Olympics

Hasan Arat, the head of Istanbul's bid for the 2020 Summer Olympics, not only wants his city to host the Games, he wants wrestling reinstated if it does. “If we are awarded the Games, Turkey wants to have wrestling events in Istanbul,” Arat said Tuesday. The International Olympic Committee executive board voted earlier this month to drop wrestling beginning in 2020. The three finalists to host the 2020 Games are Istanbul, Madrid and Tokyo. The IOC meets in September and will make a decision then.

Mike Krzyzewski said again Tuesday he doesn't plan to return as U.S. men's basketball coach after leading the Americans to two Olympic gold medals. Saying "my stance hasn't changed," Krzyzewski told ESPN Radio he expects USA Basketball to name a new coach this summer. The Hall of Fame coach from Duke said during and after last summer's Olympics that he wasn't planning to return to the position he's held with the national team since 2005. However, he still hasn't confirmed that decision with USA Basketball Chairman Jerry Colangelo, who has said they will talk after the college season.

The gig: Michael Scully is creative director of global design for BMW Group DesignworksUSA in Newbury Park. So it's fitting that a car designer who grew up in snowy New Hampshire would be assigned this latest BMW project: building a bobsled for the U.S. Olympic team. Usually, BMW doesn't want its vehicles to slide freely on ice. But that's exactly Scully's goal now as he designs the two-man bobsled to compete in the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, next year. He's also worked on other projects for BMW since he joined the design team in 1996, including developing bicycle components and designing race cars.

Ronda Rousey is celebrated as a trailblazer, the first female champion in the male bastion of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. She got there by herself, with nothing more than the assistance of her mom and a few select others. When she enters the octagon Saturday night at Honda Center for UFC's first female fight - the main event against challenger Liz Carmouche - Rousey does so only after taking a series of boldly independent stances that wove together the fabric of this Santa Monica high school dropout.

PRETORIA, South Africa - Prosecutors on Wednesday unveiled what seemed damning testimony against Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius, who is accused of murdering his girlfriend. But as the day wore on, the defense savaged the state's case, portraying the investigation as bumbling and shoddy. Laying out what is likely to be the basis of their case, prosecutors said at Pistorius' bail hearing that a witness heard what sounded like a quarrel shortly before model Reeva Steenkamp was fatally shot the night of Feb. 13. Another neighbor heard a shot, a woman's scream, then more gunshots, they said.

Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle may be best known for "Trainspotting" and “Slumdog Millionaire,” but his globally upbeat opening ceremony for the 2012 London Olympics was named Theater Event of the Year on Sunday at London's audience-driven Whatsonstage.com awards . The lavish spectacle of British history and culture, "Isles of Wonder," was loosely based on Shakespeare's "The Tempest. " It beat out the Susan Boyle bio-musical, "I Dreamed a Dream” as well as an arena tour of "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "Globe to Globe's" season of 37 plays in 37 languages that was part of the World Shakespeare Festival.

Representatives of the International Ice Hockey Federation, the NHL and the NHL Players' Assn. ended two days of meetings about NHL players' participation in the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics with cordial comments and an understanding that they will talk again next week. IIHF President Rene Fasel and the organization's general secretary, Horst Lichtner, were in New York Thursday and Friday to discuss how the sides might resolve the issues that have divided them. The NHL and the union have been critical of policies that gave them little access to its players during the Games.

  Former Olympic shot put champion Udo Beyer has admitted to doping throughout his career, including when he won the gold medal at the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics. Beyer made the comments in the documentary "The Lone Wolf," which debuted at the Berlin Film Festival on Thursday. “I knew everything that was done with me. Things I did were my own decision," Beyer says in the film. "I gave myself the right to do it. There were things I refused and there were things I did. And there were no secret things.

Dozens of wrestling greats and their agitated fans gathered Thursday in Tehran to lament the elimination from the Olympics of the sport, which has a storied past in Iran. Olympic officials decided Tuesday to cut wrestling from the 2020 Games, jettisoning a staple that had been part of the international competition for more than a century. Backers of the sport will have a chance in May to try to get it restored, but chances are seen as slight. The decision stunned athletes and fans around the world.

The Special Olympics will have a significant economic benefit for Los Angeles, according to a study released Thursday. The games being held in the summer of 2015 will generate at least $415 million in economic activity for the county, according to the study by a research firm working for the Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board. The games are expected to draw more than 7,000 athletes and 500,000 spectators to the Los Angeles area, according to the Special Olympics website.