Senior leadership at the International Olympic Committee neither likes nor respects Sarah Hirshland, the chief executive of the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee.
She has little support among some number of key executives who head the 50 national governing bodies here in the United States.
She makes a big show of supporting U.S. Olympic athletes but late last week fired, and unceremoniously, Rick Adams, the one person at the USOPC who knew the most about getting athletes to perform their best at the Olympic Games, Winter and Summer.
A popular behind-the-scenes guessing game: how much longer will Hirshland remain chief executive?
How much longer should she?
USOC chief executive Sarah Hirshland last summer in Tokyo // Getty Images
Here’s a better question: we are now into year three of a pandemic that has claimed nearly a million American lives, so why is someone with apparently so little empathy serving as chief executive of an American institution that claims to represent the best of us but just fired the one guy who not only delivered on the field of play, and twice in seven months, but did so even though his wife is seriously ill?
This is what it means to be part of the so-called “Olympic Family”?
This is the boss who, in one of the most disingenuous corporate-style videos you would ever want to take in, delivering the hit job while seemingly reading all the while off the teleprompter, said that Adams had “passionately and courageously” served for more than a decade and his contributions were “undeniable.”
Let’s be clear: Adams was the Team USA chef de mission in Beijing and, before that, in Tokyo.
Rick Adams answering journalists’ questions in Paris two years ago // Getty Images
If you’re keeping score at home, the new head of sport, whoever that will be, will be Hirshland’s third in three years. In that same time, she has moved through three PR people (or four, depending how you count). Also, three heads of HR.
Then there was Bahati Van Pelt, who was hired in October 2019 as “chief of athlete services.” In the hubbub over everything China, it barely managed a blip in the trade press last December that Van Pelt would be leaving, his last day, Friday, Feb. 4. Who leaves an Olympic team on the day of the opening ceremony?!
Meanwhile, in November, Julia Clukey — her title was senior director of athlete development and engagement — left the USOPC, too.
Anyone see something consistent here? Hirshland, in that same video, talked about fundamental reform. Would the issue perhaps be that that fundamentally she can’t keep people around her? Wonder why that might be?
From the start, Hirshland’s tenure has been marked by change. This is undeniable and unequivocal. It’s what she was brought in to effect. Change is never easy, of course, and those who support Hirshland would tell you that she is resolutely passionate about effecting that change. It’s also the case that as CEO, it’s her vision thing.
It’s further the matter — and this is widely known in U.S. Olympic circles — that Hirshland got the job after the first choice turned it down. Among her (many) critics, she has been fighting this uphill perception battle, among others, from the get-go.
And yet.
This debacle with Adams — one of the most decent human beings in the Olympic space — would seem so telling.
It could have been a win-win.
If there were management differences, there could — should — have been a way to have kept him on as a consultant through, say, the 2024 Paris Games.
Entities do this sort of thing all the time.
Also let go: chief of business operations Kevin Penn. The USOPC framed both moves as a “result of internal restructuring.”
Adams did not return repeated requests for comment. A USOPC ‘town hall’ is scheduled for Tuesday. In a video call last Friday with what was styled as a USOPC “People Leaders” cohort, Hirshland offered these notes, among others, referring to Adams and Penn:
“It’s natural — especially in this organization — to wonder what happened, or how they are doing, and that is because you all care. I want to be clear that restructure is not an indication of performance.”
And: “I know you will, but please reach out to Rick and Kevin. Be supportive, be the friend you would want to have and wish them the best. I expect all of us to exhibit our values in these most important moments — it is where we will set ourselves apart as leaders and human beings.”
One might observe that there is indeed rich irony to be mined in promoting the notion of values and humanity when you’ve just fired someone. At any rate, if it’s not performance, what? Because the medals counts from Tokyo and Beijing are facts. And facts tend to get in the way of narratives.
At the Tokyo Games, the Americans won the medal count, gold and overall, the women’s volleyball team saving Hirshland’s bacon by winning gold. Final gold medal tally: USA 39, China 38. Overall, USA 113. China was second, 88.
In Beijing, the Americans won exactly one medal in alpine skiing, Ryan Cochran-Siegle’s super-G silver, but nonetheless managed 25 medals, fifth overall, and eight gold, tied for fourth.
It is the NGBs who deserve most of the credit for these performances. All the same, it was Adams who in February 2019 was named USOPC chief of sport performance and NGB services. Ask around — Adams was the NGB contact at the USOPC who was the trusted, go-to source. He had been with the organization since 2010.
“It’s through this reform and the success of these back-to-back Games,” Hirshland said in the video, which went to all USOPC staff but is marked with privacy settings that don’t allow for public distribution, “that we’ve shown that a holistic approach on performance and well-being work together to bring out the best in Team USA.”
Is that so?
Team USA, for instance, won 46 gold and 121 overall in Rio in 2016, both atop the table; 47 and 104 in London in 2012, same; 112 overall, tops, and 36 gold, second behind home-team China, with 48, in Beijing in 2008.
Compare apples to apples, Summer Games in Asia in 2008 and 2021: Team USA won almost the exact same number of medals, gold (36, 39) and overall (112, 113). What difference did this purportedly ‘holistic’ approach make?
Yes, the pandemic affected preparations for Tokyo. Then again, Team USA had an extra year. Did, for instance, Sydney McLaughlin’s women’s 400-meter hurdles Tokyo Games performance — a world record and gold medal in the final — suffer because of the extra time? How about 17-year-old Lydia Jacoby of Seward, Alaska, winner of the women’s 100-meter breaststroke? If the Games had been in 2020, Jacoby freely acknowledged, she had plans to be in the stands, watching. What was ‘holistic’ about being a year older?
More:
In Vancouver in 2010, home-team Canada won the most golds, 14. But the Americans won the most overall, 37.
At any rate, Hirshland asserted in the video that the time had come, even though Team USA proved in Tokyo and Beijing that whatever Adams was doing to coordinate with the NGBs was working, to “better align with NGBs.”
She offered no evidence for this assertion.
Another set of questions, and it would be super-fascinating to put Hirshland under oath to hear the answers, and keep in mind this USOPC “core principle”:
“We set clear standards of organizational excellence and hold ourselves and all member organizations accountable.”
Before firing Adams, how many NGB executives did Hirshland reach out to? Any?
Did she reach out to athlete constituency groups? Any?
Let’s be direct.
In Los Angeles, Kathy Carter and Casey Wasserman are significantly responsible for USOPC dollars.
What significant area of responsibility does that leave the USOPC? Performance. Specifically, working with the NGBs, and their athletes, to deliver it every two years.
Instead, what we’ve seen way too much of over the past three years from the CEO in Colorado Springs is virtue-signaling and getting rid of good people.
It’s our job in journalism to seek to hold people in positions of authority accountable. So:
Is that the sort of “clear standard of organizational excellence” Americans want at the USOPC?