How to view 28 medals

There are lots of ways to look at the performance of the U.S. team at the just-concluded Sochi 2014 Winter Games. The American team won 28 medals, nine gold.

The optimist says that’s great.

The realist says the U.S. not only could have done better but almost surely should have. The International Olympic Committee added 12 new events to the 2014 program, mostly in the so-called action sports, and in those 12 Americans won nine medals. So — what happened around so much of the rest of the team?

Starting with the optimist’s view:

Sochi marked the best U.S. performance at a non-North American Winter Games. Those 28 medals were second only to the host Russians, who won the overall count with 33. Nine tied the mark set in Vancouver four years ago for most-ever gold medals at a non-domestic Games. The U.S. team won 10 in Salt Lake City in 2002.

Mikaela Shiffrin, just 18, won the first gold medal in women’s slalom skiing in 42 years. Ted Ligety won the men’s giant slalom under extraordinary pressure.

The two-man bobsled team, Steve Holcomb and Steve Langton, won the first medal of any color — in this instance, bronze — in 62 years. Holcomb would later drive the four-man sled to another bronze.

Joss Christensen, Gus Kenworthy and Nick Goepper swept the Olympic debut of slopestyle skiing. That marked only the third time U.S. men have swept the podium at the Winter Games. The prior occasions: figure skating 1956, snowboard halfpipe 2002.

Alan Ashley, the U.S. Olympic Committee’s chief of sport performance, declared last Saturday at a news conference at the Sochi 2014 main press center that, overall, the American team had done a “fantastic job.”

The realist’s extrapolation:

Starting from the exact same place: 28 medals, nine golds, and comparing that with Vancouver: 37 medals, nine golds.

Should going to Russia instead of just across the border to Canada make so much difference?

If before the Games Americans would have been a known lock for nine medals in the 12 new events, experts in some circles would not have found it unreasonable to have predicted 40 medals overall for Team USA.

How, then, to appropriately assess 28?

The entire U.S. Olympic Winter team did not win as many medals as the U.S. track and field team did in London in 2012. The track team won 29.

For that matter, the U.S. 2012 swim team won 31.

Overall, there were 98 medal events at the Sochi Games. One potentially very useful metric is how many medal opportunities there were — that is, available spots for Americans to earn a medal.

It’s not a simple case of multiplying 98 times three (the number of medals per event). In some events there might only be one American available to earn a medal; in others, several.

Bottom-line: there were, by the end of the Games, 255 medal opportunities. Again, American athletes earned 28 medals. That’s a return rate of 10.98 percent.

Perhaps this, then, might offer the best measure of the 2014 U.S. team’s performance: is a return rate of 10.98 percent good, or can it — or better yet, ought to be — improved upon?

For comparison, the London track team’s return rate: 29 of 143, or 20.3 percent.

The gold standard is the 2012 U.S. swim team: 31 of 62, or 50 percent.

Of the nine gold medals, five came from new events; four from events that had been on the program before 2014.

As pointed out by Law Murray, a graduate student at the Annenberg journalism school at the University of Southern California who was a credentialed reporter at the Games, all nine of the gold medalists are under age 30.

Much of the pre-Games media attention focused on veterans such as snowboarder Shaun White and speedskater Shani Davis. Neither medaled. As Murray also noted, of the 20 individual medalists, 14 won medals for the first time in Sochi. Only the 20 new medalists from the 2002 Salt Lake Games exceeded that number.

The USOC looks at all these kinds of things, and more. It has two fundamental priorities. One, win medals. Two, inspire the American public. The inspiring depends on the medals. This is the mission. And the mission, so it’s clearly understood, can involve some serious money.

Strictly speaking, the USOC does not, in the manner of a traditional American business, seek ROI, or return on investment. But — when you are laying out $2,724,345 to US Speedskating, as the USOC did in 2012, the year for which disbursements are most recently available, according to the USOC’s tax returns, and the long-track team goes oh-for-Sochi, it’s reasonable to launch a far-reaching inquiry.

As first pointed out by Gary D’Amato of the Wisconsin Journal-Sentinel, the U.S. long-track team’s medal count since 2002 has gone like this: eight, seven, four, zero. That belies an institutional problem that, finally, exploded into the public domain in 2014.

USOC chief executive Scott Blackmun said last Saturday, “If you look at the speedskating results, we weren’t the only nation that got smoked,” the Dutch taking a torch to the rest of the world.

Echoed Ashley: “Our job now is to say, ‘What went wrong, what went right and how do we improve?’ “

Another program that figures to invite scrutiny: the figure skaters won a bronze in the new team event, true, but left Sochi without a medal in men’s or ladies’ singles for the first time since 1936. That is, in a word, unacceptable.

The USOC, according to its tax statements, gave the U.S. Figure Skating Assn. $842,486 in 2012; $866,966 in 2011; $1,023,025 in 2010.

The United States produced the men’s gold medalist in 2010, the women’s silver medalist in 2006 and gold medalist in 2002. Now?

The last U.S. woman to medal at an Olympics or world championships — in an Olympic year, the worlds come after a Games — is Kimmie Meissner, who won the world championship in 2006.

Since 2010, no U.S. man has finished higher than seventh at the Olympics or the worlds.

Figure skating’s scoring system is opaque, surely. But last Thursday, on a night when Americans Gracie Gold and Ashley Wagner were talked up big-time by many of figure skating’s most traditional U.S. supporters — Gold would ultimately would finish fourth, Wagner seventh — the TV ratings underscored the challenge:

The ladies’ free skate, traditionally a highlight of the Games, attracted 20.3 million viewers, as Russia’s Adelina Sotnikova won gold over South Korea’s Yuna Kim amid controversy. The comparable night in Torino, when American Sasha Cohen won silver, drew 25.7 million. That is 5.4 million fewer people, a drop of 21 percent.

The U.S. men’s hockey team came to Sochi proclaiming “gold or bust,” beat the Russians in one of the Games’ most dramatic moments and then, in a 5-0 bronze-medal loss to Finland, proved they really meant it — it really was gold or time to go into the tank. “We didn’t show up. We let our country down. That’s it,” forward Max Pacioretty was quoted as saying in the Los Angeles Times.

There were high hopes this might be the breakthrough year for both cross-country skiing (no medals since 1976) and biathlon (no medals, ever). Didn’t happen.

It’s easy to see how the U.S. team could have more than made up the medals it won four years ago:

Lindsey Vonn did not ski in Sochi because she was hurt. In 2010, she won two.

The Nordic combined team, altogether, won four in 2010. In Sochi, zero.

The long-track team, in Vancouver, four. In Sochi, zero.

Add those together and you get 10. Add 10 to 28 and 38 is almost the 40 that figured to come with the new additions to the program.

Of course, sports — particularly at the Olympics — can often prove a matter of woulda, coulda, shoulda.

For every medal the United States didn’t win, there’s one it surprisingly did — such as Andrew Weibrecht’s silver in the super-G, a reprise of his 2010 bronze in the same event.

Some would suggest that the move to 28 from 37 is also tied to the increasing globalization of the Winter Games. In the men’s snowboard halfpipe, for instance, traditionally the province of White and other Americans, no U.S. man medaled; two Japanese and a Swiss rocked the podium.

Then again, in Vancouver, 26 national Olympic committees won medals. In Sochi, exactly the same number, 26 NOCs, won medals.

“Things don’t always shake out the way you want to,” Ashley, ever diplomatic, said last Saturday. “The surprises are sometimes way more exciting than the disappointments.”

"The new face of Russia"

ADLER, Russia — The Sochi 2014 Winter Games drew Sunday night to a close, an Olympics intent on projecting the image of a strong and confident new Russia across this vast country and to the world beyond, with a mighty Russian team awakening the echoes of the mighty Soviet sport system to prideful spectator cheers of “Ro-ssi-ya! Ro-ssi-ya!” Albeit, over 17 days, to the beat of “Get Lucky” by a Russian police choir. And cheerful volunteers yelling, “Good morning!” while dancing to the Black Eyed Peas.

“This is the new face of Russia, our Russia,” Dmitry Chernyshenko, the head of the Sochi 2014 organizing committee, said Sunday night at the closing ceremony to more cheers. “And for us, these Games are the best-ever.”

For the rest of this post, please click through to NBCOlympics.com: nbco.ly/1hmiPVk

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.

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."

Super high-vision: a green bottle with a long neck

When high-definition television came along, it revolutionized the game. Watching sports got way better all over the world for literally millions, if not billions, of viewers. For fans of American football: think, for instance, of Mario Manningham's clutch 38-yard catch that sparked the New York Giants' winning drive in Super Bowl XLVI, and the sideline tap-dance that was part of it. High-def made it all so real.

Now comes super high-vision technology.

Watching SHV is what is like when you made that jump a few years back from your standard TV set to high-def, only way better. After seeing SHV, even high-def feels like watching Super Bowl clips from the 1970s or '80s.

You can hardly believe the level of detail that all of a sudden snaps into crystal-clear focus. It's that good. That amazing.

In a word, SHV is a game-changer.

And it's one the Olympic world has already begun to embrace.

In London, the Olympic Broadcasting Services helped the Japanese broadcaster NHK -- and the BBC -- put together substantial coverage, including the opening ceremony and the men's 100-meter final.

Developers at NHK recently showed off the technology to a small group of journalists. It was all part of the International Olympic Committee evaluation commission's assessment of Tokyo's 2020 Summer Games bid.

Of course the commission saw, too, what the technology could do. The members got to see some of the imagery -- "tape" seems such an outmoded word -- from the ceremony and Bolt's 9.63-second victory.

One of the highlights of the ceremony, of course, was when the five Olympic rings were moved into place atop Olympic Stadium. In SHV, the sparks from the molten medal appeared to literally leap off the screen. The sound from the 22.2-channel surround-sound speakers -- again, 22.2-channels -- provides a ridiculously immersive experience.

Bolt's victory was noteworthy not just because, as he proclaimed time and again, it set him toward becoming a "legend."  He would finish that off later in the Games by winning the 200 meters and then the Jamaican team would win the 4x100 relay in world-record time. Before the start of the 100, 34-year-old Ashley Gill-Webb, who somehow made his way into the stadium and into the seats near the start line without a ticket, threw a bottle at Bolt, hoping to disrupt him.

Gill-Webb, who suffered from bipolar disorder and was having a "manic episode," was found guilty in January in a British court of public disorder.

In SHV, you can see not only that Gill-Webb is wearing a blue-sleeved shirt in the middle of the crowd but that he is preparing to throw the bottle.

Too, that it's a green bottle and has a long neck.

That the bottle bounces in the middle of the track behind the runners.

That, as the field makes its way toward the finish line toward the cameras, American Ryan Bailey, in Lane 8, steps across Bolt's lane line, in Lane 7. There was no protest filed; indeed, there was no violation in this instance, as there would be in, say, a 200-meter race, because technically Bailey was running farther by stepping into Bolt's lane.

The level of granular detail makes it so evident, however, that Bailey steps across the line -- a fascinating aspect to add to the historic context of the race.

This kind of forensic clarity, moreover, would be invaluable in helping to analyze races such as the 110-meter hurdles final at the 2011 world championships in Daegu, South Korea, in which Cuba's Dayron Robles crossed the line first, only to be disqualified after tangling with China's Liu Xiang after the ninth hurdle between Lanes 5 and 6; Liu was declared the winner.

Another example: the now-infamous third-place tie at last summer's U.S. Trials between Allyson Felix and Jeneba Tarmoh in the women's 100-meter dash.

Would SHV have definitively resolved the tie? No one can say.

Would it provide more evidence? For sure.

Where 3D has tried -- and is still trying -- to make its way, SHV seems poised to be the next advance in broadcasting technology.

Even if it's maybe years away from being in your living room, maybe five or so if you live in Japan or South Korea, and though if you were an actor or actress of a certain age it might keep you awake at nights with the level of potentially frightening stuff it would enable audiences to see about you, it also just might mean -- eventually -- the end of bad refereeing.

It's that crystal clear.

At the Sochi 2014 Winter Games, OBS will again cover the opening ceremonies; this time the showcase sport will be figure skating.

NHK will be flying the recordings to Tokyo for later review. Yuna Kim dominated this week's world figure skating championships. In SHV, she figures to be, in a word, spectacular.

Pyeongchang 2018: the secret is now out

DURBAN, South Africa -- Nearly 30 years ago, I spent a year backpacking around the world by myself. I idled away nearly six weeks of the trip in India, a lot of that down in the southwestern corner of the country, in Goa, where the ocean lapped up gently on the sandy white beaches and for one American dollar you could buy a beer and a huge grilled fish, and for less than that you could rent a room and you didn't have a care in the whole wide world. It was a huge secret.

Not for long, of course. Now Goa is built up with luxury hotels. The same way Negril Beach in Jamaica got built up. And Koh Samui in Thailand. And all the world's secret spots.

Pyeongchang is next.

In selecting Pyeongchang to play host to the 2018 Winter Games, the International Olympic Committee on Wednesday shouted out to the world the secret that is now a little Korean resort. Over the next seven years, it's going to blossom into a much, much, much bigger resort -- the hub of an Asian winter-sports explosion.

Too bad if you didn't already hold real-estate rights in and around Pyeongchang's Alpensia resort. It works for ski resorts just the way it does for beach gems. To see Alpensia in 2011 -- to tour it as the members of the IOC's evaluation commission did this past February -- is to provide a modern twist on the early days of, say, Whistler Mountain, where the ski events of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games were held.

There are perfectly fine ski lifts in the area. There's an upscale hotel, the Intercontinental, and a Holiday Inn. There's a water park, a superb golf course layout and a concert hall.

And there's a lot yet to be left to the imagination.

Indeed, there's a compelling argument to be made that Pyeongchang benefitted during this 2018 bid cycle in the same way that Chicago got the shaft during the 2016 cycle, and for precisely the same reason -- because the IOC forbids bid-city visits by the IOC members.

If the members had gotten to visit Chicago, they would have seen what a lakefront jewel it is. If they had gone to see Pyeongchang -- or, for that matter, Sochi, site of the 2014 Winter Games where everything had to be built from scratch -- how many members would have been willing to take that leap of faith?

The Alpensia complex cost $1.4 billion, constructed over the past 10 years on what used to be potato fields; it was completed in October, 2009. Seven of the 13 sports venues are now built.

Credit for that has to start with Jin Sun Kim, the former governor of Gangwon, the province where Pyeongchang is located, for 2018 a special bid ambassador. Kim led the two prior bids; despite two narrow defeats, he refused to yield. He almost came to tears Wednesday in urging the IOC to vote for Pyeongchang; again, his faith, dedication and steadfastness must be recognized.

This time, the bid was led by Yang Ho Cho, the head of Korean Air. He performed superbly. "We did what we wanted to do," he said simply and elegantly just moments after leading Wednesday's presentation to the IOC.

How well did he lead this bid? The answer is in the landslide of a first-round victory: 63 votes for Pyeongchang, 25 for Munich, seven for Annecy. The argument can be made that over the past two decades no city has won an IOC election so compellingly or convincingly.

A key issue for this 2018 bid was whether multiple -- and potentially competing constituencies -- in Korea could be kept not just in check but in sufficient harmony, everyone pulling toward the common goal. Korea may be, as the saying goes, the land of morning calm; the joke in bid circles was that it was the land of evening meetings.

In addition to the presidency and other layers of government, there was -- in no particular order -- Samsung, along with other powerful business interests and, of course, the Korean Olympic Committee.

The 2010 IOC vote was held in 2003, in Prague; Samsung flags and banners were all over central Prague, raising questions about whether the Korean business heavyweight -- and leading IOC sponsor -- had exerted undue influence. This time, Samsung's presence around and about Durban was extraordinarily muted.

Two rock stars stood front and center for the 2018 Pyeongchang team.

One the world knows well: 2010 figure skating champion Yuna Kim. She was brought onto the team late in the game, making her first appearance on stage in May in Lausanne, Switzerland, the IOC's base, before most of the members, at the so-called technical briefing. Nervous, she made a couple mistakes in her lines. The members ate it up, finding it endearing; after all, she is still just 20 years old.

On Wednesday, meanwhile, she was smooth and polished, declaring she was a "living legacy" of her nation's investment in sports.

The other star: Theresa Rah, the articulate and poised director of communication. A former television personality, she spoke Wednesday from the stage in both English and French. Over the two-year course of the bid run, she proved -- time and again -- a remarkable talent with a gift for directing traffic on and off camera.

Behind the scenes, any number of hands played key roles. But enormous credit has to go to Terrence Burns, the first-rate bid consultant from Helios Partners in Atlanta. He dreamed up the tagline "New Horizons," which captured the essence of the historical moment the IOC vote on Wednesday delivered. He wrote every word of all their presentations, including the one here. He trained the presenters, including the president of Korea, to deliver lines with verve. In English.

For Burns -- it marked his fourth Olympic win.

Mike Lee, the British consultant, continued an Olympic winning streak, too: London 2012, Rio 2016, rugby as an Olympic sport and now Pyeongchang.

By 2030, according to an Asian Development Bank Study, Asia will make up 43 percent of worldwide consumption. From 1990 to 2008, the middle class in Asia grew by 30 percent, and spent an average of an additional $1.7 trillion annually. No other region in the world came close, as the Koreans emphasized time and again these past several months.

When you combine that with the 90 percent approval rating the 2018 project garnered in opinion polling in Korea -- an absurdly high result in any poll -- the IOC had to take notice.

If it's not clear why the Koreans came up just short in 2010, it's manifestly evident why they came up shy for 2014 -- Vladimir Putin. He is among the most important figures in our time -- not just in global politics but, as well, in international sport.

This time around, there was no Putin with which to contend.

Plus, Rome wants to bid for 2020. Madrid, too. And the Swiss are exploring a 2022 bid. Translation: incentive for others in Europe to keep 2018 out of the Alps.

It all broke Korea's way.

Despite the usual professions for public consumption about how this was a close race -- behind the scenes, it had been clear for a long time that this was the way it was going down. Even the other bids knew it.

The members said so, too, just not for publication. In prior years, some European members acknowledged they were almost embarrassed to admit they might be supporting Pyeongchang. This time, several let it be known openly that they were with the Koreans and that was that.

The presentation Wednesday proved the icing on the cake. The Korean president, Myung Bak Lee, promised full support. The head of the Korean Olympic Committee, Y.S. Park, told a hilarious joke, apologizing to that noted newlywed and IOC member, Prince Albert, for making his serene highness sit through a Pyeongchang bid presentation for a third time. It broke up the room.

The prince said later, "It was even better the third time. Don't worry."

When the world shows up in Pyeongchang in February 2018, the area will for sure look very different than it does now. They're going to spend another $6.4 billion between now and then, $3.4 billion of that on a high-speed rail link between Pyeongchang and Seoul, to be completed in 2017.

It's why former Governor Kim welled up with emotion on stage Wednesday -- the notion that Pyeongchang, this little jewel, is for sure going to be a secret no more.

He said, "It has been 17 years since Pyeongchang first had the dream about the Olympics. We decided to realize the dream 12 years ago. We failed two times in the bidding. Now we are here for the third time. We have walked a thorny path to get here to this day.

"As I was explaining the whole thing to the IOC members, I did not even know I had tears in my eyes. I was filled with emotion. That's what I had been feeling -- not just me, but all of us."

Toby Dawson and the promise of hope

DURBAN, South Africa -- Pyeongchang's winning sales pitch here Wednesday for the 2018 Winter Olympics  included the likes of South Korean president Myung Bak Lee,  2010 Vancouver figure skating gold medalist Yuna Kim and a 32-year-old guy whose story speaks to the best of what the Olympic movement can be. "My name is Toby Dawson,"  the 32-year-old guy told the members of the International Olympic Committee.

"My name is also Kim Bong Seok," he went on to say.

"I am a freestyle skier and I am an Olympian.

"I am a Korean by birth. Yet I am also an American."

In a presentation that bridged cultures and spoke to the core of the Olympic values, Dawson all but stole the show.

The entire Pyeongchang presentation was obviously impressive; after falling short in two prior bids for 2010 and 2014, they finally broke through for 2018, winning in the first round over Munich and Annecy, France. The vote totals: 63 for Pyeongchang, 25 for Munich, seven for Annecy.

Dawson's appearance had been a closely held secret. When he took to the lectern, he spoke with clarity and confidence about the essence of the thing that sustains not just sport but, indeed, life.

Hope is real. Toby Dawson is living proof.

"It was nerve-wracking, absolutely nerve-wracking," he said just moments after walking off the stage. "But I thought I had a great story to tell."

Not even 3, little Kim Bog Seok had been abandoned on the doorstep of a police station in Pusan, in the far south of Korea. He spent six months in an orphanage; there he was given he name Soo Chul.

In time, he was adopted by a pair of American ski instructors, Mike and Deborah Dawson, who brought him to a new life in Vail, Colo.

Little Toby was on skis early. He soon became not just a great moguls skier but known as a showman, too. As time went on, he won or earned medals at virtually every level -- the U.S. championships, World Cups, world championships.

All that remained was the Olympics. But he didn't make the 2002 team. In 2004 he broke his leg. In 2005 he sprained knee ligaments. But in 2006 he regrouped and in Torino he seized the moment, winning bronze.

Winning that medal unlocked the past in a way Toby Dawson never imagined.

At a news conference in 2007 in Seoul, where Toby had gone to help promote Pyeongchang's 2014 bid for the Winter Games, in walked Toby's biological father, Jae Soo Kim.

"Flash bulbs were going off everywhere," he said, recalling the event. "Meeting this man for the first time -- I didn't even get the chance to meet him or say hi. I was sitting in a press conference room and he walked in."

There was no question that the man who was said to be his father was, indeed, his father. "The moment he walked in, I said, 'Holy cow, this is definitely my father, there's no two ways about it. We look so similar. For both of us to have a lot of facial hair and long sideburns -- it was obvious I was related."

There was not, however, a lot to say: "I said, 'Hello, dad.' "

Things have gotten better since, Toby said. He, his father and his biological brother, Hyun Chul Kim, have meet three times now. The father has remarried; the circumstances regarding his biological mother remain unclear.

"The last four or five years, after I met my father for the first time, the Korean people have really embraced me. I was really ashamed of being Korean growing up. It was not until my mid-20s that I became comfortable with myself personally that I was willing to accept that I was actually Korean.

"To be able to go through that has made me want to learn more about Korean culture, about the land where I was born, to be a Korean-American. That's why I wanted to be out here, to help out my people, the place where I was born."

It's why Toby Dawson wrapped up his speech Wednesday to the IOC by asking a rhetorical question:

Were were the members listening to Toby Dawson, the American Olympian, or to Kim Bong Seok, "the little Korean boy with the ability to be an Olympian but with limited opportunities to do so?"

"Well," he answered, "to be honest, you are listening to both.

"I came here today," he went on to say, "to achieve two things.

"First, I want to honor my home country and its people -- my people. i want to return, in some small measure, the good fortune that I've receive in my life from sport.

"Second, I want to speak for future generations in Korea and beyond. I ask you to give them the same chance that I received when I moved to America in 1981 -- the chance to hope, the chance to participate, the chance to excel and the chance to succeed."

And he said a moment later, "I believe that there is no greater honor than representing one's country at the Olympic Games. It is my dream that every child, everywhere in the world, can hope for that possibility."

Three bids, 88 members, 49 days to go

LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- Two years ago, Rio de Janeiro's bid team came here and put up a map that showed the Summer Games had never been to South America, a remarkably clever piece of stagecraft that separated Rio from four other contenders and, ultimately, made the case for its stunning win for the 2016 Summer Games. The three cities for the 2018 Winter Games came here Wednesday with movies and charts and Olympic medalists by the score, the two perceived chasers, Munich and Annecy, France, looking for a similar breakout moment to make up ground against the favorite, Pyeongchang, South Korea.

The Koreans came Wednesday with the admittedly "nervous" but nonetheless impressive Yuna Kim, the women's 2010 figure skating gold medalist. And they have their own world map.

That map shows that the Winter Games have been held in Asia only twice, and both times in Japan, in Nagano in 1998 and Sapporo in 1972.

This is the underlying dynamic of this 2018 race, and unless the others wield a compelling argument to the contrary, it's why this arguably is -- and always has been -- the Koreans' race to lose. The IOC will vote July 6 by secret ballot in Durban, South Africa.

The essential 2018 question is whether the forces of history, economics and demographics are -- or are not -- on Korea's side.

To frame it another way: Is the sports world still in the expansionist mode of recent years? Or is 2018 the campaign in which the IOC takes a break and opts for a more traditional locale before venturing forth anew in 2020, 2022 and beyond?

To be clear: The Koreans have a lot going for them. Then again, if they could win, of course they could lose. They have bid twice before for the Winter Games, for 2014 and 2010, and lost both times. Moreover, it's an International Olympic Committee election; by definition, the only thing predictable about an IOC campaign is that it's unpredictable.

Indeed, sometimes it's just flat-out unusual.

One such moment:

At the session Wednesday, held at the Olympic Museum, and formally dubbed a "technical briefing," with each city given a 45-minute presentation window followed by a question-and-answer session, Hicham el Guerrouj, the great Moroccan middle-distance runner who since 2004 has been an IOC member, posed a question during Annecy's time about the arrest in New York on sexual assault charges of French financier Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

IOC president Jacques Rogge promptly ruled the question out of order.

Rogge was not asked about that question at an end-of-the day news conference.

He declared the day a big success: "It was a very good day for the International Olympic Committee because whoever wins will definitely be able to stage very good Games."

He also said, and perhaps he's absolutely right about this, perhaps he's just practicing diplomacy: "It's going to be a close race."

The Koreans, with their tagline about taking the Games to "new horizons," would appear in many regards to be driving the campaign. At the least, the other two bids have felt compelled to respond to the Korean narrative.

"When you choose the Olympic host city, it is about more than just geography," Katarina Witt, the chair of the Munich bid, stunning as ever in a low-cut dress by the Berlin designer Michalsky, told the 88 IOC members on hand, stressing that Munich would deliver full stadiums and "the single greatest experience" of each athlete's life.

It's not just about geography, of course.

Even so, the broad theme of the era in which we are living is writ large.

The nations that through the 1990s played host to major sports events have been giving way in recent years to countries and regions that, logically enough, are saying, it's our turn now.

As a for instance, this is why -- despite what is shaping up to be a comparatively weak field for 2020 -- the U.S. Olympic Committee, even if its revenue and marketing issues with the IOC are resolved, ought to give serious, serious pause before considering an entry.

One theory holds that after ranging afield to new locales -- such as Rio for 2016 -- the IOC needs to park in a safe harbor, such as the U.S., for 2020.

Applying that theory now would deliver 2018 to Germany or France -- after 2014 in Sochi, Russia, where they're building a brand-new Winter Games destination from scratch.

The competing theory is that the Olympic and international sports world is still very much in the midst of turning away from what was and toward what's next.

See, for example: Russia 2014; Brazil 2016 (and soccer's World Cup in 2014.)

Russia, again, for the World Cup in 2018. Qatar, for the World Cup in 2022.

Qatar, again, for the men's team handball world championship in 2015 -- chosen this past January over three European bids, from France, Norway and Poland.

Our world is changing all around us. Just a couple days ago, in an event that went virtually unnoticed in the United States but is big stuff in Europe, with more than 100 million people tuned in to watch the final episode, Azerbaijan, one of the former Soviet republics, won the Eurovision song contest.

Germany was 10th; Britain, 11th. Spain and France finished farther still down the list.

Azerbaijan winning Eurovision -- that underscores a major cultural and economic shift.

Here's another huge economic shift in the making, a point the Koreans have underscored time and again during this 2018 campaign:

By 2030, according to an Asian Development Bank Study, Asia will make up 43 percent of worldwide consumption. From 1990 to 2008, the middle class in Asia grew by 30 percent, and spent an average of an additional $1.7 trillion annually. No other region in the world comes close.

Complicating the 2018 Olympic dynamic, though, is the factor of personality politics.

Thomas Bach, the vice president and presumed IOC presidential candidate in 2013, is leading the Munich bid. He observed Wednesday that "there are cycles of life," a time where "you go to new shores" and another "where you cultivate your foundations."

While the presentations Wednesday were important, the behind-the-scenes politicking now begins in earnest.

"This is a marathon race," Bach said at a news conference. "It's of no importance whether you lead at 22k or 35k or 40k. The only thing that counts is to cross the finish line first, on the 6th of July. After today's presentation and the response, which we can feel, we go into this final stretch of this very special Olympic marathon with full confidence and with all the determination and with all the passion we can have for the Olympic Games in Germany and for winter sports in particular."

Asked where Munich stood at this point in the "marathon," Bach answered, "I don't care. This is, as I said, about winning."

For their part, the French team includes Jean-Claude Killy, the triple 1968 Games ski champion turned sports administrator. Arguably no one within the Olympic movement carries more credibility within winter sports circles. "We think we have nothing to envy the other two propositions," he told reporters after the French had briefed the 88 members.

Later, he said that he supported the bid "very strongly." He also, reading from a paper left over from the German news conference, said, "It says here that 'Munich loves you.' So I just want you to know that we love you, too."

The chairman of the Korean bid, Yang Ho Cho, met reporters immediately after the Pyeongchang presentation ended. In keeping with the Korean message of humility, he said, "The decision is up to the IOC members. We did our best," adding a moment later, "We sent a message of new horizons."

--

A quickie and by no means exhaustive summary of the three bids:

-- Munich: One of the world's great cities. Re-purposed 1972 Summer Games venues. Big crowds. Fantastic guaranteed atmosphere. German business underwrites 50 percent of the revenues of the seven sports on the Winter Games program. Germany hasn't hosted the Winter Games since 1936.

-- Annecy: The IOC has had a penchant for staging recent Winter Games in big cities -- Vancouver, Torino, Salt Lake City. What about the mountains? "Authentic" Annecy, amid the world's most iconic mountain range and with a sustainable development plan in mind, is uniquely positioned to take the Winter Games, and mountain communities worldwide, into a 21st-century future.

-- Pyeongchang: Time is not only ripe but right to go to Asia and South Korea to grow the Winter Games, and in a big way. 87 percent national support for 2018 Games. Major national priority. Two prior bids, spent $1.4 billion to build first-class Alpensia resort in what used to be potato fields. "We are keeping our promises to the IOC," former provincial governor and bid leader Jin Sun Kim stressed at news conference.