0.7 seconds clear of their nearest competitors on the final lap. Part of that advantage was down to the fresh tyres they fitted at an additional pit stop under the second safety car, but it also underlined the performance the Mercedes had in dry conditions.

Combine that pace with the off-track excursions Russell endured attempting to defend the lead from Norris on Lap 22, while missing the apex at Turn 8 on Lap 51 and failing to pass Oscar Piastri on Lap 63, and it's fair to say the result could have been a lot better.

"It felt like a missed opportunity, to be honest," Russell said. "We were really quick at the beginning of the race on the inters, and then obviously Lando came through really fast, and then we jumped back onto the slicks, made a couple of mistakes out there, just pushing the limits and paid the price for it.

"But nevertheless, first podium of the year, we truly had a really fast car this weekend, and to be back in the mix fighting for victory was really fun. That's what Formula One is about, and that's why we go racing."

Lewis Hamilton -- who qualified seventh and ran as high as third at the end of the race but ultimately lost the last place on the podium to Russell -- was even harder on himself.

"Over the weekend just a really poor performance from myself," he said after the race. "[On Saturday], some other things came into it, mostly myself, and then [Sunday] one of the worst races that I've driven, lots of mistakes, but of course if I'd qualified better I would've been in a much better position so it is what it is.

"I will go back to the drawing board."

Team boss Toto Wolff played down the missed opportunity, but perhaps only in the knowledge that the result bodes well for team's season and its three-year struggle in developing its car.

"Maybe for a few minutes we dreamt about a win," he said. "But in reality, it probably wasn't possible.

"Definitely since Imola we have taken the right steps and put parts on the car that are working, and that is something we were struggling with in the past couple of years. Now directionally we seem to be adding performance every weekend and we have new parts coming in Barcelona that should help us, so I would very much hope we can continue the positive trajectory."

No room for error

The clearest message from Montreal is that for the fourth race in a row, Red Bull was beatable. Albeit to a lesser extent than in Monaco, where Ferrari's Charles Leclerc emerged victorious, the weaknesses of Red Bull were exposed again in Canada. That made Verstappen's performance all the more impressive and the errors of his rivals all the more galling.

"That's a well-earned victory today," Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said Sunday evening. "Just look at the restarts, how [Verstappen] was really able to make use of the conditions, he was at the top of his game and working well with the pit wall. I think we made the right calls strategically during the race and we reacted well to what was going on around us, so a very rewarding race to win."

Red Bull's rivals are expecting the return to a high-speed, permanent circuit at the next round in Spain to turn the tables back in favour of the championship leaders, but Red Bull is also acutely aware of the strides its competitors have made at recent rounds.

"The last couple of races have been more choppy water for us, but we have still managed to win two out of the last three races," Horner said. "We managed to win and match the pole time here with a car that both drivers were feeling some deficiencies with, so there is a lot of focus on now to see if we can improve those areas because we know at circuits later in the year, like Singapore, that could be a factor.

"We really expect Ferrari and McLaren certainly, and Mercedes came into that window this weekend, to be competitive at every circuit, so despite the fact we have won six out of the nine races, I think we are going to have to be really at the top of our game to keep eking out a gap."

For Verstappen, who is now 56 points clear of Leclerc in the standings, the key to victory in Montreal will also be the key to a fourth consecutive world championship at the end of the year.

"It's definitely more challenging [now] and we were definitely on our toes," he said. "We cannot afford to make mistakes or even tiny mistakes anymore. Every little detail matters now."

- Laurence Edmondson, F1 Editor