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    Mike Repole, Horse Racing’s Loudest Critic, Is Kentucky Derby Favorite

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    In the world according to Mike Repole, everyone involved in horse racing is a dummy. Except him, Mike from Queens or the Commish, as some of his followers on X call him.Stuart S. Janney III, chairman of the nonprofit Jockey Club, is clueless and tone deaf and has run the sport into the ground, Repole says. Churchill Downs Inc., which hosts the Kentucky Derby, is cheap: The $3 million purse for America’s most famous race should be much more, and the racetrack treats Repole and other owners badly.Forget about John Stewart, a new owner bringing fresh energy and big money into the game. He is “arrogant, free spending” and such a rube that he has an “$8 haircut.”All the above, and many others, are among Repole’s frequent targets on social media and various podcasts. Repole, a prominent horse owner who made his fortune in the beverage industry, says he is merely trying to disrupt an industry (often punctuated with profane Bronx cheers) that he likens to the Titanic heading inevitably into a looming iceberg.“You want real or you want fake??? You want loud or you want quiet??? You want intensity or you want passive??? You want better or you want worse??? Love me or Hate me,” Repole posted on X in January, summarizing his credo for remaking the racehorse business.Repole, right, with Fierceness last week. In seven starts, Repole-owned horses have yet to win a Derby. Two more were late scratches. Matt Stone/The Courier Journal — USA Today NetworkWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Cheated’: Chinese Doping Case Roils Swimming

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      An American who won silver in Tokyo calls for an investigation. A British gold medalist demands bans. But the most bitter fight was between antidoping leaders.The revelation that 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for a banned drug seven months before the Tokyo Olympics but were secretly cleared and allowed to continue competing has exposed a bitter and at times deeply personal rift inside the fight to keep drugs out of international sports, and brought new criticism of the global authority that oversees drug-testing.A New York Times investigation uncovered previously unreported details of the 2021 episode, in which a contingent of Chinese swimmers, including nearly half of the team that China sent to the Tokyo Games, tested positive for a banned prescription heart medicine that can help athletes increase stamina and reduce recovery times.Within hours, the disclosure of an incident that had been a secret for more than three years was roiling swimming. An American Olympian who took home a silver medal from Tokyo said she felt her team had been “cheated” in a race won by China. A British gold medalist called for a lifetime ban for the swimmers involved on social media. And a simmering feud between global antidoping officials and their U.S. counterparts burst into the open with caustic statements and legal threats.“Any time there’s a situation where positive tests aren’t clearly identified and gone through a proper process and protocol, it allows for doubt to creep into athletes’ minds who are competing clean,” said Greg Meehan, the Stanford University coach who led the U.S. women’s team at the Tokyo Games. “When they’re going into competitions, you can’t help but think, ‘Am I competing in a clean event?’”The fallout comes less than 100 days before the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics. That has created uncomfortable headlines both for the sport but also for the Games themselves, which depend on global antidoping regulators to ensure fair play and the integrity of the medals awarded — which can validate years of training, define athletes’ careers and confer pride on a nation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Takeaways From Our Chinese Swimming Investigation

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      A doping case involving Olympic swimmers has left unanswered questions and raised new concerns about the actions of a global antidoping regulator.In the first days of 2021, seven months before the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics, 23 of China’s best swimmers tested positive for the same banned drug at a domestic meet.Chinese antidoping officials investigated and declared the case an unusual mass-contamination event that could be traced to the presence of a heart medication, trimetazidine, known as TMZ, in the kitchen of a hotel where the swimmers had stayed for a New Year’s event in late December 2020 and early January 2021.The World Anti-Doping Agency, the global authority that oversees national drug-testing programs, looked into the episode but then accepted that theory and allowed China to keep the results secret.All the while, the swimmers were allowed to continue racing, without suspensions or disqualifications. Some of the swimmers who provided positive samples went on to qualify for the Olympics, and to win medals — including three golds — for China. A few are favorites to win again at the Paris Olympics this year.The incident would have remained in the shadows, a secret known only to a select few, had details of one of the most curious episodes in swimming not made their way out of the sealed files of the organizations trusted to keep sports fair.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kamila Valieva Banned Four Years Over 2022 Olympic Doping Case

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      Valieva, once a 15-year-old gold medal favorite, was punished in a doping case that upended the figure skating competition at the Beijing Games.Kamila Valieva, the teenage Russian figure skater whose positive doping test upended her sport at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, was banned from competition for four years on Monday by the top court in sports.The punishment, announced by a three-member arbitration panel empowered by the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport, was related to a tainted sample Valieva, who was 15 at the time, gave at a competition. The positive result only emerged two months later — in the middle of the Olympics, and only a day after Valieva had led Russia to victory in the team competition.The ban will be retroactive to Dec. 25, 2021, the arbitrators ruled, meaning it will end in 2025, just in time for Valieva to compete at the next Winter Olympics, in 2026. Now 17, she was ordered to forfeit “any titles, awards, medals, profits, prizes and appearance money” earned after her positive doping sample was collected.Valieva had claimed that she had mistakenly taken a heart medication, Trimetazidine, prescribed for her grandfather. Russia’s anti-doping body had cleared her of any wrongdoing, not because of her reasoning for ingesting the banned substance but because of her age, saying she could not be held responsible because she was a minor at the time, and therefore a “protected person.”The CAS panel, in Monday’s ruling, dismissed the premise that minors competing in adult competitions should be treated different from their rivals.“There is no basis under the rules to treat them any differently from an adult athlete,” the arbitrators wrote.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More