Gene Sykes, chairman of the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee, said Thursday in public what everyone who is anyone in U.S. and worldwide Olympic leadership has been saying quietly in private: the financial models that have sustained the movement since 1984 need to be reimagined.
Like, now. If not sooner.
EUGENE, Oregon — For the past five years, Kenya’s Lawrence Cherono has been one of the world’s top marathoners.
In 2019, he won the Boston Marathon. Again: the Boston Marathon. Is there anything more symbolic of American distance running than Boston, and #BostonStrong? That’s not a rhetorical question. Answer: no. That year, Cherono won the Chicago Marathon, too.
In 2021, Cherono finished fourth in the Tokyo Olympic marathon. Last December, he won the marathon in Valencia, Spain. This past April, he finished second in Boston. His personal best, 2:03:04, is the eighth-fastest of all time.
So where is the outrage, especially from all those, especially in the United States, who went all but berserk this past February over the Russians at the Beijing Winter Games, now that the 33-year-od Cherono has been provisionally suspended for the exact same substance that then-15-year-old Russian skater Kamila Valieva got tagged for — and under eerily similar circumstances?
If the weekend seems a long way away for most if not many of you, 2028 probably seems like Pluto, the farthest reaches of your personal universe.
In Olympic time, however, 2028 is already on the horizon, and the days and weeks are already slipping by. These next 10 years are the imperative for the United States Olympic Committee and, indeed, for all who would understand the transformative potential of those Los Angeles Summer Games.
The USOC must — must — keep its eye on the prize.
That’s what it did Thursday in naming Sarah Hirshland, chief commercial officer of the U.S. Golf Association, its chief executive officer.
