The WASHINGTON POST goes with, "Horses, guns and swords: How cumbersome equipment gets to the Olympics." While Olympic organizers provide the "basic staging and infrastructure for each event, athletes compete with their own gear." It is "highly customized, costly, irreplaceable -- and often also large, cumbersome and maddening to transport." Some Paris-bound athletes face an "Olympian challenge in getting their equipment -- from boats to guns to horses -- overseas for these Summer Games." Many athletes travel in "constant fear of luggage mishaps." No single piece of sporting equipment is "quite like a 17-foot piece of carbon-fiber composite" used for pole vaulting and veteran competitors "know which airlines consider poles to be acceptable sporting equipment and which ones can be finicky." Equestrian athletes will "fly commercial to France while their four-legged teammates will fly on special cargo jets operated by the Dutta Corporation that are specifically outfitted for horse travel."
Also:
- How the NHL, Predators helped deliver men's ice hockey to Tennessee State.
- What started in basement is now one of college sports fans' favorite brands.
