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Cruise Radio News provides travel stories as they are released from the cruise lines. Cruise Radio News is a service of Cruise Radio, a weekly podcast informing cruise vacationers about cruise ships, cruise ports, and money saving travel tips.

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Seaspan Celebrates 30 Years of Ship Repair in Victoria

• April 26, 2024

Seaspan is celebrating the 30th anniversary of its Victoria Shipyard on Canada’s West Coast. 

“Our workforce is the heart of our business and will always be the root of our success. Together, we stand on the values and culture that was built 30 years ago: we continue to focus on customer relationships, quality work, timely delivery, and continuous improvement. It’s a winning formula and how we have set the gold standard in ship repair on the West Coast,” said Tony Winter, general manager and vice president of Seaspan Victoria Shipyards.

“It is an honor to carry on the legacy of this shipyard and celebrate how far we have come — from our humble beginnings to one of Victoria’s major private sector employers.”

Operating from the Esquimalt Graving Dock, Seaspan has repaired 477 vessels in the drydock, including Royal Canadian Navy vessels, cruise ships, ferries, foreign navy vessels and other ships over the last three decades.

The shipyard is also part of the Royal Canadian Navy frigate and submarine maintenance programs, which provide maintenance on the Halifax-class frigates and in-service support for the Victoria-class submarines.

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Cruise ship industry is booming despite spate of high-seas deaths

I t’s full steam ahead for the cruise ship industry after Royal Caribbean hiked its full-year profit guidance on Thursday, saying it expects 60% growth from last year following record bookings during the first quarter.

Travelers are paying “record ticket prices,” according to Royal Caribbean — despite a recent spate of high-sea deaths and missing passengers reports, including a Florida 20-year-old who jumped off a Royal Caribbean cruise this month.

Soaring demand for vacations at sea has given cruise operators ample room to raise ticket prices as the industry looks to close the pricing gap between more expensive land-based holidays and give their profits a lift.

Royal Caribbean, which operates the Celebrity Cruises, now expects annual profits of between $10.70 and $10.90 per share, compared with its earlier forecast of $9.90 to $10.10.

“Our existing fleet along with our new ships continue to perform exceptionally well, highlighted by the market response to the launch of Icon of the Seas,” CEO Jason Liberty said.

Royal Caribbean’s shares — which have spiked 126% in the past year, were up 2% on Thursday morning, to $139.32.

“I remember owning the stock in 2022 and every client was giving me grief about it,” said Peter Ahluwalia, manager at Belinvest Global Equity Fund that holds Royal Caribbean stocks and chief investment officer at Swiss Partners Group. “We’re turning almost 45% return on equity at the moment, which is quite incredible.”

Overall, the industry which was among the hardest hit during the pandemic, is expected to grow to 39.4 million passengers in 2027 from 31.7 million last year, according to Statista.

The surge in demand comes amid major publicity blows from incidents at sea involving passengers who have gone missing, including the Florida man who jumped overboard on April 4 in front of his brother and father after a night of drinking.

Last December, a 41-year-old Royal Caribbean passenger went overboard on a cruise to the Bahamas. That followed an incident last August involving a 64 year-old woman sailing from Singapore to Malaysia on Royal Caribbean who is presumed to have jumped to her death .

On average, 19 people go overboard on cruise ships every year — and of those, only about four are rescued, according to a 2020 study commissioned by the industry trade group Cruise Lines International Association.

NT government unveils new saltwater crocodile management plan, stops short of mass culls

On the murky waters of the Adelaide River, saltwater crocodile cruise operator Tony Blums has watched the rise of the iconic but deadly species over the past four decades.

WARNING: This story contains the name of an Aboriginal man who has died, used as per the wishes of his family.

"At the present time, we now have a situation where every 50 to 100 metres, we've got a crocodile pretty much over two metres in length," Mr Blums said.

His observation isn't outlandish.

Since saltwater crocs were protected from mass culls and hunting in the Northern Territory in 1971, the species has boomed from 3,000 to an estimated population of 100,000.

Now, in a bid to rein in the threat of saltwater crocodiles to human safety, the ABC can reveal hundreds more are set to be removed from Top End waterways every year.

The Northern Territory government will allow 1,200 crocs to be removed annually, a figure being unveiled in its newly finalised 10-year crocodile management plan.

The new quota is a substantial increase from the previous figure of 300, but stops short of a widespread cull of the species, a possibility put out to public debate earlier this year.

The decision comes less than a year after a 67-year-old tourist was bitten by a two metre saltwater crocodile at Wangi Falls – a popular tourist destination south of Darwin.

NT Environment Minister Kate Worden said the latest move "was about public safety".

"We want to be able to go to our national parks and know that there's waterholes that we can safely swim in," Ms Worden said.

"So that's what we will be doing, increasing that live harvest, taking out the juveniles, taking out some older crocodiles as well, to make sure that those public spaces are really safe."

The government is also making changes so more crocodile eggs can be taken from the wild.

"We've talked to scientists, we've talked to people in the industry," Ms Worden said.

"We've got scientific evidence to back up those decisions."

Plan to fuel remote crocodile economy

The new 10-year management plan also seeks an "increased focus" on working with traditional owners to help fuel the crocodile economy on Aboriginal land and sea country.

One of those who has long been calling for more involvement of Aboriginal landowners in crocodile management is Jida Gulpilil, son of the trailblazing Yolŋu actor David Gulpilil, who starred in landmark Australian films including Crocodile Dundee.

"People do want to live and prosper on their own homelands," Mr Gulpilil said.

"And what better way to be able to do that than as part of their land management and conservation efforts?"

Mr Gulpilil wants his business in north-east Arnhem Land, Gupulul Marayuwu Aboriginal Corporation, to be at the forefront of the new developments, including by allowing a quota of "high-end clients" into Arnhem Land to hunt for saltwater crocodiles.

"We are seeking the support and approval towards the sustainable use of saltwater crocodile live harvest commercially," he said.

"You have the potential to bring in high-paying clients to live harvest saltwater crocodiles around our community areas ... the opportunities there will be very rewarding."

Mr Gulpilil said it would be a vastly different model to so-called "safari hunting" but would allow permitted clients to take a trophy such as a skull or a skin of a crocodile pegged for removal.

"This is not Africa, this is Australia, we don't do safari," he said.

"We are reframing it to be more of a sustainable management system, [as] part of our land management and conservation efforts."

Ms Worden said the NT government is "open to those ideas."

"Whether it's trophy hunting or it's starting a small enterprise in a remote community, what we do want is to get Aboriginal people across the Northern Territory working," she said.

The crocodile industry is worth an estimated $25 million in the NT annually.

Experts 'shocked' over culling debate

Crocodile attack specialist Brandon Sideleau said while he doesn't "have any big problems" with the NT government's new live crocodile harvest quota, he had some reservations.

"I do have a problem if they're going to be removing exceptionally large animals, unless they're in an area that poses a serious danger to people," Mr Sideleau said.

"A lot of these crocodiles are iconic, they're very important to tourists … and they're also very ecologically important, they keep the other crocodiles in check."

Mr Sideleau was critical of the NT government's decision last year to reignite a public debate about culling the species, which he called "disappointing and irresponsible".

"We haven't had a fatal attack since 2018 – that's the longest we've gone without a fatal attack since the 1990s," Mr Sideleau said.

"That's significant, it means the [former] management plan really works, and I was very shocked."

NT crocodile management pioneer Grahame Webb said he also believed the culling debate was triggered for overtly political reasons.

"In this case we had one tourist bitten by a crocodile, and suddenly it became a political issue, with some of the politicians saying 'oh, there's too many crocodiles, we've gotta cull all the crocodiles'," Mr Webb said.

Ms Worden denied the recent culling debate was fuelled by politics.

"We have seen a big increase of crocodiles, saltwater crocodiles who are an apex predator and a risk to human safety," she said.

"You speak to anybody here … it's becoming an issue for people.

"So it's timely that as a government, we look at that, and see what's possible to make sure that we can decrease that risk."

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Inside the Olympic effort to clean up the River Seine — and why it may be spoiled by a rainy day

PARIS — Meandering down the Seine R iver , the light breeze, gentle current and the sun’s glistening rays weren’t the only things the three kayakers were hoping to catch on a warm spring day — they were also on the hunt for garbage. 

By attaching nylon stockings to the side of their kayaks, they scooped up even the smallest fragments of plastic, as well as the everyday detritus of life in the French capital that washes to the river’s surface every time it rains. The members of the Arc de Seine Kayak club then sent what they had collected to be tested for bacterial levels. 

“My kayak capsized this morning and I’m OK,” a laughing Paul Maakad told NBC News on Sunday, at the Pont de Sevres in central Paris. 

But while Maakad, 40, and his fellow boaters said they were not scared of getting into the river, with less than 100 days to go before the 2024 Paris Olympics , fears are growing that events like the marathon swim, the triathlon and the paratriathlon could be postponed or canceled because of high pollution levels, or that the flotilla-based opening ceremony could be affected.

Earlier this month, Tony Estanguet, the president of the Paris Organizing Committee, expressed confidence "that it will be possible to use the Seine,” but admitted that the swimming leg of the triathlon could be canceled if pollution levels are too high. "It’s what we want to avoid, of course,” he said .

His comments came days after a French charity warned that bacteria, including “pollution of fecal origin,” was far higher in the river than permitted. 

As part of an ambitious plan to open up the Seine to public swimmers by 2025 — after being illegal for 100 years because of dangerously high pollution levels — France has spent 1.4 billion euros ($1.5 billion) on altering and upgrading the city’s antiquated sewage system, which now includes a 13-million-gallon overflow tank called the Austerlitz Basin. 

But in August, the swim portion of the test marathon event was canceled because the river failed pollution tests.

As the starting gun to the Games approaches, Fluidion, one of the companies the city of Paris contracted to monitor bacteria in the water, exclusively shared its findings with NBC News. 

A sample of water collected by the Pont Alexander III bridge, in the city’s center, showed E. coli levels two-and-a-half times the level considered safe for swimming. 

But that in itself isn’t necessarily a concern for the Games themselves, according to Dan Angelescu , the CEO of Fluidion, a tech company that develops water testing products. 

“In the summer when there is a lot of sunlight, when the water flow, river flow rate is really low, and when there is no rain for several weeks, let’s say two or three weeks without rain, you can actually reach really good water quality conditions,” he said in an interview this month.

But he added that even a small rain event could make E. coli levels shoot up. 

“You may swim in very polluted water and nothing may happen to you, or you may swim and you may develop itches, or you may develop infections, or you may catch a strain of E. coli that may be pathogenic," he said. "Those aren’t very common, but they exist, and that could get you really sick.” 

But he cautioned that exposure to other pathogens associated with the presence of E. coli could lead to contracting a norovirus, diarrhea “or you could get certain diseases that can really kill you.”

In a bid to boost public confidence, French President Emmanuel Macron and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo have both promised to swim in the river to prove its cleanliness.

Pierre-Antoine Molina, a director of public policy in Paris, said he would follow suit. In an interview Monday, he said that water pollution in the river “has been gradually improving.”   

He added that the work to upgrade the city's sewage system had led to the modernization of wastewater treatment plants and an improvement in the network that separates wastewater and rainwater. 

“It’s an ancient city going back to Roman times, so inevitably that’s a big task,” he said, adding that a lot of buildings had been gone up after World War II “and the sewage system did not always cope.” 

Around 30 miles downstream from Paris, Edouard Combette, 50, showed no fear as he plunged headfirst into the storied waterway, which has inspired artists like the impressionist painter Claude Monet.   

“Life is good here,” he said after coming up for air, adding that he didn’t know whether the water was completely safe.  

“Don’t drink the water. You can swim, but don’t drink,” he said. “I haven’t heard of anyone dying or getting sick.”

Keir Simmons is chief international correspondent for NBC News, based in London.

A New Pacific Arsenal to Counter China

With missiles, submarines and alliances, the Biden administration has built a presence in the region to rein in Beijing’s expansionist goals.

By John Ismay ,  Edward Wong and Pablo Robles April 26, 2024

U.S. officials have long seen their country as a Pacific power, with troops and arsenals at a handful of bases in the region since just after World War II.

U.S. military or partner bases

But the Biden administration says that is no longer good enough to foil what it sees as the greatest threat to the democratic island of Taiwan — a Chinese invasion that could succeed within days.

The United States is sending the most advanced Tomahawk cruise missiles to Japan and has established a new kind of Marine Corps regiment on Okinawa that is designed to fight from small islands and destroy ships at sea.

The Pentagon has gained access to multiple airfields and naval bases in the Philippines , lessening the need for aircraft carriers that could be targeted by China’s long-range missiles and submarines in a time of war.

The Australian government hosts U.S. Marines in the north of the country, and one of three sites in the east will soon be the new home for advanced American-made attack submarines. The United States also has a new security agreement with Papua New Guinea.

Potential submarine bases

Xi Jinping, China’s leader, and other officials in Beijing have watched the U.S. moves with alarm. They call it an encirclement of their nation and say the United States is trying to constrain its main economic and military rival.

Since the start of his administration, President Biden has undertaken a strategy to expand American military access to bases in allied nations across the Asia-Pacific region and to deploy a range of new weapons systems there. He has also said the U.S. military would defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion.

On Wednesday, Mr. Biden signed a $95 billion supplemental military aid and spending bill that Congress had just passed and that includes $8.1 billion to counter China in the region. And Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken traveled to Shanghai and Beijing this week for meetings with Mr. Xi and other officials in which he raised China’s military activity in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, calling it “destabilizing.”

Mr. Xi told Mr. Blinken on Friday that the United States should not play a “zero-sum game” or “create small blocs.” He said that “while each side can have its friends and partners, it should not target, oppose or harm the other,” according to an official Chinese summary of the meeting.

Earlier in April, the leaders of the Philippines and Japan met with Mr. Biden at the White House for the first such summit among the three countries. They announced enhanced defense cooperation, including naval training and exercises, planned jointly and with other partners. Last year, the Biden administration forged a new three-way defense pact with Japan and South Korea.

President Biden held a trilateral meeting earlier this month with the leaders of Japan and the Philippines at the White House.

Yuri Gripas for The New York Times

“In 2023, we drove the most transformative year for U.S. force posture in the Indo-Pacific region in a generation,” Ely S. Ratner, the assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, said in a statement following an interview.

The main change, he said, is having American forces distributed in smaller, more mobile units across a wide arc of the region rather than being concentrated at large bases in northeast Asia. That is largely intended to counter China’s efforts to build up forces that can target aircraft carriers or U.S. military outposts on Okinawa or Guam.

These land forces, including a retrained and refitted U.S. Marine littoral regiment in Okinawa, will now have the ability to attack warships at sea.

For the first time, Japan’s military will receive up to 400 of their own Tomahawk cruise missiles — the newest versions of which can attack ships at sea as well as targets on land from over 1,150 miles away.

The Pentagon has also gained access rights for its troops at four additional bases in the Philippines that could eventually host U.S. warplanes and advanced mobile missile launchers, if Washington and Manila agree that offensive weaponry can be placed there.

The United States has bilateral mutual defense agreements with several allied nations in the region so that an attack on the assets of one nation could trigger a response from the other. Bolstering the U.S. troop presence on the soil of allied countries strengthens that notion of mutual defense.

In addition, the United States continues to send weapons and Green Beret trainers to Taiwan, a de facto independent island and the biggest flashpoint between the United States and China. Mr. Xi has said his nation must eventually take control of Taiwan, by force if necessary.

“We’ve deepened our alliances and partnerships abroad in ways that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago,” Kurt Campbell, the new deputy secretary of state, told reporters last year, when he was the top Asia policy official in the White House.

What Deters China?

Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu, said in an interview in Taipei that the strengthened alliances and evolving military force postures were critical to deterring China.

“We are very happy to see that many countries in this region are coming to the realization that they also have to be prepared for further expansions of the P.R.C.,” he said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

To some Chinese military strategists, the U.S. efforts are aimed at keeping China’s naval forces behind the “first island chain” — islands close to mainland Asia that run from Okinawa in Japan to Taiwan to the Philippines.

U.S. military assets along these islands could prevent Chinese warships from getting into the open Pacific waters farther east if conflict were to break out.

Leaders in China’s People’s Liberation Army also talk of establishing military dominance of the “second island chain” — which is farther out in the Pacific and includes Guam, Palau and West Papua.

First Island Chain

Second Island Chain

philippines

But several conservative critics of the administration’s policies argue that the United States should be keeping major arms for its own use and that it is not producing new ships and weapons systems quickly enough to deter China, which is rapidly growing its military .

Some American commanders acknowledge the United States needs to speed up ship production but say the Pentagon’s warfighting abilities in the region still outmatch China’s — and can improve quickly with the right political and budget commitments in Washington.

“We have actually grown our combat capability here in the Pacific over the last years,” Adm. Samuel J. Paparo Jr., the incoming commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said in an interview. “But our trajectory is still not a trajectory that matches our adversary. Our adversaries are building more capability and they’re building more warships — per year — than we are.”

Mr. Paparo said new American warships were still more capable than the ones China is building, and the U.S. military’s “total weight of fires” continued to outmatch that of the People’s Liberation Army, for now.

Warplanes on the flight deck of U.S.S. Carl Vinson, an aircraft carrier, during a joint U.S. and Japanese military exercise in the Philippine Sea in January.

Richard A. Brooks/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty , a Cold War-era arms control agreement between Washington and Moscow, prohibited land-based cruise or ballistic missiles with ranges between 311 miles and 3,420 miles. But after the Trump administration withdrew from the pact, the United States was able to develop and field a large number of small, mobile launchers for previously banned missiles around Asia.

Even with the deployment of new systems, the United States would still rely on its legacy assets in the region in the event of war: its bases in Guam, Japan and South Korea, and the troops and arms there.

All of the senior U.S. officials interviewed for this story say war with China is neither desirable nor inevitable — a view expressed publicly by Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III. But they also insist that a military buildup and bolstering alliances, along with diplomatic talks with China, are important elements of deterring potential future aggression by Beijing.

Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, told Mr. Blinken on Friday in Beijing that “the negative factors in the relationship are still increasing and building, and the relationship is facing all kinds of disruptions.” He warned the United States “not to interfere in China’s internal affairs, not to hold China’s development back, and not to step on China’s red lines and on China’s sovereignty, security and development interests.”

U.S. military or

partner bases

The new deterrent effort is twofold for American forces: increasing patrolling activities at sea and the capabilities of its troop levels ashore.

To the former, the Pentagon has announced that U.S. Navy warships will participate in more drills with their Japanese counterparts in the western Ryukyu Islands near Taiwan and with Filipino ships in the South China Sea, where the Chinese coast guard has harassed ships and installations controlled by the Philippines .

A swarm of Chinese militia and Coast Guard vessels chased a Philippine Coast Guard ship in the South China Sea last year.

Jes Aznar for The New York Times

To the latter, Marine Corps and Army units already in the Pacific have recently fielded medium- and long-range missiles mated to small, mobile trucks that would have been prohibited under the former treaty.

These trucks can be quickly lifted by Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft or larger cargo planes to new locations, or they can simply drive away to evade a Chinese counterattack. A new flotilla of U.S. Army watercraft being sent to the region could also be used to reposition troops and launchers from island to island.

In an interview last year with The New York Times, Gen. David H. Berger, then the Marine Corps’ top general, said the service had begun analyzing strategic choke points between islands where Chinese forces were likely to transit throughout the Pacific. He said the service had identified sites where Marine assault forces like the new Okinawa-based littoral regiment could launch attacks on Beijing’s warships using these new weapons.

Philippines

Partner bases

The Pentagon announced in February last year a new military base-sharing agreement with Manila, giving U.S. forces access to four sites in the Philippines for use in humanitarian missions, adding to the five sites previously opened to the Pentagon in 2014. Most of them are air bases with runways long enough to host heavy cargo planes.

Plotting their locations on a map shows the sites’ strategic value should the United States be called upon to defend their oldest treaty ally in the region , if the Philippines eventually agrees to allow the U.S. military to put combat troops and mobile missile systems there.

One, on the northern tip of Luzon Island, would give missile-launching trucks the ability to attack Chinese ships across the strait separating Philippines from Taiwan, while another site about 700 miles to the southwest would allow the U.S. to strike bases that China has built in the Spratly Islands nearby.

In 2023, the United States committed $100 million for “infrastructure investments” at the nine bases, with more funds expected this year.

The Pentagon has forged closer military ties with Australia and Papua New Guinea , extending America’s bulwark against potential attempts by the Chinese military at establishing dominance along the “second island chain.”

The Obama administration moved a number of littoral combat ships to Singapore and deployed a rotating force of Marines to Darwin, on Australia’s north coast, giving the Pentagon more assets that could respond as needed in the region.

Last year, the Biden administration greatly elevated its commitment to Australia, which is one of America’s most important non-NATO allies.

The U.S.S. North Carolina, a Virginia-class submarine, docking in Perth, Australia last year.

Tony Mcdonough/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A new multibillion dollar agreement called AUKUS — for Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States — will permanently transfer some of the U.S. Navy’s newest Virginia-class attack subs to Canberra . The location of the new bases for those subs has not been announced, but the first group of Australian sailors who will crew them graduated from nuclear power training in America in January.

These stealthy submarines, which can fire torpedoes and Tomahawk missiles, will potentially add to the number of threats Beijing faces in case of a regional war.

Just north of Australia, an agreement in August gave U.S. forces more access to Papua New Guinea for humanitarian missions and committed American tax dollars to update military facilities there.

To Admiral Paparo, this growing network of partnerships and security agreements across thousands of miles of the Pacific is a direct result of what he calls China’s “revanchist, revisionist and expansionist agenda” in the region that has directly threatened its neighbors.

“I do believe that the U.S. and our allies and partners are playing a stronger hand and that we would prevail in any fight that arose in the Western Pacific,” the admiral said.

“It’s a hand that I would not trade with our would-be adversaries, and yet we’re also never satisfied with the strength of that hand and always looking to improve it.”

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Takeaways from the 2024 Olympic wrestling trials: 13 athletes punch tickets to Paris

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — The U.S. wrestling team for the 2024 Paris Olympics is just about set.

After a grueling two days of competition at the Bryce Jordan Center on the campus of Penn State, 18 wrestlers emerged from the Olympic wrestling trials with a victory in their respective weight classes and styles. And in doing so, the vast majority of them − 13 of the 18 − officially punched their tickets to Paris later this summer. The other five will now represent Team USA and try to earn their spots at an Olympic qualifying tournament in May.

Many of the names who qualified Saturday will be familiar to casual Olympic fans, from Helen Maroulis to Kyle Snyder and Kyle Dake . But others might be new, including a pair of dominant youngsters who bested their veteran opponents in the women's tournament.

Here are the key takeaways and things to know from the Olympic wrestling trials, with an eye toward Paris.

Kennedy Blades, Amit Elor leading next wave

Two of the most dominant performances of the trials came courtesy of two 20-year-old women who had never made an Olympic team: Kennedy Blades and Amit Elor.

Elor has taken the global wrestling stage by storm, winning a combined eight world titles in various age divisions over the past three years. She looked in complete control in 6-0 and 2-1 wins over Forrest Molinari at 68 kilograms.

Perhaps the more surprising result came at 76 kg, where Blades upset reigning Olympic silver medalist Adeline Gray in convincing fashion, with an 11-6 victory in the opener followed by an 8-3 win to claim her spot on the Olympic team. Blades said it was a surreal moment, given their history; she said Gray actually coached her at her first trip to the Pan-American Games, when Blades was a teenager.

"Now we're both wrestling for an Olympic spot. It's awesome," Blades said. "This younger generation did look up to the older generation. Now as they start to probably retire and stuff, and we're catching up, they're just setting a great example for us."

While veterans Sarah Hildebrandt, Kayla Miracle and Helen Maroulis still give the U.S. women's Olympic team an experienced feel, they know more young talent is coming. Hildebrandt faced Audrey Jimenez, a high-schooler who won the Arizona boys' state wrestling championships earlier this year, in her weight class final, for example.

"It's just a really beautiful cycle," said Hildebrandt, 30. "You're seeing the depth of women's wrestling in the States grow."

Is this the end for Jordan Burroughs?

Burroughs, the six-time world champion and 2012 Olympic gold medalist, told multiple news outlets in stories published this month that he would retire either after the 2024 Paris Games or Olympic trials. But when Jason Nolf knocked him out of the 74-kilogram challenge tournament Friday night, Burroughs did not speak with reporters or otherwise confirm his decision. Nor did he leave his shoes on the mat − the universal wrestling sign for retirement − like fellow U.S. star J'den Cox had hours earlier.

While the official announcement might be pending, Burroughs likely knows he is at the end of the road. He has five children, including a two-month-old boy, Badge. And in a sport where 20-somethings usually reign, he's a few months shy of his 36th birthday and would be 40 by the time the 2028 Olympics roll around.

Kyle Snyder joins rare club

On a night where reigning gold medalist David Taylor's stunning loss drew headlines, Kyle Snyder managed to win comfortably over his opponent, Isaac Trumble. In fact, he didn't concede a point.

Still just 28, Snyder has been a consistent force at 97 kg, winning nine Olympic and world medals in that weight class since 2015. He will now be making his third trip to the Olympics, looking to add to the gold medal he won in Rio de Janeiro and the silver he won in Tokyo. According to USA Wrestling, he is just the 11th American wrestler to qualify for three Games.

"The first time you do it, you're real happy. Now it's almost just an expectation (I have) of myself," Snyder said. "And then the real fun starts."

Parris is heading to Paris

The heavyweight wrestler who will represent Team USA in Paris is none other than Mason Parris, the reigning world bronze medalist who recently wrapped up an outstanding collegiate career at Michigan.

He celebrated his back-to-back 7-0 wins over Hayden Zillmer by donning a "Parris to Paris" hat like his family. When asked where the hats came from, he said he had no clue. His parents just handed him one when he stepped off the mat.

"It's destiny, you know?" Parris said. "I'm 24 years old. 2024. Parris in Paris."

Seeds have advantage

The Olympic wrestling trials unfold in a bracket-style format, but in 14 of the 18 weight classes, at least one athlete got an automatic bye to the semifinals or finals − which appears to offer a huge advantage. The athletes with byes get to rest for most or all of the trials' first day. And they don't have to weigh in multiple times, relieving some of the pressure that cutting weight can bring.

At this year's trials, however, there was more parity than one would think. Five athletes worked their way up what's called the challenge tournament, then beat an athlete who had a bye − most notably Aaron Brooks, who beat Taylor.

"It's pros and cons to both," he said, when asked if wrestling in the challenge tournament helped him build momentum or provided any other advantage. "I wouldn't pick one. Just wherever you're at, use what you've got."

Still work to do

While a winner was crowned in every weight class, three Greco-Roman athletes and two in men's freestyle have another step to take. They'll have to compete at a last-chance Olympic qualifying tournament in Istanbul, Turkey from May 9-12, when the last slots in the Paris 2024 field will be at stake.

Spencer Lee, who beat defending Olympic bronze medalist Thomas Gilman in his final Saturday, views the event as another opportunity to build international experience.

"I see it as a blessing," he said, "and I'll get ready for the Olympics after I go win that tournament."

Complete Olympic wrestling trials results

• *57 kg:  Spencer Lee def. Thomas Gilman
• *65 kg:  Zain Retherford def. Nick Lee
• 74 kg:  Kyle Dake def. Jason Nolf
• 86 kg:  Aaron Brooks def. David Taylor
• 97 kg:  Kyle Snyder def. Isaac Trumble
• 125 kg:  Mason Parris def. Hayden Zillmer

Women's freestyle

• 50 kg:  Sarah Hildebrandt def. Audrey Jimenez
• 53 kg:  Dominique Parrish def. Haley Augello
• 57 kg:  Helen Maroulis def. Jacarra Winchester
• 62 kg:  Kayla Miracle def. Macey Kilty
• 68 kg:  Amit Elor def. Forrest Molinari
• 76 kg:  Kennedy Blades def. Adeline Gray

Greco-Roman

• *60 kg:  Dalton Roberts def. Ildar Hafizov
• *67 kg:  Ellis Coleman def. Alejandro Sancho
• *77 kg:  Kamal Bey def. Aliaksandr Kikinou
• 87 kg:  Payton Jacobson def. Spencer Woods
• 97 kg:  Josef Rau def. Alan Vera
• 130 kg:  Adam Coon def. Cohlton Schultz

Contact Tom Schad at [email protected] or on social media @Tom_Schad .