Chances grow of two-for-one Summer Games (2024-28) deal

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Chances grow of two-for-one Summer Games (2024-28) deal

The chances have increased substantially for the hosts of both the 2024 and 2028 Summer Olympics to be named at the same time this September.

That was the takeaway both from an action the International Olympic Committee executive board took Friday and also the statements IOC President Thomas Bach made in a press conference after the meeting at the site of the 2018 Winter Olympics, Pyeongchang, South Korea.

In his first public comments directly on the possibility of a joint award to Los Angeles and Paris, the 2024 candidates, Bach made it clear the IOC would do well “to exploit a positive situation” of having “two excellent candidates from two major Olympic countries.”

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In Fredericks' case, IOC tries to extinguish yet another fire

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In Fredericks' case, IOC tries to extinguish yet another fire

Did Frankie Fredericks jump to do the right thing or was he pushed?

And should the four-time Olympic silver medalist sprinter and International Olympic Committee member from Namibia be allowed to return to his administrative positions in international sport, no matter the outcome of investigations by the IOC ethics committee and French law enforcement?

Those are the questions raised by Fredericks’ stepping down from major roles in the IOC and the international track federation after the French newspaper LeMonde reported last week financial ties between Fredericks and the sulfurous former IAAF marketing consultant Papa Massata Diack.

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On the defensive, IOC president plays alternative facts trump card

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On the defensive, IOC president plays alternative facts trump card

Funny what you will find while looking for something else.

I was searching the International Olympic Committee’s web site to check a reported fact about how much the IOC charges cities to bid for the Olympic Games when I came across the headlines pictured above on a story posted the day after the Sept. 15, 2015 deadline for 2024 Summer Games bids to be submitted.

Eighteen months later, that headline looks like an IOC version of something Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway would have explained away as “alternative facts.”

A rejection in a public referendum (Hamburg), fiscal priorities (Rome) and the threat of a referendum (Budapest) have reduced the competition to just two world-class cities (Los Angeles and Paris) and made a mockery of the IOC’s self-congratulatory headlines.

In an interview last week with the German magazine Stuttgarter Nachrichten, IOC President Thomas Bach blamed the dropouts on the “anti-establishment movements we have in many European countries.”

Or, alt facts.

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A tone deaf IOC won't hear what cities do: hosting the Olympics sounds like sour notes

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A tone deaf IOC won't hear what cities do: hosting the Olympics sounds like sour notes

How’s that Olympic Agenda 2020 thing working out, Mr. Bach?

All that hot air about reform and cost-cutting in both bidding for and staging the Games that filled a Monaco conference center in 2020, inflating a balloon of self-congratulations that has been leaking ever since?

“Like most people, I am sick and tired of hearing the mantra of Olympic Agenda 2020,” Canada’s Richard Pound said in an email.

Pound is the senior member of the current 95 in an International Olympic Committee presided over by Mr. Thomas Bach since September 2013.

Agenda 2020 was rushed to a vote in December 2014 after cities in five countries either dropped out of bidding for the 2022 Winter Olympics or, in one case, dropped even the idea of a bid after public opposition.  That left just the capitals of two authoritarian nations in a race Beijing won over Almaty, Kazakhstan, despite serious environmental and logistical issues related to having skiing events in a low-snow area miles away from the host city.

And, then Mr. Bach, it was barely six months after your IOC membership rubber-stamped Agenda 2020 that cities in the 2024 Summer Games race began laughing at an emperor who still had no clothes.

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Skating rings around his rivals, Nathan Chen's rise to the sport's elite has been meteoric

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Skating rings around his rivals, Nathan Chen's rise to the sport's elite has been meteoric

Perfect symbolic fit:  Five Olympic rings.  Five Nathan Chen free skate quads.  And Chen doing them on the rink where a year from now he will be a strong contender for an Olympic gold medal.

The improbability that I could now confidently make such a bold statement about Chen is, in keeping with the numerical theme, the first of five takeaways from what he did Friday and Sunday in winning the Four Continents Championships in Gangneung, South Korea.

1.  Few U.S. singles skaters have had as meteoric a rise as Nathan Chen.

Last December 8, a day before the free skate at the Grand Prix Final, the 17-year-old from Salt Lake City was a prodigiously talented young skater with no striking international success at the senior level.

Barely three months later, he has become the most striking figure skater in the world, with a real chance to win the title in his debut at the senior World Championships beginning March 28 in Helsinki, Finland.

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