2018 Youth Games - calling Mr. T

SINGAPORE -- If it is at all possible that any of the movies in the Rocky series qualifies as cinematic achievement, then perhaps the line uttered by Mr. T, playing Clubber Lang in 1982's Rocky III, stands alone as one of the fine lines in movie history. It is, of course, "I pity the fool!"

These first-ever Youth Games, which closed Thursday to a resounding fireworks show, were by virtually every operational measure a resounding success. The next Summer edition comes in Nanjing, China, in 2014 -- where, as here, there will be little concern about spending money. The Singapore 2010 budget, in American dollars at current exchange rates: $285 million, three times the original estimate, the government's sports minister confirmed Thursday.

After Singapore and then China, who wants to put on these Games in 2018? The International Olympic Committee won't decide for a little while yet. But it is tempting even now to declare: I pity the fool!

Unless and until the U.S. Olympic Committee resolves its longstanding revenue-related dispute with the International Olympic Committee, there's zero reason for the United States to consider a YOG bid. Not that the USOC is asking for my advice but here it is: don't do it.

Plus, there's no reason for the USOC to get into the YOG game. Someone, somewhere will be only too glad to stand up and take on 2018. Better they do it than the U.S. run the risk of following 2010 and 2014.

Nothing is perfect, and these Singapore Youth Games weren't, hardly to be expected from a new initiative. Even so, the glitches were just that -- glitches.

As a consequence, it's almost too bad for the IOC that this first YOG, as it is commonly referred to in Olympic-speak, was held here.

Why? Because Singapore organizers set the bar so high that what's next may be all too predictable -- a rush by successive organizing committees to out-do the one before, and thus a challenge to the very ethos that animated YOG, and ought to keep doing so.

YOG is not the Summer Games. It is not the Winter Games.

It is, instead, a sports festival for teenagers overlaid with a cultural and educational program.

In these two weeks, it took huge steps toward creating an identity distinct from the traditional Summer Games.

It is, as the IOC and the international sports federations intended it, a laboratory for tinkering with various sports and formats -- everything from 3-on-3 basketball to the mixed team events that saw, for instance, an American and Cuban compete together in modern pentathlon.

The odds of seeing any of these experiments any time soon as part of the formal Summer Games program? Close to zero. You might, for instance, see 3-on-3 at the London 2012 or Rio 2016 Games but not as a medal event -- as halftime entertainment in the basketball tournament itself.

The IOC didn't keep a medals count in Singapore but everyone else assuredly did. Of course they did; the Olympic franchise means flags, anthems and medals, though some had suggested the Youth Games could do without. No way.

Fifty nations won at least one gold medal, among them Eritrea and Vietnam. Some treated YOG as a sort-of junior Games (China, with 51 medals overall). Some treated it as a developmental event, sending athletes who might or very well might not ever make it to the Summer Games  (the United States, which typically tops the Summer Olympic overall medals count but finished here with 25.)

Nauru, the world's smallest island nation, all of eight square miles out in the vast Pacific Ocean, won a medal here -- a silver in boxing.

A Saudi girl, Dalma Rushdi H Malhas, the first Saudi female to compete at an Olympic event, won bronze in equestrian.

Haiti's boys soccer team took silver. "Our countries are all united by the tragedies we have suffered," a 15-year-old girls' soccer player from Chile, Romina Orellana, said of the 2010 earthquakes in Haiti, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and her own nation.

YOG was filled with such genuine, indeed lovely, moments and sentiments.

Unclear, though, from the start -- and still so -- is how to measure the import of the formal culture and education program.

Yes, some famous Olympic stars (Frankie Fredericks, Yelena Isinbayeva) came here for chats. And -- so?

Yes, a bunch of booths were set up in the athletes' village that depicted life in the various nations of the world -- Malaysia next to Lebanon next to Laos, for instance, each booth staffed by Singaporeans wearing costumes from whichever country it was. The booths seemed like something you might see at an American high school's version of International Day. It's entirely uncertain whether the booths were totally cheesy or because the target audience was, in fact, high-schoolers, pitch-perfect.

Many of the IOC members toured the booths, and the village. Within the IOC itself, YOG was a huge event -- 108 of the members, nearly all of them, made an appearance here.

Within Singapore, YOG was big news. It occupied several pages a day within the main local paper, the Straits Times.

Elsewhere, though, YOG proved a blip. If that.

Going forward, one of the key challenges YOG faces -- if not the main one -- is how to make this two-week event relevant to the young audience the IOC is seeking to reach.

Because it's in essence a high-school track meet (swim meet, gymnastics meet and so on), there's little to no interest from major broadcasters in televising significant chunks of it. Odane Skeen of Jamaica, who won the boys' 100-meter dash, was timed in 10.42 seconds. Usain Bolt's world record is 9.58. If it's at all possible for eight-tenths of a second to explain why broadcasters are highly unlikely to ever invest significantly in YOG, that's it in a nutshell.

The IOC is absolutely right, as it did aggressively here, to explore the potential of new media. Again, YOG is a laboratory for experimentation. As the IOC pointed out in a news release issued Thursday, videos on the Youth Olympic Games Channel have been viewed over five million times, and at one point it was the third most-watched YouTube channel worldwide.

The challenge is that as impressive as that sounds, it's really not -- at least not yet, in terms of global reach. That's because huge numbers of people in the world have access to a TV but not to a computer. How long will it be until that changes? A generation? Longer?

"You will be a Young Olympian for the rest of your life," IOC president Jacques Rogge said Wednesday when asked if the competitors could consider themselves "Olympic athletes." He said further, "You won't be young forever but being a young Olympian is something they can never take away from you."

Right. But what, exactly, does that mean?

Youth Games and the cousin you'd never met

SINGAPORE -- They say the Olympics bring people together. In this instance, literally.

Josh Hawkins is a 16-year-old hurdler from New Zealand. Devyn Hencil is a 15-year-old soccer player from Zimbabwe.

First cousins, they had never met.

Until they met here, at the first-ever Youth Olympic Games.

"Crazy," Josh said.

"Happy, crazy, everything," Devyn said.

"This is quite unique," the New Zealand team leader, Robyn Wong, said. "I've never heard of this happening before. It's fantastic that Josh is able to meet up with family. You think about the Olympics and the friendships you're able to make -- and now you can say the family you'd never been able to meet."

Josh's mom and Devyn's mom are sisters. The sisters are from Zimbabwe. Josh's dad is from New Zealand.

Josh has a younger sister and a younger brother. They live now in Auckland, on New Zealand's north island.

Devyn has two younger sisters. They live in Harare, Zimbabwe's capital.

Josh's mom is named Sharon, Devyn's Rachel. About three weeks before the start of these Youth Games, the two sisters were chatting by e-mail.

Guess what? Rachel was saying. Devyn is going to Singapore, to play soccer at this Youth Games thing.

That's funny, Sharon replied. Josh is going there, too, to run hurdles.

Devyn said Thursday, "When she told me, it was like, seriously?"

The two boys met up about four days into these Games, in the courtyard of the athletes' village.

Devyn recognized Josh from a photo of his New Zealand cousins that's up on a wall in his Harare home.

Josh recognized Devyn, too, from another family photo. But, he said with a laugh about Devyn, "His head looked bigger than it does in the picture!"

"I've never had family other than -- well, family," meaning his brother and sister and mom and dad, Josh said.

The Zimbabwe team finished sixth in the boys' soccer tournament. Josh made it into the consolation final of the 110-meter hurdles; in that race, he finished fifth.

So no medal for either. But you know what they also say -- when you've got your family, you've got everything.

"It's new generations, new beginnings and that's how life goes," Sharon Hawkins was saying Thursday on the telephone from New Zealand.

"I was over the moon. I cried when I heard Joshua was at the same games. My heart felt like it was going to burst," Rachel Hencil said over the phone from Zimbabwe.

"I've been phoning everyone," she said. "I think everyone in Zimbabwe knows."

Josh already stands an even six feet tall; Devyn is maybe 5-2. They laughed as they posed for pictures Thursday while relaxing in the village, telling their story to a reporter and to a Kiwi camera crew.

Only one word would do to describe it all, and Josh used it a lot Thursday. He kept saying, "Crazy."

American, Cuban make sports history -- together

SINGAPORE -- Fate threw them together. Together they made sports history.

They bridged 90 miles, 50 years and a raft of political complexities, two teenagers, both 18 years old, one American, the other Cuban.

In the mixed relay event that wrapped up the modern pentathlon competition at these first-ever Youth Olympic Games, Cuban Leydi Laura Moya Lopez and American Nathan Schrimsher competed together as a team. Two nations, one entry on the start sheet.

After a long day of fencing, swimming, running and shooting, they finished 16th of 24.

No one cared.

Just competing together was all that mattered -- their appearance, according to current and former senior U.S. Olympic Committee staff, believed to be the first time an American and Cuban had paired up as sports buddies in an Olympic-style event in decades.

"It was normal," she said. "In competition, all is beautiful."

He said, "She doesn't speak much if any English. I don't speak any Spanish. But we got along really well; we were high-fiving, giving each other hugs, encouraging each other. We both do pentathlon so we both speak pentathlon and understand each other -- our pains and groans and aches. So we were able to help each other."

Over the years that Fidel Castro has been in charge on the island nation, Cubans and Americans have of course competed against each other many, many times at untold number of events.  And some Cuban athletes -- think Major League Baseball -- have made it to the States to compete with Americans in professional sports.

But an American and a Cuban together, as teammates, on the Olympic scene -- that was believed to be a first.

It made for a study in the very essence of sport -- and a reminder that while sport hardly offers a direct path to world peace there are moments when sport can offer a dialogue and a path that virtually nothing else can.

The pairing in pentathlon, as it would turn out, came on the very same day that a Saudi Arabian girl, Dalma Rushdi H Malhas, the first Saudi female ever to compete at an Olympic event, won bronze in the individual equestrian event.

International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge, on hand at the Singapore Sports School to watch the swim portion of the pentathlon, said, "Sure, sport is an instrument of change."

He cautioned, "We should not overload sport with potential that it does not have. Sport alone will not bring peace. Sport alone will not keep peace. It can contribute to other efforts -- by politicians, by public opinion, by non-governmental organizations -- to create a peaceful planet. We are participating in that effort."

These first-ever Youth Games now seem destined to be remembered for such sentiments, in part because the IOC and the international sports federations gambled on experiments such as mixed relays.

Some sports featured mixed events in which boys and girls competed together but still for their own country. The swim meet here, for instance, saw mixed 400-meter freestyle and medley relays; China won both.

Other sports mixed not only boys and girls but nations.

In archery, for example, the mixed event saw a girl from Spain and a boy from Bangladesh paired up. They finished fourth.

'It was fascinating," said Yasaman Shirian, a 17-year-old archer from Iran who teamed up with Ibrahim Sabry of Egypt in the team event. They finished 17th. She said, "It didn't matter whether you came first or last because you were enjoying being with another person. The best part is making good friends with people from other countries."

Track and field mixed it up by continents -- and, in a further quirk, by distance.

So, for instance, the line-up for the Americas boys' relay team looked like this: Brazilian Caio Dos Santos running first, for 100 meters; Jamaican Odane Skeen, the individual 100 gold-medalist, running the next leg in the relay, which was 200 meters; Najee Glass, a 16-year-old from Woodbridge, N.J., running the third leg, which was 300 meters; and, finally, Luguelin Santos of the Dominican Republic running the anchor leg, 400 meters. The Americas boys won handily -- and, to the relief of anyone who has seen a USA relay in recent years, Najee handled the baton smoothly.

Gilbert Felli, the senior IOC official who oversees the delivery of Olympic events, said in an interview with the Young Reporters program -- another Youth Games initiative, with more than two dozen aspiring journalists from around the world -- that the mixing and matching was highly unlikely to make its way into the traditional Summer Games program.

For one, he suggested, such mixed events can help the Youth Games achieve its own identity.

For another, he said, the competitive and commercial pressures of chasing a medal at the traditional Games are all but sure to prove far too intense to allow for such experimentation at the Summer Olympics.

"We have to look at the Youth Olympics as a special event," he said. "It is not a mini-Olympics."

The mixed fencing competition here last week split the Americas teams into two.

Americas 1, made up of four Americans and two Canadians, took bronze.

Americas 2 finished seventh of eight. That team included a Canadian, Argentinian, Brazilian, Salvadoran and finally, 17-year-old Redys Hanners Prades Rosabal of Cuba and Mona Shaito of the United States, a 16-year-old from Garland, Texas.

"I thought about it," Mona said. "I thought, wow. This is really weird, how nobody from the U.S. is allowed in Cuba, and here we are competing with somebody we're not allowed to get into their country with. It was amazing."

The pentathlon competition Tuesday took USA-Cuba one step further -- to a genuine partnership.

Nathan, who is from Roswell, N.M., was thrown together with Leydi by chance; their names were picked out of a glass bowl in a draw made Sunday evening.

Because she had won the individual gold, some had thought before the mixed event Tuesday that they might be medal contenders.

But no -- as she would acknowledged later, she was so tired from winning the individual event that she didn't have much left.

"The competition was good," she said. "Sports are sports. If I had to compete with the United States, I was happy about it."

He said, "Competing with Cuba was amazing. I don't know all the politics and everything. I know there's a lot of tension. Competing with her -- there wasn't any problem. We're just pentathletes. We're people, too. We enjoy what we do and had a blast doing it."

Americans 2-for-2 in judo gold

SINGAPORE -- When he was a toddler, Max Schneider was one of those kids who got bullied in pre-school. The normal stuff, he says now. Hey, kid, I want your toy -- and the next thing you'd know, Max would be on the floor. This would not do, Max's mom, Adelina, decided. She was concerned her son would always be on the small side and picked on. So she found a judo program in the neighborhood in Chicago where they lived, and put him in the class.

What do you know -- Max Schneider turned out to be a natural at judo, a sport that many Americans assuredly have heard of but couldn't tell you the first thing about.

A couple days ago here at the first-ever Youth Olympic Games, Max won gold in the boys' 66-kilogram class (that's 146 pounds). That was the first-ever gold medal for the United States in an Olympic-category judo event.

The very next night, Katelyn Bouyssou of Hope, R.I., won gold in the girls' 52-kilo class (114 pounds).

Two golds in two days -- the American team one of only two to win two gold medals in a sport in which nations were allowed here to enter, in total, one boy and one girl. South Korea was the other.

The Americans, though, will leave these Youth Games as the only judo team to hold opponents scoreless. Again: neither Max nor Katelyn gave up even a single point.

In judo!

American performance in judo over the years on the Olympic stage calls to mind the sort of thing a boy who lives on the North Side of Chicago would know a lot about -- the Cubs, and how they pretty much never win the big one.

American men have won nine Summer Games medals, American women one. The men have won three silvers and six bronzes;  Ronda Rousey won bronze at the 2008 Beijing Olympics in the women's 70-kilo class (154 pounds).

That's it, and judo has been on the Olympic program now for two generations.

Judo is of course one of the martial arts. It's not taekwondo, where they kick each other. It's not boxing, where they slug each other with gloves. In wrestling, they wear tight-fitting singlets and grunt like forest animals.

In judo, the competitors wear a woven uniform called a gi. The point is to throw your opponent down or otherwise subdue him (or her) or force him (or her) to submit.

There's a bigber-picture ethos to judo. The point is to improve one's self physically, mentally, even emotionally.

It's something of a mystery how in a nation of 300 million people and who knows how many self-improvement gurus the United States holds zero Summer Olympics gold medals in the sport.

Then again, it figures that at these Youth Games the Americans would excel in something like judo.

These are the Games at which nations that traditionally have done well in certain sports haven't (United States, swimming) and nations that typically are extras on the Olympic scene are suddenly starring (girls' soccer final Tuesday: Chile v. Equatorial Guinea, boys' soccer final Wednesday: Bolivia v. Haiti).

The two American medals here perhaps signal something big come London and the 2012 Games.

Katelyn, who is 16, last year became the youngest U.S. athlete ever to compete at the senior world championships; she first won her class at the U.S. nationals as a 14-year-old.

Her father, Serge, is her coach. In the finals, Katelyn fought Anna Dmitrieva, a Russian. "We talked about her killing the Russian's grip, killing her right hand, and then staying on the offense," the father said later.

Max is 17. Along with being a world-class junior judo player, he has become a big-time high school wrestler. Two years ago, as an incoming freshman at Lane Tech College Prep High School in Chicago, he approached the wrestling coach, whose name is Mark Medona. "And," as Max tells the story, "I said, hey, my name is Max. I won nationals in judo last year. And I would like to join the wrestling team.

"His first response was actually pretty funny," Max said. "He told me to take my cock-and-bull story to someone who believed it.

Then, Max said, coach Medona "went down and researched my name and found out what I said was true. And I kept coming back."

As a freshman, Max made it to the Illinois state high school finals. This past school year, as a sophomore, wrestling at 145 pounds, he enjoyed an undefeated season en route to the state championship.

That, though, was followed by shoulder surgery on April 12, just four months ago. Max didn't get cleared to play judo here until July.

In the final, Max faced Hyon Song-chol of North Korea; the two had never seen or fought each other before.

Serge, the American coach here who also coached the 2009 junior world team, said after Max's victory, "I'm fighting back tears, if that'll tell you anything."

Max said that "ever since I was a little kid" it had "been my dream to be the first to do it," to win an Olympic-event gold for the United States.

He said of his Youth Games gold, "This is as close as I've ever come to a real Olympic medal. On some levels it feels like it.

"On others, I know I still have a lot to overcome."

Not, though, at school. Nobody bullies Max Schneider. "No," he said. "Not anymore."

A gesture lifts South Korea

SINGAPORE -- Sometimes the smallest gesture tells you an awful lot about the essence of a person. Kim Dae Beom, who is 18 years old, had just won the boys' modern pentathlon here Sunday at the Singapore Sports School. He had made history. South Korea had never before won a pentathlon medal of any color at an Olympic event. Now, at these first-ever Youth Games, Dae Beom had just won gold.

It would have been all too easy for Dae Beom to make the moment all about him. It might even have been understandable.

Instead, in his moment of glory, Dae Beom had the presence to make it about something much more. A "precious opportunity," he had called the competition itself, and now he was about to make the most of another.

In so doing he would honor himself, his county and the sport itself. In taking one small step he made real the Olympic emphasis on excellence, friendship and respect.

They climbed onto the medals stand, Dae Beom along with runner-up Ilya Shugarov of Russia and third place-finisher Jorge Camacho of Mexico. Sir Philip Craven, along with Klaus Schormann, president of the modern pentathlon federation, appeared to hand out the medals. Sir Philip, president of the International Paralympic Committee, gets around in a wheelchair.

Dae Beom is only 5-foot-6; he was the shortest of the 24 competitors in Sunday's competition. Nonetheless, from the wheelchair to the top of the podium was something of a reach for Sir Philip.

Sensing that it might make Sir Philip slightly uncomfortable to have to reach up that far, wanting to honor Sir Philip even as Sir Philip was about to honor him, Dae Beom stepped down and off the podium, back onto the track.

There he positioned himself next to Sir Philip's chair, within easy reach.

And Sir Philip gently placed the gold medal around Dae Beom's neck.

Dae Beom declined to say anything later about the class and grace he displayed by the podium with Sir Philip. Again, the emphasis was elsewhere. "I am very happy to let people know about this sport," he said, adding, "Because not many people in Korea know about this sport."

Traditionally, pentathlon has been a European affair.

The sport combines five Olympic disciplines -- fencing, swimming, equestrian, running and shooting. It is has been part of the Summer Games program since 1912 in Stockholm; in those Olympics, an American army lieutenant, George Patton, would finish fifth.

The founder of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, created the modern pentathlon. The idea is to replicate -- after a fashion -- the story of a soldier delivering a message. He has to ride an unfamiliar horse. He has to fight a duel. He is trapped but shoots his way out with a pistol. He swims a river. He completes the job by running a long distance through the woods.

Anyway, that's the idea.

After the Sydney Games, it wasn't clear that such an idea still had enough juice to carry on in the Olympic program. In 2002, in fact, pentathlon almost got the boot. Schormann, though, promised change, and the International Olympic Committee issued pentathlon a reprieve.

Two years ago, the pentathlon federation combined the running and shooting disciplines into one event. These Youth Games in Singapore saw the introduction of a further change -- the familiar air pistols were replaced with laser pistols.

"It's the way of the future," Prince Albert of Monaco, the federation's honorary president and an IOC member, said after watching the girls' event Saturday, won by Leydi Laura Moya Lopez  of Cuba.

The Koreans, Schormann asserted, have "always been my driving forces" to implement such changes. "The Europeans have always been complaining," he said. "The Koreans, Chinese and Japanese were forces for change."

If the Korean pentathlon record at the Summer Games has been oh-for-every-one-of-their-Olympics, the Korean record over the past two years at junior events hints at something very different soon enough, perhaps as soon as London and the 2012 Games.

Three of the top four at the 2009 junior worlds -- Korean boys. The winner of the 2009 junior world team event -- South Korea.

Two of the top three at the 2009 version of what in pentathlon circles is called the Youth A world championships, an event for 17- and 18-year-olds -- Korean.

At the 2010 Youth World A event, in June in Sweden, the Koreans won the team title; in the individual competition, Dae Beom won bronze.

And now, at the Youth Games, gold.

At the Youth Games, as at the youth world events, there is no equestrian portion -- meaning the pentathlon was something of a quadrathlon.

Dae Beom was seventh after the fencing portion. He moved into medal contention after finishing with the third-best time in the 200-meter swim.

As the run-and-shoot got underway, pentathlon experts were mostly watching Han Jiahao of China, the gold medalist at the 2010 Youth World A's. Jiahao's nickname is "King Kong," because, as he explains in a brief biography on the modern pentathlon website, "I think I resemble it."

Not this time. Jiahao faltered during the run-and-shoot. The laser pistols got him.

"I only [learned] about the usage of laser pistols when I came here," to Singapore, Jiahao said later, and a pause here to consider what the reception back home in China might be like for whoever it was that oversees -- perhaps now it's oversaw -- Jiahao's presentation.

How is it he or she or they, whatever, didn't know lasers were going to be used for the first time in pentathlon's 98-year history when everyone else knew?

Jiahao said, "I brought my own air pistols from China only to be informed that we are using laser pistols instead for the modern pentathlon."

Jiahao finished 11th overall.

Dae Beom, meanwhile, came on strong and steady during the run-and-shoot. After crossing the finish line, he staggered a few steps to the mixed zone, where athletes mingle with reporters. There, he collapsed to the track.

He got up a few moments later and said, "I didn't dream of this. It's a gift from heaven."

Joyful at the track

SINGAPORE -- Before the gun went off in the boys' 100-meter dash, Odane Skeen of Jamaica, standing at the blocks in Lane 5, made a motion with his hand like an airplane taking off. Then he flew down the track, and won. In the girls' 400, American Robin Reynolds turned it on down the homestretch for victory. She knew with 50 meters to go the race was hers: "I was just smiling and jumping for joy inside because I knew I would win gold."

In the high jump, an Israeli, Dmitry Kroytor -- an Israeli! -- won gold at these first-ever Youth Olympic Games. "It's a big deal," his coach, Anatoly Shafran, said. "We have so much problems in our country. We need something to be happy."

There are nights like Saturday when track and field is joyful.

And that's precisely the right word: joyful.

After she had taken fourth-place in the girls' 100 -- and fourth is the hardest place to finish, just out of the medals -- Annie Tagoe of Great Britain was the farthest thing from unhappy. She climbed into the stands and sat down, flashing a big smile while everyone around her applauded.

Australia's Brandon Starc took silver to Dmitry Kroytor's gold. Brandon said afterward, "I"m over the moon."

Makes you wonder, doesn't it, why it can't always be like this?

The talk before these Youth Games was all about how there were lessons for the young athletes here, 14- to 18-year-olds, to learn about cultures from around the world. Maybe the real lesson is for the senior officials of international sport, and in particular track and field's governing body, the International Assn. of Athletics Federations.

Here's the lesson:

This is all supposed to be fun.

International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge, speaking in a different context here the other day, said, "I think the Olympic Games are maybe a little bit too serious, there is too much gravitas. To introduce a little bit more of an element of fun would be good."

I second the motion, and when it comes to track and field in particular.

These have not been easy months for the sport.

Last summer brought the controversy at Berlin involving South African Caster Semenya.

This summer's inaugural Diamond League circuit was marked by injuries that limited Usain Bolt, Tyson Gay, Asafa Powell, Sanya Richards-Ross and others. Injuries happen. But track in particular is dependent on star power. Everyone everywhere is clamoring to see Bolt. They didn't get to see nearly enough of him this summer.

The sport's status in the United States is still second-rate. And just in the past few days, Scott Davis, one of the nicest men you could ever meet, a man who embodied all that was right in track and field in the United States, passed away.

USA Track & Field is consistently riven by factions and political infighting.

Worldwide, meanwhile, the IAAF's financial situation is a matter of some delicacy.

It is not, as was widely and erroneously believed in track and field circles a few weeks back, on the verge of collapse. The organization has reserves. It has guaranteed money from TV and sponsors which it can predict for the next four years. It expects a significant boost in the dollars it gets in connection  from the International Olympic Committee in connection with the London 2012 Games when compared with what Beijing 2008 brought.

The dollar's drop against the euro has helped the IAAF, too.

Even so, it has instituted some significant budget cuts, staff reductions (mostly due to attrition) are in the offing and, because of the way revenues come in during the four-year Olympic cycle, the IAAF expects to post an operating loss for 2010.

But -- it expects to break even, more or less, over the four-year 2008-2012 cycle.

Then there's what's going on at the top. Lamine Diack, the IAAF president, is 77. He has been president for some 10 years. He confirmed in an interview in his hotel room here that he's definitely running for election again next summer, at the IAAF's next regularly scheduled balloting.

Diack would seem likely to be elected again. The challenge for the organization is where that leaves Sergei Bubka, Seb Coe and others who might rightly be looking at the job.

It gets even more complicated, actually. Diack said the situation in his country, Senegal, is such that he may well be drafted to be a candidate for his nation's presidency. That would be in 2012. Diack would doubtlessly only agree to be drafted if he knew he was going to win; he certainly has the right, perhaps even the obligation, to respond to a call to serve his nation.

But if that scenario plays out -- where would that leave the IAAF?

It makes your head hurt to think of the various possibilities, and the ferocity of the political jockeying, that would seem all but likely to unfold if Diack becomes president of Senegal.

It would be a lot more fun all around if it there were a lot more nights like the scene Saturday before a packed house at Bishan Stadium.

Odane Skeen, for example, ran a personal-best 10.42 to win the boys' 100. He  posed afterward for pictures with elementary school kids, answered questions from the grown-ups patiently, said and did all the right things.

Undoubtedly, the "next Usain Bolt" stories are already being written.

Odane is just 15. There's a long, long way between 10.42 and 9.58. How about we hold off on Odane being the next Usain and just savor the moment? It was lovely. Joyful, really.

Fun is good

SINGAPORE -- One week down, one to go in the first-ever Youth Olympic Games. Courtesy of the internal Games News Service, here's just some of what they had to say that first week: "I think the Olympic Games are maybe a little bit too serious, there is too much gravitas. To introduce a little bit more of an element of fun would be good."

- International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge on the traditional Summer Games and the Youth Games

"Friendship comes first. Results are secondary."

- China's 69-kilogram weightlifting silver medallist Gong Xinbin

"I am very disappointed I couldn't win a gold medal for India. I am sorry I let India down. Sorry India. Sorry parents. Sorry coach."

- Pooja Dhanda of India, silver medalist in girls' freestyle 60-kilo wrestling

"I knew from the qualifications that my level was good enough for bronze, but I hoped someone would fall so I could have done better."

- Boys' trampoline gymnastics bronze medalist Ginga Munetomo of Japan

"The very top layer of the playing surface had peeled off due to the heat."

- Tennis referee Nitin Kannamwar explaining why the boys' singles match between Venezuela's Ricardo Rodriguez and Argentina's Olivo Renzo had to be moved

"They are probably a little undercooked for London 2012, but have a focus for 2016 [Rio de Janeiro]. What we are asking all athletes [is] to focus on is the long haul and having an intermediary stop on that long haul is essential."

- London 2012 organizing committee chairman Sebastian Coe

"They play sport on computers. We see that kids are not active in sport anymore."

- Sergei Bubka, IOC member and legendary Summer Games pole vault champion from Ukraine

"Many children need to work to help their families, so there isn't much chance to play sport."

- Bangladesh team manager Niaz Choudhury on sports in that nation

"The secret to staying young is exercise. I am healthy and this is a great new experience for me."

- Tennis line judge G Ramanathan, who is 71

"Being an Aussie you always want to win -- even if it's your school spelling bee."

- Australian cyclist Kirsten Dellar

"It shows that females can be just as good as males [in shooting] or even better. So boys have to step it up."

- Australian Emily Esposito on being the only girl on the Australian shooting team

"I want to be a world-class hurdler, the best and most remembered [who] ever lived."

- Jamaican hurdler Megan Simmonds

"This is a completely unpaid, cost-me-a-lot-of-money job."

- New Zealand badminton coach Peter Mundy

"He was focused and I was confused."

- Surinam's badminton player Irfan Djabar on why he lost in three sets to Canadian Henry Pan

"We've both got two arms and two legs, but maybe he prepared a little bit better."

- Ukrainian Olexandr Lytvynov after losing in the boys' 58-kilo gold-medal wrestling match to Urmatbek Amatov of Kyrgystan

"It's always better to dream big than to think you'll come in last."

- Singapore's Travis Joshua Woodward after the boys' cycling time trial finals, in which he finished 25th of 32

"My horse was afraid of something in the audience -- it started to behave very strangely."

- Equestrian Timur Patarov of Kazakhstan on his fall in round one of the jumping event

"I ran straight into someone head first. I couldn't feel anything, I just went numb. It was the end of the regular season, but I missed the play-offs. I wore a neck brace for four weeks and I haven't played contact sports since."

- Sprinter Brandon Sanders of the American team on why he gave up football to run track

"I say, 'I am going to get you, I am going to get you.' "

- Iranian weightlifter Alireza Kazeminejad's announcement to the barbell before going for gold in the boys' +85-kilo category

"I told you so."

- What the 16-year-old Kazeminejad said to the bar after becoming the Youth Games gold medalist

Teen team 32, Central African Republic 28

SINGAPORE -- If Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade and LeBron James were to suit up and play a little three-on-three against the three best guys the Central African Republic had to offer, what would the final score be? Would the spectacle call to mind the routs the U.S. Dream Team laid on the rest of the world at the Barcelona Games in 1992? Would the spirit of Charles Barkley show up to elbow another skinny African?

Meaning no disrespect of any sort to Angelo Chol, Sterling Gibbs and Brandan Kearney, the three Americans who played Thursday  -- a fourth, Kyle Caudill subbing in for all of 37 seconds -- they were in no position to joke about anything after a preliminary-round game over the Central African Republic.

Final score: USA 32, Central African Republic 28.

This is already what it has come to, the Americans barely squeaking by a country most Americans have never heard of (landlocked, central part of the continent, bordered by Chad, Sudan, Cameroon and two other nations, both of which feature the word "Congo" in their names).

This is also exactly the kind of thing basketball's international governing agency, FIBA, was hoping this first-ever Youth Games 3-on-3 tourney would yield.

The only thing better would have been if the Central African Republic guys had actually won.

Mind you, at FIBA they're not rooting against the Americans.

They're rooting for the game.

And -- they can't, won't and don't say this, but it's incredibly obvious  -- the game wins when the Americans lose.

For the Americans, even allowing that it's American 17-year-olds, to beat the Central African Republic by only four -- that's a result that's "really great and that excites people," Patrick Baumann, the general-secretary of FIBA and an International Olympic Committee member, said.

"That excites the players. They will go back home and say, 'Yes, we can beat the U.S.' For everyone, the U.S. is the team to beat."

Prince Albert of Monaco dropped by the tourney venue, the *scape Youth Space, on Thursday. (That's the name: *scape. Cool space, with a skate park and other amenities. Dumb name.) He said of 3-on-3, "It's fast-paced. There's a lot of skill involved -- I mean, all the necessary skills and physical abilities for normal basketball. But it's just a shorter game -- but a very intense one …"

Absent the likes of Kobe, Dwyane and LeBron, in 3-on-3 pretty much anything can happen. The game is so fast -- two five-minute periods -- and so fast-paced that one scoring run can virtually seal the deal.

The four-point American victory, Baumann said, was "an amazingly exciting game."

As was Serbia's 31-30 victory over Puerto Rico.

And, also in the boys' preliminary round, Egypt's 33-31 upset over Lithuania.

Though there is still roughly a week to run in the Youth Games, it's already abundantly clear that 3-on-3 -- which coming in was one of the most intriguing YOG format experiments -- will be one of the major takeaways in all the Singapore debriefs.

"I think it's just what these Games needed," Prince Albert, who is also an IOC member and who took part in five Winter Games in the bobsled, said.

For one, the 3-on-3 game gives countries with little or no basketball heritage a chance against the Americans and Lithuanians, who do.

As Baumann said, it's one thing to expect India to find 12 guys with the skills to run with the NBA professionals in the Summer Games; it's quite another in a country of more than one billion people to find just three guys who can shoot jumpers and who thus might be able to give anyone a game.

Then there's this: Basketball is already popular worldwide. Why? In part because Michael Jordan and the other Dream Teamers helped make it so. Also, you can play without much of an investment. A ball, a backboard, a rim and you're good to go.

Even so, as FIBA figures it, there are fewer than 50 million people formally affiliated with clubs and teams; officials conservatively estimate there are 10 times that many people already playing, many in developing nations. The 3-on-3 format would seem a natural for drawing in all that new talent.

A game like 3-on-3 is played on a half-court and thus involves one net and backboard, not two; it requires only six players, not 10; and it's fast, so you can play it in the afternoon and still get home and do your homework at night. Or do your homework, eat dinner and go back out.

The rules are simple: Both teams score in one hoop. Ten-second shot clock. No time-outs. You can win before the end of the second five-minute period by reaching 33.

Baumann was asked Friday if 3-on-3 might someday be part of the traditional Olympic program. Not anytime soon, he made plain.

Then again, the odds are extremely good you'll undoubtedly see it in London in 2012, and probably in Rio in 2016 too, as part of the halftime shows, a FIBA effort to build buzz for the format. You're likely to see a boys' game at one end, a girls' at the other; you'll hear lots of loud rock music blaring away.

That's the action here.

Now: Can the Americans win out at these first-ever Youth Games? The boys get Spain in Saturday's quarterfinals.

Anything can happen. As Baumann said, "In this game, you have a chance."

The sidewalks -- very clean

SINGAPORE -- It has been said many times that any Olympic experience is in part a travelogue. Here, then, some impressions of this city-state nearly halfway through the 2010 Youth Olympic Games: - The sidewalks are spotless, just as advertised.

- A taxi driver the other day gave us an incredibly vivid description of how it is that prisoners are delivered a caning. Much of what the genial driver said is really not suitable for publication. But there's this: Let's say the prisoner is meted out a sentence of 24 lashes. After six, the prisoner's posterior is so, um, unsuitable for further lashes that he is sent to the prison infirmary to recuperate for some period of weeks or months; when he is again able to take the lash, out it comes again, for as many more strokes as he can take. And so on. Huge elements of this story may bear only a faint resemblance to reality. Doesn't matter. If, anecdotally speaking, that's the way caning is perceived -- it's no wonder the walkways here are so clean.

- I was here five years ago, for the historic International Olympic Committee session at which London was awarded the 2012 Summer Games. The change in the city skyline from then until now is staggering, in particular the Marina Bay complex, which has to be seen from the high-up club floors of one of Singapore's many swanky hotels to fully appreciate.

- A focus of the complex is a new casino. The main press center for the 2010 Youth Olympic Games is in the same building, a couple of floors above the casino. The building isn't quite fully built out yet and the food court -- for reporters as ever on per diem -- is a far cry from the collection of luxury stores now opening up in the mall. There's a juice shop, a Chinese noodle place, a Malay stand and one Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf café. Here's a quirk: When you order from these stalls, they don't give you a napkin. Not sure whether that means you're supposed to buy the packs of Kleenex they offer for sale for 30 cents, if you know that they have them (which many tourists don't), or you're just supposed to use the back of your hand. At any rate -- again, perhaps this is yet another why there's no litter on the streets.

- A scene on a bus from the press center out to the Olympic village: Driver Jason Koh, 35, is a fan of collectibles. Around the front windshield and on a platform above his head sit or dangle four glass dolphins, two plush dolphins, a pair of fuzzy dice, five snow globes, two geisha-girl dolls, a popsicle-stick Hansel-and-Gretel house replete with a windmill, Sesame Street's Bert (but not Ernie) as a figurine, a heart-shaped wreath made out of blue flowers, a scale version of London Bridge, two bells, a tiny wooden water wheel and a champagne glass filled with lavender wax. "It's my hobby," Jason said.

- Because of land reclamation projects, Singapore, which in the 1960s was about 225 square miles, is now about 270. Chicago is about 234. Besides winter (Chicago), the big difference in Singapore is that once you get out of the central business district it's astonishing how much  jungle-style greenery there still is here.

- The red-and-white Singapore national flag hangs everywhere. Every day here is like the Singapore version of Fourth of July.

- The other city under consideration for these 2010 Youth Games was Moscow. Imagine if 3,500 kids from around the world were there now, coping with the worst heat and choking air in Moscow in a very long time.

- Ten minutes outside in Singapore and the sweat runs down your back.

- The air conditioning inside virtually every building I've been in here is fierce. It's so hot outside it's stupid and then you go inside and you need a sweatshirt.

- There's an army of volunteers at every YOG stop and venue, all of them in their purple shirts with orange trim, pretty much everyone gosh-darn friendly. At the BMX venue Thursday afternoon, two of the Young Reporters with whom I'm working managed to snag seats on a bus taking them back to their dorms; the other four in the group were left without a ride; the transit manager summoned a cab, produced a voucher and said, here, this will take care of it.

- A Singapore Sling at the Long Bar at the Raffles is hideously expensive. But the peanuts in the shell there are really good.

- There's a stand in the mall next to the IOC hotel that presses sugar cane into juice. Totally simple, really excellent.

- Singapore has cool money. The notes are polymer, they're brightly colored and they have those see-through security windows cut into them.

- They drive here on the left-hand side of the road. No matter how many times you get into the left front seat of a car and there's no wheel there -- it's weird.

- Traffic is bad. But the cars are good. Apparently everyone is hugely motivated because of taxes and fees to take care of their cars. Have yet to see one beater.

- Immediately outside the athletes' village there is both a McDonald's and a Subway. Consistently, the long line is at McDonald's.

- The many, many drugstores around town sell row upon row of Omega-3 fish-oil pills.

- Cellular phone service is excellent. You'd be jealous in New York and San Francisco to have service like this.

- There are lots of 7-Elevens in Singapore. Who knew?

No Kuwaiti flag - but IOC gets one right

SINGAPORE -- The temptation for many in looking at the photo of the flag-raising ceremony here Wednesday night after the boys' 50-meter backstroke will be to see the Olympic flag where the flag of Kuwait should have been, and to blame the International Olympic Committee. That would be wrong.

Instead, the IOC is to be saluted.

No, Abdullah Altuwaini didn't get to see the Kuwaiti flag go up for the bronze medal he won, a third-place tie in a very close race. It is not fair that a 17-year-old boy didn't get to fully enjoy his moment  -- and what a moment, the first Olympic-category swim medal won by an athlete from Kuwait.

A moment or two before the medals ceremony got underway, Abdullah even was asked -- it wasn't clear by whom -- to take off the T-shirt he was wearing that said "Kuwait" on it. He did so, and put on a sleeveless blue one with harmless commentary. Go Rafael Nadal, it said.

In the bigger picture, Abdullah was here, and he got to swim, and he won a medal, and maybe the medal will go a long way toward resolving one of the most complex disputes very few have even heard about -- a dispute that cuts directly to the essence of keeping sport apart from government interference.

But first the obvious:

"Of course it is a pity we haven't seen our country's flag," the  Kuwaiti ambassador to Singapore, Abdulaziz Al-Adwani, who was on hand Wednesday, said.

The reason why is because the IOC earlier this year suspended the Kuwait Olympic Committee, citing political interference from the nation's parliament.

That it would come to suspension when the Olympic committee at issue is Kuwait makes it all the more fascinating. One of the movement's more influential figures is Sheikh Ahmed Al-Fahad Al-Sabah, a former Kuwaiti Olympic Committee president who since 1991 has served as head of the Olympic Council of Asia, the continental confederation.

That the IOC would take action when it's the sheik's own country tells you the gravity with which president Jacques Rogge and other senior IOC officials view the issue.

The IOC tried for nearly three years to reach a compromise. But in January of this year, it finally had no choice but to spend the Kuwaiti committee.

In announcing the suspension, as the Associated Press reported at the time, the IOC said Kuwait failed to meet a Dec. 31 deadline for amending a law that allows the Gulf state to interfere in the elections of sports organizations.

The IOC is right to insist on the political autonomy of the sports organizations affiliated with the Olympic movement. To take a different position would be intolerable. Imagine if in the United States members of Congress were, for instance, able to exert direct control over the elections, the management or the  budget authority of the U.S. Olympic Committee. Yikes.

"Kuwait needs swimming to develop in the Middle East," the secretary-general of the nation's swimming federation, Husain Al-Musallam, said here Wednesday evening.

Al-Musallam, who is also director-general of the OCA, added, "The problem is not the IOC."

It's not clear when the Kuwaiti dispute will be resolved.

The suspension wasn't much of an issue for the Vancouver Olympics, Kuwait hardly being a Winter Games nation.

But what to do about these inaugural Youth Games? YOG, as this competition is known, is supposed to be as much about what the Olympic movement can teach young people as it is a Games-style sports event.

The compromise was to allow Kuwaiti athletes -- but not as part of a Kuwaiti team.

There are three on the YOG rolls, identified formally not as Kuwaiti but as "athlete from Kuwait": a girl, Hessah Alzayed, who is entered in the shooting competition, and two boys, 400-meter hurdler Yousef Karam, and Abdullah. Each is 17 years old.

Of the three, Abdullah was considered the likeliest to win a medal. His sports hero, he says, is Michael Phelps; Abdullah says he hoped here to emulate Phelps and win Olympic gold, at least Youth Games-style.

In Monday's final of the boys' 100 back, Abdullah was disqualified. He false-started.

His start Wednesday was clean. And halfway through the race, it was clear he would win a medal. But what color?

As the swimmers neared the wall, the few Kuwaiti fans in the stands were going crazy. "I felt I was going to have a heart attack," 14-year-old Ali Dashti said.

At the end, Abdullah faded just slightly.

Christian Homer of Trinidad & Tobago won, in 26.36 seconds. Rainer Kai Wee Ng of Singapore delighted the home crowd by coming in second, in 26.45. Abdullah and Max Ackermann of Australia touched just one-hundredth of a second back, at 26.46, Abdullah in lane six, Max in lane seven.

A history note: the results led to the first-ever Olympic-event swim medals for all three nations, according to the internal YOG news service.

In the mixed zone, the area just off the pool deck where athletes mingle with reporters, nobody stopped Abdullah from waving the Kuwaiti flag. He said he didn't speak much English. Even so, he tried a few sentences:

"Really, really," he said, "I am very happy."

He also said, "Okay, my flag is not here," meaning part of the formal ceremony. "But I am fighting for my flag."