Athletes save the Olympics from their leaders' big lies

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Athletes save the Olympics from their leaders' big lies

Oh, how the International Olympic Committee must yearn for the good old days of 1999, when revelations of bribes for bid city votes led to the worst scandal in the hoary (or should that be whorey?) history of the IOC.

Because as bad as that was, 2016 was even worse.

That is a painful irony given that years with an Olympics usually leave enough good recollections to wipe the seamier ones from the public memory bank.

Not so in 2016, even if the underlying point of this column, as it has been in each of the 30 years for which I have given international sports awards, still is to celebrate the best athletes in sports for whom an Olympic gold medal is the ultimate prize.

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Jumping wizards make possibilities seem endless

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Jumping wizards make possibilities seem endless

After winning the Grand Prix Final for the fourth straight year, Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan was playing around during practice for the event's exhibition gala.

To a men's figure skater in 2016, this is what "playing around" means: He tried a quadruple salchow, followed by a half loop, followed by...another quad salchow.

Yes, he fell on the second salchow, but still: a quad-quad combination?

"He gets pretty excited/competitive on those practices," said Hanyu's coach, Brian Orser, in a text message. "I saw a quad axel once on one of those practices!"

Maybe the exclamation point is no longer even necessary in an era when the quad jumping progression has gone from arithmetic to exponential.

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Chen's jumping display has skating world buzzing

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Chen's jumping display has skating world buzzing

"Remarkable," said Tim Goebel, the first skater to land three quadruple jumps in a program.

"To master so many different takeoffs, that's where the hat comes off," said four-time world champion Kurt Browning, the first to land a quadruple jump in competition.

"Amazing. Amazing," said 1988 Olympic champion Brian Boitano, the first to land all six types of triple jumps in a competition.

"Welcome to the future," said 1984 Olympic champion Scott Hamilton.

"This is crazy...quite extroaordinary...staggering," British Eurosport's Simon Reed told his TV audience.

Such was the reaction from some of figure skating's most accomplished champions and a veteran commentator to what they had seen Nathan Chen do in the free skate at last week's Grand Prix Final in Marseille, France.

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Still no room at the top for U.S. singles skaters

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Still no room at the top for U.S. singles skaters

I left for a long-planned vacation in New Zealand just as the figure skating Grand Prix was starting.

By the time I returned, two weeks later than planned, the season was mostly over, and I had other immediate priorities than trying to catch up.

Now that I have had the chance to take a closer look in time for this week’s Grand Prix Finals – junior and senior - in Marseille, France, it’s plain that most of what happened was pretty predictable – and that I didn’t miss much.

*Led by Evgenia Medvedeva, the wondrous reigning world champion who just turned 17 but has added an air of maturity to her soulful expressiveness, Russians are dominating women’s skating more than ever, producing four of the six senior GPF qualifiers for the second time in three years and the top three spots in this season’s standings.  More tellingly, there have been six different Russian women in those two sets of four.

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In long term, radical change needed to reduce Olympic host burden

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In long term, radical change needed to reduce Olympic host burden

If the International Olympic Committee thought the bidding process changes in its Agenda 2020 reforms would end the negativity about being a host of the Summer or Winter Games, it has been sadly mistaken.

The frightening new financial projections about the cost of the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games and Rome’s withdrawal from the 2024 race on financial grounds make it clear the IOC still has a long way to go in convincing citizens of democracies that being a host of the ever-more-bloated Olympic Games is worth the time, money and hassle.

 The italicized passage above was the opening of my Friday column, which dealt with short- and long-term solutions to a mess so bad that six of the 10 official candidates to be host of the 2022 Winter Games and 2024 Summer Games withdrew after formalizing candidatures – and another, Boston, dropped out before filing its paperwork.

In the short term – for the 2024 vote coming next September – I borrowed an idea from my colleague Alan Abrahamson, who posited that the IOC should award the next two Summer Games at the same time, with Los Angeles getting 2024 and Paris 2028.

I suggested that the order makes no difference (click here for that column).  The important thing is doubling down will give the IOC more time to sort out its future.

The long-term answer?  Dramatic changes should be considered.

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