In June 2017, Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee president, held a meeting — tumultuous and all but disastrous — at the White House with Donald Trump, 45th president of the United States.
Details of the meeting, held as the IOC was working its way toward what would be an unprecedented double allocation that September of the Summer Games, Paris for 2024 and Los Angeles for 2028, have remained tightly held. Neither the IOC nor Trump have ever issued a formal statement on the matter. Trump, who posted thousands of times to Twitter before the service banned him permanently on Friday, said nary a word on the site about this particular meeting.
After the meeting broke up that June afternoon, it can be revealed, Bach turned to his mobile phone. Multiple sources confirm he said these words: “Pray for our world.”
Wednesday’s insurrection in Washington marked the first occupation of the United States Capitol since British troops set the building afire during the War of 1812, a Trump-incited rampage that led to the deaths of five people, including a police officer and a woman who stormed the building. It means two things with immediate and profound import for the American presence in the Olympic scene:
So much for American exceptionalism.
So much — and for a very long time — for the notion of the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee, or any agency or entity affiliated with it or seen to be related to it, including but not limited to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, wielding any sort of significant influence in the Olympic world.
Bluntly, it is inconceivable — frustrating, maddening, an absence of leadership, all that and more — that the USOPC has not, and in the strongest terms, condemned the insurrection.
Outside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, January 6 // Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images
Inside: the Confederate flag being paraded around the U.S. Capitol halls // Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
Elsewhere inside the Capitol on January 6 — these Trump supporters include Jake Angeli, center, a QAnon supporter known for his painted face and horned hat // Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
The USOPC is supposed to represent the best of us as a nation. If the leadership of the USOPC can’t, amid this moment, find a way to do what should be so obvious — say that the very threat to American democracy that went down at the Capitol was absolutely, irrevocably unacceptable — then the people in charge should seriously consider finding new work, and let someone who understands this very basic principle say it.
What, the USOPC is afraid of being political?
In 2014, about a year after becoming IOC president, Bach made clear that the days of sport and politics being separate — if they ever were — were, formally, over. He said, “In the past, some have said that sport has nothing to do with politics, or they have said that sport has nothing to do with money or business. And this is just an attitude which is wrong and we cannot afford anymore. We are living in the middle of society and that means that we have to partner up with the politicians who run this world.”
What, the USOPC might fear antagonizing its watchdog, Congress?
That’s rich. The very members of Congress who, under the protection and direction of law enforcement, were forced to flee for their safety when the mob breached the Capitol grounds? Maybe that Congress might be entirely receptive to a well-taken message of support? Maybe a good number of Americans might appreciate leadership, especially in a purported Olympic year, from the people charged with sending the Olympic team?
On Sunday, the PGA of America severed its ties to Trump, voting to take its championship, one of the sport’s four majors, away from his Bedminster, New Jersey, course in 2022. “We’re fiduciaries for our members, for the game, for our mission and for our brand,” chief executive Seth Waugh said.
Before becoming USOPC chief executive in August 2018, Sarah Hirshland served as chief commercial officer for the U.S. Golf Association — so it’s not as if she doesn’t understand the connection. Or being a fiduciary for the mission. Or context.
President Trump flanked by USOPC chief executive Sarah Hirshland, right, and Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf in Beverly Hills last February // Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
Especially because the contempt with which Olympic leadership globally has held the president of the United States has been an open secret throughout the Trump presidency. On top of which, over the past year, the pandemic — in no small measure because of the federal government’s response — has led to the deaths of 365,000 Americans. More than 4,000 died in one day for the first time on Thursday; authorities have said the outlook for January is expected to grow worse.
By extension, one can imagine the challenge confronting the Olympic entities in the United States. Yet USOPC leadership inexplicably has acted with little or no comprehension of the compelling history and realpolitik at work around them, essentially freelancing — throwing their positions on Rule 40, Rule 50 and doping-related matters in the face of the IOC and much of the rest of the Olympic world, yet doing so with little to no leverage, nowhere near enough moral or ethical leadership, no foundational relationships to effect constructive change on those or other issues.
Consider the irony:
Hirshland makes no statement condemning the actions of the president or the rioters at the Capitol but a month ago is “proud,” per her tweet, about the “athlete-led council” pushing against Rule 50 in a bid to “advocate for racial and social justice,” even though the IOC has made it crystal clear the odds of change to that rule are exceedingly slim, Bach declaring the Games, and particularly the medals podium, are not the place for a “marketplace of demonstrations.”
New USOPC slogan: Be brave in someone else’s country, just not our own!
For many months now, if not years, this space has sought to hammer home the point that Americans — while needed in the Olympic world because of the financial contributions of U.S. corporate entities — are not particularly wanted any more than anyone else. We are merely one of 206 national Olympic committees and we do better, far better, if we play it humbly than otherwise.
Instead, certain factions of American would be-leadership — Hirshland and board chair Susanne Lyons at the USOPC and, let’s be clear, chief executive Travis Tygart over at USADA— have tried over the course of the Trump presidency to leverage American financial muscle into something akin to a morality play, insisting with almost religious zealotry that American democracy means that we, Americans, have a special right, a missionary-like calling, to tell others how to govern.
This was — is — misguided in the extreme.
Bluntly, again: increasingly as 2020 turned to 2021, with events last week in Washington amplifying the matter, to be American is often to be received elsewhere in the Olympic landscape with suspicion or worse.
American exceptionalism didn’t work during the Obama years, the 44th president humiliated in 2009 when he campaigned for Chicago’s 2016 bid, then complained in 2016 that “IOC decisions are similar to FIFA’s decisions: a little bit cooked.” It didn’t work during his predecessor’s years, even though George W. Bush was a huge Olympic and sports fan; the then-IOC president, Jacques Rogge, assiduously avoided the United States. His predecessor, Juan Antonio Samaranch, was keelhauled before Congress during the Salt Lake City corruption scandal.
Yet we persist in our self-professed exceptionalism. For example, our major professional sports leagues — NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL — are wholly dismissive of the World Anti-Doping Code. Meanwhile, from the top levels of government on down, the United States treats the IOC with the back of its hand. Is it any wonder that the last contested American bid to win was Salt Lake, in 1995? Say again: “Salt Lake corruption scandal.”
Since then, contrary to widespread public belief, the IOC has reformed. Yes, there are still royals. But the members tend to run (with exceptions) to international technocrats. Besides, the members don’t run the IOC anymore, if they ever did. Bach does.
Larry Probst and Scott Blackmun, predecessors as the-then USOC chair and CEO, understood what far too many Americans don’t in the Olympic landscape — this is a relationship business. Understand this: if 2024 had been put to a vote, Paris would have won. The 2024/2028 package is the only way Americans got Games, and this because of years of Probst and Blackmun working the IOC game, along with Casey Wasserman and LA mayor Eric Garcetti. Let’s just say Trump did not help.
Probst, let’s also be clear, was an IOC member. Lyons is not.
Wednesday’s revolt at the Capitol is of course — let’s once more be plain here — not in any way connected to USOPC or USADA action. But the scenes from that insurrection transmitted around the world, and what they say about American values and morality, underscore just how off-base USOPC and USADA leadership have been internationally.
Anne Applebaum, writing Thursday in the Atlantic, put it this way:
“Unlike so many other disturbances over the years, the events at the Capitol yesterday did not represent a policy dispute, a disagreement about a foreign war or the behavior of police. They were part of an argument over the validity of democracy itself: A violent mob declared that it should decide who becomes the next president, and Trump encouraged its members. So did his allies in Congress, and so did the far-right propagandists who support him. For a few hours, they prevailed.”
The upshot: “The power of America’s example will be dimmer than it once was; American arguments will be harder to hear. American calls for democracy thrown back with scorn: You don’t believe in it anymore, so why should we?”
In a roundup piece in the New York Times that quoted personalities from around the globe, Charles Santiago, an opposition lawmaker in Malaysia who is also chair of ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights, said Trump had joined other world leaders in “subverting democracy and the will of the people.”
He added, “The U.S. has lost its moral authority to preach democracy and human rights to other countries. It has become part of the problem.”
The Wall Street Journal said that Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova refrained from commenting directly about the riots, instead sharing a Facebook post from Jill Dougherty, a Russia expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. It said:
“The United States will never again be able to tell the world that we are the paragon of democracy.”
On Twitter there was this:
And this:
The most recent example of pressing an advantage that does not, did not, exist: an early December letter from Lyons and Hirshland to World Anti-Doping Agency president Witold Banka and director-general Olivier Niggli urging fundamental governance reforms.
As if.
Let’s just say that unless and until we in this country can keep idiots parading the Confederate battle flag out of Congress while lawmakers are counting votes for the election of the 46th president — the very definition of transition of power — we have no business telling anybody what to do.
That flag represented a breakaway nation that led to a four-year war and thousands upon thousands of American deaths. It is grotesque to see it paraded in the U.S. Capitol.
Not to mention the horrific sight of a rioter wearing a hoodie that proclaimed “Camp Auschwitz.” In a lengthy video posted Sunday to Twitter, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the movie star turned two-term California governor, said he considered the Capitol riots America’s Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass, a November 1938 Nazi rampage against Jews that historians view as a prelude to the Holocaust.
CNN on Sunday identified the sweatshirt wearer, left, as a 56-year-old Virginia man // CNN
In words that perhaps Hirshland ought to take to heart, Schwarzenegger also said, “It all started with lies, and lies, and lies, and intolerance.” The Olympic committee purports to represent otherwise: respect, excellence and friendship. A USOPC statement that said just that, for starters?
For those who would wish to minimize the import of such lies, such intolerance, indeed the riots themselves, more than 70 million people voted for Trump and though the election was free and by every measure fair and legitimate, more than 140 Republicans voted to not certify the election results — including Rep. Doug Lamborn, who represents Colorado’s 5th District, which includes Colorado Springs, where the USOPC is headquartered. In a Jan. 4 tweet, Lamborn said, among other things, “@realDonaldTrump fought or us, on #JAN6 I’ll fight for him”
We have considerable work to do domestically before we get uppity about telling others about what to do elsewhere.
To emphasize the point about this early December letter to WADA, there can be no question the language was influenced by Tygart and USADA. Right about that same time that letter went out, meanwhile, the general counsel at USADA, Bill Bock, departed to work for Trump, to represent him in an election-related lawsuit in Wisconsin. USADA is supposed to be free from political influence; Tygart lobbied ferociously for a bill called the Rodchenkov Act that criminalizes doping in certain circumstances; it is remarkable — the only word — that Bock was representing Trump in the Wisconsin lawsuit while the Rodchenkov Act was on the president’s act awaiting signature.
In another election-related case involving the president, as Politico reported, a lawyer in Pennsylvania filed a motion late last week asking to be allowed to withdraw from the matter, calling Trump’s actions “repugnant” and criminal.
With that in mind and the Trump presidency winding its way to a shameful end, it’s way past time — far overdue — for answers to a lot of questions.
Why is Grigory Rodchenkov in the witness protection program?
Who is paying Rodchenkov’s lawyer — Jim Walden’s — bills? Why?
What is FairSport’s interest in all this? What are FairSport’s finances all about?
What are FairSport’s connections, if any or many, to the Trump presidency or administration?
What does USADA know about FairSport? What does the USOPC know? What contacts have each or both agencies had with FairSport?
Same questions for Global Athlete — “funded initially by FairSport along with other individual donors,” according to the 2019 news release announcing its launch. Who are they? What is its budget?
The IOC and WADA opposed the Rodchenkov Act. When Trump signed it into law on December 4, the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy issued a statement that thanked Global Athlete and FairSport, USADA and others, and said, under a headline that disingenuously categorized the law as “healthcare”: “Bad actors who enable unfair competition should face legal consequences — a position shared by President Trump, legislators on both sides of the aisle in the United States and athletes around the world.”
Going forward, this thought from the director of the Europe Council of the Atlantic Center as we — in Bach’s words — pray for our world: