The U.S. men’s basketball team will play in a tournament with top-ranked Spain and Slovenia, possibly with Luka Doncic, in mid-August, two weeks before this summer’s FIBA World Cup.
The three nations make up a tournament in Málaga from Aug. 11-13 to mark the 100th anniversary of the Spanish basketball federation.
It should be a key test for the U.S., which won its fourth consecutive Olympic title in Tokyo, but lost an Olympic game for the first time since 2004 (to France in group play). The U.S. is expected to qualify for the World Cup next month.
At the last men’s World Cup in 2019, the U.S. lost twice and finished seventh overall, its worst major tournament result ever. That team had just two reigning NBA All-Stars and one player with Olympic experience.
New coach Steve Kerr will hope for a better turnout from the NBA’s best this summer for the World Cup co-hosted by the Philippines, Japan and Indonesia, a month before NBA preseason training camps.
This past November, the U.S. men dropped out of the No. 1 spot in FIBA’s world rankings for the first time since 2010. Spain, coming off a European title, displaced the U.S. by a slim margin. The U.S. beat Spain in the Tokyo Olympic quarterfinals.
Doncic led Slovenia to its first Olympic basketball berth in 2021. Slovenia, with a population of 2.1 million, became the smallest nation by current population to participate in an Olympic men’s basketball tournament since Estonia and Latvia in 1936.
The Slovenians beat Argentina and Spain in Olympic group play, then lost in the semifinals to France and the bronze-medal game to Australia.
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Quinn Dehlinger became the first American man to win a World Cup aerials event in nearly three years, doing so in his first time on any step of a World Cup podium in Le Relais, Canada, on Saturday.
Dehlinger, a 20-year-old from Cincinnati, was the highest-ranked American man last season to not make the Olympic team with a previous career-best World Cup finish of eighth.
On Saturday, he threw a double full-full-full in the super final to beat a field that included teammate Chris Lillis, the 2021 World silver medalist, and Swiss Noe Roth, the 2019 World bronze medalist.
“It honestly feels unbelievable, it’s still settling in,” Dehlinger said, according to U.S. Ski and Snowboard. “It is so rewarding to have all the hard work and training finally pay off, and it paid off big. I was in the mindset of doing what I need to do first, thinking about the beginning of the jump first and the rest will come.”
Lillis was the last American man to win an aerials World Cup in February 2020.
Oleksandr Abramenko, Ukraine’s top winter sports athlete who took gold and silver at the last two Olympics, sat out due to a minor knee ligament injury, according to Ukrainian media quoting a national team coach. Abramenko and the Ukrainian aerials team spent part of January training in Park City, Utah.
Four-time Olympian Ashley Caldwell took second in the women’s event for her first podium in two years. Caldwell has 17 career individual World Cup podiums, second among American women behind 1998 Olympic champion Nikki Stone‘s 32.
After another competition in Le Relais on Sunday, the aerials World Cup moves to Park City the first weekend of February (along with moguls) with coverage on Peacock and NBC Sports.
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American Travis Ganong appears headed into retirement with a podium in the biggest annual Alpine skiing race.
Ganong finished third in the famed Hahnenkamm downhill in snowy Kitzbuehel, Austria, on Saturday, one day after saying he plans to retire at the end of this season at age 34.
“My goal all season was to perform here. This is the biggest race,” said Ganong, who skied in front of Lindsey Vonn and Arnold Schwarzenegger. “If that was my last run down it, I am pretty happy. I love this hill. My goal is always to win here, but to podium would be pretty good, too.”
Aleksandr Aamodt Kilde won to become the first man with five World Cup downhill victories in one season since Austrian Stephan Eberharter in 2001-02.
The Norwegian fractured a bone in his right hand during Thursday’s training, then needed an acrobatic recovery in the race the next day to escape a fall near the end of his run, which he called “scary.”
Frenchman Johan Clarey finished second, 67 hundredths behind. At 42 years old, Clarey broke his own record as the oldest Alpine skier to make a World Cup podium, doing so for the second time this season.
Ganong was 95 hundredths back to become the first American man to make an Alpine World Cup podium since December 2021. In 2022, no U.S. man made a World Cup podium in a year for the first time since 1998.
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Ganong was seventh in the first of two Kitzbuehel downhills on Friday, after which he voiced retirement plans.
“I’m pretty ready to start doing some new things,” Ganong said, according to The Associated Press. ”It’s been 18 years on the U.S. team. I’m happy with what I’ve done. I’ve been among the best for a long time.”
The California native Ganong’s career highlight was taking downhill silver at the 2015 World Championships in Beaver Creek, Colorado. It remains the best finish in an Olympic or world championships downhill for a U.S. man since since Bode Miller and Daron Rahlves went one-two at the 2005 Worlds.
Ganong’s best Olympic finish was in his first Olympic race, fifth in the downhill at the 2014 Sochi Games. It is the best U.S. men’s downhill finish in the last three Olympics.
Ganong has two World Cup wins, later in 2014, then in January 2017. He then tore an ACL in a downhill crash in Bormio, Italy on Dec. 28, 2017, ruling him out of the 2018 Olympics and ending that season.
Ganong came back to make his fifth and, until Saturday, most recent World Cup podium in December 2021, then placed 12th and 20th in two Olympic races last year.
The last American to make a Kitzbuehel downhill podium was Miller in 2014. Rahlves is the only American to win a World Cup downhill in Kitzbuehel, doing so in 2003.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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