PARIS – Here in France they have a saying for the thing that transpired as Salt Lake City won the right to the 2034 Winter Games, delivered amid an International Olympic Committee thrashing of the IOC’s favorite dog to beat, the United States of America.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
The more things change, Uncle Sam, the more they stay the same.
The IOC gave Salt Lake 2034 because it had to. It needs American money. The U.S. television rights deal expires in 2032.
At the same time, the IOC is seriously unhappy with hyper-aggressive positions taken frequently and again recently by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, most notably in regard to the case of 23 Chinese swimmers. That particular case, in the words of U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee chair and new IOC member Gene Sykes, has for months seen USADA and the World Anti-Doping Agency “playing a game of ping-pong with media bullets, if you will,” which he called “distressing.”
IOC member Ingmar de Vos during Thursday’s session
The media posturing led to a late June hearing on Capitol Hill featuring Michael Phelps, among others, and USADA chief executive Travis Tygart.
Tygart keenly understands how media works and, moreover, gets, too, that Americans, especially in our age of geopolitical rivalry, need a villain and that sport is a proxy for what is most real. For years, Russia served the cause. Now, China.
In early July, World Aquatics confirmed that its chief executive, the American Brent Nowicki, has been subpoenaed to testify in a U.S. government investigation into the Chinese swim case.
A WADA-appointed independent prosecutor found in an interim report issued a couple weeks ago the agency acted appropriately. Critics, USADA and many in the media, remain unmollified. WADA is also on the offensive, saying the world anti-doping system depends on everyone pulling together, not one party calling out another.
“It’s highly incorrect for one country to impose the jurisdiction of anti-doping on the rest of the world,” WADA president Witold Banka said here at a Friday news conference.
It’s this context that produced Thursday’s seemingly dramatic episode at the IOC assembly at which Salt Lake got 2034 – 32 years after 2002, a Games marked a corruption-marked bid – but only conditionally.
In theory.
Because, again, and this cannot be stressed enough, the IOC needs American money. The NBC deal, $7.65 billion, runs out at 2032.
What broadcast/streaming/whatever deal comes after? No one knows.
The IOC said it had modified what’s called the “host city contract” to allow it to kill Salt Lake for 2034 if the United States of America doesn’t come around to respecting WADA’s “supreme authority.”
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Sykes said at a Friday news conference he believes the chances of the IOC pulling the plug are highly unlikely.
In a lifetime of doing deals as a businessman, he said, “In every dispute, there are things that give you the opportunity to find ways to get you to agreement,” and that’s what he – and Fraser Bullock, the SLC34 chief who for more than 20 years has been one of the few Americans enjoying IOC trust and confidence – are now charged with doing. Let’s not forget Casey Wasserman at LA28. What’s his thing? Doing deals.
All the same, to take a big-picture step back, the IOC's posturing here would seem to belie a fundamental misunderstanding of how systems, business and legal, work in the United States.
The USOPC is deliberately not an agent of the federal or any government, what lawyers would call a “state actor.” USADA is the same — not a state actor. What leverage does anyone at the IOC think anyone in the Olympic landscape in the United States truly might have?
The real piece of genuine insight amid considerable theater here came from Princess Reema Bandar Al-Saud, Saudi ambassador since 2019 to the United States, an IOC member since 2020. A graduate of George Washington University, she is steeped in American ways. She said from the floor that those in the Olympic system ought to visit their representatives in Congress and their U.S. senators “to help create the [appropriate] legislative environment.”
If the IOC were smart and the ambassador had time and bandwidth, she would and should be ideal to offer considerable guidance in this context. She also said, “I understand that the United States of America operates under the rule of law,” adding in reference to the IOC, “Please consider this organization to be at your service.”
So, then, what did this organization do here at this assembly, and why?
If the IOC had a therapist, what would it say about what happened? I’m from California. Everyone in California has a therapist, right?
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Some context: I came to the Olympic beat in late 1998 after nine years at the LA Times covering news, murder trials and more. Days later, literally days, the Salt Lake corruption scandal exploded.
What I learned then, nearly 26 years ago, is the same today:
The IOC is schizophrenic when it comes to the United States.
The relationship is classic love-hate.
To generalize – to reiterate, this is perhaps a gross overgeneralization – the IOC loves to hate us.
At the same time, the IOC hates loving us – that is, needing us.
It needs American money.
It may not need American money quite as much as it once did, but American dollars are what make IOC finance go.
Money is one thing. The politics of the IOC: another. Kinda church and state.
Therein lies considerable friction.
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Breaking this down further:
The IOC is, has been, and maybe always will be, a Eurocentric institution. Americans typically have an American way of doing things. Friction.
Around the world, national Olympic committees are funded by governments. Not the USOPC – Congress told it in 1978 to fund itself. That means it needs a special cut of the U.S. television rights. That has meant considerable friction over the many years with the rest of the Olympic world.
Our pro leagues, the NCAA – they don’t take subscribe to the World Anti-Doping Code. More friction.
This sort of friction has played out in public when – under the old system of bidding for the Games – American cities sought an Olympics. In 2005, New York got thrashed when it wanted 2012. In 2009, even with President Obama in attendance in Copenhagen, Chicago did worse than New York, out in the first round.
Los Angeles only got 2028 in a double allocation made seven years ago with Paris. It’s widely accepted in the Olympic world that if LA had gone to a vote – Paris, Budapest, LA – LA likely would not have prevailed.
In recent decades, the only two U.S. cities that won IOC votes are Atlanta, in 1990 for 1996 – in the aftermath of the 1984 LA Games, when everything American seemed possible – and Salt Lake, in 1995 for 2002. Then came the SLC corruption scandal, in 1998.
And then the Salt Lake Games themselves, only five months after 9/11.
Nawal el-Moutawakel of Morocco, elected here again an IOC vice president, a 1984 400 hurdles gold medalist and Iowa State grad who like the Saudi ambassador knows the United States, articulated Thursday from the floor a widespread concern among IOC members – the heavily militarized nature of those Games amid the well-known difficulty in the first instance of simply getting into the United States.
That getting in was a real problem for the 2022 track and field championships in Eugene, Oregon. It is a major concern for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
“I still remember some IOC members from our family attended those Games,” el-Moutawakel said, speaking of 2002, “and at the airport spending hours and hours.”
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Salt Lake City is all but the perfect Winter Games host. That it was going to get 2034 has been an accepted fact for some time.
All the same, USADA’s agitprop over the Chinese swim case gave the IOC an opportunity.
If this seemed like genuine drama, consider: IOC sessions are, under the watch of president Thomas Bach, tightly scripted.
Everyone but everyone knew this was coming.
The Utah delegation knew 10 days before this was coming. The USOPC knew this was coming.
Know that the summer Olympic confederation, which goes by the acronym ASOIF, issued a July 12 statement seeking “urgent clarification” from the USOPC and the LA28 organizing committee – SLC34 yet to be formally recognized – “regarding the position of WADA as an institution and respect for the fundamental principles of the World Anti-Doping Code.”
Back story: the ASOIF president, until the end of the year, is the Italian Francesco Ricci Bitti, who is hugely influential in Olympic and WADA circles if not often publicly outspoken. The incoming president, taking office January 1, is Belgium’s Ingmar De Vos, president of the equestrian federation and IOC member since 2017.
After the SLC34 presentation Thursday, who did Bach called on from the floor first?
IOC president Thomas Bach during Thursday’s session
That would be de Vos. He spoke of the fear Olympic officials might have to “answer questions of their activities from the FBI” and of the risk of events in the United States “impacted by another geopolitical crisis.”
A string of speakers followed. Last, Luis Mejia Oviedo of the Dominican Republic: “You cannot have a single nation that takes the privilege of being above all the rest.”
Left unsaid but understood by all: the very real possibility Donald Trump will be elected again in November. Who sought to close the borders last time he was president?
Bach offered this thought from the dais, speaking to the SLC34 delegation:
“It is very unfortunate, and I am sorry for you, and for us, that this issue arose now, at the time when it comes to your election. You have nothing not only to do with this.”
OK, so why did the president orchestrate it all?
Salt Lake would go on to be confirmed 2034 host with 83 yes votes, six no and six abstentions.
For comparison: the French Alps Winter Games 2030 project, given a go earlier Thursday even though France has yet to provide the guarantees the IOC demands (in this instance, the IOC said, no prob, we’ll wait a few months), 84 voted yes, four no and seven abstained.
So more voted against Salt Lake than against France.
Feel the love. As always.