IOC

Bach's legacy is upon him: the world needs not just leadership but his humanity

Bach's legacy is upon him: the world needs not just leadership but his humanity

The International Olympic Committee is due this week to hold its policy-making executive board meeting. it comes more or less with six months to go until July 23, when the Tokyo Olympics are due to commence. To make those six months feel all the more real: that’s 26 Fridays.

In March, the IOC president, Thomas Bach, is going to be re-elected to a four-year term. He has served eight already, once again more or less. These last four will be his last in the office.

Starting with this board meeting, Bach has a unique opportunity. These first eight years have been marked by a succession of crises, some unforeseeable — the Russian doping scandal, the organizational disaster that was Rio 2016, the almost-didn’t-happen PyeongChang 2018 Winter Games.

This space has many times been critical of Bach. His Agenda 2020, for instance? Not much there there. All the same, throughout these first eight years, and this is difficult indeed for Bach’s many critics — some voluble indeed — to comprehend, he has shown genuine leadership. Now he must do more. His legacy is at stake. He has the chance, starting now, to define that legacy rather than let others define it for him.

Does anyone at the USOPC realize there's a world out there beyond the 50 states?

Does anyone at the USOPC realize there's a world out there beyond the 50 states?

Does anyone at the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee really think through some of the things they announce? Do they understand there is a world out there beyond the 50 states?

Do they care? Do they understand this is why the rest of the world often — and for good reason — thinks the Americans are self-righteous, self-centered and deserving of approbation and scorn?

The rest of the world hates it when we imperiously and sanctimoniously climb up and seize what we believe is the moral high ground and tell all the little people — indeed, lecture them — about what to do.

When are we ever going to stop? Ever?

IOC must 'urgently' re-do esports strategy, this time for real

IOC must 'urgently' re-do esports strategy, this time for real

Six months ago, International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach published a remarkable white paper about the state of Olympics, as he saw it, amid the pandemic. More remarkably, it drew — and yet more remarkably still, over the months since has drawn — comparatively little media attention. Like almost zero.

The think piece was called — you’ve got to love this title — “Olympism and Corona.”

If Roger Goodell wrote such a piece about the state of the NFL, or Adam Silver about the NBA, odds are it would be the stuff of hot takes on sports radio and cable TV, and for weeks. Here was Bach thoughtfully trying to sort out the new realities of the most complex puzzle the world knows, the Olympic Games, in reaction to the shifting realities of a global pandemic. Reaction: mostly crickets.

He deserved better, particularly because in the fourth copy block, entitled “Social Impact,” third paragraph, the IOC president signaled to the entire world — if, like, anyone was paying attention, which obviously they were not — that esports ought to be taken seriously. He used the word “urgently.” The IOC almost never uses the word “urgently.” This time, though, it did.

This year of living dangerously, and surely the Olympics can and should be reimagined

This year of living dangerously, and surely the Olympics can and should be reimagined

For the past six weeks, this space has been dark. For the past six weeks, per doctor’s orders, the mandate has been to do nothing — or, to be practical, as little as possible. Thus, for six weeks, instead of writing, the mission has been to read and read and read, and in particular everything about the state of the Olympic movement.

You know what? I have been reporting, writing and observing the Olympic movement since late 1998, since the break of the Salt Lake corruption scandal. That’s 22 years, with 10 editions of the Games. Fair question now, after taking in everything over these past six weeks: when has the Olympic landscape ever been in a more precarious position?

Answer: in my experience, this is the worst.

Without hyperbole: the situation now bears echoes of the movement’s darkest days from the 1970s.

The pandemic brings IOC to a moment consequential if not existential

The pandemic brings IOC to a moment consequential if not existential

Greetings anew from Manhattan Beach, California. And how are things? Thanks for asking! People are sick and dying because of the coronavirus. Also, a chunk of the state — bigger than Rhode Island — is ablaze after a siege of spectacular lightning strikes, some 12,000 over the past week, 100 on Friday; on the ground, the destruction is already savage; the air smoky and unhealthy; beyond, it’s only August and fire season has weeks to go. Meanwhile, the utilities are ordering rolling electricity blackouts. School started again but, you know, not in person so no one is happy about that.

Then there’s the political angst, President Obama finally going off on his successor. Here’s a fact: the selection of California Senator Kamala Harris to be Joe Biden’s running mate makes her the first person in the history of the Democratic Party to be nominated — as president or vice-president — as a representative of a state west of the Rocky Mountains.

We are living in weird times. In all of this, there seems to be an element of the apocalyptic. Even the setting sun is not yellow but an iridescent red. Thus the mind quite naturally goes, especially as the red sun sinks into the Pacific, to matters existential or, at the least, consequential.

Being, staying relevant in an 'ever more fragile world in deep crisis'

Being, staying relevant in an 'ever more fragile world in deep crisis'

Welcome to Day 3,042 in Coronaville. It’s back to Lockdown 2.0 here in Manhattan Beach, California, where nobody can even get a haircut and as of Saturday you are liable to get a fine of up to $350 if seen in public without a mask and, to quote Alice Cooper, school’s out not for just summer but for a long time to come.

Looking out across the top of that mask, the United States on Thursday reported 75,600 new coronavirus cases, a single-day record. The situation is so bad across the 50 states — Thursday was the 11th time that the past month the single-day record had been broken — that, for now, Americans are not welcome in the European Union.

India, the New York Times also reported, hit a million cases in a surge that has forced a return to lockdowns there. India ranks third in the world in both total cases and new ones, the Times further said, adding that its rate of new infections is on track to overtake Brazil’s.

And what’s this?

The International Olympic Committee, capping a series of meetings with its first-ever virtual assembly on Friday, remained resolute in its determination to stage the Summer Olympics next summer in Tokyo.

Getting to Plan B — and with kinder, gentler messaging for a world that needs it

Getting to Plan B — and with kinder, gentler messaging for a world that needs it

When I was a boy growing up in the cornfields of Ohio, my younger brother and I thought one of the greatest days imaginable was riding our bikes the several miles to the Ben Franklin five-and-dime store, there to peruse the comic books, to see what might have come in since our last check-in.

The summer before I turned 11, drama! DC Comics created Earth-Two, a parallel world. This allowed them to publish Superman stories without regard for the line of Superman tales that had developed over decades.

A fresh start, if you will.

Imagine if in our Earth-Two the International Olympic Committee had 1/ a more nimble communications department and 2/ could thus tell the story it should be telling in a world in crisis because of the coronavirus.

After Dayton and El Paso: guns must get out of the Games

After Dayton and El Paso: guns must get out of the Games

I was born and grew up in Dayton, Ohio, where nine people were killed and more than two dozen hurt  when a gunman with a military-style weapon opened fire over the weekend at a bar.

That attack came just hours after a gunman with an assault weapon killed 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.

That’s 31 people killed in a space of 13 hours — 31 innocent lives, their hopes and dreams gone forever — because of gun violence.

This has to stop. 

Shooting needs to be off the Olympic program. The guns need to go.

No more 'losers': IOC vows new way to pick Games hosts

No more 'losers': IOC vows new way to pick Games hosts

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — Thomas Bach is a winner.

From some, that sentence is likely to draw howls. What? Is this, like, sucking up, or what? 

Please — chill. Any objective, reasonable analysis of the International Olympic Committee president’s record would lead to that conclusion. The man is an Olympic gold medalist. A brainy lawyer. An adept businessman. Now in his sixth year as IOC president, he is all but a shoo-in for re-election to a second four-year term in 2021.

Perhaps twice in Bach’s career has he been a “loser.” Once, when as a champion fencer representing West Germany — he, like the outstanding middle-distance runner Seb Coe in Great Britain — campaigned to go to the 1980 Moscow Games amid the U.S.-led boycott. Britain went. West Germany did not.

The next time came in 2011. On that occasion, Bach was leading the Munich campaign for the 2018 Winter Games. PyeongChang won. And Bach was — not happy.

Of course, Bach rebounded two years later to become IOC president. But as the IOC session on Wednesday approved a plan to re-do the process by which it selects cities for the Summer and Winter Games — driven by Bach’s avowed concern that the current system produces too many “losers” — it’s perhaps worth wondering, why? And what of his own experience?

In memory of Patrick Baumann

In memory of Patrick Baumann

We all know what awaits us at the end. What we don’t know, can never know, is when the end comes for each and every one of us. This is why, despite the considerable rancor and conflict in our world, the better path forward is to listen a little bit more, to be just a little more gentle in your words and your manner, a little more kind, to always work toward solution.

This was Patrick Baumann’s way.

It is why his sudden passing at the Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires has not just stunned but shaken the Olympic landscape. Baumann died from a heart attack, according to FIBA, the international basketball federation. He was just 51.

Baumann served as FIBA’s top administrator for 15 years. He was the key figure behind, among other things, the introduction of its so-called urban discipline, 3x3 ball, into the Summer Games. It will debut in Tokyo in 2020.

And so much more.