Rot at the core threatens future of Olympics

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Rot at the core threatens future of Olympics

Sixteen years ago, when the Olympics were beset by leadership corruption, ethical laxity and doping, my perspicacious colleague Jere Longman of the New York Times suggested the possibility of the Games’ crumbling under the weight of rotten moral underpinnings.

“Future drug and corruption scandals seem inevitable. Preparations for the 2004 Summer Games in Athens remain precarious. The Olympic Games are as decayed as a bad tooth, perhaps facing permanent extraction sometime in the future,” Longman wrote in a May 17, 2000 Times story headlined, “Lack of I.O.C. Ethics Is Business as Usual.”

The Olympics may still be standing, but the rot has gotten so much worse in the past two years that it no longer seems a stretch to envision their demise.

Such a vision may be peculiar to the United States, where the much-trumpeted notions of an Olympic movement with Olympic ideals have no traction, where the coverage of Olympic-related events (and the Olympics themselves) in major media is continually shrinking, where the presence of more than one major pro sport and of all-but-pro college sports adds competition for attention that the Olympics face nowhere else in the world.

How can one have ideals when the leaders of the International Olympic Committee, notably its president, Thomas Bach, have mastered the art of moral equivocation and of what I call Candide-ism: saying all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds?

I am moved to this doom saying by events of the last few weeks involving Olympic costs and doping, the latter now known to be so pervasive as to have invalidated dozens of results from the 2008 and 2012 Summer Games.

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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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Why Two Runners, One From The U.S., One from New Zealand, Deserve A Gold Medal For Their Humanity

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“In the Olympic preoccupation with winners and losers, in the mania for counting medals, it is easy to forget what really constitutes triumph.”

I wrote that in 1992, as the first sentence in my story about British runner Derek Redmond’s “excruciating and exhilarating” demonstration of the human spirit as he staggered to a last-place finish with a torn hamstring in the Olympic 400-meter final.

Those words came back to me immediately as I saw and heard and read about what befell U.S. runner Abbey D’Agostino and New Zealand runner Nikki Hamblin – and, more importantly, how they reacted to it – in a Tuesday morning heat of the 5,000-meter in Rio.

D’Agostino, like Redmond, will win no medal. USA Track & Field announced Wednesday that the serious knee injuries she sustained after a tangle with Hamblin will keep D’Agostino from running Friday’s final.

What D’Agostino has won is more important. She has gained the respect of the whole world because, at likely the saddest moment of her athletic career, she looked beyond herself.

And so did Hamblin.

Each deserves a gold medal for her humanity – and selfnessness that put a golden glow on humanity at large.

FOR MY WHOLE STORY ON TEAMUSA.ORG, CLICK HERE

"Not Superwoman But Pretty Super:" Ledecky Gets Silver Surprise In 400 Free Relay

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RIO DE JANEIRO - Four years ago this week, Great Britain’s Rebecca Adlington had a first-hand view of the moment that surprisingly was the start of the Katie Ledecky era in women’s swimming.
 
Saturday afternoon, on the opening day of swimming at the 2016 Olympics, Adlington had a different vantage point on another Ledecky swim that seemed equally surprising.
 
A near-repeat performance Saturday night brought Ledecky a silver medal in the 4x100-meter freestyle, an event in which there had been no guarantee she would compete.
 
“She’s just amazing,” Adlington said as she stood on a bus for the brief ride between the pool and the Main Press Center.

FOR MY WHOLE STORY ON TEAMUSA.COM, CLICK HERE

Wagner, Gold resigned to morning skating at 2018 Olympics

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Wagner, Gold resigned to morning skating at 2018 Olympics

BOSTON - The news that figure skating competition would begin at 10 a.m. at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea left the two leading U.S. women singles skaters resigned to deal with situation, although Ashley Wagner adopted that attitude more grudgingly than 2014 Olympic teammate Gracie Gold.

“This is all fresh to me, and right now I’m annoyed, because it’s a difficult thing to ask the skaters to do,” Wagner said after her Tuesday evening practice before the World Figure Skating Championships that begin Wednesday at TD Garden.

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