Sports

Organizers of the 2026 Sydney Marathon are making the best of the situation after minting tens of thousands of medals engraved with depictions of landmarks from the eastern Australian city along with one that doesn't belong — the Allianz Arena in Munich, Germany. The medal should have instead shown the Allianz Stadium in Sydney, which is one of the sights that participants in the upcoming race will pass while running the the 42.2-kilometer (26.2-mile) course. More than 40,000 participants are expected to earn the medal as a "badge of honor" for completing the race on August 30. Other landmarks shown include the famous Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge.Sydney's Allianz Stadium also has its own unique appearanceImage: Rafael Ben Ari/Newscom/picture alliance What have organizers s...

As announced last Friday, the 14 Women's Bundesliga clubs have officially established their own league organization during a meeting in the German city of Frankfurt. Katharina Kiel of Eintracht Frankfurt was elected as the first president of the Frauen-Bundesliga FBL e.V. (Women's Bundesliga Association). Veronica Sass of Bayern Munich and Florian Zeutschler will serve as vice presidents. The FBL's stated purpose is to take the league's marketing and professionalization to a new level, and it will reportedly be rolled out in 18 months time. "Today marks a historic moment for German women's football. For the first time, all top-division clubs are joining forces and pooling their interests within a league association," Kiel said in a statement posted on Eintracht Frankfurt's website. "For...

While Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are still playing at 39 and 41 respectively, most football fans thought Ronaldinho belonged to another footballing era. That all changed in June, when Italian Serie C club, Ravenna, announced that the former Barcelona, Paris Saint-Germain and AC Milan forward would play for them in the upcoming season. On a rainy Thursday in northeastern Italy, the former Ballon d'Or winner was unveiled with a quick press conference and a sense of excitement gripping the city. "I'm very happy to be here with friends, we have a team that can do something good," said Ronaldinho. "I just arrived, but I have a great desire to live this experience with the whole city." Pure PR? The 46-year-old last played for Fluminense in his homeland in 2015 and will become a sha...

There is probably no other sport in the world that has experienced a boom like Hyrox in recent years. What started as an idea in 2017 has, within just a few years, evolved into one of the fastest-growing fitness movements in the world. The format was developed by event organizer Christian Toetzke, communications expert Michael Trautmann, and Moritz Fürste, a former member of the German national field hockey team that won gold at the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics. Their basic idea was very simple: to create a competition that combines the atmosphere of a running event with the intensity of functional strength training that many people know from time in the gym. Hyrox consists of eight functional stations interspersed by eight 1-kilometer (0.62 miles) runs. Moritz Fürste went from nationa...

Several months after moving to Germany, Bernadette Amani is clearly where she wants to be, having won both the Bundesliga and the German Cup in her first half-season since joining Bayern Munich. "It's a dream come true for me to be here, and I'm living my dream to the full," the 28-year-old midfielder told DW in a recent exclusive interview. "Munich is a very, very big club. Beyond just making me happy, it's a real achievement, a dream come true to be here, to play for such a prestigious club." Amani, who recently captained Ivory Coast at the Women's Africa Cup of Nations (WAFCON), added that playing for Bayern's women has been a major step up from what she had come to know playing for CD Tenerife Femenino of Liga F, Spain's topflight. "I was already professional when I was in Spain, b...

Amanal Petros stood in Birmingham's Victoria Square, the German flag draped over his shoulders and the gold medal resting on his chest. Eleven months after narrowly missing out on a World Championship title in Tokyo, the 31-year-old had just won his first major marathon. After roughly 25 of the 42 kilometers, Petros picked up the pace on an incline, breaking up the lead pack. No one could keep up with him. He was able to savor the victory during the final two kilometers. He crossed the finish line in 2:09:11 — a record time for the men's marathon at the European Athletics Championships. "My goal was to wrap things up early," Petros said afterwards. "That worked out perfectly." The fact that Italian runner Pietro Riva finished just seven seconds behind him hardly reflected the commanding...

Germany international Jamal Musiala has collapsed during a match for the second time in four days. He was helped off the pitch looking dazed just six minutes after coming on as a subsititute in Bayern Munich's 4-2 friendly win at Heidenheim on Tuesday. Musiala collapsed in similar fashion in a match against RB Leipzig a few days earlier. After the Heidenheim game, Musiala explained in an Instagram post that the blackouts were caused by a "neurological dysfunction" known as "absence seizures." "I've been diagnosed with temporary, brief, but easily treatable absence seizures, which are due to a neurological dysfunction," he wrote in the post, which drew support from many in the football world, including Bayern keeper Manuel Neuer and former Germany and Bayern forward Thomas Müller. "The...

Former Wimbledon runner-up Nick Kyrgios has been provisionally suspended from tennis after failing a doping test, the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) announced on Wednesday. The 31-year-old Australian gave a sample at an ATP tournament in Mallorca in June that tested positive for benzoylecgonine, a metabolite of cocaine, the ITIA said. Cocaine is classified as a stimulant and substance of abuse on the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Prohibited List and is banned in competition. A WADA lab confirmed the presence of the banned stimulant in Kyrgios' sample on July 17, and a provisional suspension has been in place since August 4, the ITIA said. "While suspended Kyrgios is not allowed to play in, coach at, or attend any events organised or sanctioned by World Tennis, WTA, ATP,...

"I'm really not sure if I'll carry on doing it for much longer."  Those words earlier this month, from a man who famously says very little, sparked a global conversation about whether Lionel Messi's storied career was about to end. The Argentinian posted a tribute to his father, who recently died, on Instagram. "You were by my side from the beginning; there was so little left until the end. Why couldn't you hold on just a little longer so we could finish it together?" he wrote. Messi turned 39 during a World Cup in which he belied his advanced years to drag Argentina to the final despite rarely breaking into a sprint. During the 2026 tournament, Messi scored eight goals in eight games to further cement his reputation as the best footballer of all time. "He is the greatest footballer I'...

There is probably no other sport in the world that has experienced a boom like Hyrox in recent years. What started as an idea in 2017 has, within just a few years, evolved into one of the fastest-growing fitness movements in the world. The format was developed by experienced event organizer Christian Toetzke, communications expert Michael Trautmann, and Moritz Fürste, a former member of the German national field hockey team that won gold at the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics. Their basic idea was very simple: to create a competition that combines the atmosphere of a running event with the intensity of functional strength training, as many people know from time in the gym. Hyrox consists of eight functional stations interspersed by eight one-kilometer runs. "People love to either challeng...