LaShawn Merritt's fascinating legal drama

Beijing Games 400-meter track and field gold medalist LaShawn Merritt got 21 months for doping, a three-member arbitration panel ruled in a decision made public Monday. That's not, though, the news from one of the most fascinating Olympic-themed sports law cases in recent memory. As part of the case, a 7-Eleven clerk testified that she sold Merritt the male enhancement product ExtenZe on a number of occasions. The stuff that's in ExtenZe is what he tested positive for. Again, though, that's not the news. Merritt is, by all accounts, a first-rate young man. He didn't intend to cheat. He made a really bad choice. Enough said.

At issue in Merritt's case is a provocative, tough-on-doping rule the International Olympic Committee adopted two years ago.

The rule says that any athlete who gets hit with a doping-related suspension from competition of more than six months is banned from the next editions of the Winter and Summer Games.

Thus the bolt of news in Monday's ruling, the three-member Merritt panel saying in a unanimous ruling that the IOC rule is too strong. The panel called it an "additional penalty on an athlete over and above what is provided for in the [World Anti-Doping] Code for a doping infraction."

Like virtually all doping-related rulings, the Merritt matter is mired in citations and in criss-cross analysis that might well terrify even a first-year law student. It runs to 52 pages. Yet on the central point the ruling speaks with remarkably frank language.

"If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck," the opinion reads in emphasizing its assertion that the rule is an impermissible additional penalty. It adds a few sentences later, "Any argument to the contrary is mere skullduggery."

Well.

Bring on the appeal!

Off we go to the next and final tribunal, the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sports, and the sooner the better, because this is a point of sports law that must not any longer remain unsettled.

In the big picture, and just being honest about the way Americans are sometimes perceived in the quiet corridors of international sport, the fact that this ruling comes from an American case, with American arbitrators assigned through the American Arbitration Assn., may not ultimately prove all that helpful to American athletes such as Merritt, or the likes of the swimmer Jessica Hardy.

But this, too, must be said: At least someone, somewhere was willing to confront the issue squarely. If it had to be an American panel, so be it.

One way or the other, it must be settled. To let it linger perpetuates a situation that's not fair and not right, because -- as in nearly all rule-oriented areas of life -- it's essential that there's certainty about which way the rule cuts.

Merritt's case makes for an excellent test. It offers a vivid reminder of how world-class athletes lead different lives than the rest of us mere mortals even as it raises a string of compelling questions.

The well-established rule in sports doping is that if it's in your system, you're liable for it. That is, and remains, the starting point for any discussion.

By now, any elite athlete surely must know that you play with fire if you buy anything at an American vitamin store.

By extension, now you have to be on guard at the 7-Eleven, too. So the case of LaShawn Merritt makes for a cautionary tale. The lesson: a world-class Olympic-sports athlete has to be on guard about almost everything he or she ingests.

Is that fair?

Maybe not.

Is there any other way to do it? Almost surely not, because athletes and their lawyers have proven amazingly inventive in seeking to avoid culpability.

No question Merritt was negligent for not checking the ExtenZe label. No question it's his fault the stuff -- the substances DHEA and pregnenolone -- got into his system. That's why he got 21 months.

Then again, was he appropriately warned? Everyone in American society knows there are warning labels or signs about seemingly everything, everywhere. Should there be warnings about the potential adverse consequences to athletes on a "sexual functioning" product?

As the ruling Monday noted, the "privacy of an individual's sexuality requires the greatest degree of [legal] protection. As such, the issue of sexuality rarely comes up in the context of doping in sport. In this respect, this is a truly exceptional case."

Should issues of sexuality so matter? That would make for an exceptionally interesting debate.

Ultimately, though, that's not why this case is, indeed, truly exceptional.

The IOC's policy-making executive board, in June 2008, adopted the six-months-and-you're-banned-from-the-next-Games rule. In Olympic legal jargon, the policy has come to be called "The Unpublished Memo."

The standard suspension in a first doping offense is two years.

To cut through a lot of legal clutter, the issue with The Unpublished Memo is simple:

Is it only an eligibility rule? Or is it itself a second sanction on top of a significant suspension already issued in a particular case?

If it's the latter, doesn't that amount to double jeopardy?

As detailed Monday, Merritt's suspension is retroactive to last October and runs through next July. Merritt would be eligible for track's 2011 world championships, due to be held in August of next year in South Korea.

Should he also be barred from the 2012 Games? If he is barred, doesn't that have the real-world effect of extending his suspension from less than two years to nearly three? Is that fair?

Yes, he could perhaps run in, say, Diamond League events. But not the Games? As his lawyer, Howard Jacobs, put it in an interview, "To say it's anything other than a sanction is really to ignore how important the Olympics are."'

To frame the issue differently, consider the familiar saying -- you do the crime, you do the time. Emphasizing that in this context these sorts of sports doping cases are not criminal and considering merely that such a saying is so well-known: Once you do your time, then what? Do you have the right to -- using Merritt as the example -- run again freely?

Or is appearing in the Olympic Games not a "right"? Is it a "privilege"? And if it's a "privilege," do organizers have the authority to set whatever conditions they wish for entry?

Clearly, the IOC has an interest in blunting athlete use of performance-enhancing drugs. No one disputes that. The issue is how to go about doing so fairly.

The three-member American Arbitration Assn. panel invited the IOC to take part in its consideration of Merritt's case. The IOC declined, saying that if "any party intends to challenge any IOC decision, it may do so in front of the appropriate international jurisdiction, which is not the AAA."

No matter which way the appeal finally goes, it's worth remembering that any system of jurisprudence works best, and engenders the most respect, when it is grounded in common sense.

Thus the wish here is both that the appeal is rendered quickly, and that due attention is paid to these sentiments near the close of the ruling issued Monday (for ease of reading, broken here into two paragraphs instead of one) :

"… The principles of Olympism (i.e., respect for universal fundamental ethical principles such as fairness and human dignity) require a resolution of this issue sooner than later. Mr. Merritt should know where he stands in all aspects of his competitive career after the conclusion of this case, which would include appeals.

"His competitors in the United States should know. USATF and the USOC should know. Delaying the final determination of whether The Unpublished Memo conforms to mandatory provisions of the [World Anti-Doping] Code cheats athletes and sports organizations around the world."

Jon Horton and the quest for stone cold

Jon Horton looks at Paul Hamm and what he sees goes well beyond the men's gymnastics all-around gold medal that Hamm won at the 2004 Athens Summer Games. He sees a mental toughness that's best described simply: stone cold.

After four of the six rotations at those Games, the fourth producing what seemed like a disastrous fall in the vault, Hamm stood 12th in the all-around standings. After five he moved up to fourth. With his sixth, the high bar, he moved into first.

After that fourth rotation, it would have been easy to give up. No way. Not Paul Hamm.

The world gymnastics championships get underway Saturday in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Paul Hamm is coming back to competitive gymnastics but -- not yet. It's Jon Horton's time now. He's the leader of this 2010 U.S. team.

Click here to read the rest at TeamUSA.org.

Sochi at the halfway point and a 'New Russia'

SOCHI, Russia -- It should have taken maybe 15 minutes to make it Monday morning from our hotel near the central business district out to the airport. It took two hours. Of course, that was leaving the hotel on the 10 o'clock bus, which actually left way closer to 10:45 a.m., but why quibble over such details? Especially, as it was later related by other friends, when it took four hours to get to the airport on the 11 o'clock bus.

It's not as if there was some catastrophic accident that had blocked the roads, either. Just some rain and a whole bunch of cars going nowhere fast. Asking why it took two hours, or four -- there's no answer.

"It's normal in Russia," a Russian friend who was also on the 10 o'clock bus said of our two-hour crawl. She shrugged her shoulders.

Of all the things that get said and written about Sochi in the next few years, leading up to the 2014 Winter Olympics, there's this: See those 2014 Games as catalyst for a new normal in modern Russia.

There are lots of ways to define "legacy," a word much used in Olympic circles. The way the Russians are defining it -- particularly since the entire project in Sochi is a start-up -- makes for a compelling study.

Russia is not going to be changed overnight because of the Olympics.

But Russia assuredly is going to be changed. Some of those changes are already clearly visible now -- not quite three and a half years since Sochi won the right to stage the 2014 Game, about three and a half years to go until the opening ceremony. Some are more subtle and may take at least a generation to realize.

The visible change is easy: all the construction in and around Sochi, the seaside Olympic Park for the ice sports and the snow sports cluster in the mountains at what's called Krasna Polyana, about 35 miles away.

At the figure skating and short-track speed skating building, they've already screwed in 500 tons of bolts. The top row of beams is being hoisted up into place now.

A few steps away, at the larger of the two ice hockey buildings, they've poured nearly 110,000 cubic yards of concrete.

All in, estimates are that it will take $6 billion to build all the Olympic infrastructure -- and that's only about a quarter of the sum being poured into developing the region by 2014, as the official Russian news agency Tass reported Wednesday. If the Beijing 2008 experience is any example, such enormous figures will ultimately prove low-ball estimates.

Sochi is a Black Sea resort with hundreds of what the Russians call "sanitoriums" and Americans might call "spas." It's a well-established summer fun spot. The 2014 game plan is to make it a winter destination as well.

This isn't Greece in the run-up to the 2004 Summer Games in Athens or, for that matter, India in the lead-up to this month's Commonwealth Games in New Delhi. They're emphatic in Sochi that the buildings will get built on schedule -- everything in the Olympic Park in 2012 but for the central stadium, and that in 2013.

"I'm not afraid to show you anything," said Murat Akhmadiev, a supervising engineer for Olimpstroy, the government agency overseeing building at Olympic Park, said during a walk-around a few days ago.

Vladimir Putin himself made a little tour on Wednesday. Knowing that he was coming by to scrutinize your work -- that's what you might call motivation.

Clearly, there's a sense of urgency among the construction crews working 24/7 at Olympic Park. At the same time, there's an undeniable sense of confidence, too -- reflected in the six-month-old stray puppy that crews have adopted as the site mascot.

His name is Tzosik -- a Russian diminutive for "Tzentralnyi Stadion,"  Central Stadium.

In wrapping up its visit this week to Sochi, it was little surprise to hear the IOC's inspection team -- the so-called coordination commission -- prove upbeat, commission chair Jean-Claude Killy saying at a news conference Thursday, "Every time we meet with President [Dmitry] Medvedev or Prime Minister Putin, we have a complete sense that this project is Priority No. 1 nationally."

Will the traffic be way, way better by 2014? Undoubtedly.

Will there be other and unforeseeable challenges to come? Plainly.

Will mistakes be made? Yes. Nothing is perfect.

Is Sochi one of the more interesting experiments in Olympic history? Sure, in the manner of Beijing two years ago and Rio in 2016. Which is why the International Olympic Committee keeps going to such places.

The Olympic Games, though, are not fairy dust. They don't magically solve problems. As a catalyst for discrete change, though -- the trick is to think big but recognize that sometimes big change just takes time. That's a hugely sophisticated take on legacy. That's what's on display in Sochi.

In Russia, right now you can't recycle the plastic bottles that are seemingly everywhere. They're working now on that -- because of 2014.

For the first time, 2014 again the spark, they're trying to figure out how to identify -- and recruit -- as many as 30 million people nationwide for the sorts of volunteer projects that are common in the United States. That's one in five people.

"Can you imagine the scale of under-delivered services that could be provided?" asked Dmitry Chernyshenko, the chief of the Sochi 2014 organizing committee.

This is a country where an estimated 13 million people, just under 10 percent of the population, daily confronts physical disabilities.

All that concrete that has been poured at the ice hockey arena? Some of that went into ramps to get up and down.The ramps are the sort that evoke, say, Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego. Nothing out of the ordinary here in the United States. In Russia -- that's a shining example.

"Russia is a rather new democracy," Chernyshenko said in an interview. "It's just less than 19 years old." He laughed, then said, "It's like my older daughter," who is 19. "This," the father said, "is the best way to describe what the 'New Russia' means. When you are 19 years old, when you've got great potential but you've [also] got a great history -- it's very natural to become very active and be recognized as a member of world society.

"First of all," he said, "the New Russia should be an equal member of the world society. I know our state leaders are doing a lot for Russia to become that."

And, he said, "We will help them."

'You could feel the spirit'

SOCHI, Russia -- How many of you, asked Jim Beitia, know what this is? He held a metallic purple-colored softball bat. Better yet, he said a moment later, what are all the things could this be? A bat, someone said. Right, said Beitia, a longtime major-college softball coach back in the United States, a long way away from this part of the world, where softball is not well known. He asked, what else could it be? It could be a club, someone else said, a weapon. Right again. What else?

Silence. Well, Beitia said, it could be a tool -- an instrument for building peace. So, he said, let's go play.

The problem with world peace is not just that it's not realistic. The real problem is that if it's not realistic, no one tries.

Of course it's idealistic to try. But the entire thrust of the Olympic movement is to try, and the fundamental premise of an Amman, Jordan-based outreach project called Generations For Peace -- which on Sunday wrapped up its seventh wide-ranging workshop, its first not only in Europe but outside the Middle East -- is that sport genuinely can help, can promote one-on-one change.

For all those quick to dismiss a program such as Generations For Peace -- an initiative launched three years ago by Prince Feisal Al Hussein of Jordan, now an International Olympic Committee member, and his wife, Princess Sarah -- there's this: two of every three people in the world watch the opening ceremony of the Summer Games on television. At some level, in some fashion -- that's a lot of idealism out there.

The trick, as is obvious if no less difficult, is how to make it real.

There's no right way, and there's no only way. The Olympic scene is punctuated with ambassador programs and cultural exchanges and awards shows and more.

Generations For Peace has opted to do its work in a quiet fashion. Since the project's launch in 2007, it had staged -- before Sochi -- six workshops; those six trained some 460 community activists from 39 countries and territories; they have since passed on what they learned to 3,100 more coaches and community leaders; in all, Sarah said at the seminar, roughly 51,000 young people have been touched already in some way by the process.

The 57 who spent 10 days together in Sochi came from 11 European and Central Asian countries. They included survivors of the 1990s conflict in the Balkans and those who came of age in former Soviet republics now grappling with religious, political and economic tensions.

Over the 10 days they spent 80 hours in classroom sessions and 54 more on the sports fields and courts. The agenda ranged from sophisticated negotiation theory to how to hold a softball bat to common-sense advice: Connections and relationships matter. Talk with each other, not at each other. Small moments can be really big.

"On a football field, you can pass the ball to me and I can pass to you back,"  said one of the 57, Denis Kruzhkov, a 37-year-old Russian professor. "Even if we don't speak the same language, we can use signs and we can score a goal."

"Everybody is born with a purpose," said Emina Cerimovic, 26, a lawyer from Sarajevo, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. "Life is short. If we have to do something, then do it well. If you can make one child smile -- that's enough for me."

When Emina was just 8, her father was killed in the war that raged through the former Yugoslavia; he was just 33. She couldn't go to school for three years. Now, though, she has her law degree and is a finished thesis away from a master's degree.

A frequent community volunteer, this summer she voluntarily took part in the forensic identifications of some of the mass graves in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

There's no point, she said, in giving in to sadness, no matter how tempting. "My mom calls me idealistic," she said. "Many people do. But I still believe. And I really want to remain this way."

Such stories make for the soul of the program. They have received little or no publicity, however, because Generations For Peace has deliberately kept such a low profile.

Doing so has defused the inevitable suspicion that the initiative is but a vanity project for Middle Eastern royalty. Reality check: there's nothing vain about 57 people doing softball or volleyball drills in the rain, as they did here, most everyone in bright yellow slickers.

Moreover, operating out of the spotlight made it that much easier to tweak the program.

Among the faculty at the Sochi workshop:  Olivier Faure, a Sorbonne professor and expert on conflict resolution whose works have been published in 12 different languages.

"We want to promote reconciliation," he told the group in one of his lectures. "… It doesn't mean you need to fall in love the next morning with your enemy. Let's be realistic, let's be reasonable. We want decent co-0peration -- being able to live with each other, next to each other, without every day having the past in our minds."

Three years in, clearly something about Generations For Peace is clicking, the Sochi camp offering "more evidence of our global reach," Feisal said Sunday in a speech closing the seminar.

He said in an interview, "The energy, the enthusiasm, the passion you have from everybody involved -- it's very difficult to capture that in words and pictures," adding a moment later, "It's like you can describe what an orange tastes like but it's not until you taste an orange that you can say now, 'I know what it's like.' "

IOC President Jacques Rogge, visiting the Jordan Olympic Committee in Amman just a few days ago, said he was "very impressed" with what Feisal had done there, then -- unprompted -- called Generations For Peace a "great step forward in promoting peace through sport."

A major Generations For Peace sponsor announcement is forthcoming. The program's annual budget, figuring in three camps per year, now runs to about $1.5 million.

Last December, the IOC recognized Generations For Peace. That milestone  formally eased connections to the wider Olympic movement.

In the works now is the opening of research institute based in Amman, with ties to Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. , designed to measure which parts of the program work and over how long, and which need to be reviewed and changed.

It's expected that each of those attending here will, once back home, work with at least 200 children and train at least 20 other adults -- each year.

Of the 57 on hand in Sochi, 10 were from Bosnia and Herzegovina -- four Croat Catholics, two Orthodox Serbs, four Bosniak Muslims. On Day One of the workshop, amid introductions, standing as a bunch at the front of the room, six of the 10 put their arms around the next person over.

As the workshop closed, again at the front of the room, after a short presentation -- all 10 linked up. "You could feel the spirit," Emina Cerimovic said.

Donna de Varona, the Olympic swim gold medalist turned broadcast journalist, was among those taking in that scene.  "I interpreted that," she said later, "as hope for the future."

Baring it all, for art

It is so, so tempting to dismiss "The Body Issue" from ESPN The Magazine as either a lame attempt to compete with Sport's Illustrated's swimsuit issue, or just so much voyeurism, or both. The clock is already running on which librarian in which city declares the whole thing an abhorrent shock to the system, and orders it banned.

That would be foolish.

To look at the photos themselves in the magazine, which goes on sale Friday, is to be reminded once again that the human body comes in an astonishing variety of different sizes and forms and features, and to realize that humankind has celebrated the gift of our bodies since the dawn of time, and it's absurd to pretend that we don't, or we shouldn't.

Here are some of the best of the best among us, among them Olympic athletes past, current and future.

Click here to read the rest at TeamUSA.org.

And here for an ESPN photo gallery.

Bearing down, Sochi-style, for volunteers

SOCHI, Russia -- For those of us lucky enough to live in Los Angeles,  it's both normal and yet incredible what inevitably happens when there's some sort of Olympic-themed event in town. It has already been 26 years since the 1984 Summer Games. And yet, whenever there's something Olympic going on, it's all but guaranteed that someone in the crowd will, unprompted, announce both that he or she was a volunteer at those 1984 Games and that it still ranks way up high there on the list of life's great experiences.

Which is why being here, in Sochi, site of the 2014 Winter Games, is -- among many reasons -- so intriguing.

There's no real volunteer culture in Russia.

And that's a fact they're trying to change -- indeed, already making some small headway -- with the Sochi Games as catalyst. A "new page in our country," Dmitri Vityutnev,  the Russian official overseeing the volunteer effort, said in a speech  here Thursday.

That there is a Russian ministry official in charge of volunteering speaks to the nature of how things are different here than in, for instance, the United States, where the tradition is firmly established and is hardly considered a state function.

That there is a Russian ministry official in charge of volunteering also speaks, loudly and clearly, to how an Olympics can produce a legacy that extends beyond the construction of, say, a ski jump ramp -- and how that legacy doesn't have to wait until a Games is over to become real.

"The volunteers are a new generation -- like the generation in the mid-'60s called the baby boomers," said a 19-year-old university student, Ekaterina Tskhakaya, a volunteer at a 10-day workshop here for what's called Generations for Peace.

All six prior Generations for Peace workshops -- the outreach project aims to use sport as a means to defuse conflict -- have been held in the Middle East. The program was launched by Prince Feisal of Jordan and his wife, Princess Sarah, a couple increasingly influential in International Olympic Committee circles.

This seventh workshop is here, in Sochi -- in part a reflection of the growth of the Generation for Peace brand and in part a mini-model for some of the initiatives the Russians aim to promote before, during and after the 2014 Games.

Like the concept of volunteerism.

Most people in the world will never attend an Olympic Games in person. For that matter, even in a city staging the Games it may not be all that easy to score a ticket.

Those two reasons explain why the reach of the movement arguably finds its greatest one-to-one in-person connection in one of two ways:

The journey of the Olympic flame relay.

And volunteering.

An Olympics, Summer or Winter, is now such a grand-scale undertaking that it would be impossible to run a Games without volunteers. The London 2012 organizing committee volunteer effort, for instance, makes for Britain's biggest post-World War II volunteer recruiting campaign.

London 2012 organizers need 70,000 volunteers. They announced Thursday that more than 100,000 have already applied, 2012 Games chairman Seb Coe telling the Associated Press he is "thrilled with the response we've had."

A volunteer force that's sub-par can make for a major Games buzz-kill. On the other hand, a great volunteer crew indisputably makes a great Games great.

Wilfried Lemke, the United Nations' special advisor on the use of sport as a development and peace-building tool, said here earlier in the week amid a presentation to the Generations for Peace group -- 57 delegates from 11 nations -- that what he recalls most about the 2008 Beijing Games is the volunteer spirit.

"I might forget who won the 5,000 meters in track and field. But," he said referring to an 18-year-old volunteer, Wang Yang, who helped look after him in Beijing, "I will never forget the kindness of how she welcomed me with a ni hao every morning," Chinese for hello and welcome.

It's foolish to pretend that such one-on-one goodwill doesn't hold the potential for positive political, diplomatic and business consequences.

There are roughly 20-some million Australians and before the 2000 Sydney Games there were doubts in some quarters about the ability of a nation that small to pull it all off. Now those Games are remembered as one of the best-ever, if not the best, and in significant measure because the volunteers were so incredibly friendly and helpful.

"I've had successive prime ministers tell me that when they travel other world leaders want to talk to them about the Sydney Games," the head of the Australian Olympic Committee, John Coates, said in an interview last month marking the tenth anniversary of those Games.

Vityutnev on Thursday handed out a passport-sized booklet to the Generations for Peace audience, and for the six Russians among the 57 it probably held extra significance -- Vityutnev saying the idea is that volunteers will fill the booklet just like you fill a real passport, and that a record of such volunteer service will be promoted as a career-builder.

Russia is hardly the only country in this part of the world confronting -- in some cases again, in some anew -- the concept of volunteerism.

In Serbia, "we have had to build it up again like a phoenix," said Andrej Pavlovich, one of the 57 in the audience. A 30-year-old English teacher, he served as a supervisor in the organizing of more than 10,000 volunteers for the 2009 University Games in Belgrade. A "milestone," he said.

They're looking for 25,000 volunteers for the Sochi 2014 Games.

There were 10 on hand here Thursday at the Generations for Peace workshop, identifiable in their white T-shirts with black sleeves or blue polo shirts.

"Hey, every1! I'm a Volunteer!" Dana Vorokova wrote in the volunteers' newsletter (already -- a volunteers' newsletter). "It's G8!"

Ekaterina Tskhakaya also contributed to the newsletter. She wrote, "The obligations of volunteers have no limits. You can never know what kind of situation you will face, and when.

"You must always be ready to take on any job and this is what makes our work exciting. It starts from stuffing refrigerators with water and providing delegates with pens to helping the lecturers make their presentations and translating to royal highnesses.

"You know, when sending applications to participation in the event you never know what surprises are waiting for you. I love this feeling of getting involved in all sorts of activity, gaining all-around experience, investigating and which is more important -- making your own contribution to the event."

She's 22, not a grandmother

Before it became the province of girls on the way to becoming women, it used to be that being a woman was normal in what is, after all, called women's gymnastics. Hungary's Agnes Keleti was 35 when she and 21-year-old Larysa Latynina dueled for gold in the all-around at the 1956 Summer Games. Latynina, competing for the Soviet Union, was 29 when in 1964 she won the last of her 18 Olympic medals. Czechoslovakia's Vera Caslavska won Olympic gold in the all-around twice, the second time in 1968, when she was 26.

Then came teen-agers Olga and Nadia and Mary Lou -- and, recently, all those teen Chinese girls.

The sport has changed.

Or has it? Because clearly there's still a place for someone like Alicia Sacramone, who is already 22 -- and closing in, in December, on 23.

Click here to read the rest at TeamUSA.org.

Chicago 2016 - can a loss be a win?

CHICAGO -- Destyne Butler Jr. is a young boxer. As the intriguing new movie chronicling Chicago's unsuccessful bid for the 2016 Summer Games opens, the camera catches Destyne banging away in the gym and then saying, "It's all going to pay off in the long run, and I know I can make it." Maybe, in its way, that's the Chicago 2024 motto, too. Or Chicago 2028. Or Chicago 2032.

Not that anything like that, and for sure not a most unlikely 2020 bid, is the main point of the film.

It nonetheless remains an unavoidable subtext, and the documentary's recap of the 2016 race can't help but look ahead to what might be someday, with new takes from Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and bid chief Pat Ryan, along with some logical thinking from U.S. Olympic Committee chief executive Scott Blackmun.

Indeed, Ryan says at one point, "I believe Chicago should bid again."

But, again, that's not the central point. Instead, it's this: Can a loss nonetheless be a win?

No one likes losing, and losing was particularly difficult in the case of Chicago 2016 because it was indisputably the most complete Olympic bid ever put forward by the United States. It featured a great technical plan based along the city's lakefront enhanced by unprecedented business and political support.

President Obama made a personal appeal as part of Chicago's presentation to the International Olympic Committee last Oct. 2 in Copenhagen. Yet Chicago got bounced in the first round, with only 18 votes, Rio de Janeiro winning in a landslide. "Shocked. I really was. Never anticipated it," Ryan says of the first-round exit.

It would be easy, of course, to make a documentary about a winning Olympic bid. The 44-minute Chicago film, produced by Mark Mitten, written and directed by Mitten and Jim Schmidt and due to air Saturday on Chicago's NBC affiliate, the one-year anniversary of the 2016 vote, is believed to be one of the very few on a losing campaign. It might even be a first -- insiders from losing bids generally not eager to re-visit that sort of thing on film. (Disclosure: I was among those interviewed for the movie. No idea if I made the final cut.)

The documentary -- here's a clip -- skirts the many controversies involving the IOC's complex relationship with the USOC that are widely believed to have played a key role in sinking Chicago's aspirations.

It's not that Mitten and Schmidt don't know about the controversies. Mitten was the bid's chief brand officer; he and Schmidt, a principal at Downtown Partners Chicago, worked on all the bid's campaign films. Some critics may thus declare the film, entitled Making Big Plans: The Story of Chicago's Olympic Dream, guilty of omission.

At the same time, it's not clear that much -- if anything -- would be gained by rehashing those conflicts, in particular the USOC's plan to launch its own television network. The USOC made that announcement in the summer of 2009 over ferocious IOC objections; ultimately, the USOC abandoned the project.

Besides, the film's focus is elsewhere:

"Chicago didn’t lose," Ryan says. "Rio won.  But Chicago won in so many ways."

If some will be tempted to say that's self-serving or just so much rationalization, consider:

The Chicago bid generated undeniable civic spirit; it positioned Chicago on the world stage; it also produced significant partnerships and real-world job and other benefits.

One example: The 2016 Fund for Chicago Neighborhoods, for example, used $2 million left over from the bid to attract $18 million in federal matching funds for job-training programs in South Side neighborhoods. Some 2,200 people stand to benefit.

Another: The bid branded Chicago, previously known around the world perhaps for Al Capone or Michael Jordan, in ways that arguably nothing else could. "We put Chicago on the global map, with all the publicity and all the competition -- it was worth it," Daley says.

If one day there is another Chicago bid, it will be under the direction of another mayor. Daley recently announced plans to leave office.

Ryan has made clear, too, that while he would be happy to advise and support another bid, someone else will be in charge.

As things stand now, there are only three cities in the United States that can legitimately aim to mount and then win a Summer Games bid: Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. The USOC has made it abundantly plain that no American bid will even be considered until a longstanding dispute with the IOC over the USOC's shares of broadcasting and marketing revenues is resolved.

There's no timetable for getting that done. So any bid talk  has to be considered hypothetical.

"If and when we do want to reconsider a bid, we are definitely going to want to be in a dialogue with the people of Chicago – a combination of the great leadership that they were able to put together, the great plan," Blackmun, who has been chief executive since January and played no part in the 2009 campaign, says in the movie, adding, "I think we definitely want to revisit that with Chicago at some point in the future."

Again, and for emphasis: Blackmun was not endorsing Chicago and he was not slyly suggesting the Americans are up to something for 2020. He was speaking in the hypothetical.

The film does, however, give voice to the obvious question:

"Should we bid again?" asks Scott Myers, the executive director of World Sport Chicago, another legacy of the bid, its youth sport-oriented organization.

"I think we should bid again," Bill Scherr, World Sport Chicago's president, answers.

"Chicago should bid again," Phil Enquist, an architect and key 2016 Games planner, says.

Lori Healey, the Chicago 2016 president, says, "Never say never, right?"

Ryan says the bid team "put our bid plan in a time capsule and it's there to be taken out by a future mayor and business community and community leaders. And it will be very timely because what was great about our bid was the physical beauty and lakefront and parks of the city, and that’s not going away.

"So when there is another bid, it will cost far less than our bid cost. And it could be eight years, 12 years, 16 years."

He also says, "The Olympic bid -- it was a great, great thing for Chicago," adding, "Some day Chicago will host the Olympics."

Maybe. It's like Destyne Butler Jr. also says: "I want to make history."

'Beyond Sport,' and the right thing to do

CHICAGO -- Far too often it is said overseas that the primary interest -- indeed, perhaps the only interest -- in the United States in the Olympic movement is money. That is, making as much money as possible off the Olympics.

The rest? The Olympic spirit and all that? Commitment to the values that underpin the Olympic ideal? Attention to the idea that sport can cut across social and political differences and move the world forward, bit by bit?

Those who would hold fast to the idea that it's only a dash for cash here in the States ought to have been part of the crowd Wednesday at the opening of what was called the 2010 "Beyond Sport" summit.

"Fellow agents of positive social change," Jordan's Prince Feisal Al Hussein, an International Olympic Committee member and the founder of an initiative called "Generations for Peace," said in beginning a speech that focused on "how we can get sport to effect great and lasting social change."

It's not treacly and it's not saccharine to say such things.  Just the opposite. Talking about such values and such goals -- and then doing something about it -- is what makes it all real.

That said, the point here Wednesday was not that world peace suddenly broke out. Of course not.

The point is that there are efforts underway to recognize the distinct role that sport, and the Olympic movement in particular, can play in effecting change.

"This is what the 'Beyond Sport' summit is all about -- getting the world to listen," the prince said from the lectern.

World Sport Chicago, the group created to promote the legacy of Chicago's unsuccessful 2016 bid, played a key role in organizing the event here, which runs through Thursday.

Again: Chicago is not now in the bid game. If Chicago ever again launches an Olympic bid, it will be many years down the line. Yet here were World Sport Chicago and the United States Olympic Committee, stepping up -- with no expectation of immediate pay-off from the IOC, maybe no bid-related pay-off ever.

It was just the right thing to do.

"We think it's important for Chicago, and for the United States, to host these international sports conferences and events," Bill Scherr, the president of World Sport Chicago, said in an interview, adding, "We think it connects us."

Scott Blackmun, the chief executive of the USOC, took part in the very first panel discussion on the agenda, an examination of "legacy delivery."

"Yes, we're doing a lot. No, we're not doing enough," Caryl Stern, the president and chief executive of UNICEF USA, said as part of that panel.

Added Tim Leiweke, the chief executive of AEG Worldwide, "We have to do more," noting that sports and music are "the only two entities that break through."

"A generation ago, this conference wouldn't happen," Blackmun said, noting the power of the stories of Olympic athletes to inspire not just young people but influence-makers on Capitol Hill.

Just last Saturday, at the conclusion of the USOC's annual assembly in Colorado Springs, Colo., Blackmun, asked about the way he and USOC board chairman Larry Probst have this year quietly but pointedly emphasized a commitment to relationship-building with international sports officials, said, "I think the 90-degree right turn is for us to be more engaged and become more active participants.

"That," he said, "means showing up."

Like at events such as Beyond Sport.

Among other provocative discussions on the schedule here:

What good can sports celebrities do -- what's possible and what's not?

How can sport provide opportunities for girls' and women's education?

Can sports programs help reduce youth violence? How?

"There could be no greater legacy to Chicago's Olympic bid than to commit to Chicago's young people… [and to explore] how sport can play a crucial role in the urban environment," Nick Keller, the founder of Beyond Sport, said Wednesday from the lectern.

Again, the point is not that answers were fully divined in the great ballroom of the Palmer House in Chicago's Loop.

It's the pursuit of those answers.

That is, the affirmation of some of the key values that animate the Olympic spirit between editions of the Games, among them "courage, boldness, tenacity, humanity," Keller said in asserting, "We want you to be moved … to forge the next set of connections … to use sport to address the next set of the world's great challenges."

"We all believe sport can bring youth away from and into very important things, away from crime, away from violence, and into academics, into sport, into character development," Pat Ryan, the head of the Chicago 2016 bid and chairman of World Sport Chicago, said in his address.

"Archimedes once said, 'Give me a place to stand, and I will move the earth,' " Prince Feisal said a moment or two later.

It was the "prerogative" of those in the room to do so, he said, then paused and corrected himself: "No, it's our duty."

USOC: 'an exciting new time'

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- After Larry Probst and Scott Blackmun had given first-rate speeches to the hundreds gathered here at the Antlers Hilton hotel for the U.S. Olympic Committee's annual assembly, the two senior USOC officials, with a gaggle of reporters in tow, found a small room just off the big ballroom for an impromptu news conference. This was the Jackson Room, named not for the seventh president but for a 19th-century Colorado photographer. A big wooden table dominated Mr. William Jackson's room. Blackmun took one of the blue chairs on one side of the table, Probst the chair right next to him.

Probst, in his shirt and tie, jacket off, leaned back in the chair, waiting for the first question. The two of them hadn't yet said a word in this little clutch but their body language said everything: relaxed, calm, comfortable, confident, in charge.

What a difference a year makes.

And what buzz around what traditionally has been a lackluster, even dreary, event.

This year, the scene at the assembly and its related programs was marked with energy, enthusiasm and a distinct sense of inclusion, from the opening reception Wednesday (a packed house swarming the bruschetta and the fried shrimp, and how about the support of that Virginia Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau!) through the wrap-up meetings Saturday.

The catch phrase that appeared on the literature the USOC distributed here read "one team," and that sentiment seemed to strike home.

One example from among many: Dick Ebersol, the NBC Universal Sports & Olympics chairman who last autumn was a vocal USOC critic, delivered the keynote address Friday night. Probst introduced him as "our good friend and partner."

Another example: Mark Emmert, the incoming NCAA president, made a joint appearance Thursday morning with Blackmun and while they didn't announce any major initiatives, it didn't matter; the point was that the guys in charge of the USOC and NCAA were on stage together.

"I have said this repeatedly: I am more enthusiastic about this organization and this movement today than I have been at any point in the last 10 years," Dave Ogrean, the executive director of USA Hockey, said at a cocktail party Friday night.

"The best presentation I have heard in my 32 years of association with the USOC by its leaders," a former USOC spokesman, Mike Moran, posted on his Facebook page, referring to the Probst and Blackmun speeches to the assembly. "Candid, on the money and substantial."

Donna de Varona, the Olympic swim gold medalist turned sportscaster and women's- and athletes'-rights activist, called the meeting the "most inclusive, visionary and inspirational gathering in the history of the U.S. movement."

A pause: the USOC's history is filled with much-documented starts, stops, missteps and missed opportunities.

One also must note that the success of the moment hardly guarantees anything in the future. See above: USOC starts, stops, missteps, etc.

Even so, this assembly made for a great convention, and it would thus be irresponsible for the reasonable observer not to relate the obvious: There is a renewed sense of optimism and can-do within and around the USOC, and it's primarily because of leadership. That means Probst, the USOC chairman, and Blackmun, the chief executive.

"Larry has not only found his role but his voice," Doug Logan, the outgoing USA Track & Field executive, said in an interview. "And Scott is not only doing the right things and saying the right things but saying them with the right inflection."

From the daïs Friday evening, Ebersol, referring to Probst and Blackmun, said, "Let me say very clearly: congratulations for the start of this incredible turnaround. We are very lucky we have your leadership. And we hope we have it for a very long time."

It was last Oct. 2 that the International Olympic Committee delivered its humiliating verdict on Chicago's 2016 chances -- out, despite the personal lobbying in Copenhagen by President Obama himself, in the first round, with only 18 votes. Later that day, Rio de Janeiro would win going away.

A lot of things that had bubbling for a lot of time led to that vote, which Probst in his speech here Friday called, among other terms, "devastating." Some of it involved the USOC's complex relationship with the IOC. Some of it revolved around the USOC itself.

The criticism and turmoil that ensued afterward produced weeks, indeed months, of reflection and re-engineering -- institutional and, for Probst in particular, personal.

Stephanie Streeter, the USOC's acting chief executive, stepped down; Blackmun, who had been a candidate for the CEO job nearly 10 years ago, got the job this time and said Friday that "in retrospect I am grateful to be standing here now instead of then."

Why? Because then the USOC "wasn't structured to succeed." Now, Blackmun said in his assembly speech, "I am filled with optimism about the future of our American Olympic family, and in particular about the future of the USOC."

In part that's because of Blackmun himself. He is modest and speaks softly. The staff loves him.

In part that's because of Probst. He weathered furious criticism after Copenhagen, then -- as Blackmun put it -- "stepped forward to listen" and learn. As the senior USOC official, and thus its key protocol figure, he has since been traveling the world, meeting with IOC members, with plans in the coming weeks to go to Mexico, Japan, China and Serbia, among others.

"It's a relationship business," Blackmun, who is also a frequent flier, said. "We have to start by being present."

Finally, there's the way Probst and Blackmun work together. To simplify something that by its nature is more complex, indeed laden with nuance: Probst hired Blackmun to be in charge, and Probst lets Blackmun run the USOC.

The two get together by phone every Tuesday morning. Of course they trade emails and make other calls as warranted. "There is a high level of communication between us," Probst said in Mr. Jackson's room, adding, "Having said that, he is the CEO and I have no intention of being the CEO of the USOC."

In his speech, Probst said, "We are being honest and open and present and I believe we are on the right track," and while he was referring specifically to the USOC's international outreach, he could have been speaking of so much more.

Ebersol said, "I knew I was coming here for what is really an exciting new time for the United States Olympic Committee and for the Olympic movement in the United States. Just think: a year ago that would have been unthinkable, absolutely unthinkable."