Volleyball legend Mike O'Hara -- he leaves you breathless

They like to call the Manhattan Beach Open the Wimbledon of beach volleyball. That makes Mike O'Hara some kind of stud, because he won the thing five times in a row, including the inaugural open in 1960.

And there's so, so much more to Mike O'Hara's story.  Everyone should lead a life so interesting -- then and now, especially now, at age 78, because he just keeps going. He just published his latest book -- "Volleyball: Fastest Growing Sport in the World!"

In case you might miss the point, here's the subtitle to the book: "The Basic Guide to the Sport Challenging Soccer."

Another of Mike's books, so you should know, was updated in 2004. It's all about prostate cancer, which Mike was diagnosed with in his late 60s. He's doing just great, and if you'd like to know just how great, it's all there in the book -- how, in typical Mike fashion, he studied up, educated himself, made some decisions and moved on, no regrets, onto the next challenge.

That's Mike. No regrets and what's next?

Born in Texas, Mike moved to California when he was just a kid. He grew up near the beach and went to Santa Monica High School. In tenth grade he was all of 4 feet, 10 inches tall. Over the next 18 months he grew 17 inches. By the time he got to college, he was 6-feet-4.

He started at Santa Monica City College, then transferred to UCLA where, naturally enough, he was interested in basketball. The relatively new coach at UCLA happened to be a gentleman named John Wooden. Mr. Wooden was intrigued in a specimen who stood 6-4. But not interested enough because the young man had only two years of eligibility remaining.

So Mike took up volleyball. "It was like being in the desert all my life and suddenly I found a magic waterfall," he says now of not only how good he got but how much he loved the game.

In 1953, Mike and the rest of his Delta Tau Delta fraternity intramural championship volleyball team talked the UCLA athletic director, Wilbur Johns, into letting them represent the university at the national collegiate volleyball championships -- which the boys had to get to in Omaha, Neb., all by themselves. They roped the championship trophy to the roof of their car to get it back to Westwood.

Johns thereupon made men's volleyball a varsity sport. The next year the Bruins road-tripped it to Tucson. Again, they came back with the national championship trophy.

In 1959, Mike played on the gold medal-winning U.S. national team at the Pan American Game. He played at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, on the American team at volleyball's first appearance at the Summer Games.

Outdoors, at the beach, he teamed with Mike Bright to dominate at Manhattan Beach -- showing the kind of versatility that Karch Kiraly would show a generation later.

Mike helped organize the 1984 Olympics in L.A.

He helped develop the American Basketball Assn, -- he can regale you with hugely entertaining tales about the Kentucky Colonels of the ABA -- as well as the World Hockey Assn. and professional track.

The rally scoring system that's now an essential feature of volleyball worldwide? That was Mike's idea.

Oh, there's more. Of course there is.

Mike has deservedly been made a member of various volleyball halls of fame.

Mike has done extensive on-camera broadcast work.

And he worked closely for years with Art Linkletter, helping the TV personality with various business ventures. The two became not just professional colleagues -- they were close friends before Art's death, at age 97, last May.

At a lunch celebrating Art's 96th birthday, Mike was telling Art how something Art had once said to him had changed his life.

What, Art said, was that?

Well, Mike said, you told me, find something you like to do -- because then you really never work another day in your life.

Art paused. He said, I've thought about that. There's more to it.

Mike said, what do you mean?

My new philosophy, Art said, is this: What's important in life is not how many breaths you take. It's how many times life makes you breathless.

Bud Greenspan, 84

It is standard practice in the world of journalism to write obituaries long in advance of the day someone dies. That way, when the day comes, you don't have to wrestle with the emotion of the moment. I never did get around to writing Bud Greenspan's obituary. I simply couldn't do it. He had been ill with Parkinson's disease but I just could not confront the inevitable.

Over the years, Bud and I -- and Nancy Beffa, his longtime companion -- had become way more than professional colleagues. We had become good friends.

And Bud was always -- always -- one of the most vital people I ever had the pleasure and privilege of knowing. You just had to enjoy being around him, his glasses perched always -- always -- on his forehead. The man could tell a story, he loved to tell stories and he had stories to tell.

So apologies in advance. This column is really, really hard.

Bud passed away Saturday. He was 84.

The history books will say that Bud was one of the foremost filmmakers in Olympic history. In the mid-1980s, he received what's called the Olympic order, the highest award in Olympic circles, the then-International Olympic Committee president, Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain saying that Bud had even then "been called the foremost producer, writer and director of Olympic films -- more than that, he is an ever-lasting friend of the Olympic family."

Bud was so much more than that.

The explosive growth that saw the Olympic rings become one of the most recognizable symbols around the world over the last half of the 20th century is arguably due to two factors -- television and Bud Greenspan.

Television brought what happened on the track and in the pool in all those far-away places into your living room.

Through his films, Bud told you the stories of the athletes, wherever they were from. He made them real people. They had families, just like you and me. That their names didn't sound quite like ours or maybe their clothes didn't look like what we would wear or whatever -- all that faded away.

Bud's gift to us was simple but nonetheless profound. He reminded us all of our humanity.

That's why his work is so powerful. And no matter how many times you see his films, the power endures.

In Bud's world we are all the same. No matter what we look like or are shaped like or sound like, each of us is a human being imbued with potential and dignity.

"Bud Greenspan always understood that the athletes are at the center of the Olympic experience," Peter Ueberroth, who ran the 1984 Los Angeles Games and then served from 2004 to 2008 as chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee, said late Saturday night.

"Their stories are the ones he told, and those stories reminded us of our shared humanity and the commitment to excellence that are at the core of the Olympic ideals around the world."

In his Olympic films, Bud told dozens and dozens of stories. Perhaps none was as memorable as one of the first -- the Tanzanian marathoner John Stephen Akhwari, who finished last, 57th, in the marathon at the 1968 Mexico City Summer Games.

As the story goes, John Stephen came in about an hour after the winner, Mamo Wolde of Ethiopia. John Stephen had injured his leg in a fall; his leg was bandaged and bloodied.

Why, Bud asked, didn't you just give up?

Give up? Never, John Stephen replied.

My country, he said, didn't send me seven-thousand miles to start a race. He said, they sent me seven-thousand miles to finish it.

"In his lifetime, through his work, he did more than any individual to bring the personal stories of Olympians into households around the world," Mike Moran, who served as the U.S. Olympic Committee's spokesman from 1978-2003, said  Saturday night.

"His style never was out of date. What he produced will be watched decades from now by people who are or will be members of the Olympic family. No one else can ever do what he did. His contributions to what we refer to as Olympism are simply without precedent and Olympic athletes around the world owe him a huge debt of gratitude."

When I think of Bud and Nancy, I think of course of all the great stories he told on film but also the great tales he shared in the times we hung out together -- the back stories of how the films came together, the projects that didn't work, the ones that worked better than they ever imagined, all of that.

We had some great times together. We laughed and laughed with Aussie broadcasting friend Tracey Holmes in Sydney in 2000. We were super-sober while taking in the scene of all the police dogs and the soldiers while we waited our turn to get into freezing-cold Olympic Stadium in Salt Lake City on opening night in 2002; for all his celebrity, Bud was just one more guy getting into the stadium that night, believe me. After we got through and into somewhere where it was warm -- more laughs. As if Bud Greenspan was a threat to anyone.

In November 2007, the USOC endowed a scholarship at the USC School of Cinematic Arts to honor Bud and to encourage future filmmakers.

Donations should be sent to that scholarship fund.

As for flowers, Bud always was fond of relating a quote from another pioneer, Red Barber, one of the great baseball play-by-play men: "If you're going to send someone flowers, make sure they're around to smell them."

The world is diminished tonight because Bud is no longer with us. Godspeed, my friend.

U.S. team handball: a ray of hope

There's no point sugar-coating the U.S. team handball program's record. Neither the men's nor women's teams has come remotely close to winning an Olympic medal at the Summer Games, and "remotely" doesn't do adequate justice, really, to describing how unsuccessful the program has been over the years.

Neither team qualified for the 2008 Beijing, 2004 Athens or 2000 Sydney Summer Games. In Atlanta in 1996 the men finished ninth, the women eighth. The men didn't qualify for Barcelona in 1992; the women finished sixth. The men finished 12th in Seoul in 1988, the women seventh. And so on.

But -- wait. What happened Thursday night in a gym in La Prairie, Quebec, offers reason for hope. Real hope.

Click here to read the rest at TeamUSA.org.

U.S. biathlon on the right track

Did the U.S. biathlon team bring back the medals it was expecting at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games? No. Has the U.S. biathlon team enjoyed anything like the we-are-good, really-we-are results it was expecting in the opening weeks of the current World Cup season? No.

So as that season heads into the traditional holiday break, is all doom-and-gloom in and around the U.S. biathlon program? Hardly.

There's no doom, no gloom. And there shouldn't be.

Click here to read the rest at TeamUSA.org.

U.S. ski team on the rise

If only skiing were like the NFL in these United States, Lindsey Vonn and Ted Ligety would be famous like Tom Brady and Peyton Manning. A ski fan can dream.

A weekend like the one the U.S. ski and snowboard team enjoyed this third weekend of December underscores the enormous American talent now on display on mountains all over the world -- a thing that over the years could not always be said about the Americans.

Individual talent, yes. Consistent talent, no. Now, though, there's consistency, and consistency is the hallmark of any great program.

In this post-Olympic season, the weekend showing also highlights the enormous backstage commitment, continuity, purpose and leadership it takes to get the athletes in position to deliver their best -- the systems that include trainers, technicians, coaches and, at the top, longtime U.S. Ski and Snowboard Assn. boss Bill Marolt.

Click here to read the rest of the story at TeamUSA.org.

Martina: 'The only failure in life is the failure not to try'

The only time I could talk to Martina Navratilova, I was told, was 2:45 in the morning. Okay.

She was in France, having flown there from Kenya. I was in California. 2:45 in the morning was 11:45 in Paris, where Martina was. Take it or leave it, I was told.

I took it, because what she did over the last couple days is the essence of what life is about. She set out to climb Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa. She had undertaken the climb for charity, for the Laureus Sport for Good foundation.

She didn't make it to the top. In fact, she had to be carried off the mountain, fluid in her lungs making it tough to breathe.

Kudos to Martina.

The point is she tried.

Bruce Springsteen likes to say at his shows that it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive. The point of life is the trying.

The greatest athletes among us, and by any measure Martina Navratilova ranks in that group, understand that innately. That's what makes them champions. That's what makes them different from you and from me. They readily embrace the sort of risk and the sorts of challenges that the rest of us don't, or can't.

The thing that makes Kilimanjaro different, though, is that it's the kind of challenge the rest of us ordinary mortals can undertake.

I'm never, for instance, going to win Wimbledon.

I'm never, regrettably, going to win an Olympic medal.

I'm never going to climb Everest.

But I can make it to the top of Kilimanjaro.

In fact, in 1998, I did, along with one of my very best friends, Logan Faust, a doctor.

Kilimanjaro is a trek, not a technical climb.

That said, it's hugely demanding. The summit is about 19,340 feet high. There are a variety of ways to go; our way meant climbing up for four and a half days and racing down for one and a half. The reach for the summit itself, at least in August, meant climbing overnight on the last of the going-up days; we started at midnight at 15,000 feet and reached the peak just past dawn.

Dawn is critical because at that hour the sun hasn't had a chance to melt the snow, meaning it's still packed hard enough so you don't fall through it.

On the trek up, you move through an amazing variety of climates. Jungle gives way to big boulder zones. The boulders turn to loose rock. Then the air gets thin and very, very cold.

How cold? I went to college at Northwestern, just north of Chicago along Lake Michigan. My junior year, we had a snowstorm that dumped 27 inches of snow on us; the windchill during that event, as I recall, reached to minus-83 Fahrenheit. Yet the coldest I have ever been is at the crater rim with an hour yet to go to reach the Kilimanjaro summit.

I had six upper layers on to hike through the night and was still bone cold. As the sun started to illuminate the seemingly unending African plains far below, our guide suggested we duck into a cave he knew at the crater rim. Let's have a cup of tea, he said. Tea! Logan and I almost screamed out the same response. Tea! What? Screw the tea! Dude, let's keep going!

At 19,000 feet, you are almost crazy.

Of course, our patient, knowledgeable and experienced guide knew full well what he was doing. We needed the liquid, and the heat, and a dose of good sense. We made the summit about an hour later.

Only about half of all those who set out for the Kilimanjaro summit make it. In our group of eight, four made it. In Martina's group, 18 of 27.

Martina said by phone from Paris that she's going to be fine. The doctors have told her there won't be any lasting effects from the experience. "I've been better but I'm on my way," she said, adding, "We all gave it 100 percent."

There has been enough time now since leaving Kilimanjaro for Martina to ruminate now on the experience. It wasn't particularly fun, she said, and in particular the weather for the Laureus climbers proved consistently miserable. "From the second day, I felt like I couldn't take a full breath of air. I felt like there was somebody sitting on my chest," she said, adding, "I got to the point when I was going to the bathroom and the rock to go to was 20 meters away and I was like -- I can't do that.

"I should have known something was seriously wrong when I didn't want to eat. That," she said, laughing, "is not me!"

Four Swahili-speaking porters got Martina off the mountain. They brought her down in a wheelbarrow-like litter, one guy in the front, one in the back, one on each side. It took four and a half hours, she said.

The important thing is they got her down. Literally, they saved her life.

Nothing about any of it says failure. Martina doesn't think so, and neither does anyone else.

As she said, and after all this is the entire point, "The only failure in life is the failure not to try."

--

For those who may be interested, here is the link to donate to Martina's Laureus fund.

A most excellent first year

The U.S. Olympic Committee's announcement Tuesday of the addition of five genuinely impressive new directors to its board caps a remarkable year. All five would seem to be incredibly constructive additions. They promise to bring not only breadth, depth, institutional experience and even ingenuity to the board. The newcomers include the likes of Robbie Bach, the former president of Microsoft's entertainment and devices division, as well as Dave Ogrean, who over 30 years has seemingly seen and done it all in American Olympic circles and is now executive director of USA Hockey.

That the USOC, which for most of its own 32-year history has been wracked by dissension and dysfunction, could identify and recruit five all-stars for its board is testament to -- hold on here, this is gotcha kind of stuff -- process and structure.

Don't be bored. Process and structure are the product of leadership.

And, in the persons of Larry Probst, the USOC chairman, and Scott Blackmun, the chief executive, the USOC can be said to have real leadership.

It's a year, more or less, since Blackmun took over the job -- that is, since Probst hired him.

Before the USOC board convenes Thursday in Redwood City, Calif., for the meeting at which the five new members will be formally approved, it's worth taking a moment to review the year that was.

And if you allow again for a slight elasticity in the calendar, there's a powerfully symbolic way to show how far things have come, and there's an easy way to explain how and why things have indeed come so far.

Scene one: It's Copenhagen, October 2009. Chicago has just gotten booted in the first round of voting for the 2016 Summer Games despite the personal plea to the International Olympic Committee by the president of the United States of America.

Scene two: The 21 Club in New York, earlier this month. The USOC awards its first Simon Award -- named for William E. Simon, a former USOC president -- to Dan Doctoroff, the head of the New York 2012 bid, and to Pat Ryan, head of the Chicago 2016 bid. Eminently deserved, and the delightful thing is that both would accept.

That, in large measure, is because of the current USOC leadership.

And here is the secret to that leadership:

Probst is not -- repeat, not -- an all-seeing, all-knowing, Oz-like chairman. He hired Blackmun to run the USOC and, in fact, Blackmun runs it.

That is, Probst and the board set policy. Day-to-day, Blackmun runs the place.

Because Probst allows him to act as a chief executive, Blackmun actually can get things get done. And what he has gotten done is truly impressive.

Here is a partial list of Blackmun's accomplishments this year. Again, this is not -- repeat, not -- an A-to-Z list of every accomplishment:

-- Major sponsor deals with Proctor & Gamble and BMW, and in this economic climate.

-- Repairing and recasting of relationships with national governing body officials.

-- Splitting sport performance into its two logical subsets, facilities and high-performance.

-- Driving long-term strategic vision. It's all there in the board minutes, which are posted online.

-- That the board minutes are online is evidence of the open, accessible and transparent culture the USOC is trying to foster. In the same way that Probst empowers Blackmun, Blackmun lets communications chief Pat Sandusky do his thing.

-- Repairing and reframing of the key relationship with NBC. Blackmun and Probst have forged a solid working relationship with NBC Universal Sports & Olympics chairman Dick Ebersol, who had been a strident USOC critic in late 2009 but appeared at the USOC assembly in September, 2010, to offer praise. Blackmun also has worked with NBC to jointly sell the banking category,  an unprecedented marketing partnership.

-- $18 million deal with the IOC for so-called "Games costs" that sets the table for negotiation and potential resolution of longstanding dispute over marketing and broadcasting revenue splits.

-- Low-key, JFK-esque "ask not what the movement can do for you but what you can do for the movement" approach to the IOC and, for that matter, to international relations.

Nearly once a month Probst or Blackmun has been traveling abroad, or both for that matter, and not just for the Olympic version of a drive-by. Probst hung out at the Assn. of National Olympic Committee meetings in Acapulco in October for a week. Blackmun -- despite having shoulder surgery immediately beforehand -- was there nearly as long.

For anyone's first year on the job, that list makes for a pretty good record of accomplishment.

At the USOC -- it's nothing short of a culture change, and downright historic.

And it's only the first year.

Oh, and by the way -- the U.S. team won a record 37 medals at the Vancouver Olympics this past February.

Bring on 2011.

Mike Alexandrov: see him with your eyes closed

Mike Alexandrov was always a good swimmer, an All-American at Northwestern. After finishing graduate school, he moved to Arizona. Since making the move to the desert southwest, Alexandrov, a breaststroke specialist, has gotten to be a way better swimmer, emerging as one of the key American medal threats at the short-course world championships this week in Dubai. Earlier this month, at the U.S. national short-course championships, in Columbus, the 25-year-old Alexandrov not only won both the 100- and 200-yard breaststroke -- he set American records in each.

Really good for a guy who swims with his eyes closed.

Yes, closed.

Click here to read the story at TeamUSA.org.

Annecy 2018 -- now what?

From the very get-go, it seems, Annecy's bid for the 2018 Winter Games has been missing that certain something. At an introductory news conference at the Vancouver Olympics this past February, there up on the stage appeared a line-up of various French personalities and dignitaries. Except -- Jean-Claude Killy wasn't there.

Within Olympic circles, especially within Winter Games circles, Killy is the man. Not just in France. Worldwide. So for him not to be there -- that wasn't good.

The open secret is that it hasn't gone much better for Annecy ever since, and the resignation Sunday of Edgar Grospiron, the Annecy 2018 chief executive, would seem to threaten to plunge Annecy into thorough disarray -- except "disarray" would seem to assume there was ever "array" in the first instance, and in the case of the Annecy bid that assumption may well be unfounded.

The International Olympic Committee will pick the 2018 site in July. Pyeongchang, South Korea, and Munich, Germany, are also in the race.

It's in the IOC's interest to have as many viable candidates as possible in its bid campaigns. But it has been clear to everyone who knows the Olympic scene that Annecy's viability has always been suspect.

This past June, the IOC criticized Annecy's spread-out venues. The bid scrambled to come up with a new plan centered around Annecy and Chamonix.

Then, a few days ago, Killy and fellow French IOC member Guy Drut said Annecy was still way behind.

Such public criticism from your own country's IOC members is virtually unheard-of.  Especially from the likes of Killy -- 1968 Grenoble Games ski gold medalist, co-chair of the 1992 Albertville Games, IOC point man for the 2006 Torino and now 2014 Sochi Winter Games.

This past week, rumors flew that the Annecy bid was actually considering withdrawing from the race itself.

Imagine that. The founder of the modern Olympic movement, the Baron Pierre de Coubertin, is French. The two languages of the movement? English and French, and in case of dispute French wins. A French bid -- withdrawing? Unthinkable.

Strike that, since the only certainty in Olympic bidding is uncertainty, and there are eight long months to go before the IOC vote next July 6.

For that matter, who knows what kind of grades Annecy will get from the IOC's evaluation commission visit? The IOC team is due to visit in early February.

Clearly, the matter of whether to stay in seems like it was up for serious debate. A news release issued Sunday said that "following a very long session" the Annecy 2018 supervisory board "confirmed its ambition" to pursue a campaign "in view of the tremendous contribution it makes to promoting the region and endorsing Olympic values."

Anyone can see the potential in an Annecy campaign. It's a mature resort in one of the world's most beautiful spots, nestled in the Alps. What if Annecy could be transformed, the Games as catalyst, into a 21st-century resort that relies on cutting-edge and sustainable environmental technologies?

That whole global-warming thing? What's that going to do to the ski and snowboard industry? Shouldn't someone somewhere -- say, an already-developed resort such as Annecy -- be thinking out of the box about how to find a new way forward?

On Friday, the new French sports minister, Chantal Jouano, reportedly affirmed her support for the bid. On Sunday, the bid's budget, it was announced, would be increased from 18 million euros, about $23.7 million, to 20 million euros, about $26.4 million.

Bluntly, that's not enough. That's half, maybe a third, of what it might take.

The debate about whether Olympic bids should run to $50 million or more is a reasonable one, and it's worth having. But not if you're in the game. If you're in -- you're in.

The French, though, have tried to go it in what they might call a "modest" or "authentic" way. It makes you wonder who's really running things there, and whether he, she or they understand what it takes to win, and whether they're committed, or can find such a commitment.

It also makes you wonder whether someone in a position of serious responsibility in France is going to look at what is really a pretty modest increase in that bid budget and ask whether -- to use the American expression -- it's nonetheless a case of throwing good money after bad.

Does it serve the president of the French republic -- who, after all, is up for re-election in 2012, a year after the IOC vote -- for Annecy to get thumped?

How does it play for a potential Paris bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics -- a 100th anniversary bid of the 1924 Games -- if Annecy gets whacked?

What's the dynamic if, ultimately, Annecy withdraws? Can there be such a thing as a graceful withdrawal?

To be explicitly clear on one point: This is not about Grospiron, the 1992 Albertville Games moguls champion. He was fully committed. Grospiron has consistently proved the one bright spot in the bid -- a guy that everyone, and I mean everyone, in particular his rivals, not only liked but respected.

He said in a telephone interview late Sunday night, "I have done what I could do. It's like that."

Growing reflective, he said about his decision to step down, "I decided to be honest to myself and to others. Just to be honest. I learned that from sport. First of all, honesty and integrity. And integrity comes first to yourself. You can lie to everybody but if you lie to yourself that causes damage.

"Again, I learned that through sport. If you cheat yourself, it will have consequences. You can cheat others -- well, it doesn't matter. But when you lie to yourself, you cheat yourself, it's not good. And I wanted to be honest to myself and clear with others. And I took my responsibilities. I think this will help each one of us in the team and those on the [supervisory] board to take their responsibilities. We owe that to the Olympic movement."

He also said, "I did my best and it was not enough. It was not enough to have put us in a good position. I know there are probably guys who can do much better."

It says here -- probably not.

Again, this is not about Grospiron. This is about something much bigger. This is about France.

No apologies necessary: still the shining city on the hill

Enough already with the "we wuz robbed" whining and complaining in the aftermath of FIFA's decision to award the 2018 World Cup to Russia and the 2022 Cup to Qatar. Qatar? Not the United States? Robbed! We wuzn't robbed.

We got beat. Indeed, we beat ourselves.

That's why there must -- again, must -- be a systemic and comprehensive re-think before the United States bids again for any event of significance in international sport, and in particular the Olympic Games.

Without such a review, American bid success has to be seen -- at best -- as problematic,  China, Brazil, Russia, South Africa and Qatar presenting abundant evidence of the will to take the World Cup and the Olympics to new territories.

That doesn't mean the United States can't win.

It does, however, mean that the American approach has to be fully re-calibrated.

"The United States can put forward and should put forward a very compelling argument to FIFA and to the IOC that's based on their needs," meaning FIFA and the IOC, "and not money," Terrence Burns, the president of Atlanta-based Helios Partners, a long-time and super-successful player in the bid game, said in a telephone interview.

"Money is important. A great technical plan is important. But the most important thing in this game -- and the game has changed -- is the vision thing.

"What is the narrative? What is the story? How does that dovetail with making the world a better place and how can we," meaning an American bid, "help you do that?"

Russia's winning 2018 World Cup bid? Helios.

Sochi's winning 2014 Winter Games bid? Helios.

Golf's winning campaign last year to join the Summer Games program? Helios.

Now on the Helios agenda: The 2018 Winter Games bid from Pyeongchang, South Korea, the IOC due to pick the 2018 site next July. Munich, Germany, and Annecy, France, are also in that 2018 race. The Korean bid is widely considered a strong candidate.

More Helios: work on the winning Beijing and Vancouver bids and on events such as the World University Games.

And others, too, which mostly would seem to add to the credibility of Burns and Chris Welton, who is now the Helios chief executive officer, because no one wins all the time:

Moscow's 2012 Summer Games bid, which came in dead last in IOC voting in 2005? Helios. Doha's 2016 Summer Games bid? Helios -- the IOC saying Doha was technically solid but then moving to exclude the Qatari capital, ostensibly on the grounds of the weather.

"I have never seen a bid be beaten by another bid," Burns said. "Every bid I have seen a bid lose -- it has beaten itself."

He said of the complaining, blaming and finger-pointing that seemingly has dominated American reaction to the 2022 loss and, to use another example, last year's first-round exit by Chicago in the 2016 IOC vote, won by Rio de Janeiro:

"It's really kind of funny when you see bids lose and the first thing they do is start blaming 'things beyond their control.' Or anti-Americanism. Or you hear, 'It's the wrong time,' or, 'There are visa issues getting into America,' or, 'In the United States, we have to do it with private funding instead of government funding and so it's harder for us.'"

You want hard? Sochi had zero -- nothing, nada, zilch -- on the ground for the Winter Games. They started there literally from scratch.

"If you don't think that I heard from everyone in the business when I started with Sochi that it was a joke and what were we thinking -- well," he said, "it wasn't."

He also said, referring to the United States, "This country, for every reason that's right, should still be the flagship. The USOC should be the flagship of NOCs in the world," meaning national Olympic committees. "It's not. FIFA and the world should be clamoring to hold their events here. They're not.

"Because we haven't given them a reason to."

The reason Americans once could give -- the reason that used to really, really matter -- is money.

Once, there was a lot more money here than elsewhere. International sports entities were eager to tap into that. That's why the United States could win with relative ease in the 1980s and 1990s.

Reality check: those days are long gone.

FIFA has all the money it needs. So does the IOC.

That's why the essence of the American argument for hosting 2022 -- enhanced sponsorships and television revenues -- was always such a dead-bang loser. It's why reading the transcript of USA 2022 World Cup bid chairman Sunil Gulati's presentation to FIFA feels like you've dropped in on an Economics 101 lecture.

Money still matters. There's no point in the USOC bidding for anything until it resolves a longstanding revenue-related dispute with the IOC.

But, going forward, basing a bid on the notion of making boatloads of money? It doesn't work.

What was missing from the 2022 American soccer bid was the narrative -- the outward-looking reason for the bid. Similarly, Chicago's 2016 Summer Games bid was technically fantastic. But the Chicago bid couldn't hit the emotional highs.

"You don't win bids on facts. You win bids on emotion," Burns said, adding, "You touch people's hearts. You have to do that in a way that addresses their core needs."

A far-reaching re-think ought to start from these two premises:

For one, the United States typically has gone into the bid game in far more of a reactive than pro-active mode. That has to change.

In this instance, reactive means this: Some city or number of cities, typically led by influential business or political figures, catches Olympic fever. In the abstract, there's nothing wrong with that. Passion is very, very good. The challenge is that it doesn't leave the USOC in control of the process.  In a real sense, the USOC is stuck choosing among cities and leaders. And then there's almost inevitably tension between the bid city and the USOC, both wrestling for control.

Wouldn't it be smarter to do it a different way? With the USOC taking a big-picture look and itself assessing when to bid, and whether it would be better to go for the Summer or Winter Games? Then -- identifying the city that gave the United States the best chance? Then -- finding somebody with the right skill set?

Taking charge  of the process is the first part. The second: the right strategy. That means developing a message that's embedded in the bid, and about two things: Why the United States is in. And, more important, why the fact of the United States being in is good for -- in the instance of the Games -- the Olympic movement.

It's regrettably all-too American to be snarky about the idea of sport as a tool for social good. Burns, referring to the IOC and to FIFA, said, "Maybe they're drinking their bath water, too, But they're looking for their movements and sport to make social impact, to move the world forward.

"That's a much-used line in every Olympic speechwriter's repertoire, including mine. But it's true. And for whatever reason we haven't figured that out yet."

Here's a start:

"We don't need to be ashamed about the American story, or apologize to anyone," Burns said.

At the same time, "We have to think about why America is what it is. I think it's still the shining city on the hill. I would tap into that."

And, as well, "I have never heard anybody stand up [at a bid presentation] and say, 'America is changing.' But every day we wake up and it's a different America. That is America. It was made to be a fluid, never-ending river of change."