PARIS (AP) — Sarah Ourahmoune, a silver medalist at the 2016 Olympic Games, has withdrawn her bid to become president of the French boxing federation, saying she has been the target of vicious racist and sexist attacks.
In an open letter published this week, Ourahmoune said she found herself at the receiving end of insults that went beyond anything she could have imagined in the buildup to next month's election.
“Words like ‘the token Arab’, ‘the federation’s cleaning lady’, or even ‘the (expletive) of...’,” she wrote on social media. "Not to mention anonymous messages of unprecedented and deeply shocking violence."
Ourahmoune had been campaigning on a joint bid alongside the current president, Dominique Nato.
Another female boxer, the 2016 Olympic lightweight champion Estelle Mossely, is also a candidate.
“I never thought I’d be attacked like this because of my origins or simply because I’m a woman,” Ourahmoune said.
“My decision to step down has cost me enormously, because it seems to contradict everything I stand for on a daily basis: courage, resilience, the ability to fight in hostile environments, to push back the limits of what is possible, and to defend equality, diversity and gender balance.”
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FILE -France's Sarah Ourahmoune, left, fights Kazakhstan's Zhaina Shekerbekova during a women's flyweight 51-kg quarterfinals boxing match at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Aug. 16, 2016. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — An arbitrator upheld five-year suspensions of the chief executives of Bad Bunny’s sports representation firm for making improper inducements to players and cut the ban of the company's only certified baseball agent to three years.
Ruth M. Moscovitch issued the ruling Oct. 30 in a case involving Noah Assad, Jonathan Miranda and William Arroyo of Rimas Sports. The ruling become public Tuesday when the Major League Baseball Players Association filed a petition to confirm the 80-page decision in New York Supreme Court in Manhattan.
The union issued a notice of discipline on April 10 revoking Arroyo's agent certification and denying certification to Assad and Miranda, citing a $200,000 interest-free loan and a $19,500 gift. It barred them from reapplying for five years and prohibited certified agents from associating with any of the three or their affiliated companies. Assad, Miranda and Arroyo then appealed the decision, and Moscovitch was jointly appointed as the arbitrator on June 17.
Moscovitch said the union presented unchallenged evidence of “use of non-certified personnel to talk with and recruit players; use of uncertified staff to negotiate terms of players’ employment; giving things of value — concert tickets, gifts, money — to non-client players; providing loans, money, or other things of value to non-clients as inducements; providing or facilitating loans without seeking prior approval or reporting the loans.”
“I find MLBPA has met its burden to prove the alleged violations of regulations with substantial evidence on the record as a whole,” she wrote. “There can be no doubt that these are serious violations, both in the number of violations and the range of misconduct. As MLBPA executive director Anthony Clark testified, he has never seen so many violations of so many different regulations over a significant period of time.”
María de Lourdes Martínez, a spokeswoman for Rimas Sports, said she was checking to see whether the company had any comment on the decision. Arroyo did not immediately respond to a text message seeking comment.
Moscovitch held four in-person hearings from Sept. 30 to Oct. 7 and three on video from Oct. 10-16.
“While these kinds of gifts are standard in the entertainment business, under the MLBPA regulations, agents and agencies simply are not permitted to give them to non-clients,” she said.
Arroyo's clients included Mets catcher Francisco Alvarez and teammate Ronny Mauricio.
“While it is true, as MLBPA alleges, that Mr. Arroyo violated the rules by not supervising uncertified personnel as they recruited players, he was put in that position by his employers,” Moscovitch wrote. “The regulations hold him vicariously liable for the actions of uncertified personnel at the agency. The reality is that he was put in an impossible position: the regulations impose on him supervisory authority over all of the uncertified operatives at Rimas, but in reality, he was their underling, with no authority over anyone.”
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FILE - Bad Bunny appears in the press room at the Oscars in Los Angeles on March 10, 2024. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)
