RIO DE JANEIRO -- British Open champion Henrik Stenson is close enough to think about adding an Olympic gold medal to his silver claret jug.He just took a long and wild route to get himself into contention on Friday.Marcus Fraser of Australia got off to a quick start, stretched his lead to four shots at one point, and wound up with a 2-under 69 for the 36-hole lead in the first Olympic golf competition since 1904. He had a one-shot lead over Thomas Pieters of Belgium, a former NCAA champion who closed with three straight birdies.Still, it was the sight of Stenson on the leaderboard that was hard to ignore.Only a month ago, the 40-year-old Swede won his first major and got his name on the claret jug at Royal Troon with the lowest score in major championship history. On Friday, he had a 68 to go into the weekend at Olympic Golf Course just two shots behind and in the final group.But this was hardly a masterpiece.In the wind and a hard rain, Stenson had to hit 4-wood to reach the green on the second hole and made a 60-foot birdie putt. He hit into the water on the next hole and still had a full 4-wood just to reach the front part of the green. Stenson made a par putt from 108 feet.Youre just standing there, praying for a two-putt bogey. Before I know it, it found the bottom of the cup, Stenson said. Thats the longest putt Ive made in my career. First of all, its hard to get a putt that long on any green in the world.He followed by duffing a tee shot and making bogey, and it was a relief to play what he called ordinary golf until another wild finish.Stenson had a three-putt bogey, followed by two birdies, and then a tee shot he missed so badly that it came up 30 yards short and into a bunker for a bogey on the par-3 17th. He finished his round with a delicate pitch from a drop area, but only after his caddie had to ask Brazilian fans in the bleachers around the 18th green to move 20 feet because their shadows were dancing around his golf ball.Three-under is not a bad score out there, especially not with that first five or six holes in those conditions, Stenson said. All in all, happy with that. I didnt play as solid as I did yesterday, but were still in the race and still in good position halfway through the tournament.Golf hasnt been part of the Games in 112 years, so none of these players grew up dreaming about an Olympic medal. For someone like Stenson, the highest-ranked player in the 60-man field, his current results are like getting through the preliminary heats in a traditional Olympic sport.Then again, not even he knows what to expect out of his game. No other Olympic sport has so many contenders.Its not like some of the other sports where if you jump a certain distance or swim at a certain time, you can pretty much figure out who is going to win and finish second and third, Stenson said earlier this week. Ours is a bit more down to the form for the week and on any given day.At the halfway point, Olympic golf was starting to take shape.Fraser was at 10-under 132 -- another day, another Olympic record. Of course, given how long the sport has been absent from the Games, new marks are being set every day. The Australian caught only a little of the nasty weather, and it didnt last long before the sun came out. Fraser built a four-shot lead before dropping two shots, including the reachable par-4 16th, where it took him two chips to reach the green.Playing with Stenson on Saturday could be intimidating, through Fraser saw it differently.Any time you play with Stenson on the weekend, you know youre doing something right.Pieters made up a lot of ground in a hurry by driving just through the green on the 16th for a two-putt birdie from 75 feet, holing a 15-foot birdie on the 17th and then two-putting from just off the green on the par-5 18th.Justin Rose of Britain and Gregory Bourdy of France each shot 69 and were four shots behind.The Americans, the only country with four players, were still lingering. Matt Kuchar had a 70 and was seven shots behind, following by Bubba Watson (67) at 2-under 140 and Patrick Reed (69) nine shots back.Rickie Fowler was still near the bottom. Even with actor Matthew McConaughey following along, Fowler made three bogeys on the back nine and had to settle for a 71, leaving him 14 shots out of the lead. Barring a low round Saturday, he likely will leave Rio with plenty of selfies, but no medals. Nike Shoes Outlet China . LOUIS -- Heading into the final stretch of the season, the issues for the Chicago Bears banged-up defence only seem to be getting worse. Buy Nike Shoes China . Here are his mid-season NBA awards. MVP: (KEVIN DURANT-Thunder) - Has been sensational this season and more importantly, the most consistent player in the league. Considering that his team has been without star guard Russell Westbrook and with the free agent departure of sharpshooter Kevin Martin, hes had to carry the majority of the load to not only keep his team afloat but more importantly, at an elite level. http://www.chinashoesnike.com/ . He says so-called TRT is only one problem and he wants to go even further than the ban. "Its about time," St-Pierre told reporters at a promotional event in Montreal on Friday. "I think its a good thing. Cheap Nike Shoes Sale . A forerunning sled crashed into the worker Thursday at the Sanki Sliding Center. The unidentified worker broke both legs and was airlifted to a nearby hospital. Nike Shoes China Wholesale .com) - Manchester City midfielder David Silva is expected to miss the next four weeks because of a calf problem. As the world turns its attention to the Olympics in Rio, The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida released the 2016 International Sports Report Card on Women in Leadership Roles. The report highlights the lack of representation of women in leadership roles and is a startling indictment of the current system. It should serve as a call to action to change the way we run our sports internationally.The results are a striking reflection of an exclusive mens club that runs international federations affiliated with the Olympics as well as their related regional zone confederations and national federations. All received grades of F in the report card. The International Olympic Committee itself received a D+.I have been writing racial and gender report cards on the NBA, NFL, WNBA, Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer and college sports since the late 1980s. Not one of those entities has ever received an overall combined grade of F. I consider a grade of C to be poor, and the NFL, MLB, MLS and college sports have gotten Cs for both race and gender over the years. In fact, the NFL, MLB and college sports got?C-pluses in the most recent report for gender hiring practices. But in more than 25 years, with more than 100 reports published, none ever received an overall combined grade of F. There had been only two D-pluses?... until today. That is how badly international sport fared when we evaluated the level of women in leadership roles.Although the hierarchy of international sport has been overwhelmingly conservative and elitist over the years, the Olympics have spawned some powerful moments for diversity and inclusion. Jesse Owens lit up the victory stand with his amazing athletic feats in the face of Adolf Hitlers planned 1936 showcase of Aryan superiority in Berlin. In spite of resistance from the IOC itself, the sports boycott of apartheid forced South Africa out of the Games starting in 1964 in Tokyo. The Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina held the distinction of not just the most Olympic medals won by any female athlete but the most won by any?athlete in Olympic history. Latynina held the record for 48 years, until Michael Phelps broke her record in 2012. Finally, at the Games in Mexico City in 1968, Tommie Smith and John Carlos shook up America on the victory stand with their stunning, silent scream about racism in the United States.Knowing the possibilities of using the power of sport to affect change, I readily agreed to undertake what became the International Sports Report Card on Women in Leadership Roles when I was approached by Val Ackerman, the first WNBA president and current commissioner of the Big East Conference. In October of last year, she started talking to me about how outrageous it was that women have such poor representation in leadership positions in international sport. The results are in the report released today.The report, researched by co-authors Erin Davison, Rodrigo Quirarte, and Caryn Grant, examined more than 8,500 leadership positions. Some of the notable findings include shockingly low numbers for women in leadership roles: ? 5.7 percent of International Federation presidents ? 12.2 percent of vice presidents ? 13.1 percent of executive committee members ? 24.4 percent of members of the IOCAlthough these numbers are better than those of the IFs, the IOC must set a higher standard for the International Federations to follow. It was good to learn that Angela Ruggiero was elected to head the IOCs Athletes Commission and became a member of the IOC Executive Board. She joined Anita DeFrantz as the second American woman on the Board.The United States Olympic Committee comes closest to showing a commitment to gender equality, with women representing 31.0 percent of governance roles. Even so, when compared to data from previous TIDES reports, that is less than the percentage of women in professional roles in the league offices of the NBA, MLB, MLS and WNBA and at the NCAA headquarters.There is a stark contrast between the participation numbers and the leadership numbers of women in the Olympic Games. As cited in the report, the 2012 Summer Olympics in London were the first in history to include a woman from each country. The Olympics in Rio are predicted to have 45 percent female participation.dddddddddddd If that holds, that would be the highest female athlete participation to date. This year, women athletes will not only outnumber male athletes on Team USA, as they did in London, but they will also set a new Olympic record as the largest number of women participating for any nation.Diversity and inclusion are moral imperatives, but they are also now viewed as business imperatives. They become a sports business imperative in some obvious ways. When we do the Racial and Gender Report Cards, the best grades for diversity in sports have consistently come from the NBA, in which senior leadership at the league office has been diverse since we began doing report cards. The worst grades for gender have consistently come from the National Football League and Major League Baseball.When the Ray Rice story began to break, the public relations nightmare for the NFL kept getting worse. Had there been women in senior leadership positions to advise the commissioner, they might have been able to chart a different course for the league to become a leader by taking a strong stand against domestic violence. The NFL could have said something like: Domestic violence is a huge problem of men in the United States. While 54 NFL players were accused of domestic violence since 2006, when Roger Goodell became Commissioner, during that period until the Ray Rice incident, 11,700,000 women were battered. It is an American problem -- not just an NFL problem. We are going to work with organizations to stop domestic violence.The NFL did appoint several senior women, who eventually helped guide the league to take such a position, but by the time this happened, so much damage had already been done.In contrast, when the Donald Sterling tape leaked late on a Friday night, Adam Silver, the relatively new NBA commissioner, had diverse senior leadership at the NBA with whom he could consult. Five days later, he took the podium and said there is no place for racism in the NBA and Sterling would be banned from the league. I consider that the single most important statement ever made by any commissioner in a league office. Diversity and inclusion helped the NBA, and a lack thereof greatly hurt the NFL.Ackerman summed it up perfectly: This marginalization is short-sighted and at odds with the ideals of inclusiveness the sports world increasingly holds dear. Across sports, there is no shortage of areas where more womens voices (and votes) would enrich dialogue, improve decision-making and ensure that sports remain in step with the times. Hopefully, sports leaders will heed Dr. Lapchicks call and shake off their lethargy, acknowledge fast-moving social currents and initiate the reforms needed to give women the clout they deserve.Anita DeFrantz, considered by many as the most influential woman in international sport, commented, Good governance demands that women and men share the responsibility of decision-making at board levels. International Sports governance is far behind the standard as evidenced by the 2016 International Sports Report Card on Women in Leadership Roles. Thank you for this remarkable tool so we can assess the movement of international sport to good governance!Billie Jean King, who has perhaps done more than anyone to push for equality for women in sport, noted that, The Lapchick report card on the lack of women in leadership roles in international sport is an accurate picture of where we are today and reinforces that our international and national federations need to bring more women in leadership roles and bring about transformational change in the way we manage and lead in sports.Richard E. Lapchick is the Chair of the DeVos Sport Business Management Graduate Program in the College of Business Administration at the University of Central Florida. Lapchick also directs UCFs Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, is the author of 16 books and the annual Racial and Gender Report Card, and is the President of the National Consortium for Academics and Sport. He is as a regular commentator on issues of diversity in sport for ESPN.com. Follow him on Twitter @RichardLapchick. ' ' '