Olympic TV: the time is now

Based in Los Angeles, KIIS-FM — OMG, Ryan Seacrest, he hosts the talent show American Idol, too! — is a pop culture powerhouse that unabashedly plays a loop of hit songs its teenage listeners want to hear, over and again. This summer, as I know well, what with three teens in the house (disclaimer: the oldest turned 20 in April), one of those songs is Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda.” If you are not in the know, let us just say that “Anaconda” is salacious. My 15-year-old daughter, who is a straight-A student and gives her parents zero problems, knows all the words. These include rhymes and riffs that veer from Eiffel to Nyquil to others that are for sure not printable in a family newspaper. The video, with Minaj and a posse of backup dancers twerking and then twerking some more, makes the whole thing all too clear.

When I was 15, Karen Carpenter was making big hits.

Times change.

Which leads — yes, it does — to the prospect of an Olympic TV channel. To quote Karen Carpenter, we’ve only just begun. You don’t think so? Rewind to the Sochi 2014 opening ceremony. There was the Russian Police Choir covering Daft Punk’s dance floor anthem, “Get Lucky.”

The International Olympic Commitee — indeed, the entire Olympic movement — is trying to figure out how to reach the emerging demographic that is teenagers and 20-somethings.

There are two universal languages spoken around the world.

One is music.

The other is sports.

To be candid, the notion of an Olympic TV channel is an idea that should have come to fruition already.

Like many things in our world, however, this is one of those that is a matter of timing.

Five years ago, the idea of such a channel was floated by Comcast and the U.S. Olympic Committee but then abandoned weeks later when the IOC and NBC demurred.

That was then.

Now, Comcast has acquired NBC, and Comcast chief executive Brian Roberts — who, it should be said, was supportive of the 2009 concept — recently played a key role in the $7.65 billion deal that gives NBC the U.S. rights to the Olympics through 2032.

Now, Thomas Bach is the IOC president instead of Jacques Rogge, and Bach has signaled unequivocally that the idea of an Olympic channel is a priority. Indeed, of all the working groups in his “Agenda 2020” review and potential reform plan, the channel is the one working group that Bach himself is chairing.

The Agenda 2020 process is working toward an all-members session in Monaco in December. There, the channel — along with other items on the agenda — will come up for review.

It’s not a foregone conclusion that the members will approve the channel. Nothing in the IOC is ever such a thing.

But if ever the timing is right — it’s right, right now.

“You mention the example from five years ago and the example from the United States,” said Yiannis Exarchos, the chief executive officer of Olympic Broadcasting Services. “In the last five years, we have seen changes from a century.

“We have seen changes and movements that are really seismic,” he said, adding a moment later, “Everybody in the movement started realizing the importance of coming together under a powerful brand. It adds value to all the efforts, which has a proven record of providing a robust platform for the partners to grow.”

Timo Lumme, the managing director of IOC TV and marketing services, added, “An Olympic channel is not going to solve everything at a stroke. But what it does is put a marker down and put a destination down for what we stand for.

“It’s not just the notion of the Olympic Games — but the values and everything we stand for. And hopefully we can get in there and stretch the Olympic brand beyond the two weeks beyond the huge spike of the Games, and leverage that spike.”

This is it, exactly.

Since early indications are the channel is not about rights fees, there isn’t likely to be a problem with NBC, the BBC, CBC, CCTV or others.

Also, it is going to be— by design — a global entity. NBC, just to pick one, serves the terrestrial interests of U.S. viewers, and is in business to make money. The point of the channel is very different. It’s to enhance the Olympic brand — to make it a 365-day-a-year proposition.

If done right, the channel not only could but should boost the quality and level of corporate partnerships, potentially meaning revenue over the longer term.

But that is not the outset goal.

What is, is telling the Olympic story, Exarchos said: the thousands of hours of sporting excellence already on file in the archives along with promoting the values of friendship, excellence and respect; adopting healthier lifestyles; organizing community events in a sustainable way; social inclusiveness; and more.

“Obviously, we do not believe television should be didactic,” he said, adding, “It should be exciting, moving and engaging.”

He said planners see sports as the “core,” as the “human stories,” ones with “moral paradigms that carry emotions and so on,” adding, It’s a more fuller world we see [with] sports as the moving heart of it, the core of it.”

He also said that while there should be “reference to the big stars and the big stories in the Olympics,” as with “everything in broadcasting … you have to make things locally.” He said, “I strongly believe in the incorporation of locally produced programming so that it can become far more relevant.” While this is “complex,” he said, this factor “will be the key to its success.”

Assuming the members give the go-ahead in December, the channel is likely to get up and running as early as 2015.

Back to Nicki Minaj, and for this reason. At the end of “Anaconda,” she sings about other women she meets in clubs. She is dismissive — I am being gentle here — about these other women.

For those of you who might take offense to Minaj and her lyrics — I direct you to Led Zeppelin and “Whole Lotta Love,” which essentially covers some of the same ground, only 44 years prior. Now that song is considered “classic rock.”

But I digress.

What Minaj creates in her song is a world that teenagers want to be part of. She’s so cool that she shows up on TV with Ellen DeGeneres — host of this year’s Academy Awards, hello selfie shot, which was apparently good enough for the IOC at the Youth Games in Nanjing — and DeGeneres makes a parody video that reduces Minaj to hilarious laughter.

Teens aren’t old enough to go to clubs, at least — in many countries — not legally. But they yearn to be part of something bigger, something so intrinsically awesome that they say, I’m in.

This is what the Olympic Games are about.

This is where the Olympic channel comes in.

Because aside from the two weeks every two (or four) years, the movement is very good at ceding the spotlight to the likes of Nicki Minaj.

And while she has something to say, the movement does, too.

To be obvious, it needs somewhere to say it.

“We have an opportunity right now to build something,” Lumme said, Exarchos adding, referring to the prospect of an Olympic channel, “In today’s day, it would be hard to do it in any way other than this.”

Selfies and the Youth Olympic Games future

In American teen parlance, the word “tryhard” is a noun. It means when someone tries hard to appear a certain way but all that effort does is make that someone all the more contrived. Here is how to use “tryhard”: when the president of the International Olympic Committee posed with a group of young athletes for a staged selfie shot in the opening ceremony of the Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, China, over the weekend, the IOC was being such a tryhard.

The disconnect this moment illustrates is so profound that, in a way, it’s almost a good thing that it happened.

Because, if the Youth Games really are going to stick around, and that is a serious question for debate, this can be the moment everyone can look at and go, OK, let’s see if we can go forward from here and find something actually authentic that might actually speak to young people instead of trying to manufacture something.

To start from the very top:

There is no question the Olympic movement needs to reach out to young people, especially teens. Everyone in a position of authority within the movement agrees about that.

The issue is whether the Youth Olympic Games is the means and method by which to do so.

It is by no means a sure thing that the Youth Games is a viable concept.

I wrote as much in 2007 when, at its all-members assembly in Guatemala, the IOC authorized the idea in the first instance.

I was in Singapore, a mentor for the inaugural Young Reporters program, for the first edition of the Youth Games, and though the organization of those Games was by every important measure a success, the fundamental problems confronting the Youth Olympic Games then are still the same challenges now, and they are going to be the same going forward.

One, the sports calendar is already completely overloaded. This year, just as it was in 2010 and just as it will be in 2018, we have already had the Winter Olympics and Paralympics; the soccer World Cup; and the Commonwealth Games. Now YOG?

At some point, fatigue sets in. People are, like, what, another multi-sport event?

Beyond which, it’s August. Around the world, soccer — and, in the United States, football — season is starting up again. That’s what most people will tend to care about now for the next several months.

Two, is YOG a kumbaya session in which teens ages 14 to 18 are immersed in “the themes of culture, education and friendship,” or a mini-Olympics? The IOC is trying to have it both ways, stressing the former in its official release but, of course, awarding medals. This is a muddle, and muddles are never good.

Three, while the IOC under the new president, Thomas Bach, is stressing sustainability and legacy, the opening ceremony in Nanjing was thoroughly over-the-top, as absolutely — after the display in Beijing in 2008 — could have been expected from our Chinese friends. If you are Buenos Aires, site of the 2018 Youth Olympics, what are you thinking after watching that ceremony? How do we top that? Should we even try?

Four, and the biggest problem, YOG simply doesn’t do what it is supposed to do. The idea is to connect with teens. How, exactly? Big picture: the Olympic scene is a made-for-TV spectacle. YOG is the classic “if a tree falls in the forest, does anybody know about it” deal because hardly anyone sees it on TV, especially not teen-agers.

How would they? YOG’s broadcast reach is hugely limited, especially in major markets. Beyond which, why would teens watch? Who are the personalities? Their back stories?

The IOC wants to believe this is all going to be a social media-driven event.

Gently: we are years away from that.

Maybe we will get there someday. But not now. I remain a huge supporter of the Young Reporter program. As of Monday evening, its Facebook posts were generally reaching 200 to 500 people.

Which brings the circle back around to the on-stage selfie in the opening ceremony.

“Dear young athletes, these are your Games. This is your moment,” Bach said. “So, young athletes, please join me: let us all capture it — so get your smartphones out and let’s set a record for selfies.”

At that, he was joined by five young athletes for his own “YOG selfie,” the IOC reported.

The whole thing evoked the Ellen DeGeneres moment at the Oscars earlier this year.

If one of the young athletes had suggested the selfie, instead of the president, perhaps the moment might have seemed less manufactured.

But, ask yourself — is this something a 15-year-old would do?

Or something that more likely came out of a middle-management brainstorming session? Run by, you know, adults?

I live with three teenagers. Well, technically, two. The older daughter is 20. The boy is 17. The younger daughter is 15, headed toward her sophomore year in high school. Because she has an older sister who is going to be a junior in college, the younger one knows a lot of stuff.

Essentially, the 15-year-old is the IOC YOG target audience.

She lives on her phone, “talking” incessantly with her friends and her sister on Snapchat. They are on Facebook and on Instagram. Twitter, not so much.

Teenagers do not take selfies with, as they describe them, “old people.”

Who is an “old person”? Me, for one.

As the 15-year-old said, “How old is old? When they have visible wrinkles.”

Has the IOC yet figured out that, especially in this context, teenage girls are the knowers of all things? Or at least all relevant things?

Suddenly, she and all her friends are busy — like seemingly everyone in the United States on social media — taking the ALS ice-bucket challenge. She did so Sunday and immediately — to stress, immediately — put video of it up on Facebook, cautioning me that I was not allowed to “like” it until she got a certain number of likes from her friends first because that would not be cool. As for the Youth Games? A world away. Whatever.

Has the IOC, you know, convened focus groups of teen girls to figure out the Youth Games?

The 15-year-old asked, reasonably enough, “Why is there a Youth and a Junior Olympics?” A lot of her friends are geeked up about the possibility of taking part in the JO’s. YOG? What?

Also, the word “Youth.” That, she said, “sounds like it should be for 8-year-olds,” and she is right, because “youth” is not a word that, especially in American English, people use in everyday speech. It just isn’t. It’s stilted.

This is the overarching problem with the Youth Olympic Games. There are so many disconnects on so many levels.

Bach’s “Olympic Agenda 2020” review and potential reform process, headed toward an all-members session in Monaco in December, is supposed to be heavy on what to do about engaging tomorrow’s audience.

The IOC needs to give serious deliberation to the notion about whether hundreds of millions of dollars for a Youth Olympic Games, Summer and Winter, is legitimately the way to go. For a fraction of that money, Michael Phelps, who was a 2010 YOG ambassador, and Chad le Clos, who is a 2014 ambassador, can make a lot of appearances, and reach a lot of teens.

You can make the argument that the modern Olympic Games, launched in Athens in 1896, took a few cycles to gain sound footing.

You can counter, however, that back then the Games had the luxury of time. The world we live in now doesn’t have that luxury. Things are too expensive and move too fast.

Today’s teens have far too many choices. Why should they not only check out but stay tuned in to a Youth Olympic Games? The IOC has to give them not only reason but exciting reason. What is that going to be? Without that, can the IOC articulate good reason for the Youth Games to keep on keeping on?

More and more, indisputably Bach's IOC

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — In 1980, Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain was elected president of the International Committee. The next year, the IOC held a far-reaching Congress in Baden-Baden, Germany, that set the stage for Samaranch’s visionary — yes, visionary — years in office. Germany’s Thomas Bach was elected IOC president last September. This December, the IOC will hold an all-members assembly in Monaco to reflect on his far-reaching review and potential reform process, which he has dubbed “Olympic Agenda 2020.” Backstage, the comparisons to Samaranch have already begun, and within the Olympic community those comparisons are assuredly meant to be complimentary.

Absolutely Samaranch endured criticism, some of it brutal, outside the walls of the IOC’s lakefront Chateau de Vidy headquarters. At the same time, he was widely adored within the IOC as a president who commanded authority but who also understood personalities and relationships.

Bach has already demonstrated the same touch.

On Tuesday night, the upstairs bar area of the Palace Hotel in Lausanne was turned into a viewing party area for IOC members — and reporters, too — for the soccer World Cup semifinal match between Germany and Brazil. The front row featured a couch where Bach, who promised to be “studiously neutral,” and Carlos Nuzman, who leads the Rio 2016 effort, sat side by side.

Behind were rows of couches or chairs for everyone else. Without anything having to be said, it was understood both that the president was to be left alone until the game was over, and that afterward he would be gracious enough to say a few words.

This scene would never have transpired during the Jacques Rogge years. Not that Rogge is not friendly enough. It’s just that this was not his style.

Almost a year in, it’s now evident this is more and more becoming Bach’s IOC. This is as it should be.

The IOC functions best when the president takes charge. When he is a strong figure.

Bach recognized this from the outset.

Politically, financially and diplomatically, he has -- in large measure -- moved adeptly.

Last November, he delivered a speech at the United Nations that delineated the IOC’s place in the complex worlds of politics and sport. He then navigated through the controversies of the Sochi Games. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon met Bach here in Lausanne in June; that meeting came just two months after the two signed an agreement to strengthen ties; Rogge, meanwhile, has been appointed Ban’s special envoy for youth refugees and sport.

Bach moved fast to strike a $7.75 billion deal with NBC, announced in May, that extends the network’s rights through 2032. A key facet of that deal is $100 million to explore the potential of an Olympic television channel — and it surely is no accident that of the 14 working groups in Bach’s Olympic Agenda 2020 process, the only one the president himself is chairing is the one exploring the potential TV channel.

A “summit” reviewing the working groups’ activity meets in Lausanne next week; the executive board takes a look at it all in October.

The TV deal extends the IOC’s enviable financial position. Keep in mind the global financial crisis of the past several years while processing these numbers: the IOC’s forecast 2013-16 revenues are up 86 percent compared to 2001-04. Why? Primarily television rights, which have increased by 85 percent to $4.1 billion from $2.2 billion. Throw in another $1 billion for top-tier sponsor revenues, up a comparable 53 percent, and simple math says the IOC is at $5.1 billion.

Bach’s pace has kept staffers half his age racing to keep up. After the three-day executive board get-together, he was due to fly out Wednesday night to Rio for high-level meetings amid the World Cup final with Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff and others. After the game, he flies to Haiti for the dedication of an IOC “Sport for Hope” project; the UN’s Ban is due to attend as well.

In his news conference Wednesday, asked a question about potential Tokyo 2020 venue changes by a Japanese reporter, Bach talked about how he’d recently had some discussions with senior authorities in Tokyo while on the ground there for all of 12 hours.

Bach, too, knows that all is not rosy with the IOC. Hardly. Absolutely he knows that criticism comes with the territory.

For one, he is not a dictator. He is a president. The IOC has to be careful not to overreach — so, for instance, when the Spanish Olympic Committee announces, as it did last week, that it is going to be working on an anti-doping program funded by the IOC, that is bound to raise questions about the role of the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Much IOC business seemingly can take on the air of never-ending, impending crisis. The Rio project, for instance, is well behind schedule. “We have to stay vigilant. There is no time to lose,” Bach said Wednesday, adding a moment later, “We are very confident. The World Cup is encouraging. We are very confident we will have great Games in Rio de Janeiro.”

The cities that were passed through Monday to the finalist stage for the 2022 Winter Games race — Oslo, Beijing and Almaty — underscore perhaps the IOC’s most fundamental challenge:

There were only three left.

The IOC had essentially no choice but to go with those three, and Oslo is by no means certain to stay in. The government there must yet offer certain financial guarantees; it won’t be known until November whether that can happen.

Over the past several months, scared off by the $51 billion figure associated with the Sochi Olympics, other cities said no thanks to 2022: Stockholm; Lviv, Ukraine; Krakow, Poland; Munich.

In an IOC-commissioned survey released Tuesday, asked if staging the Olympic Games leaves the host city or country with “many benefits,” 73 percent responded favorably, 13 percent not. The online survey consists of 36,000 interviews in 16 countries; age groups ranged from eight to 65. A margin of error was not immediately available.

So there’s obviously a disconnect -- all those people all over the world believe the Games are beneficial, according to that poll, and yet all those cities and governments, when it comes to 2022, bowing out.

It’s reality, it's perception, it’s a significant communications challenge, it's all intertwined.

Asked about the disconnect Wednesday, Bach spoke, uninterrupted, for nearly six minutes. This is obviously unusual at a news conference — but underscores the importance of what’s much on the mind within the so-called "Olympic family."

This is what he said:

“Explain. We have to explain and to explain and to explain. This is sometimes, you know, we could say easily sometimes you have a difference between the published opinion and the public opinion. But this would be too easy. It is obvious we have to explain our system of bidding and organization of the Games better.

“That means we have to show that this is a very transparent procedure from the very beginning. You know, you can start with a working group — the results of this working group are public, are open to everybody, the report and the visit of the evaluation commission will be open to everybody, the bidding files are to everybody. The evaluation report is open to everybody. The comments from the bidding cities are open to everybody. Obviously, we need to explain this better and more.

“We have to explain better and more the system and the logic of the two different budgets," meaning, on the one hand, the Games operational budget and, on the other, however much a city, region or nation opts to invest in infrastructure. "It is, you know, this is easy when you speak to a financial or business community. They understand very well that you can not depreciate the investment for housing for thousands of people within 16 days to zero. But obviously the broader public does not understand this.

“This is an investment budget, what you could put in the Olympic Games budget and what is Olympic-related — there what you could argue is the rent for the four weeks, where this housing serves as the Olympic Village. The other day, a colleague of mine said, it is like with a housewarming party. It’s as if you would calculate the cost for a housewarming party [in] the construction cost of a house. It’s a little bit the same, therefore for the two budgets and for the investments to be made. There again we also have to explain.

“And the Olympic Agenda to make sure — it is first of all up to the candidate cities to tell us how the Games fit into their environment. That means which investments have they planned, anyway, to develop their city, their region, and how the Games fit into this, not blaming in the end the IOC and the Olympic movement for infrastructure projects they wanted to do, anyway, but using the Games just as a catalyst because they know that without the Games they would not never have gotten the approval to put them in place.

“I was once, allow me this to be a little bit because as I say I have to explain and I may take the opportunity to explain — we had once had a bid in Germany, this was for the Summer Games, this was the bid from Leipzig,” for the 2012 Summer Games. “One day the prime minister there of this region invited me to visit there Leipzig and to show me the project. Then he got me to a helicopter and we were flying over the airport of Leipzig.

"Then he showed me some land and said, ‘Here we are going to build the next landing strip for the airport.’

“I said, ‘What do you need it for?’

“‘It’s the other way around. I need it, the candidature for the Games, to get this approval for this landing strip.’

“In the end, if they would have gotten the Games, then people would have said the Games have to pay for this landing strip. It’s just not logic but sometimes in this business it’s more about perception than it is about reality. So we have to keep explaining and thank you for giving me the opportunity to start.”

What would Jackie Robinson say?

International Olympic Committee news releases are written in distinctive code. In an otherwise anodyne six-paragraph release issued a few days ago on autonomy and good governance, the IOC dropped a bombshell. For years, Iran as well as a number of Arabic countries have taken sly steps aimed at denying appropriate recognition to Israeli officials or athletes; further, athletes from these countries have mysteriously feigned ailments or been ordered not to compete with Israelis. The new IOC president, Thomas Bach, is seemingly now keen to send a strong signal that on his watch this sort of thing is not likely to be tolerated.

To be clear, the release itself hardly makes any grandiose pronouncements.

But the signal would seem strong.

It’s spelled out in the fourth paragraph, the IOC noting that at the instruction of the president himself, a task force has begun an investigation into an “incident” that “may represent discrimination” against the Israeli baseball/softball federation at the World Baseball Softball Confederation general assembly last month in Hammamet, Tunisia, a resort about an hour south of Tunis.

This marks the first time in recent memory the IOC has pointedly taken such official note of such an “incident” involving potential “discrimination” waged against the Israelis.

The details of the “incident,” moreover, make it abundantly clear the president of the Israeli baseball federation, Peter Kurz, absolutely was singled out and made the target of discrimination.

Not only that: though he was not harmed, he was left throughout the congress feeling unsafe and vulnerable. Given that security -- as the IOC is always given to say, is paramount issue No.1 -- that can never be tenable, particularly given the lessons of the 1972 Munich Olympics.

The question now: what is to be done?

Tunisia is among those nations that have inappropriately mixed politics with sports when it comes to Israel. Last fall, for instance, Tunisia’s tennis federation ordered its top player, Malek Jaziri, ranked 169th in the world, not to play Israel’s Amir Weintraub in the quarterfinals of a lower-tier ATP event in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

The WBSC congress, its first after the merger of the international baseball and softball federations, took place May 10-11.

In a May 12 letter to newly elected WBSC president Riccardo Fraccari, Kurz wrote that despite the history between the two nations he had been assured he and Israel would be appropriately “recognized and honored” per usual Olympic-style protocol at the assembly. But “unfortunately, the night before the Congress, I was asked to sit without my national flag and country sign, for ‘my own well being’ and for the sake of the host country.”

In a telephone interview Tuesday, Kurz said, “I went there with assurance the Israeli flag would be shown,” adding a moment later, referring to Tunisian authorities, “They told me that for my own benefit it was probably better if I didn’t sit with the flag. I agreed, for my own safety. Afterward, when I left, I sent them,” meaning the WBSC, a “letter of protest.”

Israel was the only nation so singled out at the conference. The merged confederation represents more than 100 nations; softball alone is played in more than 140.

Bach has made autonomy and governance issues — which typically do not receive much, if any, press — one of the mainstays of his “Agenda 2020” IOC review and potential reform process, now working its way toward an all-members session in Monaco in December.

In governance, the president has sought to underscore the obvious: without consistency, everything can get very shaky, and very fast.

"The health and viability of the Olympic movement start and end with issues of ethics and governance," said Atlanta-based Terrence Burns, a noted Olympic strategist. "These principles are embedded in the Olympic charter and have guided the movement since 1896."

Bach has also, since his election as IOC president in Buenos Aires last September, sought to highlight the import of fair play and respect, both on and off the field of play.

He has cited Nelson Mandela: “Sport can change the world.”

In a late April speech at the United Nations, he reiterated the words he used in closing the Sochi Games, when he urged “the political leaders of the world to respect the Olympic message of good will, of tolerance, of excellence and of peace” and appealed to “everybody implicated in confrontation, oppression or violence: act on this Olympic message of dialogue and peace … have the courage to address your disagreements in a peaceful, direct political dialogue.”

If the IOC in prior years might have been perhaps more inclined to be more passive about what happened in Tunisia, it’s clear a different sort of reckoning now awaits.

Uncertain, though, is the full scope and nature.

For its part, the WBSC has also launched its own inquiry. It will “fully cooperate” with the IOC to determine “warranted sanctions” and “any other course of action,” Fraccari said in an email sent early Wednesday from Tokyo.

Tangled up in all this — albeit as a side issue, though one that has sparked some concern within the WBSC — is the federation’s positioning going forward as it seeks to get baseball and softball back onto the Olympic program, perhaps as soon as the Tokyo 2020 Summer Games.

Fraccari said, “Good governance, autonomy and upholding the Olympic values are absolutely paramount to the WBSC, and the IOC’s involvement in this highly important matter is very much valued -- and any guidance that is provided will be strictly followed.”

He also said, “I am deeply, deeply disappointed with this incident; the flag of Israel should have been proudly on display alongside the other flags.”

He  said, “On behalf of the WBSC – and in my own name – I personally apologized to President Kurz and the Israel Association of Baseball following the incident, and I have given IAB every assurance that the newly elected WBSC executive board will handle this case in a swift, just and decisive manner, so that no such occurrence -- or such a scenario – is ever repeated.”

Kurz said the apology came in a telephone call last Friday: “He said it shouldn’t have happened.”

Fraccari also said this: “This regretful, isolated incident in no way reflects what baseball and softball represent — baseball and softball have a long and proud tradition of promoting racial diversity and multiculturalism, and have helped challenge racism, stereotypes and have helped to tear down both social and gender barriers."

In that spirit, Bach has, and with ample reason, pointed to Nelson Mandela. The Olympic movement has long venerated, again with sound reason, the U.S. track star, Jesse Owens.

In this instance, perhaps the time has come to look to another American icon, the baseball player Jackie Robinson. He literally changed the face of professional sports in the United States. Throughout his life, he proved an exemplar of peaceful tolerance. Each year, on April 15, in a celebration of his life and achievements, is Jackie Robinson Day in Major League Baseball; all the players, coaches, managers on both teams, even the umpires, wear Robinson's No. 42.

The irony of the "incident" in Tunisia is that the other candidate to have hosted the WBSC assembly was Los Angeles; of course, that's where the team that Robinson played for, the Dodgers, moved to from Brooklyn, and that's where he grew up, in nearby Pasadena, California, and went to college, at UCLA.

The federation opted to have the congress in Tunisia on the theory that staging it in Africa would be a part of promoting a growth strategy for their games; after all, in January, Uganda opened central Africa's first-ever national baseball and softball stadium.

It was left to Kurz, in his letter, to point out the obvious: "Future Congresses should not be held in countries that do not respect or recognize the rights of other countries, and you had over 145 countries to choose from."

IOC: $300,000 "emergency fund" for Ukraine

The International Olympic Committee on Wednesday announced it had established an “emergency fund” of $300,000 to benefit Ukrainian athletes, one of the most intriguing moves in recent memory. It underscores the will and decisiveness of the IOC president, Thomas Bach of Germany, and his bid — which he has made a point of repeated emphasis in these first months of his term — to stake out separately delineated spheres for what is sport and what is politics. Recall that the very first call Bach received upon his election last September was from Russian president Vladimir Putin.

It also comes as the days move steadily toward the IOC’s early July executive board meeting. There the list of 2022 bid cities will be finalized. Will Lviv, Ukraine, be among them?

Skeptics would say that of course 300,000 reasons to keep going would be helpful — particularly when it seems apparent Almaty, Kazakhstan, and Beijing will go through, leaving the European possibilities of Lviv, Oslo and Krakow, Poland, and both Krakow and Oslo facing distinct financial or political challenges. Indeed, Krakow is up against a May 25 referendum.

In a bizarre turn early Wednesday, someone — no one knows who — sent out a “news release” declaring that Sergej Gontcharov, the head of the Lviv 2022 bid, had been fired. There was no letterhead; the sentences were awkwardly constructed and, moreover, filled with spelling and other errors; the release was quickly dismissed as a fake. A motive also remains unclear.

As difficult as it might be for the skeptics, Sergey Bubka, the IOC executive board member who is also president of the national Olympic committee of Ukraine, said the explanation for the $300,000 fund — one wholly unconnected to the bid — is simple enough.

Bach, he said, has a genuine humanity.

Recall, too, that Bubka, the 1980s and 1990s pole vault champion, was one of the other five candidates for the IOC presidency. Now read these words:

“I think, generally, the president he was himself an Olympic champion,” in fencing at the Montreal Games in 1976. “He was a great athlete.

“Through all this period,” meaning the turbulence affecting Ukraine, “in Sochi, after Sochi, we are in contact all the time. When we are in Turkey,” in April for the SportAccord convention and the IOC executive board meeting, “we had a meeting — you can see him as a human and as a president who cares. He has feelings with a heart.

“The bidding process, all these things, of course it’s important for him to have good bids, different representation from different parts of the world. But I can see he is human.”

Bubka also said, “He is a person with a heart. It is really touching.”

And: “This help is not connected in any way to the bid. I am confident. No way.”

The IOC statement announcing the fund -- from Bach himself -- started by saying he was following the “political, economic and social developments in Ukraine with the greatest attention and growing concern. Also the situation of the Ukrainian athletes, including those who have so successfully represented their country in the recent Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, which has dramatically deteriorated.”

Ukraine won two medals in Sochi, both in biathlon, gold in the women’s 4x6-kilometer relay and bronze for Vita Semerenko in the women’s 7.5km sprint. The gold was the nation’s first in two decades.

The day after they won, the four women were invited to USA House for a private reception, the Americans operating on the belief the Ukrainians perhaps had nowhere else to celebrate; the Ukrainians got a standing ovation. The Americans played that one right down the middle, of course; earlier in the Games, Putin visited USA House as well, where he mingled and took photos.

“For all these reasons,” Bach went on in the IOC statement, “I repeat my appeal of Sochi to all political leaders involved to enter into a summit dialogue in the Olympic spirit of mutual respect and peace.”

At the United Nations on April 28, Bach reiterated the main points he laid out in a speech there in November and, as he said in in Wednesday’s statement, underscored at both the opening and closing ceremonies at the Sochi Games.

This, in part, is what he said April 28 in New York:

“One of the basic principles of sport is non-discrimination for whatever reason, including political ones. Sport is the only area of human existence with a truly universal law. This universal law is based on global ethics, fair play, respect and friendship. This means for sport and sport organizations that we have to be politically neutral without being apolitical. This means for our partners that they have to respect this responsible autonomy of the sport organizations and the universal law of sport. Otherwise, international sport with its unifying, peace-building, dialogue-enforcing and respectful efforts cannot exist.”

Back to Wednesday’s statement:

“To help the Ukrainian athletes — wherever they come from in Ukraine and whatever their background — and to help mitigate their difficult situation, the IOC has established an emergency fund of $300,000.”

The money, it said, is to go through the Ukrainian Olympic committee for both training and competition.

What it means, Bubka said, is that now, as the summer season gets underway, athletes should once again be able to go to various training camps and meets. The NOC had naturally enough been funding those activities. Now the ministry’s funds for the NOC — not enough.

Ten days ago, in Taicang, China, the Ukrainian men’s race-walking team delivered a surprise 20km team victory at the IAAF World Race Walking Cup, highlighted by 28-year-old Ruslan Dmytrenko’s first-place finish, Ukraine’s first-ever individual medal at the Cup, in a national-record 1:18.37.

Igor Glavan finished seventh, in a personal-best 1:19.59; Navar Kovalenko, 10th, in 1:20.11.

Bubka, who is also an IAAF vice president, was there for the moment, and said, “What happened in China was really amazing.”

“I joined them and I saw the happiness of our athletes, our coaches, our team. This was really for our people — the history of our team, the individual success, this is really nice, to feel the team spirit and to feel society together in this particular place.”

He also said, “These last couple of months, we have emphasized that we represent all the nation. From east to west. From north to south. We are different athletes. We are different coaches. We are one team, we are united — to represent the dream.”

And: “I believe we will overcome. The most important thing is peace.”

There will be skeptics. This is an inevitable part of life. Bubka also said, referring to the IOC president, “He cares about the Olympic family of Ukraine. He cares about the movement. This is the real solidarity. We see it and we appreciate it very much. This is important help in the difficult moment of our history from President Bach.”

IOC, NBC bet big together through 2032

The subject first came up last November. This was in New York. It was over dinner at DeGrezia, a small Italian restaurant on East 50th Street that features many private rooms. The International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, was in town to deliver a major political statement at the United Nations. While in New York, there was time for him — and a couple senior aides — to meet with a few top executives from the IOC’s longtime broadcast partner, NBC Universal. Thus this dinner.

NBC already held the rights to broadcast the rights to the Games in the United States through 2020. The IOC president knew this well.

What would you think, he said that evening, about the idea of a long-term partnership?

This simple bet would launch a series of clandestine meetings — at The Olympic Club at the Sochi Games in February, and elsewhere — that culminated in Wednesday’s announcement of the $7.75 billion deal to extend NBC’s rights to the Games from 2021 through 2032.

That means six editions of the Olympics.

It is of course a financial play.

But it is so much more.

It is a fantastic triumph, professional and personal, for Bach.

It is a huge win for the entire Olympic movement, securing its financial future, in particular for the IOC and, too, for the U.S. Olympic Committee, which gets a share of the deal.

And it is a major coup for NBC, which secured the rights to the sports property that has for years, through ups and downs, given the network a consistent identity. The Olympics. no matter what, deliver ratings.

London 2012 was the most-watched television event in history, with 217 million viewers. Sochi 2014 was the “most-consumed” Winter Games ever. Even as technologies change, the Olympics drive numbers — whether in the broadcast or on emerging digital platforms — and, simply put, that’s why NBC was willing now to bet so much money into the future, the company’s executives said Wednesday.

Slightly more than half the viewers who watched Sochi 2014 on NBC also used a computer, a tablet device or a smartphone to get information about those Olympics while the TV was on, NBC has said.

It’s not just the IOC that is willing to make bets so far out into time. USA Track & Field three weeks ago announced a deal with Nike — believed to be worth about $500 million — through 2040.

And it’s not just NBC that is willing to pay big for live events.

ESPN has laid out $5.6 billion for Major League Baseball, $7.3 billion for a 12-year deal for the new college football playoff system, $15.2 billion for “Monday Night Football.”

CBS Sports and Turner Sports are paying $10.8 billion for 14 years — 2011 through 2024 — to show the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament.

Others, of course, have broadcast the Olympics — CBS, for instance, in the 1990s.

But over the years, only NBC — relying on its parent companies, first General Electric, now Comcast — has backed up its passionate commitment to the Olympics with really big money.

In two negotiations in 1995, it paid $3.5 billion for the rights to the Games from 2000 to 2008.

In 2000, for $2 billion, it bought the rights to the 2010 and 2012 Games. A GE sponsorship meant another $200 million.

In 2011, it paid $4.38 billion for 2014 through 2020.

The new deal, technically $7.65 billion for 2020-2032, includes a $100 million signing bonus to promote the Olympic movement from 2015 to 2020. Some significant chunk of that $100 million presumably will be used to help boost an Olympic channel that is now the subject of a feasibility study.

This new deal came together in a spirit evocative of the two 1995 deals — when Dick Ebersol headed NBC and Juan Antonio Samaranch the IOC, and it was all done quietly, without bids from other networks.

Here, too.

The 2011 process involved competitive bids, and for those tempted to ask why not this time, too, or to suggest that something might be amiss, there are realities that explain it elegantly.

Another thing Bach knew well is that in 2011 NBC outbid everyone else by a country mile. As a matter of fact, Fox was the only U.S. entity that even bid for four Games, the way NBC did. When NBC went big at $4.38 billion, Fox came in at $3.4 billion. ESPN opted only to bid for 2014 and 2016, and at $1.4 billion.

Accordingly, Bach knew to a certainty that in dealing with NBC he — that is, the IOC — was going to make money.

The new deal breaks down this way: $2.5 billion for 2022 and 2024. $2.55 billion for 2026 and 2028. $2.6 billion for 2030 and 2032.

On average, it represents a 15 percent increase per Games over the previous arrangement.

Really, though, that is not the deal point.

“This kind of deal is not only about money,” Bach said in a conference call with reporters.

“You know, you can maybe  — in one deal you can make one or the other dollar more and maybe have your product destroyed. We are thinking long-term in the IOC. We are here for 120 years, and we want to be there much longer. We want to leave a good legacy there to our successors.

“All these kind of strategic issues play a role. We have a responsibility. We are the trustees. We are the owners of the Olympic Games, yes, but we are the trustees of the Olympic movement. Therefore the balance has to be there between the protection of the Games, the promotion of our values and the financial consideration. There this deal reflects this consideration from our point of view in an excellent way.”

Going forward, it’s obvious — more than obvious — that this deal could in an excellent way boost the chances of a U.S. bid for the 2024 Summer Games. Indeed, Bach said Wednesday a “strong bid” from the U.S. would not only be “very much welcomed” but would be a “very strong competitor.”

To be super-obvious: if the principal broadcast partner of the IOC has put in more than $17 billion since those first deals were announced in 1995, has bankrolled the IOC with that kind of money, it will likely be made clear to everyone — particularly now that things are good again between the IOC and USOC — that the IOC would look favorably upon going to the United States, and for a Summer Games. In 2024.

Larry Probst, the USOC board chair and new IOC member, would only say Wednesday what he and Scott Blackmun, the USOC’s chief executive, have said for months — that the USOC is going through its process, and expects to have whittled down a list of potential applicant cities “sometime in the next few months.”

Los Angeles, Boston, Dallas and San Francisco are believed to be among cities under USOC scrutiny.

Other 2024 candidates from around the world are likely to include Paris but, frankly, it’s understood even in France that Paris could afford to run and lose. An American candidate would be in it to win, and win only, and there is a school of thought that announcing sooner in 2014 than later, particularly given this NBC deal, might well build up momentum that might be difficult indeed to beat.

The IOC will pick the 2024 winner in 2017.  It will pick a 2022 Winter Games site in 2015.

Bach, meanwhile, was elected president just last September, succeeding Jacques Rogge.

Since then, Bach has — at that United Nations appearance last November — outlined a clear vision for how sport and politics inhabit both separate but sometimes intertwined spheres of influence.

In February, he oversaw a Games in Sochi that — despite dire predictions from many beforehand and a $51 billion price tag — were generally an operational success.

He inherited roughly $900 million in reserves, a U.S. TV deal worth $4.38 billion and now has produced a new contract worth $7.75 billion. That means the IOC is and likely will be financially secure not only through his term, which presumably will run through 2025 but, incredibly, through 2032.

All this in but seven months since taking office.

Politically and financially, the IOC would now seem to be set for the next steps — all part of Bach’s big plan, aiming toward December and the IOC’s so-called “extraordinary session” in Monaco, when it will tackle the major issues that are part of what he has dubbed “Olympic Agenda 2020.”

In Sochi, the members floated 211 so-called “interventions” from the floor during their assembly. In Monaco, expect these major topics:

The Summer Games program; the bid process; autonomy and governance; and the structure of the IOC itself.

With this much cash now in hand, for instance, it’s plausible for the members to consider visits once again to cities bidding for the Games. If the IOC itself is paying for such visits, why not?

With this much cash in hand, for example, if the IOC is able to increase its outlay to an organizing committees for the Games to a level approaching or, better yet, over $1 million, isn’t it feasible to start considering a far more extensive use of temporary facilities? Bach has mentioned this notion many times over.

London got just over $750 million from the IOC in the 18 months ending Sept. 30, 2012, according to its March 2013 financial report. If an organizing committee got $250 or $500 million more, wouldn't that directly translate into less money spent on capital costs? Wouldn't that sensibly -- logically and easily -- be able to be explained to taxpayers, no matter where, that hundreds of thousands of dollars for a Games would be coming from the IOC, not from them?

“This is a happy day for the whole Olympic movement,” Bach said at the outset of that conference call, adding a moment later, without explanation, “We are happy for different reasons.”

You bet.

ANOC gets big-time professionalized

KUWAIT CITY, Kuwait — When you are living it in the moment, it is of course a challenge indeed to know whether a three-day meeting spread across a hotel complex and an office tower makes for a turning point, the sort of thing that accounts for the sort of thing Olympic historians can one day point to with distinct accuracy and say, this was when it all came together. As it drew Monday night to a close, however, it seemed abundantly evident that the time is now for the 204-member Association of National Olympic Committees.

Headed by the charismatic Kuwaiti Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah, ANOC seems poised to assert itself on the Olympic scene as never before.

Against the backdrop of the International Olympic Committee’s own 2014 review process, dubbed “Olympic Agenda 2020,” with the international sports federations due next week to meet in Turkey at the SportAccord conference under the leadership of the influential Marius Vizer, ANOC — first on the post-Sochi calendar — made the most of the timing.

IOC president Thomas Bach, and Vizer, among others, were in attendance here in Kuwait.

In all, 41 of the 106 IOC members were drawn to this desert meeting.

Actually, three separate sessions took place:

— ANOC, overseen by Sheikh Ahmad since a revolution of sorts in Moscow in 2012. The organization had been headed — since its June 1979 founding — by Mexico’s Mario Vazquez Raña.

— Olympic Council of Asia, the regional confederation, overseen by Sheikh Ahmad since 1991.

— Olympic Solidarity, the IOC initiative, overseen now as well by Sheikh Ahmad, that aims to identify and train promising athletes from around the world. It carries a 2013-2016 budget of $438 million.

The trip to Kuwait marked Bach’s first to the region since becoming IOC president last September. In a news conference Saturday, noting the participation of ANOC, OCA and others in Olympic Agenda 2020, he called these meetings an “important step in the procedure.”

ANOC, meanwhile, kicked things off Saturday with a series of commission meetings.

So what?

So often the volunteers who make up the Olympic movement are derided for what is depicted as the desire to belly up to some trough and pig out on all the free food and booze imaginable.

One, this is Kuwait. There wasn’t booze.

Two, these meetings were held in the second floor of the Missoni hotel, or alternatively at the Olympic Council of Asia complex, starting at 9 a.m. sharp. It was like being in a hotel room in Buffalo, or Cleveland, or anywhere. The doors were locked and no one got out, except for a coffee break, for three hours. The afternoon sessions? Same deal. Three hours, if not longer.

Three, the nine commissions were a first — specialized task-forces created, 30-some years after ANOC itself got launched, to, as a press statement would put it, “add fresh impetus to ANOC’s ongoing process of reform and modernization at a time when the IOC is calling on all stakeholders within the Olympic movement to undergo a process of self-analysis and self-evaluation.”

Here, for instance, was a “marketing and new sources of finance” commission, headed by Larry Probst, the U.S. Olympic Committee board chair and new IOC member.

“He’s a professional,” Sheikh Ahmad was saying Sunday night of Probst. “For that I was very happy when I was hearing all those reports. The road map is very clear. It’s never too late, as I was mentioning in the beginning.”

There was a “modernization follow-up commission.”

There were, among others, finance, juridical and medical panels.

Too, here was an athletes’ commission, headed by Barbara Kendall, winner of gold, silver and bronze medals in windsurfing, also an IOC member and, moreover, runner-up in 2009 in the New Zealand version of “Dancing with the Stars.”

And so on — all part of the professionalization of ANOC.

ANOC also approved a new logo, the design soon to be made public.

It authorized plans, at a one-time cost of $20 million, for new headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. Sheikh Ahmad said at a news conference Monday night he was confident the bid would be brought in under budget.

Plans are in the works for a world Beach Games, perhaps as soon as 2015; interest has been solicited from a number of cities; a final report on the project is due at a meeting, set for Lausanne of the ANOC executive council in July, the sheikh said.

Another project — a gala awards ceremony. This is now set for Nov. 7, at the ANOC general assembly, in Bangkok. The concept — they’re thinking big — is for this gala is in very short order to become the sports Oscars, and with all due respect to every other show out there, ANOC has ambition and resource.

“I think this the reality of the NOCs,” Sheikh Ahmad said Monday night at that same news conference. “I think the NOCs have a good role to play in the movement …

“The head is the IOC. At the right hand should the NOCs. The left hand should be the IFs," meaning the international sports federations. "This, I believe, is the summary of the situation.

“For that we have to work because we lost 30 years of our movement.

“We have to work in a very speedy way to reach exactly all our demands. This is the demand of our NOCs.

“What we promised in the Moscow general assembly [in 2012], I think we will achieve it all in Bangkok.

“In two years we will have achieved everything. Then we will have a stable situation to develop and achieve our success.”

Why by the Persian Gulf

KUWAIT CITY, Kuwait — Accounting for the sudden resignation a couple days ago of French ski legend Jean-Claude Killy, there are now 106 active members of the International Olympic Committee. As the IOC president, Thomas Bach, pointed out in a news conference Sunday morning, Arabic hospitality is known worldwide.

Maybe that is why a reported 41 IOC members gave up their weekend to come to Kuwait to attend the meeting of the 204-member Association of National Olympic Committees.

Or perhaps it is a signal of the considerable influence of Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah — who, among other roles, is the ANOC president — that some four of 10 IOC members came to Kuwait from around the world.

Here, among others: IOC vice president and Rio 2016 coordination chair Nawal El Moutawakel of Morocco. Executive board members Pat Hickey of Ireland and Gunilla Lindberg of Sweden.

IOC athletes’ commission chair Claudia Bokel of Germany, another executive board member.

Larry Probst, the U.S. Olympic Committee board chairman and new IOC member.

And many more influential personalities within the Olympic sphere — among them, SportAccord and International Judo Federation president Marius Vizer.

The Sochi Games closed just roughly five weeks ago.

The IOC executive board meeting, to be held in conjunction with the SportAccord conference in Turkey, goes down next week.

It’s not as if IOC members are — or were — lacking for opportunities to get together.

Yet here they were.

For ANOC, this was in fact something of a history-making occasion. On Saturday, it held a variety of commission meetings — that is, the first time its commissions were said to have had these kinds of meetings, all designed as a lead-up toward the ANOC general assembly this fall in Bangkok.

And then there was the pull of having Bach on hand as well.

“It’s a big honor to welcome the president of the International Olympic Committee here in Kuwait,” Sheikh Ahmad said at that same news conference.

Bach said, “We are having a broad discussion among all the stakeholders of the Olympic movement,” adding a moment later that the weekend involved “looking into the future and looking into the different roles of the stakeholders and ensuring the harmonious roles under the leadership of the IOC.”

Much of 2014, of course, is being devoted to what Bach has called “Olympic Agenda 2020,” a far-reaching review of what works — and what doesn’t — as the IOC and the broader movement, now past Sochi, regroups and looks toward Rio 2016, the 2022 Winter and 2024 Summer bid cycles and beyond.

Bach took a moment to note the “great success of the Sochi Games,” in contrast to the doom and gloom that preceded virtually all the talk beforehand.

Five bid cities are in the 2022 pipeline: Almaty, Kazakhstan; Beijing; Krakow, Poland; Lviv, Ukraine; and Oslo. Lviv must confront political upheaval; Krakow now looks set to deal with a referendum; Oslo is grappling with local challenges to long-held assumptions about who bears what responsibilities in the bid system.

How many of the five applicants will ultimately see it through to the 2015 IOC election in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, remains decidedly unclear.

A “candidature for the Games,” Bach said — reflecting on how the “great positive legacy” of Sochi is now “well understood by the respective cities and countries” — is a “great opportunity to transform a region and a society for the better.

“Therefore, I am not too worried.”

As for Olympic Agenda 2020, he laid out a timeline, apparently for the first time publicly, for getting to the IOC’s all-members extraordinary session in Monaco in December. There the issues will be debated and, presumably, decisions will be taken. Or, more likely, ratified:

— The special special email address set up to solicit suggestions from around the globe — OlympicAgenda2020@olympic.org — closes April 15.

— Working groups will convene, probably in June.

— July will see a summit of sorts, the presidents of the major stakeholders.

— In September, the results from the working groups and the “summit” will go to the IOC commissions. Bach is due to announce in the next few days the make-up of the 2014 commissions.

— In October, the commissions are due to make recommendations to the executive board.

— The board will prepare a document to be submitted to the extraordinary session, set for Dec. 6-7.

“This will give us a good opportunity, as the president has mentioned … to keep the values of the movement and the main ideals of the movement but also to develop the relationships,” Sheikh Ahmad said.

And if you want to know why more than 40 IOC members made their way this weekend to the Persian Gulf, there you have it.

Life is a relationship business. Especially in the IOC.

Who understands this principle?

Thomas Bach.

And the host for the weekend, Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah. You had better believe he understands this is how things get done.

What does Sheikh Ahmad want?

KUWAIT CITY, Kuwait — One rumor has him one day taking over FIFA, soccer’s international governing body. Another has it that he is simply biding his time and wants to be president of the International Olympic Committee. He is, after all, only 50 years old. Still remarkably young for a man at ease in so many intersections.

Yet another talking point has it that Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah, the former OPEC chairman who since 2006 has been his country’s national security minister, is cleverly aiming to parlay his Olympic, soccer and sports portfolio into a long-range hardball twist, back into the top echelon of Kuwaiti leadership. When, of course, the timing is right.

What does the sheikh want?

A year ago, this was the question on the minds of virtually everyone in the Olympic sphere.

Throughout the spring and summer, and then at the historic 125th IOC session in early September in Buenos Aires, he parlayed his behind-the-scenes political acumen into a magnificent triple-play, helping to effect the election of Thomas Bach as president; Tokyo as host of the 2020 Summer Games; and the reinstatement of wrestling onto the Summer Games program.

For good measure, he even saw to it that Anita DeFrantz of the United States was elected to the IOC executive board — this after she had secured single digits in two prior election runs.

When all was said and done in Buenos Aires, as the sheikh was — and remains — quick to underscore, there was zero question that Bach was  indisputably in charge of all things IOC, indeed Olympic.

At the same time, there was no doubt, too, that the sheikh — head of the Olympic Council of Asia, the 204-member Association of National Olympic Committees and, as well, the IOC’s own Olympic Solidarity initiative, which carries oversight of a 2013-16 budget of $438 million — had positioned himself to be a man of significance, indeed.

The sheikh, for those who don't understand, practices grass-roots politics. Solidarity is a perfect example. It aims to provide financial, technical and administrative aid to national Olympic committees, particularly those in developing nations.

The 2013-2016 budget? Up more than 40 percent from the 2009-12 cycle, $311 million.

Since taking office, Bach, 60, has wasted little time making it plain that change is the order of the day. Bach has an eight-year mandate and, unless something extraordinary happens, will almost surely get four more years after that. He figures to be in office until 2025.

Even so, Sheikh Ahmad would by then only be in his early 60s, still plenty young enough to be -- the first Arabic -- IOC president. If that is what he wants.

Of course, 2025 is a long, long way away. The Bach years are just starting.

Last fall, Bach gave a speech at the United Nations outlining separate but important roles for the worlds of sport and politics, roles he again delineated at the Sochi Games. At the IOC session in Sochi, he invited comments from the floor, and got them — in all, 211 over a day and a half, an unheard-of number, the members weighing in on the make-up of the Olympic program, visits to bid cities and much, much more.

The IOC is due to study what — in nature and scope — will be done as part of what Bach has termed “Olympic Agenda 2020.” Another all-members assembly is planned for Monaco in early December.

For political junkies, this is all great stuff.

Thus, again the question: what does the sheikh want?

In his 18th-floor office, the waters of the Persian Gulf shimmering below as the sun set gently Friday in the west, the sheikh smiled. Over the course of this weekend, ANOC’s executive council is due to meet; dozens of IOC members are expected on hand; it is rumored Bach may make an appearance.

“I want to see the movement in a better situation,” the sheikh said.

“I want to see the movement flexible to receive everybody in it.

“I want to see the movement in a position which keeps the logo of the sport around the world and I don’t think this is [just] what Sheik Ahmad wants — I think this is what a lot of IOC members want,” he said, adding a moment later, “I think this is our dream.”

How, he was asked did he assess the state of the movement? Was it healthy? And how did he view prospects for Olympic Agenda 2020?

“I think it’s healthy, a healthy movement,” he said.

“My part should be two main roles. To show the wishes and the [desires] of the NOCs. Not all of them have a part of the IOC house. For that I have to be their ambassador …

“Then, as an IOC member, I have to support the president and be his supporter to achieve his goals.

"I have two different positions and be a supporter of both of them.”

Some, it was suggested, would say, yes, OK, but what about your own personal ambitions?

“I don’t think so,” Sheikh Ahmad said. “Otherwise, I will be in the EB of the IOC. I know everybody knows the story.”

So why so many rumors?

“I think the reality is not giving you witness for these rumors.”

He laughed.

“You know my way. I am an open man.”

Another laugh.

“Maybe it makes people a little scared [that] he,” and here the sheikh was referring to himself, “is an open man.”

IOC's signals of change

There are two ways to look at the announcement Saturday from the International Olympic Committee that sports such as skateboarding and sport climbing will put on "performances" at next summer's Youth Games in Nanjing. If you are the sort who recognizes that the IOC is and always will be, no matter what, a traditionally minded organization, where change moves at a stately pace, the fact that these sports are being reduced to demonstrations doubtlessly will provoke, yet again, exasperation. It's 2013, almost 2014. Come on, IOC. Get with the program. Skateboarding, right? And climbing is huge, particularly in Europe.

Then again, if you are the sort who sees that the new IOC president, Thomas Bach, has in three months launched an ambitious reform agenda designed to usher in change, and that getting skateboarding and climbing in particular before the members in Nanjing is a way to get them to see such sports with their own eyes so that both sports can get into the mainstream Games program sooner than later -- ah, well, then you understand how he is moving.

"We want to send a signal we are open for new and younger sports," Bach said.

In a teleconference Saturday that wrapped up a four-day "brainstorming" session at the Swiss resort of Montreux, up Lake Geneva from IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Bach announced a string of initiatives that together fit together as part of what he is calling "Olympic Agenda 2020."

In all, he intends to present a wide-ranging reform package to the full membership for discussion at the Sochi session in February and then for a vote at what the IOC is calling an "extraordinary session" to be held Dec. 6-7 in Monaco.

The entire list is likely to encompass the wide range of topics that dominated last summer's presidential campaign, which Bach won in September, everything from what sports are on the Games program to the age limit of the members (currently 70, with a move to lift it to 75) to whether the members ought to be allowed again to visit cities for the Olympic Games.

Such visits were banned in the aftermath of the Salt Lake City scandal of the late 1990s. That scandal ushered in a 50-point reform plan in 1999. Many of the issues now on the table have been percolating through the years since, through the presidency of Jacques Rogge, whom Bach succeeded.

Asked Saturday whether during the Montreux retreat the 15-member executive board discussed issues such as the age limit, the program and visits to bid cities, Bach demurred, saying that had to wait for public airing in just a few weeks.

He did say of the four days together: "This was a good experience with regard to team building because being together for four days and discussing for four days long, there you could expect you may see some hiccups in this discussion. It just did not happen. It always was very constructive. And, frankly, for four days long."

It is not clear whether, in the IOC's 117-year history, the Montreux retreat was something of a first. But for Bach it assuredly was: "This is a first brainstorming meeting I have lived in my time as an IOC member or as an IOC executive board member. I can not speak for the others."

The concepts -- as well as the details -- of what Olympic Agenda 2020, as Bach made plain repeatedly, are going to have to wait for Sochi and Monaco. A number of agenda items, however, he disclosed Saturday:

The executive board urged the 2022 Winter Games bid cities to "make the broadest possible use of temporary facilities," the IOC perhaps finally getting about  holding down costs, recognizing that Beijing 2008 ran to at least $40 billion, the Sochi project is north of $50 billion and such sums are entirely unsustainable. The IOC will pick the 2022 site in 2015. The six candidates now in the race: Almaty; Beijing; Oslo; Stockholm; Lviv, Ukraine; and Krakow, Poland.

The IOC is putting up $10 million to develop new anti-doping tests and methods and asking governments to match.

The World Anti-Doping Agency's annual budget is roughly $28 million. So -- a little math here -- $10 million is roughly equal, rounding up, to 36 percent of WADA's entire annual budget.

This shows what happens when sport takes over the WADA presidency -- IOC vice president Craig Reedie becomes WADA president as of Jan. 1 -- and is prepared to make this sort of intelligent investment. Now let's see whether eternally cash-strapped governments, who are always proclaiming they want to see a level playing field and are very public advocates for clean athletes, are willing to step up and match the IOC's $10 million.

More simple math: $20 million would equal just over 71 percent of WADA's annual budget. With that kind of money, the agency could afford to find the best and brightest researchers. Money typically has a way of solving problems that often can seem intractable.

In his role as incoming WADA boss, Reedie, incidentally, would have been just as surprised as anyone by this newest IOC initiative. Bach, in contrast to Rogge, is running the IOC  in the manner of a hands-on chief executive; Rogge had more of the style of a chairman of the board. For his part, Reedie is on his way to snowy Montreal and WADA headquarters for meetings there the next few days; with the promise of at least $10 million, he surely will receive a warm welcome amid the blizzards blanketing the eastern seaboard of North America.

The IOC, meanwhile, also is putting up another $10 million in a bid to protect athletes from "any kind of manipulation or related corruption," a match-fixing initiative. Early next year, Bach said, the IOC will sign an agreement with Interpol to set up a monitoring system aimed at guarding against illegal betting at the Games.

As for the anti-doping initiative, Bach noted that of course today's tests rely on blood and urine samples. What if, he said, there was another way? Hair? Or other cellular matter? "It would of course be very helpful if there would be another test method if we could find … prohibited methods for a longer time," he suggested, adding "This is another issue we want to address in particular."

On another issue, Bach, who during the campaign raised the idea of an Olympic television channel -- a notion that all but killed Chicago's 2016 bid because of the incredible complexities involved with NBC's multibillion-dollar support of the movement -- said the executive board during the retreat "took a first decision" by authorizing a "feasibility study."

The TV plan would be subject to discussion in Sochi and Monaco, according to the IOC.