Thoughts on this January 2022 weekend as the world gears up to go back to work or school amid Omicron. It has been foggy here near the beach in SoCal. Maybe some of these thoughts are foggy, too. Or maybe crystal clear. Whatever.
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François Carrard in 2015 // Getty Images
François Carrard has died, and the world of international and Olympic sport has lost a giant. He was 83.
Carrard was director-general of the IOC for 14 years, until 2003. He was active in sports ethics and governance for the years after — until recently, chairing a reform committee at FINA, the international swim federation (disclosure: it was my privilege to work with Carrard on a subcommittee examining the federation’s woeful pre-2021 media strategy).
Carrard knew seemingly everyone and everything. Perhaps most important, he frequently knew how to find and reach consensus in a world too often marked by polarizing disagreement.
Beyond, he was a renaissance man, learned in letters and music, especially jazz. He was unafraid to speak his mind. And he could be wickedly funny.
A small note about which some but not many people knew. When he was young, Carrard spent a year as an exchange student in the States, in Pasadena, California. There he was not “François” but “Frank.”
He was an amazing guy. He will be missed.
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We are roughly a month away from the Feb. 4 start of the Beijing Games.
Seven years ago, the International Olympic Committee picked Beijing over Almaty in a close vote, 44-40. They were the only two cities in the race.
Any number of critics have complained that China is perhaps not a suitable host.
Many have forgotten that the Chinese won on a second ballot of sorts. The first was thrown out for so-called “technical” reasons. Was it — we may never know — a tie?
The universe works in mysterious ways. What would we be looking at if Almaty — it was billed as a safe choice — had won?
Over the past couple days, the president of Kazakhstan has ordered the police and army to shoot protestors without warning with security forces seeking to end days of violent unrest; the former prime minister Karim Massimov, who as chair of the 2022 bid gave a speech at the 2015 IOC session urging a vote for Almaty, has been arrested on suspicion of treason.
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There are some number of people who for some reason followed keenly the women’s competition at the U.S. figure skating championships in Nashville.
Why?
The Russians are going to go at least 1-2 at the Olympics.
The most “recent” U.S. medalist in women’s singles at the Olympics was Sasha Cohen, a silver in 2006. That’s going on 16 years.
Following the goings-on in Nashville was like being a fan of the 2021 Northwestern Wildcat football team.
Only diehards, like me, can tell you we finished 3-9.
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Karl Rove, a senior adviser to Bush 43 who now, among other things, writes a column in the Wall Street Journal, offered a 2022 prediction piece on Dec. 29 that, in the manner of Nostradamus, or more likely Johnny Carson’s Carnac the Magnificent, offered up this whopper:
“… the U.S. collects the most medals in the Winter Olympics.”
Mr. Rove, to paraphrase from the movie Airplane, perhaps picked a bad week to stop sniffing glue.
The Americans were fourth in the medals in 2018, with 23, 16 behind Norway’s 39.
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Item:
The U.S. government paid the World Anti-Doping Agency $1.33 million in December, the second part of its total annual contribution of $2.93 million.
In a news release, the WADA president, Witold Banka, called the contribution a “clear demonstration of support by the U.S. government for WADA’s global collaborative mission for doping-free sport.”
Decoding that release further:
Banka’s observations about his “discussions” on the occasion of the Nov. 25 WADA Foundation Board meeting with Dr. Rahul Gupta, the new White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. These Bankold called “very positive.” As, Banka said, were Gupta’s “constructive interventions” — intervention is Olympic jargon for comments or remarks — “during the Board meeting itself.”
Banka went on to add, in a WADA news release “intervention” of the sort one has hardly seen in connection with the Americans in some time, “I look forward to ongoing collaboration with the U.S. Government and all other Public Authorities around the world.”
Translation:
- Part 1. The Americans, for their part, were perhaps more than just a little embarrassed they inherited such negativity from the Trump era, fueled in no small measure by Travis Tygart and Bill Bock at the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, Bock having now departed, and were apparently more than just a little glad to resume a more collaborative position with WADA. While not, of course, being seen to back down.
- Part 2. The Americans were also more than glad to be seen to say that WADA has made such significant governance progress. This allows the U.S. government to pay what it owes while also saving face.
- Part 3. Tygart loses face. This would seem to suggest significantly that the new ONDCP leadership does not listen to him the way it did under 45.
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Are the track and field world championships just that — or merely a promotional vehicle for the University of Oregon?
Latest bit of evidence — this tweet:
Oregon track and field? Go Ducks? Really?
Of even more concern, maybe: it’s now more than a week later, and this tweet, posted on New Year’s Day, has garnered all of 22 retweets and 119 likes.
When Eugene was awarded these championships, the entire point was to grow the sport in the United States. All 50 states. Not just serve a purportedly “rabid” fanbase in the Willamette Valley.
I seem to have been the only person in the press who has, for years, pointed out that Eugene is first and foremost, a college football town, not a track town, contrary to the bogus marketing effort, and second, that this obsession in certain quarters with Eugene is not healthy for the sport in our country.
119 likes.
By early afternoon noon Sunday Pacific time, my friend Christine Brennan’s Friday tweet about how some dude was singing at an open mike at the hotel where the Covid-swept figure skating Nashville nationals were going on was already up to 106 retweets and 405 likes. And counting.
When the non-event figure skating nationals are crushing the track world championships by 4 to 1, we have an issue.
Are there really more figure skating geeks than track freaks?
Christine and I, proud to say, are graduates from the same journalism school class at Northwestern.
Go Cats, people.
Remember: 3-9 in 2021. Diehards: we need a quarterback.