Peter Ueberroth was uncharacteristically understated when I gave him the chance to gloat in a phone conversation last week.

Ueberroth, the man who brought financial stability to the Olympics in 1984 (until recent host cities went wild) and enduring organizational stability to the U.S. Olympic Committee, simply refused to look back.

“I live in the present and future,” Ueberroth, 79, said from his farm in northern Idaho.

He could say, “I told you so,” now that one of his most criticized and roundly dismissed ideas (yes, I was among the critics) to promote the Olympics and Olympic athletes is about to be fully implemented in the United States.

The Saturday debut of NBC’s 24/7/365 “linear” Olympic Channel ("linear" is industry jargon for over-the-air and cable television) validates the actions Ueberroth took nearly a decade ago to create a similar network, no matter that the effort failed in part because of his headstrong approach to pushing it.

Once viewed as Ueberroth’s folly, guaranteed to suck money from USOC coffers, an Olympic Channel has become an integral part of Olympic marketing strategy.

I asked if he felt vindicated.  He parried the question.

News, followed by views - my takeaways from the International Olympic Committee’s Friday executive board decisions and IOC President Thomas Bach’s comments about them:

First, a summary of the decisions:

*The executive board recommended, as expected, the unprecedented idea of awarding the 2024 and 2028 Olympics at the same time.  That must be approved (rubber stamped?) by the full IOC membership at a July meeting that also will presumably approve a process to decide which of what were to be two 2024 finalists gets which one, even though it seems apparent it will be Paris 2024 and Los Angeles 2028.

*In an effort to make future bid campaigns (beginning with those for the 2026 Winter Olympics) less onerous both financially and time-wise, the board recommended cutting the bid campaign period from two years to one and having the IOC involved in selecting and working with bidders that have a chance to win the support of their citizens – local, regional and national.

*The IOC made substantial changes in the sports program of the 2020 Olympics, adding events (among them:  three-on-three basketball, BMX freestyle park, mixed gender relays in track and swimming) to make the Tokyo Summer Games program, in Bach's words,  “more youthful, more urban and (including) more women.”