Olympic Roundup: Stolen Gold Medal Recovered; Congress Passes Equal Pay Act for USOPC

SwimSwam will periodically update you on the biggest news around the Olympic and Paralympic world, outside of aquatic sports. Catch up on the saga of a stolen Olympic gold medal from 1952, a new bill that seeks to emphasize gender equity in Olympic sports programs, and continued calls by Ukrainian officials to keep sanctions on Russian and Belarusian athletes in place after a recent missile attack on an ice arena. 

Olympic gold medal recovered after robbery

An Olympic gold medal belonging to South African swimmer Joan Breetzke was recovered earlier this week after thieves were thought to have taken it last month along with her 1954 Commonwealth Games gold.

Breetzke, formerly named Joan Harrison, became the first South African woman to win Olympic swimming gold in the 100-meter backstroke at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, Finland. At the end of December, that medal was reportedly stolen from the East London home of her grandson, Craig Murray.

On New Year’s Day, Murray asked social media for help in locating the medal following the raid. A few days later, he got a response from Justin Ainslie of Shosholoza Cleaning, who said he found the medals lying in grass in the Southernwood area of the city. Ainslie had brought them to antiques dealer Sharl Townsend, who knew about the robbery and directed him toward the medal’s rightful owners.

Congress passes USOPC ‘Equal Pay Act’

President Joe Biden is expected to sign a bill recently approved by the House of Representatives that would require the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) to provide “equivalent and nondiscriminatory compensation,” travel arrangements, and benefits for sports with separate programs for male and female athletes.

Passed by a vote of 350-59, the new act also applies to national governing bodies. However, there is something of a loophole that allows pay discrepancies for “merit, performance, seniority, or quantity of play, in determining contract or other terms of participation.”

A provision is also included to “overpay” athletes with the goal of addressing “disparities in outside income, including in compensation made available by international sports federations and other event organizers, or the need to foster underdeveloped programs or address documented and justifiable personal need on the part of specific athletes or teams.”

A report will be due annually to the Congress to show whether or not the new guidelines are being followed.

Ukrainian foreign minister calls for continued sanctions after missile attack on ice arena

Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba pointed to a recent missile attack on an ice arena as further proof that sanctions against Russian and Belarusian athletes should remain in place given the ongoing war in Ukraine.

“I invite all sports officials who want to allow Russian athletes to compete in international events because, as they say, ‘politics should be kept out of sports,’ to visit the Altair ice arena in Druzhkivka ruined by Russia’s ‘politically neutral’ shelling,” Kuleba wrote.

I invite all sports officials who want to allow Russian athletes to compete in international events because, as they say, “politics should be kept out of sports”, to visit the Altair ice arena in Druzhkivka ruined by Russia’s “politically neutral” shelling. pic.twitter.com/gOTN1JlcML

— Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) January 3, 2023

Russian and Belarusian athletes are still barred from international competition, but International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach has expressed a desire to let them return if they do not support the war.

“It was not just a sports facility, but one of the key arenas for the development of Ukrainian sports and the largest hockey and figure skating school in Ukraine,” Kuleba added on Instagram. “The only strikes that ever took place here were hockey bullies, until ‘politically neutral’ Russian bombs landed at the arena.”

The biggest ice arena in Eastern Ukraine, the Altair stadium is reportedly one of five ice arenas that have been destroyed since the war began. One bright spot was that the Altair arena’s security guard had taken a smoke break outside just before the explosions occurred. Smoking saves lives, apparently?

“The ice arena guard was saved by the fact that he went outside to smoke,” said Oleksandra Pakhomova, the deputy head of the Druzhkivska city military administration. “If he hadn’t gone out to smoke, the epicenter of the explosion would have fallen on his guardhouse.”