Figure skating's got problems

If you are lucky enough, as I am, to be the father of teenage daughters, you learn quickly that teen girls are the knowers, indeed the arbiters, of all things. The 19-year-old is back at college, enduring the frozen winter quarter of her sophomore year at Northwestern. So the 14-year-old ruled the dinner-table focus group. Just the way she likes it.

The Sochi Winter Olympics, as we all know, are just weeks away. Name a figure skater, I said. Just one. She couldn’t do it. Now, I said, name a snowboarder. She perked right up. “The ginger guy,” she said. “Shaun White!”

Ladies and gentlemen, in journalism school long ago, they cautioned us not to rely on anecdotal evidence. In this instance, that axiom must give way to the teen-girls-know-everything rule.

Which is why, as the U.S. figure skating trials get underway Thursday in Boston, it has to be said: figure skating has big, big problems.

Figure skating is seemingly so stuck in the past it doesn’t know what it is now or what it wants to be. The generation gap is immense, intense and profound.

A Sochi prediction or two: Yuna Kim of South Korea, the ladies’ champion from Vancouver 2010, will again be ethereal. The ice dancing competition will be fine, with Americans Meryl Davis and Charlie White fighting for gold with their training partners in Detroit, Canadians Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of Canada. Aside from that — what?

All these anniversary stories this week about Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan and the specials yet to come — people, that was 20 years ago. My college sophomore wasn’t even born yet! She doesn’t know about either of them and, frankly, why should she?

To turn the infamous tagline from the sordid affair around, my sophomore might as well ask if confronted with a Tonya-Nancy story: why me?

Snowboarding, snowboardcross, slopestyle — those are the events that are now, that are fun, that are riveting. At the Sochi Olympics, these are the disciplines that are going to go flying across cellphones and tablets. It’s no wonder Shaun White’s new trick, the Frontside Double Cork 1440, is already up on YouTube.

In a little-noticed decision taken at its general assembly in South Africa in the summer of 2011, the International Olympic Committee approved the introduction of a variety of new events for Sochi 2014, including (for both men and women) ski halfpipe and ski slopestyle as well as snowboard slopestyle.

For the unfamiliar, slopestyle requires a rider to execute tricks for amplitude and style while ripping through rails, jumps and other obstacles. White is trying to make the U.S. team riding the snowboard in the halfpipe and again in slopestyle.

Math for a moment: in all, there will be 10 medal events in both snowboarding and freeskiing … multiplying 10 (medal events) across those two disciplines equals 20 … three medals apiece times 20 means 60.

In this instance, the IOC understand the teen-age girl rule, too. It gets where the action is at. It’s in action sports.

You know who else gets it? Bob Costas. The longtime NBC host made a joke about it in a conversation earlier this week with Matt Lauer on the Today show:

“Basically,” Costas said, “I think the president of the IOC should be Johnny Knoxville. Because basically this stuff is just ‘Jackass’ stuff that they invented and called Olympic sports.”

Lauer, laughing: “You mean that in the best possible way, though?”

Costas: “I mean it in the kindest possible sense, yes.”

Lauer: “We could see Shaun White, though, take center stage in slopestyle.”

Costas: “We could very well — and, god knows, if there’s anyone who knows slopestyle, it’s me.”

You know who should have gotten that — who should have appreciated the in-joke — but didn’t? The snowboarders, especially the slopestyle riders. The round of social-media criticism that ensued seemed aimed primarily at Costas. Dudes, it was a joke — lighten up. He gets you. Stay tuned. Or would you rather be at the figure-skating rink?

True, figure skating did get one new gig for 2014, a “team event.” That upped the number of figure-skating medals events in Sochi to all of five, meaning 15 medals.

If you were running things and your job was to win medals and you had to allocate resources … just looking at those numbers alone … 60 opportunities against 15 … what would you say is more relevant? Action sports, or figure skating? Where would you cast not just the present but the future?

Doubtlessly, however, figure skating will be at the core of most television production of the 2014 Games — whatever network. Another life rule: no sensible dad grabs the remote when mom declares, let’s watch skating. That said, the metrics charting the sport’s decline are irrefutable, particularly in the United States, and especially at the elite level:

Eight years after Tonya-Nancy, the French judge scandal at the 2002 Salt Lake Games put figure skating in worldwide disrepute.

In response, the sport did away with perhaps the one thing that everyone understood come the Olympics, the 6.0 scoring system. Scoring now is somewhat more fair. But who — aside from coaches, skaters and a few broadcasters and sports writers — understands it?

Skating retains significant allure in South Korea — any appearance by Kim sells out in, literally, minutes — and in Russia.

Here’s how much of a challenge it now faces in North America:

At last year’s world championships in London, Ontario, in purportedly ice-crazy Canada, they couldn’t even fill a 7,000-seat arena to capacity for any single event until more than halfway through the competition. The president of the international skating union didn’t go. The event wasn’t televised live in the (neighboring) United States. Of course there was, inevitably, a judging controversy.

As for the U.S. team, it has traditionally been so strong that you have to go all the way back to 1936 to find a Games with no medals for the Americans in men’s and women’s singles. It might well happen in Sochi.

The top American woman, Ashley Wagner, has said she would have to be nearly perfect to reach the Olympic podium.

At those 2013 world championships, the two best Americans, Wagner and Gracie Gold, went 5-6. In 2012, Wagner finished fourth; the next-best American, Alissa Czisny, 22nd. In 2011, Czisny took fifth while Rachael Flatt managed 12th.

No American woman medaled in Vancouver,  the first time a U.S. woman had not won a medal at the Games since 1964.

On the men’s side in 2010, American Evan Lysacek won gold. He won’t skate in Sochi because of injury. At last year’s worlds, the two best Americans finished seventh and 14th.

In Vancouver, the contrast between the way Lysacek won and Shaun White’s win in snowboard halfpipe speaks volumes.

Lysacek skated a technically brilliant but safe program. He could have opted to but did not throw any quadruple jumps, only triples. His main rival, Russia’s Evgeny Plushenko, did throw some quads, on the theory that he was — as they would say in snowboarding — progressing the sport.

Plushenko’s quads were slightly off-axis. The judges went for Lysacek.

At the pipe, White won gold with the first of his two runs.

For his second, he chose to unveil a new trick, the Double McTwist 1260, three and a half spins inside two somersaults. He did not have to do it but did so, anyway; at issue was an ethos, the snowboarder’s quest to be ever better through progression; he was thinking not just of the sport’s present but its future.

White landed the McTwist.

For Sochi, White has added another 180 degrees of revolution inside the somersaults. Thus it’s now the Frontside Double Cork 1440.

You want to know why teenagers want to be like Shaun White? Why the IOC shrewdly wants to tap into that energy?

Here’s why: because, standing on top of that hill that night in Vancouver, Shaun White dared to dream big, and then he went big. That is what the best of the Olympic spirit is all about. And that is why snowboarding, and slopestyle, and snowboardcross are where it’s at.

What does figure skating have that even begins to match that?

Sequins? Dreamy music? For real?

Four years after Vancouver, the best male skaters are seemingly all trying to throw quads. Some can even land them.

Is it already, however, a case of too little, too late?

My 14-year-old couldn’t tell you who Max Aaron, the 2013 U.S. champion is, if her life depended on it.

Shaun White — he’s the cool ginger guy.

Vonn to miss Sochi

No one on Planet Earth — repeat, no one — has more heart, will, desire, call it what you will, than Lindsey Vonn. So her announcement Tuesday that she won’t be able to ski next month at the Sochi Games can reasonably mean only one thing, and by this no one should draw any conclusions about any NFL players who have made incredible comebacks but under their rules don’t get tested for, say, human-growth hormone:

It is absurd, far-fetched indeed, to come all the way back from a world-class knee injury in under a year when you must comply with Olympic-style drug-testing protocols.

Four years ago, at the Vancouver Games, Vonn became the first American woman to win the Olympic downhill. In an announcement she posted Tuesday to her Facebook page, Vonn said she was “devastated” she would not compete in Sochi.

The “reality,” she said, is “my knee is just too unstable to compete at this level.”

Last February, at the world alpine ski championships in Austria, Vonn tore two ligaments in her right knee and broke a bone in a spectacular fall. In November, she crashed again; that tore the surgically repaired ACL. In December, she sprained her MCL during a downhill in Val d’Isere, France.

Vonn also said she is having surgery now in a bid to be ready for the 2015 alpine world championships in her hometown, Vail, Colo.

Since no one works harder, she will — barring any more setbacks — be ready.

A few more realities:

Vonn was widely expected to be the biggest star on the U.S. team in Sochi.

She — like short-track speed skater Apolo Ohno in 2010 — is one of the few who have crossed over from the comparative anonymity of winter sports to become a mainstream celebrity. And then there’s the whole Tiger Woods thing.

She will be missed.

That said, the U.S. alpine team should still be very, very good.

Ted Ligety is the best giant-slalom skier in the world, and won three golds at last year’s alpine world championships. Bode Miller is simply the best male skier the United States has ever produced and, after taking last year off, has shown signs of coming back strong this season.

All six of the women on the U.S. “speed” team — that is, downhill and super-G — finished one, two or three in a World Cup event last year. Teen Mikaela Shiffrin is last year’s slalom champion. Julia Mancuso has not had a top-10 finish this season, true, but does have three Olympic medals and a track record of consistently rising to the pressure of the big stage.

Math for a moment or two:

The U.S. alpine team won eight medals in Vancouver. Vonn won two, that downhill gold and a super-G bronze. Would she have won medals in Sochi? Was the U.S. Olympic Committee counting on Vonn in its medals calculations (which it insists it doesn’t do)? Again, realities here.

Same deal with Evan Lysacek, who won gold in men’s figure skating in Vancouver but hasn’t  competed since. Do you really, seriously think the USOC was counting on him to win in Sochi? When he bowed out a few weeks ago, did that alter anyone’s projections?

Reality, everyone.

The U.S. Ski Team — everyone from the Nordic combined guys to snowboarders to the alpine racers — won 21 medals in Vancouver.

Overall, the U.S. team won 37. That topped the medals table.

In Sochi, the U.S. team could legitimately figure, conservatively, to win 30. Aggressively, 40.

For real.

For sure the Vancouver Games were akin to a home Olympics, and that probably helped the U.S. team. But here is what is going to help the U.S. team in Sochi:

In Vancouver there were 24 snowboard and freeski medal opportunities. In Sochi, 48. These are the actions-sports events in which Americans typically rock.

In Vancouver, moreover, the Americans didn’t win even one medal in cross-country or biathlon.

To return to football, as it were: it is an enduring football cliche that when one guy goes down, another steps up.

Translation: the U.S. Olympic Team itself is still loaded with talent. Barring further injury:

Shaun White, who threw the Double McTwist 1260 to win gold in the snowboard halfpipe in Vancouver, has now added another 180 degrees of twist. The thing is now called a Frontside Double Cork 1440.

A simple explanation: the winning run in Vancouver was two flips and three and a half spins. White has now added another half-revolution of twist inside the two somersaults.

The U.S. women’s cross-country team, led by Kikkan Randall, stands ready to win its first-ever Olympic medals. The Americans haven’t won a medal of any kind in cross country since Bill Koch in 1976.

America, meet Nick Goepper. He is 19 years old, 20 in March, and does slopestyle — skiing, not boarding. (White does it boarding as well.) Slopestyle is when you navigate a course filled with rails, jumps and other obstacles and do tricks for amplitude and style points.

Did you know you can become a champion slopestyle artist from Lawrenceburg, Indiana? Growing up on a hill with a vertical drop of all of 400 feet?

Goepper won gold at the X Games in Aspen last January.

On Dec. 21, Goepper became the first skier to grab a spot on the first-ever U.S. freeski Olympic team by virtue of his second-place finish in a Grand Prix slopestyle event at Copper Mountain, Colorado. The third of five Olympic qualification events gets underway Wednesday and runs through Sunday in Breckenridge.

When he qualified for the Olympics, Goepper was naturally asked about it.

“It’s not grueling at all,” he said. “It’s a dream come true. It’s super-fun. The Olympics add a bit more pressure but we’re just out here trying to get creative and have fun.”

The thing is, every Olympics produces its own history. One of the new realities of the 2014 Olympics is that slopestyle — in both its board and ski iterations — is poised to explode in super-fun on television screens, tablets and cellphones across not just the United States but the world.

It won't be the same without Lindsey Vonn in Sochi.

But she would be the first to tell you — it’s not all about her.

One more reality: it never was.

Bill Marolt pivots to Tiger Shaw

When Bill Marolt took over 17 years ago as president and chief executive officer of what is now called the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Assn., he proclaimed its goal was to be the "best in the world." For sure, the United States had produced great skiers: Andrea Mead-Lawrence, Billy Kidd, the Mahre brothers, generations of the Cochran family, Bill Johnson, Tommy Moe, Picabo Street, the cross-country racer Billy Koch. Absolutely, unequivocally, the American union was blessed with mountains east and west, even north in Alaska.

When Marolt took over, however, his goal was audacious. The U.S. Ski Team had enjoyed limited international success for about a decade. Its cash situation was, to be gentle, precarious. "Best in the world"? Little wonder the Europeans -- who dominated the winter scene -- might have laughed. Heartily.

With Wednesday's announcement that Tiger Shaw is due to take over for Marolt after next February's Sochi Games, the time is now to give credit where credit is due.

The United States is now a Winter Games powerhouse. Why? Because of the U.S. Ski Team.

At the Vancouver 2010 Games, the U.S. team won the medals count, with 37. Again -- why? Because the U.S. Ski team won 21.

A little comparison, for those who might yet be stuck in the past, or can't -- or don't want to -- get past their feather boas:

It is absolutely true that in Vancouver Evan Lysacek won gold in men's figure skating. But in the ladies' individual skating competition, no American won a medal of any color. That marked the first time there was no medal in women's singles since 1964, underscoring -- despite the massive hype and drama television loves to play up -- the weakness in the U.S. skating program.

That has not changed. At the 2013 worlds, U.S. women managed to finish fifth and sixth.

Reality, geography, politics and power check:

The 2014 Games are, of course, in Russia, where Vladimir Putin is president. The costs for those Games are already north of $50 billion. Mr. Putin did not oversee the spending of that much money not to win important medals. In Russia, figure skating is important (recall the judging controversy at the 2002 Games). Outside of South Korea's Yuna Kim, who is ethereal, who thinks the Russians aren't going to run away with the figure-skating medals?

The corollary? That leaves the real action in Sochi in the mountains.

Which leads back to the U.S. Ski Team, which has been planning for Sochi since even before Vancouver.

For instance, in 2014 because of new events added in 2011 by the International Olympic Committee, there will be 48 medal opportunities in snowboarding and freeskiing, up from 24 in 2010.

In these so-called "action sport" events, U.S. athletes have been at or near the top of the world rankings over the past seasons.

Meanwhile, in alpine skiing, Ted Ligety won three golds at last year's world championships. And Bode Miller is only the greatest all-around male skier the United States has ever produced.

The U.S. women, to echo the slogan, are the world's best:  Mikaela Shiffrin, just 18, is the No. 1 slalom skier anywhere, Julia Mancuso one of the top big-event racers ever. Lindsey Vonn, the most successful female ski racer in American history, a four-time World Cup overall champion and the 2010 Vancouver downhill gold medalist, now has something to prove; she is making an ahead-of-schedule recovery from last February's knee injury, cleared for on-snow training and heading Friday for Chile, the ski team's other big announcement Wednesday. Vonn's original target to be back on skis: November.

In cross-country, Kikkan Randall and Jesse Diggins and, for that matter, the entire women's relay team are for-real contenders to win the first Olympic medals for the U.S. in the discipline since Koch in the 1970s. On the men's side, Andy Newell is in the hunt, too.

The Nordic combined team proved the breakout stars of the Vancouver Games. Billy Demong and Todd Lodwick figure to be back. And the Fletcher brothers, Taylor and Bryan, are killer fast on skis. Any sort of jumping and the skiing will take care of itself -- which the rest of the world knows full well.

Sarah Hendrickson won last year's women's ski jumping world championships -- though she suffered an injury to her right knee in a training jump last week in Europe.

Back to snowboarding: the U.S. roster is so good and so deep that Shaun White, the two-time halfpipe gold medalist, is going to have to compete, and hard, to defend his title.

These are just some of the faces and names that will be on TV come February.

As complicated as Bill Marolt's job is, it's also thoroughly elemental. It's USSA's job to put these athletes in position come next February to deliver peak performance.

The record shows that few, if any, sports organizations have been run as well as the U.S. Ski Team since 1996.

Indeed, few organizations anywhere are now run with the vision -- and the winning culture -- of the ski team.

Since 2009, USSA has been headquartered at the Center of Excellence in Park City, Utah, where staff, trainers, coaches and athletes across all the disciplines mingle in a building that is part office and part state-of-the-art training center -- the better to exchange stories, ideas, laughs, whatever. This is how a common culture is not only built but nurtured.

This fall will mark the third season of the Copper Mountain Speed Center in Colorado -- where racers can, early-season, train full-on downhill, with speeds of 80 mph and jumps of 50 to 70 meters.

For 16 of the last 17 years, USSA has recorded a balanced budget.

It has an endowment that now measures $60 million.

All of this is, in large measure, thanks to the leadership of Bill Marolt.

"I think if I've done one thing," Marolt said, "I brought focus and a sense of direction that ultimately everybody bought into. And out of that focus and direction, you can create that culture of excellence. Then -- you can create a lot.

"More than anything, I brought the sense of focus."

That is what Shaw inherits. This is his challenge and his opportunity.

An alpine skier himself who raced in the 1984 Sarajevo -- under then-men's coach Bill Marolt -- and 1988 Calgary Games, where he finished 12th in the giant slalom and 18th in the super-G, Shaw has since gone on to make himself into a successful businessman.

Shaw recently served as a senior director at Global Rescue LLC, responsible for business development and new markets. Before that he was director of inventory strategy at Dealertrack, overseeing a wide range of automotive retail sales issues.

Marolt will turn 70 in September. Shaw turned 52 last Saturday.

It's one more mark of Marolt's professionalism that there was a process to recruit, identity and put in place his successor. Shaw will become chief operating officer Oct. 1, then move into the top job next spring.

"I'm going to be involved right away in whatever Bill wants as he tutors me," Shaw said in a telephone interview, adding about Sochi and referring again to Marolt, "It's his show. The Olympics are his show. He built the institution to get the athletes to the podium, all that infrastructure.

"What I hope I learn in the time I spend under him is what has made him so successful. The primary goal of mine is to keep us No. 1 in the world, whatever it takes. What he is doing works. We want to emulate that, replicate that and -- improve on it."

Watch out, world: Lindsey Vonn is motivated

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- Traditionally, alpine ski star Lindsey Vonn has been something of a summer workout fiend. This past March, she came up just three points shy of what would have been a fourth straight overall World Cup overall title, denied in part because bad weather forced the cancellation of the season's final race, a giant slalom in Lenzerheide, Switerland. Maria Riesch of Germany, who is Lindsey's very good friend, won the overall.

Watch out, world.

Because this summer? Lindsey was saying in a phone call from Chile, where there's snow: "I have had the most motivated summer I have ever had." Maybe, she said, she took two weeks off -- total.

On Friday night, Lindsey was named the USOC sportswoman of the year for her 2010 campaign, which included that third World Cup overall and two Olympic medals, gold in the downhill and bronze in the super-G.

Evan Lysacek, who also won gold at those Vancouver Games in men's figure skating, was named the USOC sportsman of the year; the bobsled team piloted by Steve Holcomb won the team of the year. Lysacek and Holcomb were both here to accept their awards, Lysacek announcing he intends to go for the Sochi 2014 Games, Holcomb saying he wants to keep on going through Pyeongchang and 2018.

It's not that Lindsey didn't want to be here as well. She sent a video thank-you in which she said she was "excited" to be an Olympic athlete and "hopefully represented the Olympic values," and anyone who has ever observed the many times Lindsey has stopped to patiently and graciously pose for photos or sign autographs for her younger fans knows she understands full well the reach of those Olympic values.

The USOC award was Lindsey's second in a row. "There are so many amazing athletes out there," she was saying on the phone. "I am incredibly honored to be mentioned in the same category with them. To have won this award two years in a row is more than I could have hoped for. I really appreciate it."

This attitude is no act.

This is not the stuff of locker-room cliché.

This is real Lindsey.

"You can never take anything for granted," she said. "Sometimes it's easy to get comfortable. You can never be satisfied. You always have to be hungry. That was one of the things I have definitely learned over the last few seasons.

"And it is very much a learning process. There's a reason people are veterans. They have been around a while. They have figured it out. Every year I have learned something. I am a much more mature skier and a much more mature person than I was even last year."

To recap the 2011 season:

In early February, Lindsey suffered a concussion. That forced her to take some time off.

When she resumed skiing, she decided to simply ski with abandon, reasoning she had nothing to lose -- she was that far down in the standings.

In late February, at the World Cup stop in Sweden, Lindsey was 216 points down.

By the time the season ended, and the weather canceled that final giant slalom in Lenzerheide, Lindsey had closed the gap to just three points -- Riesch ending with 1,728, Vonn with 1,725.

"I was disappointed," Lindsey said. "To say the least."

In May, she went to the USOC's training center near San Diego, to work on both her explosive power and her agility. She said, "It's similar to what I did last year. But a more intense program this year."

After that month, she went to Europe, to "really disconnect from the world and get hunkered down and get a good block of conditioning training."

Then it was to New Zealand, to get there ahead of the U.S. team, to get "a lot of really good info on equipment and get feeling really good, really strong in all events."

"Right now we're finishing up in Chile," she said, literally finishing up, dashing out when the phone call ended after three weeks of downhill and super-G training, and a fair amount of that with the guys.

"I feel like this summer has gone really well," Lindsey said. "I am extremely motivated for another season."

Watch out, world.

Rogge's IOC presidency 10 years in

DURBAN, South Africa -- The International Olympic Committee's 123rd session, or annual general assembly, closed here Saturday, the occasion marking 10 years of Jacques Rogge's presidency. By every objective measure, the IOC is in remarkably good shape.

History ultimately will judge whether Rogge proved a great president. It's too soon. In the moment it's clear that the president deserves, across the board, high marks.

No institution is immune from constructive criticism, and that includes the IOC. That's to be expected when dealing with multitudes of national Olympic committees, international sports federations and, of course, governments worldwide. To underscore the complexity of the IOC's task, meanwhile, a fair wrap-up of this 123rd session would have to note that while the Winter Games program is innovative and progressive, the Summer Games program -- bluntly -- needs help.

Rogge should give thanks each and every day that Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps are global icons. The Summer Games depends on the making of heroes; those heroes connect with young people; and those two are about it right now.

Pause for a moment now to try to think of others. Go ahead.

Still waiting.

That said, with only two years to go before he leaves office, and he underscored Saturday at his wrap-up news conference that he would indeed leave at the end of his second term in September, 2013, Rogge's record on most big-picture issues is incredibly positive.

His financial advisors, including IOC member Richard Carrion of Puerto Rico, a banker, have -- despite the worst financial conditions in decades -- managed to grow the IOC's financial reserve to $592 million at the end of 2010 from $105 million in 2001.

The reserve is designed to allow the IOC to continue to operate for a full four-year cycle in case an Olympics is canceled. Rogge made growing it a priority soon after he was elected president in 2001.

In other financial matters, NBC's $4.38 billion U.S. TV rights deal secures the IOC's financial base through 2020. The IOC's global sponsorship program has raised $957 million for the four-year run through the 2012 London Games; a 12th sponsor would take the number over $1 billion.

Already, the IOC has raised $921 million from global sponsors for Sochi 2014 and Rio 2016, and $632 million for 2018 and 2020.

The big news here, of course, was that Pyeongchang was elected to stage the 2018 Winter Games, Rogge saying at the ending news  conference, "The Koreans have been rewarded for their patience, their perseverance and maybe their program of 'new horizons.' "

The "new horizons" trend produced Sochi for 2014, Rio for 2016, Pyeongchang for 2018 and is now likely to see Istanbul enter the 2020 race. Rome is already a declared candidate. Madrid is likely to announce soon that it's in. Tokyo may, too, though why the IOC would go back to Asia in 2020 after 2018 remains uncertain.

Rogge said he would be "delighted" to see an American bid for 2020. Of course. It's in the IOC's interest to solicit as many bids as possible.

Is it in the U.S. Olympic Committee's?

USOC officials have said consistently that they first need to resolve a longstanding revenue dispute with the IOC -- a matter that historians may also come to see as one of the defining threads of Rogge's years.

A resolution may, or may not, happen before the Sept. 1 deadline for declaring for 2020.

Even if the financial dispute is resolved, the overarching question is whether, "new horizons" and all, a U.S. bid can win.

Also part of the calculus is whether 2022 might make for a smarter American play.

It used to be that the revenue disparity between a Summer and Winter Games could be pronounced -- that is, in favor a Summer Games. No more. Dmitry Chernyshenko, the head of those Sochi 2014  Games, told a small group of reporters here that his committee is on target right now to raise $1.3 billion in domestic sponsorships, in Russia; that's more than they did in China for the Summer Games in Beijing just three years ago.

Moreover, the United States has become a winter sports power, with a best-in-the-world 37 medals in 2010 in Vancouver that produced marketable American stars such as Lindsey Vonn, Apolo Ohno and Evan Lysacek.

And then there's the innovation issue -- the drawing power of the Winter Games for the demographically key youth market.

The Winter Games program has in recent years seen the addition of snowboarding, snowboard-cross and ski-cross. Earlier this year, the IOC added women's ski jumping. Here, it added slopestyle, among other disciplines.

Shaun White is now a two-time gold medalist. The double McTwist 1260 that he threw to win gold on his second run in Vancouver, a trick he did not have to do -- he had already won gold on his first run -- but did, anyway, is one of those moments that make kids everywhere want to soar like Shaun.

"I am so stoked that slopestyle will be included in the next Olympic Games," Jamie Anderson, a six-time X Games medalist (three gold), said in a statement released by the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Assn., about the Sochi program.

Now, the contrast.

The Summer Games program for 2020 -- the IOC is already planning that far ahead after including golf and rugby for Rio in 2016 -- will involve 25 so-called "core sports," down from 26. It's not clear what will be dropped. Also in the mix, the IOC announced here, are these eight:

Baseball, softball, rock climbing, wushu, roller sports, wakeboard, karate and squash.

To frame the matter simply: when was the last time you heard a wushu competitor say he or she was stoked about the possibility of competing at the Olympics?

The IOC insists it wants to attract young people. And then it goes and throws out a short-list that doesn't take into account the range of sports that gets kids where they live.

Anyone who knows the movement understands that there are political issues involving control of skateboarding as an Olympic sport.

Those need to be resolved. Shaun White is just as good on a skateboard as he is on a snowboard. How is it that he's not being given the chance to show that at the Summer Games?

How about surfing? Come on, IOC -- tap into the endless summer, dudes! A gracious Fernando Aguerre, president of the international surfing association, issued a statement that said, "We may have missed this big wave but like any good surfer we know there are more waves to come. We will therefore continue to develop the sport of surfing on a global level and explore the best way to contribute to the Olympic movement."

Why not, for that matter, cricket? One would think the IOC would jump at the chance to get a billion-plus crazed cricket fans connected to the Olympics.

Sure, it might be complicated. There might be turf wars. Last I looked, soccer was in the Games.

As a European journalist friend of mine likes to say -- we must always work toward a solution. And, yes, the IOC can be traditionally minded. But when it wants to move, it can do so.

In the meantime, there's this. The London Games start next July 27. The men's 100-meter track and field final goes down August 5. Organizers received more than one million requests for tickets to that race. Bolt is a phenomenon, and the Olympic movement needs more phenomenal stuff.

Baring it all, for art

It is so, so tempting to dismiss "The Body Issue" from ESPN The Magazine as either a lame attempt to compete with Sport's Illustrated's swimsuit issue, or just so much voyeurism, or both. The clock is already running on which librarian in which city declares the whole thing an abhorrent shock to the system, and orders it banned.

That would be foolish.

To look at the photos themselves in the magazine, which goes on sale Friday, is to be reminded once again that the human body comes in an astonishing variety of different sizes and forms and features, and to realize that humankind has celebrated the gift of our bodies since the dawn of time, and it's absurd to pretend that we don't, or we shouldn't.

Here are some of the best of the best among us, among them Olympic athletes past, current and future.

Click here to read the rest at TeamUSA.org.

And here for an ESPN photo gallery.