It is March, and the Olympic Games are due to open in Tokyo on July 24, and that is why the International Olympic Committee keeps saying it doesn’t have to make a decision right now.
They have time.
Until they don’t.
Right now is not a don’t.
IOC president Thomas Bach at last week’s lighting of the Olympic flame torch relay in ancient Olympia, Greece // Getty Images
Because we are living in a time of enormous if not unprecedented uncertainty owing to the coronavirus, and human beings not only want but crave stability and certainty, and because, as well, the IOC is — this point has been made in this space a jillion times — the poster child for bad comms (comms being journalese for public relations), the IOC finds itself anew, or perhaps as ever, locked in the months before a Games in crisis management.
It’s pretty clear — nothing can be 100 percent certain — that cancellation is not an option. Take it from the IOC president, Thomas Bach, who told the New York Times in a Q&A published Thursday, “The cancellation is not on the agenda.”
Until, at least, it is. That is, cancellation. If it ever is. Which, Bach said, it’s not.
Postponement?
Bluntly, if the IOC is not considering all options, that’d be tantamount to professional malpractice.
You can read, and parse, Bach’s interview with the New York Times all you want. Bach, a gold-medal fencer, is a master at fencing with the press. He’s also a lawyer, and has been interviewed literally thousands of times. A piece of him must enjoy the small thrill of triumphing over almost all the journalists he encounters.
Bach can’t say — to reiterate, he cannot say publicly, no matter what the IOC might or might not be doing behind closed doors — that the organization might be considering later in 2020 or 2021 or 2022, or whatever, because to do so would be going Pandora.
Why? Because of the communique the IOC issued Tuesday, which said “any speculation at this moment would be counterproductive.” On that point: nothing has changed since Tuesday.
If you want to gain some real insight into the IOC’s strategic thinking and positioning, you need to read beyond the New York Times — and, for that matter, the Washington Post, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, ESPN and more — and you need to think beyond the boundaries of the United States. This is, after all, a global movement, and one of the mistakes almost everyone in the United States makes when it comes to the Olympics is to be way — and I mean way — too American-centric.
Go all U-S-A! U-S-A! if you want. Watch Miracle and scream when the Mike Eruzione character shoots the winning goal. Awesome.
Now:
The United States has never — for emphasis, never — staged the world swim championships. We have one Diamond League track and field meet each year, and it is in the remote outpost of Eugene, Oregon. Our four main professional sports leagues — football, basketball, baseball and hockey — all but sneer at the World Anti-Doping Code.
We are one country. There are 206 national Olympic committees in the Olympic space.
Yet we far too often not just think but act as if we are entitled to tell the rest of the world how things should be run?
Huh?
One of the best sources — if not consistently the best — for IOC thinking is its former longtime marketing director, Michael Payne. If you’re interested in the Olympics and you’re not following his Twitter account, you’re out of the loop.
Here is Payne, quoted in the Indian Express — published in Mumbai — in a story that led into his comments with a tweet from an Indian badminton player, Parupalli Kashyap, a London 2012 men’s quarterfinalist: “IOC is encouraging us to continue training … and how? Where? Ur joking right”
From the newspaper, which reached Payne at a known IOC decampment:
“There have been numerous different crises over the years that have always made the final countdown very challenging. Even if you take the most recent Games (Winter), two years ago in PyeongChang … three months before those Games, the political situation on the Korean Peninsula was very, very uncertain with President (Donald) Trump and Kim Jong Un talking of a nuclear war,” Payne told The Indian Express over [the] phone from Costa Brava, where he is in quarantine amid a growing number of cases in Spain. “They went on to be a very, very successful Winter Games.”
He added: “As evidenced from PyeongChang, we don’t suddenly react to whatever media or political pressure there is of the day. In this case, the Games are four months away … How foolish would you look if you would have suddenly called off the Games today and in two-and-a-half months’ time, the world is pulling through it.”
All of which leads to the two developments Friday here in the United States.
Amid athlete concerns about training and qualifying, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee held a conference call with reporters at which chair Susanne Lyons called for patience.
Referring to the IOC, Lyons said, “I think we would concur with them to say that we need more expert advice and information than we have today to make a decision. And we don’t have to make a decision. Our Games are not next week or two weeks from now. They’re four months from now. And I think a lot may change in that time period.”
The chief executive, Sarah Hirshland, said, “We’re also asking athletes, if it is available to them, in a safe environment, and in an appropriate environment, based on local health official guidance, to continue to do what they can, to prepare themselves for competition. We know that the training schedules of many of our athletes have been significantly disrupted, and as we are having to be creative and nimble and adapting our lives, we’re asking athletes to do the same but to put their safety first and foremost.”
A few hours later came a letter from USA Swimming asking the USOPC — which USA Swimming chief executive Tim Hinchey described as a “leader within the Olympic movement” — to “use its voice and speak up for the athletes” and “advocate for the postponement” of the Games, by a year, to 2021.
USA Swimming chief executive Tim Hinchey at the 2018 nationals // Getty Images
USOC chief executive Sarah Hirshland // Getty Images
Pause for a moment because it’s OK to consider that Hinchey and USA Swimming are 100 percent doing their thing, and appropriately, to lobby on behalf of their constituents, including their athletes and coaches. No less than Bob Bowman, Michael Phelps’ coach, is on-record as saying 2021.
But this is way beyond that.
USA Swimming is one national governing body, among 50, at one national Olympic committee, among 206. It’s swell that American swimmers win a bunch of medals at the Summer Games. But in this context — that and $3.25 gets you a latte at Starbucks, if under these circumstances the drive-through lane at Starbucks is even still open.
Doesn’t this suggest instead that the national governing body — USA Swimming — is really unhappy with the USOPC, and its paid leadership, and has gone public?
it is historically the case that the USOPC — traditionally the USOC — has hardly been a “leader within the Olympic movement” but, instead, has been at odds with the IOC over, hmm, almost everything, in particular finance and USOC shares of revenue.
It took years — literally, years — for this fence to be mended. How? Because during the 2010s the-then chair, Larry Probst, and -CEO, Scott Blackmun, spent (again) years going to meetings, making small talk, shaking hands, doing all that kind of stuff — in essence, rebuilding relationships and showing leadership. In 2015, to make a very long story short, after the Boston bid cratered (another absurd-on-its-face USOC decision), LA announced it was in for a Summer Olympics, and in 2017, LA got 2028, Paris getting 2024 — all those years of behind-the-scenes work, paired with the one-two of Casey Wasserman and LA mayor Eric Garcetti, paying off.
Then came, if you will, a variant of cancel culture — virtually every single member of the USOC who had dealt with the IOC for nearly a decade, gone. Probst. Blackmun. Marketing chief Lisa Baird. Sport director Alan Ashley. Communications professionals Patrick Sandusky and Mark Jones. And more.
Of course, there were bound to be repercussions, and now you see it.
Again, it is essential here to see beyond the borders of the United States and, critically, the echo chamber of American media.
Hirshland, for one, did not attend the 2020 IOC Session in January in Lausanne. Blackmun, except for late in his tenure, when he was ill, had faithfully attended such IOC assemblies. So, you ask, what’s the big deal with her not being there? It got noticed. What else got noticed? What immediately followed that January Session: the 2020 Youth Winter Olympic Games. Was Hirshland there? In particular, to greet, rally and cheer the American team?
You may not think much of the Youth Games, in particular the Winter version. But in the Olympic world, the Youth Games have become a very cool lab for the IOC to do some very cool stuff. And for the chief executive of the USOPC not to be there — say what? In Lausanne, of all places, IOC headquarters — hello?
So on what theory, now, is USOPC leadership some big voice within the Olympic movement?
Thus — back we go to the USA Swimming letter. Was it really about effecting change at the IOC? Or was it designed to effect a very different kind of change at the USOPC?
Candidly: why did Tim Hinchey call out Sarah Hirshland? Why — there’s no other way to read it, is there — this vote of no-confidence?
USA Swimming and the USOPC are both in Colorado Springs. This is the point they’re at — that the head of USA Swimming felt compelled to write such a letter, even though both executives work in such a small town, and they’re bound to run into each other?
If he felt so emboldened, what might other NGB executives be thinking?
Moreover, that USA Swimming letter was quick — very quick, indeed — to make its way into the press. That only happens for a reason. What reason could that be?
One thinks back to 2009, and Stephanie Streeter. Her tenure as chief executive at the USOC did not last long, undercut by lack of confidence from the NGBs.
Hmm.
Later Friday, the USOPC was itself quick to issue a rejoinder to the USA Swimming letter. It was attributed to both Hirshland and Lyons.
The body of the reply did not mention the words “USA Swimming” at all. Instead, at the end of a two-paragraph note that went over by-now familiar ground, it said there’s a forthcoming IOC executive board meeting, and the IOC is seeking input from all 206 NOCs “to determine the impacts on training,” adding:
“Rest assured we are making your concerns clearly known to them. The USOPC will be leaders in providing accurate advice and honest feedback, and be unfailing advocates of the athletes and their safety, and the necessity of a fair platform for the Games. You have our promise.”
If Sarah Hirshland is around to be making such promises. Maybe she will be. Or maybe it’s like IOC assertions about a cancellation. She’s there. Until she’s not.