Tyson Gay and the power of forgiveness

NASSAU, Bahamas — What to make of Tyson Gay? Do you think that a mistake — an error that clearly is weighing on the man — ought to follow him around forever, ought to mark him as a cheater until the end of time, ought to drag him down and cast him out as an exile from among the others in track and field, a sport in which time has proven sanctimoniousness is altogether risky business? Or do you believe in second chances? In the power and spirit of forgiveness? Isn’t the glory and grace of the story of the United States of America this very thing — that we all make mistakes and yet each and every one of us gets a second chance?

The rules for pubic forgiveness are actually quite simple. You come clean. You admit what you did, fully and completely. You say you’ll never do it again.

That formula earns you a fresh start.

In a short but remarkable soliloquy Saturday night under Thomas A. Robinson Stadium, after the U.S. men’s 4x100 relay team had defeated Usain Bolt and the Jamaicans, with Gay running the third leg, Gay seized his opportunity.

With Bolt just a few feet down on the very same dais — the very same Bolt who just a few days before had suggested that Gay ought to have been kicked out of track and field for a 2013 doping sanction — Gay, ever soft-spoken, made his case.

Asked how he would assure people he was clean, especially young people, Gay said, “My situation, you know, I’ve never deceived any kid in the world or America that they can’t do anything that they put the hard work into it.

“At the end of the day, my situation was understood by three organizations — they understood it was a mistake,” a reference to the entities that investigated his complicated, nuanced doping matter.

“I went down the wrong path believing some supplements were clean, which they weren’t.

“I would like to apologize to any kid, you know, who feels they were deceived, who thinks they can’t do whatever they want.”

There’s more, but just this for context and background:

Bolt’s 9.58 stands as the world-record in the 100, set in 2009 in Berlin.

Gay and Yohan Blake of Jamaica have each run 9.69. That is the second-fastest 100 time of all-time. Gay ran his in 2009, Blake in 2012.

Gay tested positive in 2013 for a banned substance that he first used in July, 2012, just a few weeks before his first race at the London Games.

The then-standard two-year ban was cut in half, to a single year, because Gay provided “substantial assistance” to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

Last December, Gay’s coach, Jon Drummond, was given an eight-year suspension.

The idea of providing “substantial assistance” in exchange for a reduced sentence is familiar in the criminal justice system; it’s a new twist in the campaign against doping; Gay’s case marked one of the first such instances, and Bolt’s comments suggest the kind of push-back in some quarters it’s going to take for the notion to take hold, which anti-doping officials are insistent must be the case.

“The stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Bolt told Runner’s World, according to a Times of London article published April 24, adding, “He got a year just because he talked to the authorities about how it was done and who helped him. That sends the wrong message: ‘If you do it and get caught, just tell us all you know and we’ll lower your ban.’ "

Gay did not respond in any manner Saturday to those remarks.

Instead, after apologizing “to any kid,” he continued with this:

“I would like to thank the Bahamas, a lot of the Caribbean countries, including Jamaica, for having me at their meet, for understanding my situation.

“So, beside that, the past is the past. I ask for forgiveness for a mistake. Right now, I’m looking forward. I double-check everything. We go from there.”

For sure, he does.

Now, everyone else?

Bolt gets crowd love, a dose of U.S. "respect"

NASSAU, Bahamas — It’s better, as the saying goes, in the Bahamas. They held the first edition of the IAAF World Relays here last year, to resounding success, such success that they resolved to do it all over again. They needed just one more thing, really, to make the show even bigger and better, the biggest star of them all, the guy who is, more or less track and field in these first years of the 21st century, and when Usain Bolt took the baton and kicked it into gear on the blue Mondo track, you would have thought Thomas A. Robinson Stadium was going to lift off into the moonlit sky.

“Success is a powerful magnet,” Lamine Diack, the president of the IAAF, track and field’s international governing body, had said Friday, at a news conference, adding that officials were “therefore delighted” that Bolt was on hand for this second edition of the Relays.

Make no mistake — Bolt’s appearance this year is testament not only to his desire to gear up for the world championships in August in Beijing but, as well, to last year’s demonstrated success of the Relays and the word-of-mouth on the circuit of how much fun the event is for all involved.

When the junkanoo band is rocking, as it was for the men’s 4x800, and it’s the last lap and Robbie Andrews of the United States is kicking like his hair is on fire, and he crosses the line in a competition-record 7:04.84, pointing the baton in victory at his teammates, and fireworks go off — this is what track and field not only should be, but could be, all the time.

Same just a few minutes later when the U.S. women — with but one Olympic champion in the event, Sanya Richards-Ross, the 400-meter specialist — blows away the field to set a new world record, 10:36.5, in the distance medley, which goes 1200, 400, 800, 1600. The other three: Treniere Moser, Ajee Wilson, Shannon Rowbury.

Even the losers — well, the non-winners — almost always have a great time at the Relays. The Canadian men’s 4x100 team was disqualified for the tiny matter of not having the baton that they give you at the beginning of the race and insist you have at the end. Said anchorman Justyn Warner: “I didn’t have a stick with me. It stayed somewhere in the beginning of the race. I just ran for fun. It is a great meet!”

Remember, that’s almost always. On the final handoff of what looked like a sure U.S. win in the women’s 4x2, Jeneba Tarmoh and Felix could not execute and both tumbled to the track. Nigeria won, in 1:30.52.

For those keeping score: that’s 2-for-2 for the U.S. women in botched exchanges at the World Relays, one this year and one in 2014. Last year, Katie Mackey fell down after a collision with the Australians.

More scoreboard: of 11 major championships dating to the Paris 2003 worlds, the U.S. woman have had relay screw-ups in five. Add in the retroactive doping DQ from Edmonton 2001, and it’s six of 12. That’s not good math.

Back to the positive: these Relays provide evidence of how a win-win can work all around.

For track and field, it’s evidence of how innovation can spin the sport forward. The IAAF took a chance in adding an event to the calendar — amid grumbling that it was too early in the year, that a relay-only event was too novel, that overall it came with too many risks.

“This is an event on which we took a chance,” Frankie Fredericks, the great 1990s sprinter from the west African nation of Namibia who is now a member of both the policy-making IAAF council and the International Olympic Committee. “We need to take more chances in our sport.”

Credit Diack, in particular, with pushing ahead.

He said the Relays make for “the latest example of [track and field’s] continued evolution as a sport.”

Last year’s meet saw three world records and 37 national marks. The Jamaican 4x200 team, with Yohan Blake anchoring, lowered the world record to 1:18.63, taking five-hundredths off a mark that had stood for 20 years — by a Santa Monica Track Club team anchored by none other than Carl Lewis.

Blake is not here this year. Bolt is.

The pre-meet news conference Friday — spurred by last year’s success perhaps, maybe by the draw of Bolt — drew double the reporters it saw last year.

For the government and businesses of the Bahamas, meanwhile, the Relays are pure gold.

Last year, the Robinson track had to be resurfaced and various other capital improvements had to be made, Lionel Haven, the managing director of the local organizing committee said. All told, investment totaled $9 million. Balanced against that: a survey done after the meet by a Canadian firm totaled positive economic impact at $26 million.

That is pretty easy math.

Last year, Haven said, was a “unique year,” because of the various start-up investments — which, obviously won’t be required this time around.

You can almost hear the cash registers cha-chinging around Nassau.

At the same time, too much of a good thing is, well, too much. So the third edition of the Relays won’t go down until 2017, again back here in Nassau.

“It’s going to become even better,” year by year, Fredericks said, adding, “Now people realize this is serious.”

And, at the same time, serious fun — the very thing track and field needs.

As Bolt said Friday, “Any time I compete in the Caribbean, I get so much love.”

He made his first on-track appearance, for the first heats of the men’s 4x1, at 7:37 p.m.

The crowd, sensing a disturbance in the force, went nuts.

Ever the showman, Bolt played to the audience, walking up and down the backstretch, waving a little bit, before taking up his position at the top of the stretch in Lane 8. When the camera showed him on the big screen, he smiled a big smile and blew a kiss. That drew a big roar.

The locals saved a bigger roar for the Bahamas team, which by unfortunate luck drew Heat 1, against the Jamaicans.

Alfred Higgs of the Bahamas, a 23-year-old who three years ago ran a personal-best 10.4 in the 100, can one day tell his grandchildren he ran against Bolt.

As they lined it up, and Bolt was blowing them that big kiss, the crowd yelled, “242!” — the area code for the Bahamas, showing some local love. Bingo the Potcake dog, the 2015 Relays mascot, sporting a “242” headband, shook it down.

Alas for the men from the Bahamas, they finished sixth in a field of seven, in 39.32, and would not qualify for the finals.

Bolt had an easy jog across the line in first, the Jamaicans finishing a world-leading 38.07.

In the third of the three heats, the Americans — with Mike Rodgers running the first leg, Justin Gatlin the second, Tyson Gay the third, something of a three-way doping redemption tour in under 40 seconds — took back the world lead, in 37.87, Ryan Bailey (no doping issues) way ahead by the time he got the baton for the anchor leg.

This proved a marked improvement over 2014, when the U.S. 4x1 team had been disqualified in the heats, the result of a bad pass, Trell Kimmons to Rakieem Salaam, Man 2 to 3 on the backstretch.

The final saw the same four Americans in Lane 5.

The Jamaicans — the same four as well, Nesta Carter, Kemar Bailey-Cole, Nickel Ashmeade, Bolt — lined up in Lane 4.

As the gun went off, Bolt waited, hands on his hips. The noise in the stadium: 242-style loud.

At 300, he settled into position.

He never had a chance.

Rodgers to Gatlin to Gay had put Bailey in such a commanding lead — through 300, the U.S. was at 28.55 — and then Bailey ripped off an 8.83-second finishing leg. The batons this year have transponders in them so the timing is incredibly precise.

The Americans won in 37.38, Bolt — who, incredibly, was gaining on Bailey — and Jamaicans second in 37.68.

Candidly, both teams executed below-average passes as the stick went around the track. But there were no drops.

Who, meanwhile, was that at the finish line doing a brief exposition of the famed “lightning Bolt” phase? Could that have been Bailey? And was that, at the end, the briefest turn into a throat slash?

“It felt great,” Bailey said.

“I mean, victory always feels good,” Gay said.

Gatlin, whom Bolt had singled out before the race for talking, and a lot, spoke afterward only of how the Americans and Jamaicans had mutual “respect.”

That was for public consumption, of course.

Here was Bolt: “It’s not the first time I’ve come second.”

Here was the real tell: in the news conference, as he listened to questions and answers, Bolt’s body language said more than any words. His arms and legs were crossed. He is angry, frustrated and determined.

That is all good stuff.

You think Saturday night was good for track and field?

It was great.

“All it says,” Bolt said when asked what second-place here means, “is we need to go back to the drawing board.

“All it says is we are excited for the showdown in Berlin.” He quickly realized his mistake and threw his hands above his head. “Beijing, sorry.”

Bolt back in the spotlight

NASSAU, Bahamas — See, this is exactly the kind of thing that track and field needs, the spotlight on a seemingly relaxed Usain Bolt on Friday in advance of the second edition of the World Relays. Better yet still, what Bolt had to say. Asked by a British reporter about Tyson Gay and Justin Gatlin, Bolt reiterated that he thought Gay’s recent doping ban was “unfair” and “sent the wrong message.” Then: “Justin Gatlin is a great competitor. He is one of those guys who talks a lot and [doesn’t] say a lot. So for me it makes the sport interesting, and I look forward to running with him this season. It’s going to be interesting. Because he has been saying quite a lot.”

OK!

Two things:

First, all sports need stars.

For better or worse, Bolt is track and field in the imagination of much of the general public. The more he runs, the better off the sport is.

Last year, Bolt was hurt. Now it’s a new season. With full respect to the true believers who worship (and understandably) at the likes of the Penn and Drake Relays in the United States, the international season really kicks into gear now. As Bolt said, the full Jamaican team is here in the Bahamas.

Second, the list of things track and field needs to better compete on the international stage might be long, indeed. But any short list would include a rivalry.

Better yet, rivalries.

But at least one.

And if the storyline of the season, heading into the world championships in late August in Beijing, is Gatlin v. Bolt — bring it on.

If Gatlin is the self-styled “Batman of the track,” a “vigilante,” the sort who is — as he acknowledges — not liked but needed, the contrast with Bolt could not be more vivid.

Bolt is popularly portrayed as the super-fun action hero. Indeed, that was Bolt whom the kids — and even the moms and dads — were waiting to catch a glimpse of, and take a picture of, here Friday.

In the public imagination, it’s really no contest.

Gatlin is the 2004 Olympic 100-meter champion. He is five years out from a four-year doping ban. (His second doping offense, for the record.) He has denied knowingly taking performance-enhancing substances.

Bolt’s 100 world record stands at 9.58, run in 2009. Gay and Jamaica’s Yohan Blake stand next, both at 9.69, Gay’s in 2009, Blake’s in 2012. Gay tested positive for a banned substance in 2013 and, after cooperating with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, received a one-year ban. Bolt has said Gay should have been “kicked out of the sport” for doping and called Gay’s reduced term “the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

At issue is what this coming season will bring.

Gay? No one quite knows.

Last year was all Gatlin and very little Bolt.

In 2014, Bolt ran all of a total of 400 meters in competition because of a foot injury.

Gatlin, meantime, ran six of the year’s seven fastest 100-meter times. He set personal bests in the 100, 9.77, and in the 200 meters, 19.68.

The 9.77 matched Bolt’s winning time at the 2013 world championships in Moscow. It also made Gatlin the fifth-fastest guy of all time: Bolt, Gay, Blake, Asafa Powell (9.72), Gatlin.

At a news conference, Bolt asserted Friday that he is healthy again.

By February of this year, he said, he started feeling pretty much like himself.

The goal for 2015, he said, is first and foremost to stay healthy through the spring and summer. Then it’s to use the various meets as “stepping stones” — that is, as a ramp-up for the worlds in Beijing. There, it’s all about the familiar Bolt sprint double, and the 4x1 relay.

Michael Johnson, the 1996 and 2000 Olympic champion said Friday that if Bolt is healthy, “There’s no one who can beat him when he is at his best.”

Bolt said, “For me, I am just happy to be back competing at full health. I have been training really hard. I have been putting in the work.”

It was here, in the Bahamas, that Usain first came in 2002, an unknown. The locals were the first to name him “Lightning Bolt.”

He didn’t compete at last year’s World Relays. The Jamaican 4x200 team — Nickel Ashmeade, Warren Weir, Jermaine Brown and Blake — ran to a world-record 1:18.63, breaking a 20-year-old mark held by the renowned Santa Monica Track Club. Blake isn’t anchoring this year; there’s at least a decent likelihood Bolt will be.

Will the American 4x2 team include Gatlin? He ran last week in the 4x1 at the Penn Relays.

Gatlin figures to run in the 4x1 here as well. Bolt, too.

“Any time I compete in the Caribbean I get so much love,” Bolt said, adding a moment later, “For me, it’s going to be wonderful competing here. I know it’s going to be great. I know it’s going to be crazy.”

Eugene gets the 2021 track championships

For more than 30 years, the United States has consistently produced the world’s best track and field teams. But the track and field world championships have never been held in the United States. Then, Thursday morning, in an unexpected bolt from the blue, came word that the 2021 world championships would be held in Eugene, Oregon — a “strategic decision that enables us to take advantage of a unique opportunity that may never arise again,” the outgoing president of the IAAF, Lamine Diack, said in a statement issued from meetings in Beijing.

Eugene had last November bid for the 2019 world championships and lost narrowly to Doha, Qatar, 15-12.

Typically, the IAAF awards the worlds after such contested elections. For 2021, however, it opted to go straight to Eugene — its 27-member ruling council, guided by Diack, who throughout his 16 years as president has always wanted a U.S. championships, taking the decision Thursday in a special vote.

If anything can ignite a resurgence of track and field’s place in the sporting landscape in the United States, this marks the opportunity.

The sport — under the direction of USATF chief executive Max Siegel, now financially secure in the United States— has six full years and two Olympic Games, in 2016 and 2020, to capture public attention, not to mention the 2016 world indoor championships in Portland, Oregon.

The long-running and very vocal argument over whether a different (read: bigger) city would work as America’s track and field capital is now settled.

It’s going to be Eugene — as the backdrop for a world-class, live (or mostly) TV broadcast.

For sure, the locals know track and field.

The annual Prefontaine Classic at historic Hayward Field is a regular stop on the IAAF’s world circuit.

The NCAA championships are held regularly at Hayward.

Eugene played host last year to the world junior championships.

The U.S. Olympic Trials in track and field were held at Hayward in 2008, 2012 and will be held there again in 2016. The 2016 Trials will be the sixth in University of Oregon history.

Hayward needs a facelift. But that’s now part of the 2021 plan.

That Eugene could grab the 2021 worlds is testament, in large measure, to the vision and tenacity of five people: Vin Lananna, who championed the 2019 bid and would not give up; Bob Fasulo, his consultant and former U.S. Olympic Committee international relations director; Siegel; Diack; and Seb Coe, the IAAF vice president.

Coe headed the 2019 evaluation process and throughout played it studiously neutral. Even so, from the beginning he understood -- anyone would -- the power of having a championships in the United States.

In a phone call from Beijing, he said of Thursday's vote, "This was a strategic opportunity that the council could not overlook.

"We have to be entirely open about this: we have found it difficult to engage the United States at this level of track and field.

"The federation," meaning USATF, "under Stephanie and Max, have really reached out," a reference not only to Siegel but to Stephanie Hightower, who until this week had been the USATF board chairwoman. She resigned, remaining USATF president, and in August will stand as USATF’s nominee for election to the IAAF council.

Coe continued, "We have a world indoors in Portland. We had a very well-organized world junior championships in Eugene. As I said to Stephanie, interestingly, when they were presenting their credentials for world juniors, I said, 'I hope this was a precursor for worlds,' and they said, 'Yes,' and they were back in front of us.

"The council made the right decision. This was not an opportunity that was not going to come around that quickly. Remember, this was only by three votes last time."

Diack is an often-misunderstood figure in the track and field — and Olympic — scene. But Thursday’s decision should serve once more of a reminder of the authority he wields.

Diack has only a few more months to go in his term; either Coe or Sergey Bubka, also an IAAF vice president, will replace him at elections in August. Diack is 81 years old. Even so, Diack managed Thursday to do what Primo Nebiolo, who was his predecessor as IAAF president and who was as fearsome as they come, could not — get a championships to the United States.

And he did so without a bidding process. And without a peep of protest.

There is, to be clear, precedent for no-bidding — the 2007 worlds went to Osaka, Japan, in a similar manner.

“Although this decision departs from the usual procedure," Diack said, "I am delighted that my council colleagues understood the enormous opportunity presented to us to access a key market and have taken a decision in the interest of the global development of our sport.”

For the Americans, after the bitter disappointment of losing to Doha — and for sure it was bitter, with the U.S. contingent in Monaco last November calculating on hotel napkins, trying time and again to figure out how they could have lost by such a close margin — Lananna and Siegel vowed not to give up.

Siegel said Thursday by telephone from Indianapolis, “As a federation, frankly, since I took over,” in 2012, “we have been very deliberate in approaching the sport globally in the same way Scott and Larry have gone about it,” referring to Scott Blackmun and Larry Probst, the chief executive and board chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee, who for years have made a priority of building goodwill and relationships.

“We want to make a statement,” Siegel continued,” that we want to be one of the highest-contributing federations.”

Lananna went back to Monaco the first week of February. There he pitched Diack with what he called a “strategic business plan” — essentially, he said, the same terms and commitments for 2019 but now for 2021.

The state of Oregon, he made sure to note, has all along offered “enthusiastic” support.

Speaking Thursday by phone from Beijing, Lananna said the council voted for the plan by a “landslide” vote.

“We stayed after it,” he said. “I will say that in the end, what I will say about the IAAF, they thought strategically about this and made a bold move. The president did a wonderful job about getting behind this.”

In Monaco last November, Lananna had told the IAAF, “Destiny is calling us. America is waiting. Eugene is ready. Let’s tell our story together.”

Now that destiny is to be fulfilled. Just two years later.

“I mean,” he said on the telephone, “it’s going to reignite America’s passion for track and field. I think you put this in Eugene, Oregon, a town that has the heart and soul of track and field in the United States — the repercussions of this decision will signal a new era for the sport.

“For the IAAF, it’s a new market for the sport of track and field. It ignited the flame that gets our sport rolling in the right direction.”

But not, he cautioned without significant work.

“It’s not good enough to tell each other we have the world’s No. 1 team. We have to work to do — to have them be compelling human interest stories.”

USATF: 12-1 is one more than 11-1

The USA Track & Field board of directors voted Saturday by 12-1 not, repeat not, to rescind its December decision to nominate Stephanie Hightower for a spot on the IAAF council. Meeting in Santa Monica, California, the USATF vote ought to put to rest the controversy that has lingered since the annual meeting in December in Anaheim. Then the vote was 11-1 in favor of Hightower following a 392-70 floor vote for current IAAF vice president Bob Hersh.

Plain math: 12-1 is one more than 11-1. The dissenter Saturday was one of the athlete representatives, Curt Clausen.

It’s time to move on, people.

“Change is just tough,” USATF board counsel Larry James said afterward, adding a moment later, “As we get to that 90 percent, the last 10 percent is the most painful.”

He also said, “Leadership has to lead.”

The 75-year-old Hersh said afterward, “I don’t want to comment at this time,” adding, “Obviously I have some misgivings about the whole procedure.”

Misgivings?

Just to speak hypothetically, what would you make of someone who would suggest at a public board meeting that a woman had no chance of being elected an IAAF vice-president? Seriously? When women have for years now been International Olympic Committee vice-presidents? Should that person really be representing the United States of America? In 2015?

Again hypothetically, what would you make of someone who might suggest, also at a public board meeting, that Cubans don’t like Americans? In an era in which change between Cuba and the United States is plainly in the air?

At a time in which several of USATF’s seemingly most vocal critics are asking for enhanced transparency, what would you think if someone might hypothetically suggest that a discussion that has attracted keen interest over the past four months be held in executive session?

How about this:

Let’s dial back the wayback machine. It would be fascinating to give Hersh a dose of truth serum and ask: four years ago, did you say to Hightower, give me one final term and I will mentor you, even get you on IAAF committees, and then stand down?

Or if that truth serum was still going: last summer, in a private meeting, were you, Bob, asked in a private meeting if you would mentor Stephanie, and did you say, “I could but I won’t?”

Because Saturday, publicly, Hersh once again committed to mentor Hightower, if only he could get four more years.

As if.

To those critics who decry age-ism: the IOC in December affirmed its mandatory retirement limit at age 70. As a matter of best-practices governance, isn't it common-sense that the IAAF is going to enact a similar provision, and soon?

The winds of change are coming this summer to the IAAF. Either Seb Coe or Sergey Bubka is going to be elected federation president. Both are in their 50s. The USATF board decided in December that Hightower, 56, a contemporary of both Coe and Bubka from their time together as athletes and now as sport executives, would be a better choice as USATF nominee than would Hersh.

This U.S. debate about who ought to get the IAAF nomination has run its reasonable course.

For emphasis: there is nothing good that can come of continuing a dialogue, or debate, on this point any further.

The decent thing now would be for Hersh to concede. In politics, there are winners and losers. He has lost. Now he should do the decent thing, and the sooner the better, for the sake of the sport -- and the organizations -- he purports to love.

There is so much going now on that is good about USATF: financially, grass-roots investment and, of course, the prospect of a great summer at the world championships in Beijing followed by epic performances at the Summer Olympics next year in Rio de Janeiro.

This is the first time in maybe forever that all these things can be said about the state of affairs at USA Track & Field.

You just have to step back to see the big picture.

Those who prefer to dwell in divisiveness and name-calling are living in a past that is rapidly receding.

It’s over, people. Get on board.

Is USATF perfect? Hardly. No institution is or can be.

Does USATF deserve criticism when warranted? Absolutely.

That said, is USATF way, way better than it has ever been?

You bet.

Why? Because Hightower and the board have empowered chief executive Max Siegel to do his thing. She is not, repeat not, a dictator. She has grown into the job — as she would readily admit — and Siegel and the staff are doing what they do. That is how a $13 million business grows into $30 million, and it’s only getting started.

So, as this space has repeated several times: the time is now for civility, tolerance and decency. Of course, to reiterate, disagreements are fine. But, big picture, let’s stop the noise and the over-the-top lectures about history and democracy.

We — Americans — do not live in a democracy. We live in a representative democracy.

On the matter of the IAAF nomination, this representative democracy has now spoken, not just once but twice.

USATF should rightfully be the gracious leader among the nations in track and field. It’s time for everyone to get together so that USATF can humbly assume that role as a partner with others around the world — without unnecessary and unproductive personality politics that contribute nothing.

If you prefer it more plainly:

Complain and scheme if you want. Fine. But here’s the deal: you risk being left behind. Way behind.

At USATF, there are a lot of smart, progressive people now running the show. For real. Change is all around. If you step back and take a look, it’s right there. Is it going to happen in a day? Nope. Over time? Yep. It is happening now, and already? Absolutely.

Hightower, after the vote, had it right. She said, “This for me is about how we move the organization forward.”

USATF: a letter from Italy

A letter from Italy, from one of the most influential strategists in track and field, to Bob Hersh, currently an IAAF vice president, makes clear what many here in the United States fail to understand: Hersh is an eminently decent man but his time near the top at the IAAF has come to a close. Hersh should realize that.

“Personally,” writes Luciano Barra, whose career in track and field and Olympic circles has seen him both wielding and observing power and its nuances for decades, “I think that you are spoiling your career in the world of athletics trying to remain in the IAAF council also on this occasion,” a reference to this summer’s IAAF elections.

“Life goes for each of us and time is a severe judge. You are 75, the IAAF will have [drastic] changes in Beijing and you should have understood that this was the right time to leave in glory, being appointed IAAF honorary life vice president.”

Barra prefaces the entire letter by saying, “It was a pity that we did not find the possibility to speak in Prague,” at last weekend’s European indoor championships, and adds, “I must say that many of the things I am writing are shared by many people I spoke with in Prague.”

The letter is most notable because Barra, as Hersh would well know, is close — and has been for years and years — to IAAF insiders.

To recap just some of Barra’s resume:

He was general director of the Italian Olympic Committee from 1984 to 2003, its sport director the final 10 years. He was chief operating officer of the Torino 2006 Winter Games. He is an honorary life council member of the European Athletic Association and has been around track and field, and the organization of its events, virtually his entire life.

Barra is far from unfamiliar with the United States and Americans, incidentally. He served as an adviser to the Chicago 2016 Olympic bid.

It is amid all that context that he wrote Tuesday’s letter to Hersh, mindful that in Beijing either Seb Coe or Sergey Bubka will be elected IAAF president and that USA Track & Field will nominate a delegate to the IAAF spot.

In December, USATF opted not to re-up Hersh but to nominate Stephanie Hightower, the USATF chairwoman.

Within the U.S. track and field community, there continues to be misunderstanding about the dynamics of the 392-70 floor recommendation for Hersh and then the 11-1 board of directors vote for Hightower. A follow-up Feb. 7 board letter sought to explain why the board went the direction it did.

This letter from Barra ought to further make plain to those within the United States why Hightower is the choice.

To emphasize, Barra’s opinion not only matters; it reflects an important current of thinking in key IAAF circles that ought to be better understood in the United States, particularly with the USATF board meeting this weekend in Los Angeles.

Hightower is now 58. When he, Barra, was 58, he wrote, he retired after 18 years in the European athletics council because the Italian track and field federation had a new president and that new president wanted to represent Italy: “It was a normal ambition for him.”

“The same I did in the Italian Olympic Committee at 62 … after 15 years as sport director general (with 110 medals in five Olympics [as compared to] 55 … before) [so that I could become] deputy CEO of Torino 2006 Olympic Games.”

“For this reason,” Barra writes to Hersh, ”I cannot understand your position and your continuous quest of support also internationally. I do not know, and I do not want to know, the formal aspect of what has happened inside your federation, but if legally this has been possible, what can you say?”

Barra goes on:

“I have understood that you have been claiming the important achievement you have reached in these years inside the IAAF. Surely you have good score even if I have been critical on two of your main [activities]: the one of Technical Delegate and the one of Chairman of the Diamond League group.

“I do not want to come back on my e-mails about the time table you have ‘painted’ for Moscow and London, I am only happy to see that those who have taken the baton from you have not followed many of your ‘best practice.’ You know what I am talking about because I have written open letters on it.

“As far as the Diamond League is concerned you should know that many people in the World Athletics consider that activity as the [worst] ever run by the IAAF on many [points] of view. Financially [it] is not positive, from [a] television point of view [it] is even worse, but most of all [it] has allowed athletics to be totally in the hand of the managers. To pursue athletics based on money and records has also made the doping a major issue.

“You chaired a group in Marrakech to discuss about the need to make athletes recognize the one day meeting (the vest problem) and in spite of a report of many pages (43?) you were not able to arrive to any proposal. Should I go on?

“So why not finish in glory and take the positive aspect of what you have done? The alternative is to be challenged on the substance of what you have done, independently to the formal aspect of your queries.”

At the end the letter says, “PS it is possible that I will circulate my thought,” and indeed it is now circulating worldwide.

The race card, and more, at USATF

For years, the U.S. Olympic Committee seemed to be bent on being destroyed from within by petty politics. Now there is a dissident cohort in USA Track & Field that is playing the same game, and, it has to be said, playing the gender and race cards. A letter from USATF board chair Stephanie Hightower in the ordinary course of business prompted one of the most outrageous pieces of correspondence in recent Olympic memory, from USATF youth division chair Lionel Leach.

To be blunt: Leach pulled the race card.

He pulled the black-on-black race card on Hightower, who is also African-American.

If no one else in the United States, or elsewhere, wants to call out Leach for what he did, here it is. That’s what he did.

It’s wrong, it’s offensive, it has zero place in our world and especially in the Olympic scene, which seeks to build a better, more peaceful world through sport.

This space has called repeatedly for civility and tolerance, particularly when it comes to dialogue at USATF.

That’s what Hightower pursued.

In the aftermath of last December’s annual meeting in Anaheim, California, Hightower — as she has every right to do — sent a March 6 letter to Tim Baker, her appointee on the USATF law & legislation committee. Apparently concerned at some of his comments at the meeting, she said in the letter, “You are my appointee on my committee, but your statements and activities seem to indicate that your commitment to advancing mutual organizational goals may be waning.”

Then, she said, “If you would like to continue as my appointee, please call me so we can discuss.”

For those concerned about the use of the word “my” in “my committee,” let’s deconstruct. Hightower is the chairwoman of the board. Thus she bears ultimate responsibility. If she were truly running a "dictatorship" at USATF, as some of her critics would want to allege, Hightower would simply take over the committee itself. Which she is not doing. Logic is what it is.

Two days later, Leach issued a three-page document that started with him saying he was lying in bed — what? — thinking of the “great sacrifices” made by Martin Luther King Jr., Rep. John Lewis (D.-Ga.) and hundreds of others seeking to register African-American voters in the South, invoking the “Bloody Sunday” march 50 years ago from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

This has what to do with the USATF, please?

Answer: it has absolutely zero to do with track, field, Stephanie Hightower or Tim Baker.

Leach goes on:

“Alabama state troopers wielding whips, nightsticks and tear gas threatened and attacked the marchers. Governor Wallace refused to protect the marchers and allowed the attack to take place, making this day one of the most disturbing days in our nation’s history. Wallace believed in discrimination, disenfranchisement, and plain bullying. We all recognize bullying as the use of superior strength or influence to intimidate those who are weaker and to force them to do the bully’s bidding.”

The only bullying here is from Leach.

He is attempting to bully Hightower. Let us be clear about this.

He goes on:

“In the wake of this seminal American moment, a half century later,” which to reiterate has nothing to do with USA Track and Field in 2015, “I am saddened to say I heard about and then read a disturbing letter that makes our governor, Bully Supreme Chris Christie of the great state of New Jersey, look like an angel.”

Let’s stop, again. The Republican governor Chris Christie? What in the world does Christie have to do with any of this, aside from the fact that Leach is a union activist in Democratic-leaning New Jersey?

Again, nothing. This is political rhetoric.

Strike that. It is flat-out political bullying.

“Every day,” Leach goes on, “the members in the union I represent are bullied by their bosses all day long. I don’t let them get away with it, and I most certainly will not allow it to happen in the USATF, the organization I love most in the world.”

OK, Mr. Leach.

It’s a free country. You get the right to say what you want.

Now you get to be called on it.

Your letter goes on to call Ms. Hightower’s letter to Mr. Baker “Bullying 101.” You further describe it as “offensive, disrespectful and downright abuse.”

On what grounds?

On the second page of your letter, you say, “As a constituent leader, I have an obligation to this organization and to the youth membership — better known by all as my 85,000 babies — to protect their rights, and make this sport of track and field better than the way I found it.”

Say again: “… better known by all as my 85,000 babies…”? Seriously? What sort of paternalistic fantasy world are you living in, sir?

The penultimate paragraph of your letter says, “In closing, this organization is called USATF, not Ms. Hightower Track and Field. How dare you send this man a letter in this tone.”

Let’s pause once more. Let’s consider for a moment the tone of the two pieces of correspondence. Which of the two is a business letter and which is a three-page screed?

The hyperbole continues: Mr. Leach, you then go on to say the tone of Ms. Hightower’s letter reminds you of Oct. 20, 1973, the so-called “Saturday Night Massacre” during the Watergate scandal. In the last paragraph, you then say, “You may view that as a threat or a history lesson. Either way, I don’t care. What I do care about is the integrity and leadership of USATF; hopefully, you will find it in your heart to display more of both.”

To compare Ms. Hightower’s request for a phone call with the Watergate matter is inflammatory and inaccurate rhetoric in the extreme. In this context, for it to have come from someone purporting to represent the interests of young people is hugely inappropriate.

As you well know, Mr. Leach, if you have been checking your email inbox, on the matter of integrity and leadership, here are some of the replies your letter has generated:

— “I find your letter to President Hightower wholly inappropriate and full of ridiculous innuendo.  Thank you for providing the document she sent to Mr. Baker so I could judge for myself and not rely on your bizarre attempts to analogize "Bloody Sunday" and the Nixon dismissals with a simple letter.  What a stretch. Who are you to threaten people or give history lessons? Read the letters again and assess who is the bully? Next time maybe wait till morning before you hit send and if you still maintain the poor judgment to do so, don't send it to me.” —

— “Hello Mr. Leach, STOP corrupting the youth in USATF IMMEDIATELY! I am the angry mother of [a] 16 year old student-athlete … Members of [corporations] get fired and removed from office for this type of behavior on a much smaller scale every day. Teachers get fired for expressing their opinion in the classroom. You care for your 85,000 babies so much and fancy yourself as a chair of a youth program? Why did you just poison them? You should be ashamed of yourself!”

— “Mr. Leach-I am appalled you sent this email to USATF members. Your behavior is juvenile and unconscionable. It reminds me of a schoolyard bully trying to get the other kids on his side. You have taken a private matter between Mr. Baker and Mrs. Hightower and asked others to get involved that DO NOT have all the facts. You should be ashamed of yourself. This may be your tactic for your union work but has no place in a youth organization! I have read both letters and your letter is ten times more intimidating and bullying than Mrs. Hightower's. … You really should apologize to your "85,000 babies" for your irresponsible behavior. My child, who is a USATF athlete, overheard my husband I talking about this, and labeled you as a cyber bully. I agree! You are not setting a good example of how adults should react to conflict and it frightens and saddens me that you are representing the USATF organization.”

These people get it.

Mr. Leach, you should, too. You owe a lot of people an apology. Then you should resign your USATF position, immediately.

All of the rest of you who purport to be supporting Mr. Leach: you might want to think about where you stand as well.

None of you — seriously, nobody amid the controversy this week at the University of Oklahoma  — thought to step up and say that what Mr. Leach wrote has no place in our civil dialogue?

Your petty focus on Stephanie Hightower and whether she is a “dictator,” which is laughably absurd, keeps you from seeing the big picture?

It is wrong, wrong, wrong to conflate USATF and Stephanie Hightower in 2015 with George Wallace in 1965 and "discrimination, disenfranchisement and plain bullying," and Alabama state troopers "wielding whips, nightsticks and tear gas [threatening] and [attacking] the marchers ..."

If track and field in the United States is to be taken seriously, then the people who take it seriously now — that is, the people who love it the most — have the most responsibility to take care of it. That means stepping back and seeing what’s really happening. Racism in any or all its forms cannot be tolerated, whether white on black, black on black, purple on green.

All of you, meanwhile, on the Let’s Run message boards, when you see a post like this:

“Yea, it screamed "well you can't not agree with us sooo..." to me. This is what happens when we give women positions of power. The feck schit up.”

No one condemns this noise? No one?

Everyone, this is it, loud and clear:

Stephanie Hightower is an intelligent, resourceful, assertive, powerful black woman.

She didn’t get to be who she is without being a combination of all of those things.

Her strength and willingness to engage, and when necessary engage in constructive conflict, is an asset. It is an asset at USA Track and Field, and it will prove of benefit on behalf of U.S. interests at the IAAF, track and field’s worldwide governing body, when she goes to that board.

It’s 2015. If you don’t like or at least appreciate all that, get over yourself. And start acting with decency and tolerance.

Why Stephanie Hightower is up for IAAF council

Political and organizational culture can be a famously difficult thing to articulate. But as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said in a very different context, you know it when you see it. What’s coming this summer at the IAAF, track and field’s international governing body, is a “climate of monumental political change,” according to a memo sent out Saturday from the USA Track & Field board of directors. And that, it says, is why Stephanie Hightower, not Robert Hersh, is unequivocally “the best candidate for 2015 and beyond” to be nominated for the U.S. seat on the ruling IAAF council.

The three-page memo went out to USATF association presidents, zone representatives and committee chairs. The next USATF board meeting is March 14, in advance of the Los Angeles marathon.

The memo marks the next step in what has been a controversial, and misunderstood, process stemming from the 2014 USATF annual meeting in Anaheim, Calif.

The memo attempts to clarify, as well as bring some much-needed context, to the process.

At issue: who should get the USATF nomination for a seat on the policy-making IAAF council.

At the Anaheim meeting, delegates voted 392-70 to recommend Hersh for the slot. Key word: recommend. The board then heard from both candidates, Hersh and Hightower. It voted, 11-1, for Hightower.

The backdrop:

Hersh, who turns 75 this coming Thursday, Lincoln’s Birthday, has been the U.S. rep to the IAAF since 1999. He is an accomplished lawyer and expert in the rules of track and field. If Hersh got four more years, he’d see 79 before the end of his term.

It was also in 1999 that Primo Nebiolo of Italy, who had been IAAF president since 1981, died. Lamine Diack of Senegal, the acting president, took over. Diack subsequently has been re-elected president — unopposed — in 2001, 2003, 2007 and, somewhat unexpectedly, in 2011.

Diack is now 81. He will turn 82 on June 7. He has announced that this is his final term.

The election to replace him will take place Aug. 18 in Beijing, immediately before the world championships at the Bird’s Nest Stadium, site of the 2008 Olympic Games.

The list of serious contenders to replace Diack is expected to be two: Britain’s Sebastian Coe, the famed middle-distance runner of the 1980s who led the hugely successful London 2012 Games, and Sergey Bubka, the pole-vault champion who now heads Ukraine national Olympic committee and is, as well, a member of the International Olympic Committee’s executive board.

There are four IAAF vice presidents. Coe and Bubka are two. Hersh is another. The fourth is Qatar’s Dahlan Jumaan al-Hamad.

Hersh, at the most recent IAAF elections, in Daegu, South Korea, in 2011, was given the No. 2 IAAF position, the senior vice-presidency. Saturday’s USATF memo does not say this but this space will: this was not owing to Hersh’s accomplishments or achievements but very likely due to political expediency. Everyone within IAAF circles knew full well by then that Coe and Bubka were lining up for the presidency. Hamad had other battles to wage — see Doha’s bid’s for the 2017 and 2019 world championships (in 2011, an American bid for the world championships was a pipe dream). Who was left? Hersh.

Coe is 58.

Bubka is 51.

Hightower, the USATF chairwoman, was a champion hurdler in the 1980s. She is 56.

Put in plain terms: Hightower, Coe and Bubka are peers and contemporaries. As the memo says, she “enjoys especially good relationships with them, making her a very strong candidate.”

She has strong relationships “throughout the IAAF, and especially among women and federations in the Caribbean, Africa and the Middle East,” which also helps advance her candidacy. She has a “strong track record of advocacy … at the international level.”

This, too: the IAAF has a “demonstrable need for more women and women of color.” Hightower is African-American.

But, the memo says, “the biggest issue [the board] discussed was the current state and future direction of the IAAF and its leadership, and it is the topic on which we must speak most strongly in this memo. It is the decisive reason why we chose Stephanie Hightower as the best candidate.”

When Hersh went on the council in 1999, the memo says, that was part of the “political shift that look place as part of a new era of IAAF leadership.”

Now a new shift is underway.

“With Mr. Diack leaving office this summer, many others will also be leaving their positions of power of authority, just as had transpired after Nebiolo’s death and Mr. Diack’s ascendancy. Regime change at the top brings with it regime change at all levels. At the IAAF, a change in the presidency carries with it huge shifts in political climate and power structure, as well [as] changes in staffing, appointees, voting [blocs], elections, policy, rules … a top-to-bottom change is afoot, on a very broad scale.

“Given this climate of monumental political change at the IAAF, and given how closely Mr. Hersh is connected to the tenure and administration of the outgoing presidency, the board believes USATF would compromise the United States’ political position at the IAAF if we were to nominate a candidate for Council who is part of that past, outgoing power and leadership structure.”

Also this, and it has to be noted, because Hersh is indeed the senior vice-president, even as it should also be noted Hersh has not — repeat, not — been accused of any misconduct or wrongdoing:

“The IAAF is under considerable scrutiny at the moment as the handling of doping protocols and charges of corruption related to certain business dealings within the highest level of the organization are currently under investigation. USATF is not a party to those investigations and, like the rest of the world, awaits the outcome of the investigations.”

The memo continues on page three:

“Even though [Hersh] has served ably since 1999, there is no guarantee of Mr. Hersh’s re-election,” and it says in this space that this point must be emphasized.

“If USATF were to put him up for election amid all the change cycle, we are more likely to be perceived as backward-looking to the previous administration rather than forward-thinking to the next administration.

“Bob has served actively since 1999, but since that time there has not been a specific action at the IAAF that has actively advanced the interests of American athletes or teams,” and the opinion in this space is that this assertion is indeed the case. Through the Sydney, Athens, Beijing and London Olympics; through world championships in Seville, Edmonton, Paris, Helsinki, Osaka, Berlin, Daegu and Moscow; through BALCO and other doping scandals, including the most recent one that has now taken out the immediate past chair of the USATF athletes’ advisory council and one of the leading sprinters in recent memory, the essential question has always been — what is Bob Hersh doing?

The memo continues:

“With a new IAAF president about to be elected — and all that goes with it — whatever ability Mr. Hersh may have had to [effect] positive action at the IAAF for American athletes is gravely mitigated by the new IAAF circumstances and the changes that will happen this summer. We are not saying Mr. Hersh has done anything wrong. We recognize simply that a new leadership structure and IAAF organizational structure — one that Ms. Hightower has close ties to and excellent relationships with — will soon be in place. As [a] result of all the above considerations, Ms.Hightower is the best candidate.”

The memo observes that in its deliberations the board “openly discussed the [392-70] vote on the floor … and took that recommendation very seriously.” It also “listened to presentations” made by both Hersh and Hightower that were “markedly different in respect to future advancement of the sport.”

The memo says, “The facts we based our decision on were not those that had been discussed — and perhaps not even known — by Annual Meeting attendees in the days leading up to the [vote]. Mr. Hersh had addressed many committee meetings to present the case for himself as USATF’s IAAF Council nominee. It is our understanding that the political changes taking place at the IAAF, and how USATF could most effectively be part of them, were not part of those discussions. Those, however, were the considerations that were the crux of our decision.”

It also says, “We fully understood that our choice of Stephanie Hightower would not be popular among the delegates who voted for Mr. Hersh. We fully understood that our selection was in direct conflict with the recommendation, and that some people would be (and are) very upset by the fact that we didn’t simply accept the recommendation. But we also fully understood that our function was to select the best — and not necessarily the most popular — candidate based on everything we know.”

USATF and the notion of homework

For years, the U.S. Olympic Committee and USA Track & Field were the two reliable punching bags in the American Olympic scene. The problem at both was much the same: constant management turnover and an unwieldy governance structure, each encumbered by a board of directors numbering in the triple digits that created an environment rife with petty politics. Over the past several years, both have turned it around. But with USATF in particular, there remains a dissident cohort for whom seemingly nothing seems to be good enough. Case in point: there’s a new, professionally produced commercial featuring several track-and-field stars, and it’s even airing on network television. This has to be a huge win, right? Exposure for a sport that needs it? For some, apparently not.

Chief executive Max Siegel took over USATF on May 1, 2012. In 2013 and 2014, the federation announced nine new sponsorship deals, including seven just last year. The big one, of course — a 23-year deal with Nike approaching $500 million.

At the 2014 annual meeting in Anaheim, Calif., in December, USATF delegates were shown the organization’s rise in revenue from $19 million to $34 million; its jump in net assets from $3 million to $17 million; its commitment to spend an additional $9 million on athlete programs between the years 2015 and 2020.

Moreover, and this diversity statistic jumps out from among the U.S. Olympic federations, which can hardly claim anything like it — two-thirds of the USATF board is African-American.

And now a national television commercial?

Apparently not good enough for some, and in particular Lauren Fleshman, the two-time (2006, 2010) U.S. 5,000-meter champion, who has emerged in recent months as a vocal critic of USATF policies.

The TV spot, entitled, ”You’re Welcome,” features action shots of U.S. stars past and present laced with some of the biggest names from today talking; it ran last weekend on NBC.

On the one hand, Ms. Fleshman called the commercial “awesome.” On the other, she complains that the video contains a “massive disparity” in the way it treats “Nike vs. non-Nike athletes,” asserting this is a “problem that goes far beyond this one video, and will keep expensive initiatives like this one from making a real impact on the lives of athletes going forward.”

Her apparent primary complaint: that USATF cropped the logos of non Nike-sponsored athletes in the commercial.

“USATF has their salaries guaranteed for the next 23 years,” she proclaims at the end of her blog. “We don’t. And if USATF is entering into sponsorship contracts that demand they shrink us, silence us, prevent us from thriving, and stifle competition in the marketplace, that isn’t right. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s illegal.”

Let’s start here: no one at USATF has brought up as a hammer the First Amendment, the Commerce Clause to the Constitution or, for that matter, the notion of monopoly.

Indeed, one of the deals USATF announced in December at that meeting was with shoemaker Hoka One One, to sponsor a middle-distance race, with double athlete prize money and a TV-quality webcast.

Meanwhile, in the very same sentence in which Ms. Fleshman notes that it’s “awesome” to have a commercial, she also — in parentheses — asks “was it an MSI project like Road to Sopot? I’m curious.”

MSI stands for “Max Siegel Inc.”

It’s no secret that Siegel is a businessman. Indeed, on the MSI webpage it declares, “Our access to sports, multicultural, media and entertainment properties helps us to seamlessly integrate clients and properties with their target markets — and beyond.”

What is it about Siegel, who is African-American, that seems to be so off-putting to detractors?

The USOC has made diversity and inclusion a point of emphasis under chief executive Scott Blackmun, particularly in the management ranks of the national governing bodies.

Yet from the start of Siegel’s tenure, it has been as if nothing could be good enough. Consider the controversy over the tie in the women’s 100-meter dash at the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials. Siegel had come on the job just weeks before. Yet he took considerable heat because there wasn’t a proper procedure in place? Where in all of this was Robert Hersh, the rules guru — the longtime U.S. seat-holder on the IAAF council, whom the USATF delegates voted in Anaheim in December to send back to the IAAF, only to see the USATF board opt for Stephanie Hightower instead?

Really, you do wonder.

Because wouldn’t you think that a chief executive who — now two-plus years in — brings in big financial numbers ought to be cut some slack?

At the beginning of her blog, Ms. Fleshman suggests, “Feel free to do your own homework.”

To emphasize, everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion. At the same time, the danger of throwing stuff out there without doing your homework is that it if it’s not opinion — that is, if there are actually facts out there — those opinions, often needlessly, rile people up. And then the stuff that gets people riled up can get repeated as if it were gospel.

Which in the case of Lauren Fleshman’s blog — you have to ask, are there facts?

Or, as she herself notes in her Dec. 19 Runner’s World blog, “… if you’re gonna fling mud, come out with the evidence.”

The videos about which she inquires that recapped the journey to the 2014 indoor world championships? They were called “Path to Poland,” not “Road to Sopot,” and were executive produced — like the “You’re Welcome” commercial — by Siegel in his capacity as USATF chief executive. Not, repeat not, as MSI guy.

It should be worth noting that the “Path to Poland” series last year focused on the the breakout 800-meter star Ajee Wilson (adidas), the middle-distance runner Morgan Uceny (adidas), the everlasting Bernard Lagat (Nike) and shot-putter Ryan Whiting (Nike). If you’re keeping score, that’s two Nike athletes, two not.

The “You’re Welcome” spot features stars from yesteryear as well as now. That means USATF had to use footage owned by the USOC and the International Olympic Committee. Such usage involves specific restrictions from both entities, including what logos could be shown and where the commercial could be aired (to use a term of art, it was geo-restricted).

Such restrictions — and this is a USOC rule, not anything to do with USATF — means the commercial could not show any logos outside the so-called “Olympic family.”

No logos were airbrushed, manipulated, digitally altered. There are and were not any conspiracies.

Of the seven current athletes in the spot, four are not Nike athletes.

Indeed, one of the four, Brenda Martinez, bronze medalist in the 800-meters at the 2013 world championships in Moscow, posted on her Instagram account a retort to Ms. Fleshman’s article that said, in part, “Please take me out of [your] article,” adding, “We have it really good here in the US compared to other countries. Without the support of @newbalance & @usatf I wouldn’t have a medal.”

http://instagram.com/p/ysWM78yd8M/?modal=true

Ms. Fleshman did not take Ms. Martinez out. She did post an addendum to her blog that said, “Others have perfectly valid opinions that differ from mine, including Brenda Martinez.” To her credit, Ms. Fleshman added on Ms. Martinez’s Instagram account, “I’m sorry if my post distressed you.”

Another athlete, David Oliver, the 2013 world champ in the 110-meter hurdles, made these posts to his Twitter account:

Track and field gets a cool commercial on TV and people in the sport STILL find a way to complain about something...

— David Oliver (@doliversub13) February 4, 2015

if USATF only used nike sponsored athletes, people would complain about that. Didn't even notice the "controversy" was happy we were on TV

— David Oliver (@doliversub13) February 4, 2015

And this, referring to hurdles competitors Liu Xiang of China and Dayron Robles of Cuba, and to the IAAF, track and field’s international governing body:

Did IAAF (Adidas organization) ad with Liu and Robles for '11 Worlds. Guess who's logo was shown. Did I care, absolutely not, was very happy

— David Oliver (@doliversub13) February 4, 2015

At any rate, going back to the original assertion, that USATF pits Nike against non-Nike athletes:

Of USATF’s athlete support funds, more than 60 percent of those supported are non-Nike athletes. Here is the real disparity: USATF financially supports more athletes not affiliated with its primary sponsor than it does those who wear Nike gear.

Top-tier athletes get five-figure support each year, the kind Ms. Martinez is talking about. It’s all part of an $11-million annual athlete support package that also includes sports medicine, sport performance workshops, TV and webcast coverage with athletes wearing — whatever.

Is USATF truly discriminating? At the end of 2013, it sent out a photo book to sponsors. The very first picture: pole vault star Jenn Suhr in adidas gear. Go through the book. There’s Duane Solomon, that year’s U.S. 800 champ, in his Saucony gear.

Ms. Fleshman notes that a USATF calendar was “recently mailed out to all USATF members” that included a photo of “Leo Monzano,” note the misspelling, who is the 1500 silver medalist from the London 2012 Games, wearing a Nike uniform. When not wearing a national-team uniform, Manzano is sponsored by Hoka One One. “He was not asked permission nor compensated for a photo being used that undercut his sponsor relationship,” she asserted.

The calendar was given away, not sold, to USATF membership. USATF lost money on the calendar, which it paid to produce and send out. It was a gift to members in a bid to get them excited about the red, white and blue — and Manzano is the first American to have won a medal in the men’s 1500 since Jim Ryun in 1968, more than 40 years.

Then, this — in the third paragraph from the end in her blog, Ms. Fleshman says, “USATF selling the national team uniform is one thing. But what else have they sold? Serious question. Email me if you know.”

How about just doing it right here? Serious answer:

— Major grass-roots initiative to Hershey (Run Jump Throw).

— Program providing educational opportunities to elite athletes, among others (University of Phoenix).

— Program that provides free language training to top athletes and provides royalties directly to athletes (Rosetta Stone).

— An app that provides royalties directly to athletes (Coaches Eye).

— Title sponsorship to the Hoka One One Middle Distance Classic, a meet Ms. Fleshman herself has competed at, with the money going directly to the meet and athlete support.

All of that is in the last year.

As was noted in the last column in this space about USATF, reasonable criticism, delivered in a spirit of tolerance and good will, is always fair game.

But homework — requisite due diligence — is eminently fair, too.

USATF voices: a call for passion, civility and common sense

Eight years. That’s what Jon Drummond got Wednesday for multiple doping violations. Where are the howls now — and where have they been, because everyone had to know something of this magnitude was coming — from the athletes who filled the room just two weeks ago in Anaheim, California, at the annual USA Track & Field athletes advisory committee meeting, where Drummond was improbably still the chair of that very committee? There’s been silence, mostly, and that is just incredible. No, not incredible. Wrong. Where is the outspoken condemnation? For real? Where is it? Contrast that with the criticism and anger that emerged from some, if not many, at the end of that very same USATF convention. The USATF board voted to put forward federation chairperson Stephanie Hightower for the IAAF council slot at elections next year despite a floor vote for Bob Hersh. This produced raw emotion. Why? Sexism? Racism? Petty personality politics? Some combination of all three? Or something altogether else? The intensity is all the more mystifying given USATF’s fantastic financial performance and the wholesale changes underway at the IAAF level.

Big picture:

USATF, after years of putting the fun in dysfunctional, finally appears to be on the right track under the leadership of Hightower and chief executive Max Siegel.

For some — if not many — in track and field and the broader Olympic scene, that is a hard sentence with which to come to grips.

The evidence is right there, though, plain as day, and the critics have better start dealing with it.

Now.

Because the change is here, now in the United States, and it’s coming internationally, and the opportunity is there for USATF, Hightower and Siegel — repeat, USATF, Hightower and Siegel — to play a hugely significant role in the coming years in the governance of international track and field.

There’s room for everybody who cares about the sport, who loves it, to have an opinion. No problem there.

But here is a call for the discussion to be ramped down to levels of civility and tolerance.

This reminder: the Olympic values, in shorthand, call for excellence, friendship and respect.

Consider:

Distance standout Lauren Fleshman’s website proclaims, “Dwell in positivity — it’s worth the effort!” She is now the mother of an 18-month-old. Would language like this be acceptable at any Mommy and Me class — Fleshman writing at that very same website, recapping the annual meeting: “I don’t know enough about Stephanie Hightower to know if she would be good at the job or not, or better than Bob, etc. But I do know that at this meeting she was full of s***, so that’s not a good start.”

Here is a quote published at Flotrack from USATF activist Becca Gillespy Peter, who also attended the annual meeting:

“Bob is the most upstanding person ever, and what kills me is that he’s not an ass-kisser like Stephanie and he doesn’t play these political games, I mean obviously he knows politics, but a lot of this stuff with USATF is just beneath him. It’s not his style to go on the offensive against something like this.”

The Orange County Register ran a column that said Hightower’s “lack of professionalism and questionable ethics have long been evident,” going back to long-distance telephone calls made in 1992 (22 years ago, come on, really, and more to the point, as the Register noted, the state agreed not to seek repayment). The paper also chose to note that the Columbus, Ohio, school district — she lives there — enrolled Hightower’s child at a sought-after school even though she had not filed the proper paperwork, citing the Columbus Dispatch.

Let’s pause for a moment.

All public figures know that criticism goes with the territory. But making a professional matter personal — by bringing up family business, working in the child and the school, and relying on another newspaper to do it? To allegedly prove favoritism? Isn’t that something of a stretch to insinuate that’s the smoking gun that gets her but good when it comes to that proposition about professionalism and ethics?

To reiterate, everyone with an interest in track and field and in USATF ought to dial down the rhetoric from an 11 — using the Spinal Tap scale — to, say, an eight. Disagreement is fine. Cable-channel nasty name-calling is not. It needs to stop. Moreover, the snark needs to stop, or at least be toned way down. If you think you're the smartest person in the room, or on the message board -- you're not, guaranteed.

Now: who legitimately thinks anyone gets to be the senior vice president of a major international sports federation without playing politics?

Let’s not be naive, people.

There is little question Hersh is the senior IAAF vice president right now because Britain’s Sebastian Coe and Ukraine’s Sergey Bubka, who are also vice presidents, are going to run for the presidency next August, and Hersh was — in 2011 — the very excellent compromise candidate for the No. 2 spot.

All of you who would profess to be so in the know about the IAAF and its ways, and whether Hersh has wielded magic for the United States over the years: if you, like me, were in Daegu, South Korea, for the 2011 elections, let’s reminisce together about that weird technical glitch in the electronic voting system that almost cost Bubka his vp slot.

All right, then.

I have covered the Olympic movement since 1998. Hersh has been on the IAAF council since 1999.

Hersh is now 74 years old, turning 75 next Feb. 12. Lamine Diack, the outgoing IAAF president, is 81. If Hersh were to see four more years, he’d turn 79 before the end of his term.

Coe is 58. Bubka is 51. Hightower is 56. They are all contemporaries, elite athletes from the 1980s (and in Bubka’s case, ‘90s) who are now in their prime as executives.

If, like me, you attended the International Olympic Committee’s 5th World Conference on Women and Sport in Los Angeles in 2012, you would understand the movement is actively looking to bring more women, and in particular women of diverse backgrounds, into positions of management and leadership.

See Stephanie Hightower.

If, like me, you also attended the USATF meeting in Anaheim, all you had to do was sit down at that AAC meeting and listen to Siegel for this reality check:

USATF revenue up 79 percent from 2011 to 2014, from $19 million to $34 million. Assets up 472 percent from $3.6 million in 2011 to $17 million by the end of 2014. And more — including a raft of new sponsors, and palpable energy driven by the long-term Nike deal.

“I am just really excited with the progress of our organization since Max has been at the helm,” Olympic 400-meter gold medalist Sanya Richards Ross said upon walking out of the room that afternoon. “I am excited about the transparency and his accountability to the athletes and I am very optimistic for our future.”

Why would this be? Because, in large measure, USATF is following the exact same model as the USOC — the board chair, Hightower, has empowered the CEO, Siegel, to do his job, just the same way board chair Larry Probst has given chief executive Scott Blackmun the authority to run the USOC.

Now — does USATF still have some governance rough patches to address, which the USOC has reminded it of? Absolutely. Are things perfect? Hardly.

At any rate: it’s against the backdrop of a hugely upward and optimistic trend that the next shoe dropped, the 392-70 vote as the annual meeting was coming to a close recommending Hersh for the IAAF slot. The USATF board then heard from both candidates, Hersh and Hightower, and voted, 11-1, for Hightower.

Here is the thing, and this is what seems so problematic for some: that 392-70 vote was a recommendation.

This reminder: unless you live in Vermont, where town hall meetings are the thing, we do not live in a straight-up democracy. We live in a representative democracy. Votes of more than 400 people can far too often slide into a high school-like popularity contest, or something similarly meaningless.

The USOC’s downfall some 12 years ago was that it had a cumbersome board of more than 120 people, its decisions racked by petty, personal politics. Sound familiar? Now the USOC board is down to 15, and it works.

In his appearance before the USATF board, Hersh absolutely had a chance to make his case. To put it another way: he got to compete.

So did Hightower. She got to make her case, too.

Hersh lost. Hightower won.

This happens in sports, and it happens in sports politics.

USATF had a process in place. The process was duly followed.

The time for whining about it, friends, is over. It’s time to move on. There are far more important issues with which to contend — like why the best track and field athletes in the United States did not rise up and ask that Jon Drummond be immediately provisionally suspended as chair of the AAC as soon as it was apparent that Drummond had been implicated in the Tyson Gay matter.

If Drummond had been exonerated, he could have had his position — or an even more promising future in USATF leadership — back.

Instead, he got eight years. From the decision: “A coach must be a watchdog when it comes to prohibited substances.” From Siegel: "We are all deeply disappointed."

Where, now, are the voices — especially those who were in that room in Anaheim two weeks ago — who will rise up in defense of their peers, the clean athletes who in roughly 20 months will put on the red, white and blue and compete in Rio de Janeiro for the United States at the 2016 Summer Games?

You want something to be passionate about? Be passionate about that.