Death of Mike Moran means Olympic world has lost his inventive mind, institutional memory, moral compass and ability to create trust

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Death of Mike Moran means Olympic world has lost his inventive mind, institutional memory, moral compass and ability to create trust

It was coming up on 1 a.m. on a Sunday in Lillehammer, Norway. The Opening Ceremony of the 1994 Winter Olympics had been over for about six hours, just about long enough for those of us who had covered the ceremony to thaw out.

It was a long day for most of the U.S. media, whose 24/7 focus for a month had been on two figure skaters, one of whom (Tonya Harding) already was implicated in a plot to injure the other (Nancy Kerrigan.) Four hours before the opening ceremony, Kerrigan gave her first press conference of the Games.

It was the last place on earth the media-shy Kerrigan wanted to be: facing more than 1,000 journalists and seemingly as many TV cameras from around the world. Many of us who knew Kerrigan by having covered her for several years were as curious about how she would handle this overwhelming situation as we were about what she might say.

Mike Moran made sure she got through it fine.

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U.S. Olympic CEO deserves credit for decision to take pay cut, but she and board still should be shown the door

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U.S. Olympic CEO deserves credit for decision to take pay cut, but she and board still should be shown the door

When it comes to tone-deafness and managerial ineptitude, I thought I had seen and heard it all in my nearly 40 years covering the leadership and operations of the U.S. Olympic Committee.

I should have known better.

I feel that way even though U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee chief Sarah Hirshland executive has, to her credit, agreed to take a voluntary pay cut of an unspecified amount from her $600,000 annual salary, as she revealed in a Friday statement to Globetrotting.

The USOC may have changed its name to the USOPC last July, but it has not changed the spots that have made its operations a confounding detriment to the athletes it is supposed to serve.

The USOPC bottomed out morally in its untenable decision to ask Congress for $200 million of the federal coronavirus stimulus bill funds, as first reported Wednesday by the Wall Street Journal.

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