Gene Sykes, chairman of the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee, said Thursday in public what everyone who is anyone in U.S. and worldwide Olympic leadership has been saying quietly in private: the financial models that have sustained the movement since 1984 need to be reimagined.
Like, now. If not sooner.
Is the Olympic movement at an inflection point?
Let’s face it, the Games are prone to strong sentiments and strong statements. It’s easy to get swept away by the passion and the emotion that the Olympics evoke – after all, that’s the source of their appeal.
But if that question has ever been worth asking, perhaps it’s now.
This week, on September 10, it will be a full 10 years since Thomas Bach was elected president of the International Olympic Committee.
BUDAPEST – If their lives depended on it, the bet here is that 99 out of 100 Americans – maybe most Europeans, too, for that matter – could not find Burkina Faso on the map.
The capital of Burkina Faso, which is in west Africa and until two generations ago was called Upper Volta, is Ouagadougou, and as of these 2023 world track and field championships its most famous citizen is Hugues Fabrice Zango, who is not only a star athlete but also one small step away from getting his Ph.D. in electrical engineering at a university in France.
The guy is handsome, beyond intelligent and articulate in both French and English. He is destined to be a star at the Paris 2024 Games. Sportswriters are not supposed to say these sorts of things but, after talking with him for well over a year, here we go: he is a fundamentally decent human being who cares about our broken world. His country is in a bad way. He knows this. He knows, too, that what he represents, especially now, after these championships, is the one thing his country needs more than anything.
BUDAPEST – Americans often take a holier-than-thou position when it comes to the anti-doping system. Indeed, U.S. athletes are typically heard to say something like, we get tested more. The upshot: you can trust our results more – we’re clean. The implication: others may not be.
New data from the Athletics Integrity Unit, a deep dive of out-of-competition tests from last year’s track and field world championships in Eugene, Oregon, makes plain that Americans – and fans of the U.S. team – ought to reconsider deeply held devotion.
BUDAPEST – What does it mean to be a winner in the men’s 100 here at the 2023 track and field world championships?
Not the winner. That’s easy. Noah Lyles won the race Sunday night in 9.83 seconds.
But a winner. When you finish dead last. And you are beaming with pride and wonder.
On the one hand, you are hardly Lyles. No, you come from remote islands in the Pacific Ocean. On the other, hold on, isn’t it the truth that you’re exactly the same? There you were, on the same track, running the same damn race. And for your part, you ran the fastest you have ever run, and at the world championships!
It’s August, so why bring up the springtime Jewish holiday of Passover, the story of the telling of the Exodus? And what would Passover in any way have to do with yet another column about Shelby Houlihan?
Because one of the key words in the telling of the story is, in Hebrew, the word dayenu! – enough! You pronounce it like this: die-yay-nu! Emphasis on the yay, y’all.
The Washington Post devoted more than 4,000 words to a sob story posted Friday about Houlihan, about how her running career is in “purgatory” because she got tagged for doping and then claimed, absurdly, that it was because of a tainted burrito. That ridiculous defense got rejected but she keeps insisting on playing the victim, telling the Post, “I feel embarrassed, and I’m feeling ashamed, and all of these different emotions for having to serve a ban, even though I didn’t do anything. So that’s been really hard to navigate and work through.”
BUDAPEST – Some number of years ago, Anna Cockrell was an undergraduate at the University of Southern California, where I teach journalism. At a track and field dinner, she and I happened to get seated next to each other. It was obvious she was destined for big things.
On Friday, at the Team USA news conference before the start of the 2023 world championships, Anna, who is a standout hurdler, was asked – by a non-American journalist – how it is that the United States can keep sending a dominant team even though the sport is “losing popularity” and has essentially no “major support” at home. That is because, as he asserted, not incorrectly, “ESPN is ignoring it.”
Anna delivered a lengthy soliloquy that, for the most part, hit the right notes. (Not surprising. She is, as noted, hugely capable.) At the same time, it also underscored the blunt reality facing track and field as the sport heads into what seems by every measure to be first-rate world championships, what could be the best-ever, here in Budapest.
A shockwave of epic proportions boomed out Thursday across the Olympic world.
The International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, opted to take on – with the obvious goal of taking out – Kuwait’s Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah, the kingmaker once and perhaps again.
The obvious question: why? The follow-on: will Bach succeed? The IOC president is nothing if not intelligent and calculated. Then again, so is the sheikh.
Well, here we go again with another high-profile whereabouts case in track and field, and another dose of hot takes.
How about some calm, measured, you know – facts?
The anti-doping rules are not that difficult. The world’s leading athletes should – emphasis, should – be able to follow them and, correspondingly, fans should – should – be able to understand, clearly, what’s what.
Let’s find out.
For nearly 10 years, since he was elected president of the International Olympic Committee, it has been a rare thing for Thomas Bach to be told no.
And for good reason. Despite his many vocal critics, almost all of whom have little to no idea how the IOC or the Olympic movement works in the real world, history will likely record Bach as the most consequential IOC president other than Juan Antonio Samaranch. Perhaps even more so.
Bach’s mantra is simple: change or be changed. He has sought to drag a traditional, conservative, European-oriented institution into the 21st century. He can claim considerable success, implementing major reforms, including the end of the corruption-plagued host-city elections.
Thus what happened Saturday, at an election for the presidency of the Olympic Council of Asia, amounts to the first signs of what may well be not just restlessness but pushback if not potent insurrection in the Olympic movement – one year ahead of Paris 2024 and two years before Bach is due to step down as president.
