The tears of a worthy champion

SHANGHAI -- Three days before, an enormous bomb had gone off in central Oslo, rocking government offices, killing seven people. Shortly thereafter, the massacre began on a nearby island called Utoya. Children and teenagers, at a summer camp, gunned down indiscriminately, dozens and dozens murdered, and for what? Alexander Dale Oen felt the full enormity of his country's sorrow.

Too, he saw a path to a sliver of hope.

He was the first from Norway to win an Olympic medal in swimming. He had won silver in Beijing three years before in the 100-meter breaststroke. Thus the possibility. If he could hold himself together here in Shanghai, at the 2011 swimming world championships -- if he could win here, perhaps such a victory could, in its way, symbolize the resolve of a people going forward.

There are those who say it's foolish to expect this sort of thing from sport.

Yet, time and again, we see it is indeed the case, that sport offers a way to express these emotions, perhaps a way like no other way.

It is like this all over our world.

After the terror attacks of 9/11 nearly ten years ago, when baseball and football games resumed, it felt like life might somehow return to normal in the United States.  Five months later, at the opening ceremony of the 2002 Salt Lake Games, the march into Olympic Stadium of the tattered Ground Zero flag simultaneously paid tribute to those who were lost and all that was yet to come.

This summer, as the women's soccer World Cup played out in Germany, the Japanese team would unfurl a banner that thanked fans around the world for support in the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake, tsunami and radiation disaster.

The Japanese team's victory over the Americans in the World Cup final "touched people's hearts and gave bright hope for society," the country's chief cabinet secretary, Yukio Edano, has said, according to a story in The Japan Times reporting that the team is up for one of the nation's most prestigious tributes, the People's Honor Award.

Here in China, Dale Oen had been asked repeatedly about the attacks back home as he made his way through the rounds of the 100 breaststroke.

To keep up with developments back home, the Norwegian team had been watching TV at their hotel here. "It's unbelievable," Dale Oen told the Associated Press after his prelim swim. "We need to stay together now in Norway and we here just need to try to do the best we can." At that, the wire service reported, he seemed on the verge of tears, and had to walk away.

The 100 lasts two laps. It goes fast,  about or even under a minute.

In the final here Monday night, Dale Oen built a big lead on the first lap, then swam steady after the turn. He would not be caught. He won Norway's first swimming world championships gold medal.

He finished in 58.71 seconds, the first man to go under 59  seconds in the textile-only suits mandated by FINA, swimming's worldwide governing body, since the start of 2010.

Italy's Fabio Scozzoli finished second, in 59.42. South Africa's Cameron van der Burgh touched third, in 59.49. Olympic champion Kosuke Kitajima of Japan finished fourth; the defending world champion, Brenton Rickard of Australia, fifth.

After touching the final wall, still in the water, Dale Oen pointed to the Norwegian flag on his cap. He rose up and flexed his biceps. Look, he seemed to say to his country -- we can still be strong.

In such strength, though, there is always hidden pain.

And, at last, Dale Oen let it show.

On the medals stand, as the last notes of his country's national anthem sounded, he finally gave in.

There were tears in his eyes -- the tears he'd had to fight back just to keep himself going.

He reached up and, quickly, gently, wiped them away.

He drew a breath and composed himself. The moment passed. It was all he would allow himself.

A few minutes later, he appeared at the traditional winners' news conference, black tape wrapped around the left sleeve of his white T-shirt.

"I guess," he said, "I was racing a little bit more with my heart today than I was technically."

David Boudia's history-making platform silver

SHANGHAI -- Any championship athlete knows that delivering peak performance is about achieving a state of calm excitement. That is, it's simply telling your body to do what you know it can do, because you've done it thousands of times before in practice. The trick is the "simply" part. If it really was so simple, everyone could do it. It's not, of course, and that's what separates champions from the rest of us. That's particularly the case in a sport such as diving, and all the more so in platform diving, where you throw your body into the air from a ledge 10 meters, or roughly 30 feet, up.

The moment of championship calm and grace that everyone knew David Boudia had in him finally arrived Saturday in Shanghai. He absolutely nailed the fifth of sixth dives in his program. That propelled him up the leader board, all the way up to second. But he didn't get all caught up in the moment. He thought, oh, good. Then he went out and hit his last dive, too.

David Boudia's silver turned out to be the first medal won by an American male in 25 years at the FINA world championships. No American had won on the 10-meter board since 1986, when Greg Louganis won gold and Bruce Kimball bronze.

China's Qui Bo won gold, with 585.45 points. Boudia finished with 544.25. Germany's Sascha Klein was third, with 534.5. American Nick McCrory finished sixth, with 501.65.

Louganis, in an e-mail, wrote that he had challenged Boudia last year to "leave the pack," adding, "he is now putting that belief in himself to do just that." Louganis also wrote that he was "so proud" and predicted Boudia would have "great opportunities ahead."

Overall, there were 10 gold medals up for grabs in the diving events here in Shanghai.

The Chinese won all 10.

Obviously, they dominate the sport.

Next year, at the London Olympics, they're going to win most of the medals. That's so predictable it's even now all but fact.

Nonetheless, there's opportunity. Intriguingly, the Chinese are worried. Witness this revealing comment Sunday in the English-language China Daily newspaper from Zhou Jihong, the Chinese dive team leader:

"I am really happy to achieve that sweep but I still feel worried. Our opponents have become stronger in technique. We have to toughen up mentally."

One of the reasons they are worried is that David Boudia won silver. That's legitimately fact, too.

The Americans haven't won an Olympic medal since Laura Wilkinson, on the platform in Sydney in 2000. Even so, they were in the hunt here in several disciplines -- but only Boudia, on the final day of the diving competition, broke through.

To see the arc of Boudia's career is to witness steady progression and maturity. It's not unexpected. He has been diving for a long time now. He's now 22 -- and, at Purdue, was named the 2011 Big Ten athlete of the year.

Got that, all you football studs? David Boudia is the Big Ten man of the year.

Boudia finished 23rd in 2007 on the platform at the 2007 world championships; in 2009, he finished sixth.

At the 2007 and 2009 worlds, respectively, he won bronze and silver in the synchronized 10-meter events. At the 2008 FINA World Cup, he won bronze.

He came to these 2011 worlds with his coach, Adam Soldati, mindful that the ability to compete at an occasion such as the world championships can be viewed one of two ways.

You can graft it with all kinds of artificial pressure.

Or -- both Soldati and Boudia are animated by a solid Christian faith -- you can view the worlds as a gift, a chance "to feel alive to feel awesome moments," as Soldati put it.

Soldati also likes to say that the point of diving is to hit it, not to miss it.

That fifth dive, a back 3 1/2 pike, earned Boudia 9.5s from all seven judges.

"Once the competition started," Boudia said, "I've never felt so relaxed in my entire life. Sitting with Adam, we were just joking around like we do in practice. We didn't make a big deal like this was the world championships or anything. I didn't make a big deal of anything. I took it one thing at a time. I didn't get ahead of myself. I didn't get caught up in the environment. It was cool.

"… After that fifth round, I was excited but immediately I hit that switch. I thought, I have one more dive. I thought, 'You hit that great dive but you have more to go. So let's go.' "

He followed up with a rock-steady back 2 1/2 with 2 1/2 twists. You dive to hit it, not miss it.

David Boudia has been on the international circuit since he was 15. These championships, he said, were the first when he had the perspective to look around  the pool deck and see how anxious so many of his other competitors could be, and for what?

"I could see how nervous they were. I could tell when they were diving if they were being cautious. When I was in competition, even in synchro, I could see how they were nervous. I was, like, why do you need to get so nervous? It was like an epiphany. After seven years of competition on the world stage, I controlled my body and it was -- it was like amazing."

Asked if he thought that bodes well for next year, he smiled a big smile, and said with an indisputable sense of calm excitement, "Absolutely."

No 2011 magic for U.S. men's 400 freestyle relay team

SHANGHAI-- Three years ago, in Beijing, the American men won a relay race that still gives you shivers when you watch it. Who can forget Jason Lezak's out-of-body swim that clinched the gold medal? Two years ago, at the world championships in Rome, the American men again willed their way to victory in the 400-meter freestyle relay.

The magic came to a sudden and dramatic stop Saturday night in Shanghai. The Americans didn't win the 400 free relay at the 2011 world championships. The Aussies did. The Americans didn't even come in second. The French did. The Americans came home third, and about the only consolation was that this wasn't the Olympics.

"We just talked about just not liking where we were all standing," Michael Phelps said after the American men had come off the medal stand with their bronze medals.

"Clearly everybody wants to win. And being able to pull out a medal is good. But we -- I think, as Americans want to win everything that we do. We want to be the best. That's all you can really say. We strive to be the best we can be. We all know we can be better than that."

This was a loss for the books. The Americans had won this race in 2005, 2007 and 2009 and of course at the 2008 Games.

This was, moreover, a race that underscored two particular facets of swimming that make it thoroughly compelling.

One relates to the sport as it is now around the world: A whole bunch of countries are really good. That means the U.S. team is clearly going to be challenged heading toward London and the 2012 Games. That challenge may yet prove constructive. Only time will tell.

Two is more particular to U.S. swimming. The culture of American swimming is not only to stress accountability but to accept and acknowledge defeat -- to be stand-up about it. American athletes in any number of other sports could learn a lot from the way U.S. swimmers handle losing.

"I was out too slow," Garrett Weber-Gale, who swam the second leg of Saturday's relay, said, adding a moment later, "Obviously a relay is four men but it's pretty embarrassing for me to go slow like that and I feel like, you know, I don't know the right word, but it's very disappointing for me to have such a slow leg and feel like it was my fault we did poorly.

"... Truly, I feel sick about it. I don't like it. Just have to work harder to be better next time."

Lezak, who swam third, said he didn't swim his best, either: "It takes 100 percent of a team to do their best splits to win nowadays. You can't go in there and have two guys swim great and two guys swim average and expect to win. That's what happened today. Unfortunately, I was one of the average guys out there."

The U.S. men's coach, Eddie Reese, said, "We usually swim our relays as well or better than we look like we should. This wasn't a very good relay for us."

Before the race, the focus had been on the French, Americans and Russians. The Americans had all those recent years of winning history; the Russians, after winning the relay at the 2003 worlds and then all but disappearing, had finished first at last year's European championships; the French, second.

The Australians were nobody's betting favorites. That said, Eamon Sullivan, the Aussies' anchor guy, was hardly a secret. He had gone a then-world record 47.05 in Beijing, at the Games.

The Aussies' lead-off guy Saturday turned out to be one James Magnussen. He is 19.

Magnussen promptly went 47.49 to put Australia in open water. The Aussies never relinquished the lead.

For comparison, in the 2008 Games, Phelps swam his opening leg in 47.51.

Asked late Saturday about swimming here against Phelps, Magnussen said, "No biggie."

Phelps had put the Americans in a solid second place at the end of his split, in 48.08.

They dropped to third in Weber-Gale's leg, fourth with Lezak; Nathan Adrian pulled the Americans back up to third with a 47.40 anchor.

Reese said, "We had splits that were not at all like we thought they would be. Michael's split was really good. He was out there where we thought he should be. Then we just -- our middle, Garrett and Jason -- when you get behind out in the middle of the pool, and you got real big guys making real big waves," meaning big guys from other teams, "it's not a safe place to be.

"It's why we usually we lead off with Michael. 'Cause Michael is super-solid. And he's one of the top two or three out there. I think he had the second-fastest 100 lead-off. We got what we wanted out of that."

The Aussies' winning time: 3:11 flat. The French -- 3:11.14. The U.S. -- 3:11.96.

As Phelps pointed out afterward, the 2011 American relay time was almost two and a half seconds slower than the winning U.S. 2009 relay time, 3:09.21.

There's a whole week of these world championships left -- a lot of racing. Big picture, now there will be a year to think about this loss.

"I mean, it's frustrating," Phelps said.

"... We know what we have to do to get back. We all said that. Standing up on the podium, it's clearly not the spot we want to be in. This is really going to be motivation.

"... It is a good thing it's not the Olympics. We have time to prepare and get ready and change some things. I think that's what we're all going to do. Because I don't think we like the feeling that we have right now."

The end nears for Phelps -- amid a new beginning

SHANGHAI -- Michael Phelps turned 26 a few weeks ago, at the end of June. He  can see the end of his competitive swimming career, in London, a year from now. The beginning of the end starts here, this week in Shanghai, at the world championships.

Maybe he wins the 100 and 200 butterflys, like he usually does, and maybe he wins back the 200 freestyle from Germany's Paul Biedermann. Maybe he out-duels fellow American Ryan Lochte in the 200 individual medley. Or maybe not. Whatever. This meet matters, of course, because it's the worlds, but at the same time it's a set-up for what matters more, and that's next July in London.

What matters most of all is that Phelps has, over the past several months, discovered anew the essence of what has stamped him as the greatest swimmer of all time.

To be a great swimmer you have to want to be a great swimmer.

Phelps wants it again. "I feel like my own self," he said.

At a jam-packed news conference here Saturday, so crowded that if it had been in the United States the fire marshals would have been on high alert, Phelps acknowledged he had basically played a lot of golf and not done a lot of committed swimming for a good chunk of time after the 2009 worlds in Rome.

Look -- who can blame the guy? How would you like to produce motivation after doing what nobody had done before, winning those eight gold medals at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing?

If you had 14 Olympic gold medals in your career, 16 Olympic medals overall, what would it take to get you out of bed in the morning to go swim in a cold pool?

"It didn't matter how much I wanted him to be there," Bowman said. "He had to want to be there."

The issue was when -- if -- that switch was going to go off.

It clicked several months back.

Phelps has been sitting for news conferences since he was 15; the 26-year-old who sat Saturday and answered questions for nearly 30 minutes proved thoughtful, reflective and mature, indeed.

This is the Michael Phelps his family and close friends know and appreciate; this was really him; he was genuine and forthright and sought to explain why, really why, it clicked and in that explanation he quite unintentionally underscored his extraordinary appeal -- and not just in the United States.

Phelps opened a Twitter-style account here in China just days ago. It's called Weibo here. As of Saturday, it already had 87,169 followers.

Here is the Phelps mantra, which he reiterated Saturday: If you work really hard at something, and don't let anyone tell you something is impossible, you can achieve anything.

What clicked, he made plain, is when he realized that all over again -- now as a grown man, and on his own terms.

"I mean, it was just taking charge of my own actions," Phelps said. "You know, just sort of deciding I wanted to do it for myself -- not Bob having to sort of twist my arm to get me in the pool.

"I know if I want to accomplish my goals, I have to do it myself.

"… For me to actually show up, to work out, I have to do it myself. I have to do it. Over the last six to eight months, that has been the case. I have been excited and happy to be in the pool …"

A few minutes later, he said, "This is just how it is. There are always going to be great times. There are going to be hard times. I haven't dealt with the hard times the last two years like I used to. They're under my belt now. I know what to expect if I don't train.

"… It's funny how when you do train, you do swim well. Who would have thought? It's that easy. All you have to do is train."

Bowman said, "Golf is not good for the 200 butterfly. We can definitively say that."

He also said, "We did a year's worth of training in nine months. How that worked -- we're going to find out -- shortly."

Racing gets underway Sunday with the 400-meter freestyle relay. U.S. men's coach Eddie Reese declined Saturday to say who would be swimming, and in what order; Phelps traditionally swims the lead-off leg. Phelps' first individual race final is likely to come Tuesday -- the 200 free.

"I'm excited," Michael Phelps said, "to get in the water."

A keen IOC mission statement

The Olympic movement is and always will be something of a contradiction in terms. It is not, purely speaking, a business. It is a club based in Switzerland that counts about 110 members; through secret votes, those members allocate a franchise that decamps to different cities around the world for a 17-day stay every other year. That description both accounts for and thoroughly ignores reality. The Olympic movement encompasses fantastic business attributes. Worldwide, it is a sponsor- and broadcast-driven commercial proposition now worth well over $1 billion annually. Moreover, a Games serves as the catalyst for infrastructure, development and, as is typical in the case of a Summer Olympics, urban renewal projects worth billions of dollars more.

Underpinning all of it is a philosophy that separates the movement from every other major sports concern. All other big-time sports exist for two reasons -- to crown champions and to make money. The Olympic movement is a non-profit enterprise animated by high-minded ideals.

How, then, would you set out to describe for a highly knowledgeable audience exactly where the Olympic movement is now, and where it's going?

That was the challenge facing the Olympic Games' executive director, Gilbert Felli, when he was asked to present a report to the just-concluded 123rd International Olympic Committee session in Durban, South Africa -- that is, to the members themselves.

Felli's 11-page report, now circulating more widely, makes for one of the most remarkably articulated mission statements ever drafted by or about the IOC. Each of the 11 pages is charged with a keen understanding of what the IOC is, what it's doing, why it's doing it and where it's heading.

Throughout, there are gems -- not only stuff that's straightforward but said straight-out, in the way such things need to be said, frankly. On page four, for instance, Felli notes, "To be appealing, the Games must be the prime event in young people's heads. Regular investments must be made in the way the event is staged, broadcast and shared through the various media platforms. The program must also evolve with time. A good example is the way new events have been recently added to the Sochi 2014 program," and that is a perfect example, the IOC adding slopestyle, among other events.

Historians studying the IOC in these early years of the 21st century may well turn to this document as a -- if not the -- basic marker. It's that good.

Because it's so good, I'm going to quote at length from what is entitled the "introduction" to the report. A big-picture overview, the "introduction" deservedly carries on for more than a full page in the document itself. Here goes:

"The Olympic Games are in constant evolution. Just like any child, they grow through several stages in life. As they become more mature, they adapt to an ever-evolving context, and present new, sometimes unexpected, challenges and opportunities. What is sure, though, is that the Olympic Games are continuing to be extremely healthy and successful. Their magic is now shared with more people than ever, while their staging has come out of difficult economic times with little impact.

"The IOC, together with its key partners and stakeholders, should take great pride in having consistently delivered a series of very successful Olympic Games, sometimes in very challenging circumstances. The IOC can also congratulate itself by offering the youth of the world a new, inspiring event: the Youth Olympic Games.

"The successful staging of two major events in 2010 [meaning the Vancouver Winter Games and the Singapore Youth Games] is no stroke of good fortune. It is the direct result of all the energy expended to develop new tools and processes, to establish strong but evolving partnerships with the organizers and to deliver a rich transfer of knowledge program.

"… [T]he reality of the Games has changed significantly. The Games inspire millions of athletes and even more fans across continents, cultures, ages or ethnic groups. They continue to break down barriers and bring people together. Today, the Games have really extended out of the competition venues and TV screens to play a much wider and more significant role than ever before. They now integrate new technologies to be shared with more people. They compete with more events and leisure activities. They involve more stakeholders and public partners who are all key players in the preparation and staging of the events. Much interest is at stake around the Games.

"The Games are also perceived differently by a number of our stakeholders. Public partners now perceive more fully the potential of the Games to change the face of a city, to inspire an entire nation, to upgrade the host city's public services or generate lasting legacies for host communities. With recent and current organizers, we see that the [magic] of the Games extends far beyond the field of play.

"We have also come to realize how thin the margin can be between success and failure. What sometimes looks very promising can easily turn into a sour situation to manage either for economic, political or other reasons often out of our reach and control. Hence the need to further develop our risk management approach, tailored to each and every Games context.

"The Games bring new challenges but also a wealth of opportunities. They force us not only to observe carefully the world around us and the various trends in leisure and physical activities, media consumption, public health or applied sustainability, but also to constantly innovate and challenge ourselves to optimize the product and experience. Such are the conditions for the Games to remain relevant and successful in the years to come."

A photo tour of London's Olympic Park

LONDON -- The 2012 Summer Games get underway just about a year from now, on July 27, 2012. The International Olympic Committee's press commission got a tour Thursday of Olympic Park, including inside Olympic Stadium.

Here are photos from that tour:

Rogge's IOC presidency 10 years in

DURBAN, South Africa -- The International Olympic Committee's 123rd session, or annual general assembly, closed here Saturday, the occasion marking 10 years of Jacques Rogge's presidency. By every objective measure, the IOC is in remarkably good shape.

History ultimately will judge whether Rogge proved a great president. It's too soon. In the moment it's clear that the president deserves, across the board, high marks.

No institution is immune from constructive criticism, and that includes the IOC. That's to be expected when dealing with multitudes of national Olympic committees, international sports federations and, of course, governments worldwide. To underscore the complexity of the IOC's task, meanwhile, a fair wrap-up of this 123rd session would have to note that while the Winter Games program is innovative and progressive, the Summer Games program -- bluntly -- needs help.

Rogge should give thanks each and every day that Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps are global icons. The Summer Games depends on the making of heroes; those heroes connect with young people; and those two are about it right now.

Pause for a moment now to try to think of others. Go ahead.

Still waiting.

That said, with only two years to go before he leaves office, and he underscored Saturday at his wrap-up news conference that he would indeed leave at the end of his second term in September, 2013, Rogge's record on most big-picture issues is incredibly positive.

His financial advisors, including IOC member Richard Carrion of Puerto Rico, a banker, have -- despite the worst financial conditions in decades -- managed to grow the IOC's financial reserve to $592 million at the end of 2010 from $105 million in 2001.

The reserve is designed to allow the IOC to continue to operate for a full four-year cycle in case an Olympics is canceled. Rogge made growing it a priority soon after he was elected president in 2001.

In other financial matters, NBC's $4.38 billion U.S. TV rights deal secures the IOC's financial base through 2020. The IOC's global sponsorship program has raised $957 million for the four-year run through the 2012 London Games; a 12th sponsor would take the number over $1 billion.

Already, the IOC has raised $921 million from global sponsors for Sochi 2014 and Rio 2016, and $632 million for 2018 and 2020.

The big news here, of course, was that Pyeongchang was elected to stage the 2018 Winter Games, Rogge saying at the ending news  conference, "The Koreans have been rewarded for their patience, their perseverance and maybe their program of 'new horizons.' "

The "new horizons" trend produced Sochi for 2014, Rio for 2016, Pyeongchang for 2018 and is now likely to see Istanbul enter the 2020 race. Rome is already a declared candidate. Madrid is likely to announce soon that it's in. Tokyo may, too, though why the IOC would go back to Asia in 2020 after 2018 remains uncertain.

Rogge said he would be "delighted" to see an American bid for 2020. Of course. It's in the IOC's interest to solicit as many bids as possible.

Is it in the U.S. Olympic Committee's?

USOC officials have said consistently that they first need to resolve a longstanding revenue dispute with the IOC -- a matter that historians may also come to see as one of the defining threads of Rogge's years.

A resolution may, or may not, happen before the Sept. 1 deadline for declaring for 2020.

Even if the financial dispute is resolved, the overarching question is whether, "new horizons" and all, a U.S. bid can win.

Also part of the calculus is whether 2022 might make for a smarter American play.

It used to be that the revenue disparity between a Summer and Winter Games could be pronounced -- that is, in favor a Summer Games. No more. Dmitry Chernyshenko, the head of those Sochi 2014  Games, told a small group of reporters here that his committee is on target right now to raise $1.3 billion in domestic sponsorships, in Russia; that's more than they did in China for the Summer Games in Beijing just three years ago.

Moreover, the United States has become a winter sports power, with a best-in-the-world 37 medals in 2010 in Vancouver that produced marketable American stars such as Lindsey Vonn, Apolo Ohno and Evan Lysacek.

And then there's the innovation issue -- the drawing power of the Winter Games for the demographically key youth market.

The Winter Games program has in recent years seen the addition of snowboarding, snowboard-cross and ski-cross. Earlier this year, the IOC added women's ski jumping. Here, it added slopestyle, among other disciplines.

Shaun White is now a two-time gold medalist. The double McTwist 1260 that he threw to win gold on his second run in Vancouver, a trick he did not have to do -- he had already won gold on his first run -- but did, anyway, is one of those moments that make kids everywhere want to soar like Shaun.

"I am so stoked that slopestyle will be included in the next Olympic Games," Jamie Anderson, a six-time X Games medalist (three gold), said in a statement released by the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Assn., about the Sochi program.

Now, the contrast.

The Summer Games program for 2020 -- the IOC is already planning that far ahead after including golf and rugby for Rio in 2016 -- will involve 25 so-called "core sports," down from 26. It's not clear what will be dropped. Also in the mix, the IOC announced here, are these eight:

Baseball, softball, rock climbing, wushu, roller sports, wakeboard, karate and squash.

To frame the matter simply: when was the last time you heard a wushu competitor say he or she was stoked about the possibility of competing at the Olympics?

The IOC insists it wants to attract young people. And then it goes and throws out a short-list that doesn't take into account the range of sports that gets kids where they live.

Anyone who knows the movement understands that there are political issues involving control of skateboarding as an Olympic sport.

Those need to be resolved. Shaun White is just as good on a skateboard as he is on a snowboard. How is it that he's not being given the chance to show that at the Summer Games?

How about surfing? Come on, IOC -- tap into the endless summer, dudes! A gracious Fernando Aguerre, president of the international surfing association, issued a statement that said, "We may have missed this big wave but like any good surfer we know there are more waves to come. We will therefore continue to develop the sport of surfing on a global level and explore the best way to contribute to the Olympic movement."

Why not, for that matter, cricket? One would think the IOC would jump at the chance to get a billion-plus crazed cricket fans connected to the Olympics.

Sure, it might be complicated. There might be turf wars. Last I looked, soccer was in the Games.

As a European journalist friend of mine likes to say -- we must always work toward a solution. And, yes, the IOC can be traditionally minded. But when it wants to move, it can do so.

In the meantime, there's this. The London Games start next July 27. The men's 100-meter track and field final goes down August 5. Organizers received more than one million requests for tickets to that race. Bolt is a phenomenon, and the Olympic movement needs more phenomenal stuff.

The 2011 IOC women and sport report

DURBAN, South Africa -- It was at the Summer Games in Los Angeles in 1984 that Joan Benoit ran away with the first women's Olympic marathon and smashed stereotypes. Now, 27 years later, only three of the more than 200 national Olympic committees taking part  in the opening ceremony of the Summer Games have not yet sent female competitors, the head of the International Olympic Committee's women and sport commission said Friday. The Middle Eastern states of Brunei, Saudi Arabia and Qatar remain the holdouts, a dramatic improvement from as recently as 1996 and Atlanta, when 26 nations sent no women, Anita DeFrantz told the IOC's session, its annual general assembly. "I do believe in the name and shame strategy," IOC president Jacques Rogge said, adding a moment later, "I think it's very effective."

With female boxers in the ring, every one of the 26 sports on the program at the 2012 London Games will see women competing, DeFrantz, the senior American representative to the IOC, also said.

That's the good news.

And a little bit more:

Just 23 percent of the athletes at the 1984 Los Angeles Games were women. In Beijing in 2008: 43 percent.

At the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games: 40 percent. At the 2010 Singapore Youth Olympic Games: 46 percent.

Now for the challenges off the field, which remain considerable:

The numbers of women on decision-making boards in some significant cases have not changed much, and for that reason DeFrantz and other commission leaders -- amid planning for a major conference on women-in-sport issues next February in Los Angeles -- remain "deeply concerned."

Such concerns extend to the IOC itself as well as to boards of both national Olympic committees and international sports federations, DeFrantz said.

The 15-member IOC executive board now lists only one woman: Nawal El Moutawakel of Morocco.  A vote Saturday will see the election of a second, Gunilla Lindberg of Sweden.

Only 16 percent of the more than 100 IOC members are female. The IOC management team includes no women, according to a report presented by DeFrantz's commission to the session.

National Olympic committees in Bermuda, Mozambique, Papua New Guinea and the United States report their boards include women at participation levels of 40 percent or more.

Such information, DeFrantz said, comes from a survey the commission sent out, adding that only 81 of the NOCs filled it out. That means roughly two-thirds of the committees in the world didn't even bother.

The Australian Olympic Committee issued a release that noted it sent a team to Vancouver made up of  20 male athletes and 20 female athletes but its executive committee includes only two women, AOC president John Coates calling that a "long way short of ideal" and urging his member governing bodies to propose electable female board members at the next AOC board vote, in 2013.

As for the international federations: soccer, boxing, weightlifting, canoe/kayak, handball, archery, shooting, rugby, cycling and bobsled have no women on their executive boards, DeFrantz said.

That's nine summer and one winter sport federations -- and soccer, of course, is  the sport that carries the farthest global reach.

In some cases, the reasons for no women at the board level may be fairly clear-cut.

In others, it may be more nuanced, as C.K. Wu, the head of the international boxing federation, which goes by the acronym AIBA, told the assembly.

Wu, who is an innovative and progressive Olympic administrator, said AIBA has been trying since 2007 to recruit qualified women to its board.

It all starts, he said, at the grass-roots. Women's referees and judges now officiate at bouts. Women are being appointed as technical delegates.

Even so, he cautioned, the issue ought not be reduced to simply a numbers game.

It's not enough, he said, to just put a woman on the board -- she must be qualified, and while any and all qualified candidates would be welcomed, they must be identified and nominated by their home country federations and the elections conducted appropriately.

"To build up [female] leadership takes time," Wu said. "It also takes a lot of effort."

What now, France?

DURBAN, South Africa -- Guy Drut, one of France's two International Olympic Committee members, called it a "very, very cold shower," and that was the headline all over Thursday's editions of the French newspaper Le Monde. L'Équipe, the French sports daily, offered up the "autopsy of a failure."

In the Tribune de Genève, which can be read not just in Geneva but in Annecy, the French town just down the road that got spanked in Wednesday's IOC vote, receiving just seven votes, it was, "Disappointed."

"We console ourselves as we can," L'Équipe said, and with all due respect, that's not it. Now is not the time for consolation.

Now is the time for a wholesale re-think of what is going on over there in France.

That's what's going on in the United States as the U.S. Olympic Committee tries to rebuild its financial and political relationships with the IOC.

And that's what is manifestly called for now in France.

If that's not obvious, every single person in position of leadership in French sport ought to be replaced.

There have now been four French bids for the Olympic Games in the past 14 years -- Lille for 2004, Paris for both 2008 and 2012 and, now, Annecy for 2018. By common reckoning, the French have spent a combined 130 million euros on the four bids, about $185 million at current exchange rates.

What do they have to show for it?

Absolutely nothing.

It's pretty plain that Annecy's performance here in Durban ranks at the bottom of any bid city's effort over the last 20 years. To recap it all is to wonder how a country that has so much going for it can get it all so very wrong:

From the start, the bid proved a complicated tangle between a national Olympic committee and the central government in Paris and the locals in the far-off mountains. Jean-Claude Killy, the French ski legend and acknowledged authority in IOC circles on Winter Games, kept his distance from the campaign; he would ultimately make only three live appearances on behalf of the bid, one here in Durban.

Moreover, and crucially, the bid was under-funded from the get-go.

Because of those funding concerns, bid chief Edgar Grospiron resigned last December. No one wanted the job. Entrepreneur Charles Beigbeder was finally convinced to take it. At that point, the technical plan was a mess. There was no narrative -- that is, no story about why anyone should want to vote for Annecy.

It proved remarkable how many times one heard bid officials mention the name "Annecy" once in a briefing and then go on to mention "the French Alps" thereafter.

A little brand-management, please. Frankly, the bid should always have been called "Chamonix." There's a name that's globally recognized and might have excited people.

For his part, Beigbeder was put in a hugely untenable position. On the one hand, he had to try to keep everyone around him motivated. On the other, he had to confront the reality he had inherited.

Reality check:

If the IOC vote had been held when Beigbeder took over, it's quite possible -- as even bid insiders now acknowledge -- Annecy might have gotten no votes.

From there, things did pick up. Well, some. The technical plan was improved. A creative team -- Lucien Boyer, Andrew Craig, Nick Varley, Dan Connolly -- developed a story and hammered it until journalists could recite it by heart. That's a good thing. It meant the team had done their job. The tagline: "an authentic Games in the heart of the mountains."

Even so, it remained clear Annecy still had no chance to win. The only issue was how many votes it could get. Like, double digits?

The French were counting on African votes -- in particular, Francophone votes -- to get there. As if.

If you know how the game works, it's quite possible the French got no African votes. There were those here who knew Francophone voters were still incredibly angry for promises made in 2005 in the course of the Paris 2012 campaign that they felt had never been fulfilled. No way were they going to be voting for Annecy now.

Here's the bottom line:

In general, as a country, France does have so much going for it. The French Olympic committee is not -- as is the USOC -- locked in a revenue dispute with the IOC. So, at a macro level, what's the problem?

That's what the re-think has to be about.

France has not been able, for instance, to take the momentum of the multiculturalism that was 1998 and the winning World Cup in Paris and translate that into a winning Olympic bid. Why is that?

The Annecy campaign? Not one person of color in any leadership position.

Moreover, France's Olympic bids keep getting stuck in some weird sense of entitlement rooted in the fact that Pierre de Coubertin was French, and de Coubertin is the man who in many ways got the modern Olympic movement going. Our French friends need to get over that. Like, now. Take soccer. Modern-day soccer has its roots in Britain. Did England win the 2018 World Cup because of that? Hardly.

Sorry to say this, too, but while the French did a much better job speaking English in the Annecy presentation Wednesday to the IOC -- about 40 percent of it was in English -- they need to ramp it up even more. They can like that, or not. But they have to accept it, or at least think long and hard about the consequences of not accepting it. The language of international business has become English and the language of the Olympic movement is, practically speaking, English.

Here is indisputable proof:

At every Games, the IOC makes available a database in both English and French to the thousands of writers and broadcasters from around the world. The usage stats from the 2010 Vancouver Olympics: 96.4 percent of the hits were in English, 3.6 percent in French.

In the first of their losing bids eight years ago, Pyeongchang's team spoke almost exclusively in Korean.

What the Koreans have learned and what the French now have to study is how to play to your audience. On Wednesday, Pyeongchang's 45-minute presentation went down almost entirely in English.

You'd like to think that in Beigbeder and in the French sports minister, Chantal Jouanno, the French now might have a team that has endured a brutal learning curve and could put what they've learned to use long-term. Because this has to be a long-term play.

Then again, given the French way, it's not clear how long Jouanno can stay in her position.

Just one more thing for them to think about.

This, too:

L'Équipe's two standout Olympic correspondents, Alain Lunzenfichter and Marc Chevrier, published a lengthy feature Thursday entitled, "Objective Paris 2024!"

It seems almost inevitable. They'll be lusting after those 2024 Games in Paris because they staged the 1924 Games there.

The IOC will pick the 2024 site in 2017. That gives the French six years to get their act together, as the story points out.

Just to be blunt: that 100-year thing is no guarantee of anything. Ask Athens. They lusted for 1996 after staging 1896. The 1996 Games went to Atlanta.

Carlos Nuzman, the 2016 Rio bid leader, now its chief organizer, held a casual briefing Thursday afternoon with some reporters.  Asked what he might suggest to his French friends, he said, "You need to evaluate a lot of things. You need to put on paper or [sit] around a round table. Maybe you will think and some momentum will come.

"It's very important to understand bids nowadays are different from the past. This is one special lesson."

Pyeongchang 2018: the secret is now out

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

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

Pyeongchang is next.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For Burns -- it marked his fourth Olympic win.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It all broke Korea's way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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