Gymnast Kurt Thomas dies at 64 A cloak of secrecy for Man City’s challenge
Kurt Thomas, the first U.S. male gymnast to win a world championship gold medal, has died. He was 64.
Thomas' family said he died Friday. He had a stroke May 24, caused by a tear of the basilar artery in the brain stem.
“Yesterday, I lost my universe, my best friend and my soulmate of 24 years. Kurt lived his life to the extreme, and I will be forever honored to be his wife,” wife Beckie Thomas told Int. Gymnast Magazine.
After competing in the 1976 Montreal Olympics, Thomas won the floor exercise in the 1978 world championships in Strasbourg, France, for the first U.S. men's title. In the 1979 worlds in Fort Worth, Texas, he successfully defended the floor exercise title and won the horizontal bar.
Thomas lost a chance for Olympic gold when the United States boycotted the 1980 Olympics. He then turned professional, starred in the 1985 movie “Gymkata” and worked as a television commentator. He and Beckie owned and ran Kurt Thomas Gymnastics in Frisco, Texas.
Thomas starred at Indiana State, winning five NCAA titles and leading the Sycamores to the 1977 team crown.
Geneva — A rare level of secrecy cloaks the court case opening Monday to decide if Manchester City will stay banned from European competition for two seasons.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport has scheduled three days at an undisclosed location for an appeal hearing by video conference link connecting lawyers in Switzerland and England.
The Lausanne-based court said on Friday both City and UEFA requested confidentiality for the case. Neither party commented to The Associated Press.
The identities of the three CAS judges — selected by each side and the court — have also been protected in an intensely scrutinized legal fight.
The allegations include that City, owned by Abu Dhabi's royal family, misled UEFA over several years to comply with financial integrity rules for clubs.
The stakes are high in a case that provokes the tribal loyalties of club soccer and the distrust some fans have for sports ruling bodies.
If City's appeal fails, it faces losing hundreds of millions of dollars in UEFA prize money and some star players during a two-year exile from world soccer's most prized club competition.
Defeat for UEFA would undermine the Financial Fair Play (FFP) policy it says helps stabilize the soccer economy across 55 member nations.
Whatever the judges decide, City is still a contender to win this season's Champions League.
The CAS panel's verdict is expected before the round of 16 resumes in August, five months after UEFA paused games due to the coronavirus pandemic.
City was punished in February for "serious breaches" of UEFA's FFP rules monitoring club finances and failing to cooperate with investigators.
The investigation was opened by UEFA-appointed experts after leaked club documents were reported in German magazine Der Spiegel in November 2018.
The published evidence appeared to show City deceived UEFA by overstating sponsorship deals from 201216 and hid the source of revenue linked to state-backed companies in Abu Dhabi.