Chris Pearson: an American boxer you want to root for

The last American boxer to win gold at the Summer Olympics was Andre Ward. That was in Athens, in 2004, in the light-heavyweight division, 178 or so pounds. It has been a long, dry run. Everyone who knows the first thing about the sport in the United States understands that, and immediately.

"We're going to go back to the golden days of boxing and the USA is going to reign again in the future!" the president of USA Boxing, Hal Adonis, all but shouted into the microphone this past Sunday night between matches as the first season of the World Series of Boxing came to a close in Los Angeles.

The crowd roared -- a standing-room only mass of some 600 people at the Music Box, just steps from the iconic corner of Hollywood and Vine. In the house: Sugar Ray Leonard, Evander Holyfield, Lou Ferrigno, Jenny McCarthy, Julie Benz and "swimgerie" (that would be "lingerie-inspired swimwear") designer Lilly Ghalichi, along with swimergie models Johanna and Kristen.

What would the Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the reputed founder of the modern Olympic movement, have thought of such a scene?

"This is innovation," said C.K. Wu, the president of the international boxing federation, which goes by the acronym AIBA.

Giving the baron the benefit of the doubt:  if the intent has always been to get young people involved in sport, the swarms of young men wearing replica USC jerseys who cheered boisterously for the fighters and then lined up to get their photos taken with Johanna and Kristen in those revealing "swimgerie" suits -- it all seemed good.

As did the real surprise of the evening, and perhaps the reason there might be -- genuinely -- reason for optimism in Mr. Adonis' corner.

In boxing, you never know. The sport can be so political. Then again, as the saying goes, you simply can not teach speed, and Chris Pearson is mighty fast.

In the third fight of five Sunday, Pearson, a 20-year-old left-hander from a little town northwest of Dayton called Trotwood, Ohio, defeated a 2008 Beijing Games gold medalist, Bakhyt Sarsekbayev of Kazakhstan.

Pearson had come to the Matadors late in the season, referred by Rau'shee Warren, the 2007 flyweight world champion (112 pounds) and 2008 U.S. Olympic team member. Warren is also an Ohio guy. He's from Cincinnati, about 50 miles south of Dayton.

In a March 14 fight, Pearson, now fighting as a middleweight, at 160 pounds, had defeated one of the league's top fighters, Yamaguchi Florentino.

In the third round against Sarsekbayev, the 2008 welterweight gold medalist now fighting up as a middleweight, at 160, Pearson opened up a big cut over the Kazakh fighter's left eye. From then on, Pearson controlled the bout. He won a split decision: 50-45, 49-46, 47-48.

You want to root for a guy like Chris Pearson. He was raised by a single dad, Milton. Dad has been working for the Montgomery County court system for 21 years now. Chris' grandfather, Troy, and his grandmother, Zell, have been married for more than 50 years -- they were college sweethearts at Fort Valley State. Troy used to run a youth basketball program that's famous in and around southwest Ohio, the Dayton Mohawks.

Chris was a really good high school basketball and football player -- he was being recruited by big-time college programs -- until he tore up a knee.

It's not that he wasn't known as a boxer. He was, after all, a 2009 national PAL champ.

But now he's older, and bigger, and stronger -- after time at Northern Michigan University, at Marquette, Mich., and the U.S. Olympic Education Center there. While he has been earning two years worth of college credits, Chris Pearson said, way out of the spotlight up there in northern Michigan, he has been working on his boxing, and he has been working hard.

"Going in," meaning to the fight with Sarsekbayev," Milton Pearson said, referring to his son, "he told me, 'If I beat him, I am going to open some eyes.'

"I told him, 'Just go in and do what you know how to do.' "

As Chris Pearson later said in a telephone interview, "He knew he wasn't fighting no slouch."

There's a long way to go before Chris Pearson makes the Olympic team -- he's going to have to choose, for instance, whether to fight at the 152- or 165 1/2-pound Olympic weight classes -- and there are bound to be a lot of good fighters to be in his way.

But, as he proved Sunday night, he's pretty good himself. And bound to keep getting better.

Andre Ward, for one, has already told Chris Pearson that the sky is the limit.

This is why you really want to root for Chris Pearson. He says, "Yes, sir," and, "No, sir," when he speaks to you because that's what his father and grandfather taught him to do. He's humble about his accomplishments and his prospects even if, truly, the sky might be the limit.

All he will say, with an eye on London and 2012, is this: "I'm thankful for the opportunity to take my fighting to another level."

A healthy Hunter Kemper still has it

Seventeenth in the Sydney Games in 2000, ninth in Athens in 2004, seventh in Beijing in 2008, Hunter Kemper, who turns 35 next month, made plain this past weekend that he's very much in the mix for a fourth Olympics by winning the ITU Triathlon World Cup race in Ishigaki, Japan. To be a four-time Olympian is, of course, a comparatively unusual thing. You have to stay motivated. You have to stay healthy. You have to maybe even be a little bit lucky.

To be a four-time Olympian in an endurance sport -- that's asking even more. More than anything, you have to have what Hunter Kemper has at his core. "I still have a love and a passion for it," he said.

The question that plainly presents itself, at 34 going on 35: is that going to be enough?

When healthy, for sure, it's enough.

That's what Ishigaki showed. When he's healthy, he's still as good as anyone.

The victory Sunday made for Kemper's World Cup win since 2005.

He finished in 1 hour, 50 minutes, 32 seconds. The Olympic-style event, of course, includes a 1.5-kilometer swim, a 40-km bike ride and then a 10-km run.

Artem Parienko of Russia took second, 15 seconds back; Marek Jaskolka of Poland came in third, just two seconds behind Parienko. The World Cup medals were the first won by either racer; Jaskolka's was the first won by any Polish triathlete.

Mark Fretta of Portland, Ore., finished 14th.

Kemper had finished second in Ishigaki, twice, in 2005 and 2006, both times behind five-time winner Courtney Atkinson of Australia.

Ishigaki, located in far southern Japan, is the longest-running World Cup race in ITU history -- held every year since 1996. It's an island, and it's so far south it looks out toward Taiwan. It's more than 1,200 miles from Ishigaki to Tokyo, and farther still to the areas to the north of Japan more directly affected by the earthquake, tsunami and radiation.

Of course, the disaster was on everyone's minds at the Ishigaki race -- particularly because the ITU was still wrestling over the weekend with what to do with a race scheduled for May 14  in Yokohama, about 185 miles south of the damaged Fukushima nuclear reactor.

ITU President Marisol Casado on Tuesday announced a postponement of that May 14 event, saying the situation was "too risky," adding the federation would try to reschedule it. The event is an Olympic qualifier.

Ishigaki, though -- that race went on.  "I felt totally safe," Kemper said.

He added, "I was glad to do it, glad to support that race, celebrate sport in a few hours that might give some joy to the Japanese people."

In the swim, Russian brothers Ivan and Denis Vasiliev tried to break free from the rest of the pack. Jens Toft of Denmark joined them in the bike. Going into the transition to the run, those three were up 50 seconds against the main pack of 40.

Kemper caught them in the first lap of the run, took the lead by himself in the second lap and held to win easily.

Sounds simple enough, and it is -- again, when you're healthy.

Which Kemper hasn't been until recently.

2008 -- the dreaded sports hernia.

2009 -- a succession of nagging injuries. He raced only three times all year.

2010 -- a pelvic stress fracture and a broken collarbone.

Ouch, ouch and ouch.

Now -- better.

"The number one goal for me this year," Kemper said, "is staying healthy. If I can go the whole year and race 10 times, that's going to be a good year."

A good 2011 would, logically enough, lead to a good 2012. If logic has anything to do with it, there's this: 17th  in his first Olympics, ninth in his second, seventh in his third -- that's a trend that would seem to be pointing in the right direction.

"I like," Hunter Kemper said, "where it's going."

Awaiting the secrets of the "Richard W. Pound Olympic Collection"

The University of Texas at Austin has announced that it will collaborate with Montreal's McGill University to digitize the "Richard W. Pound Olympic Collection," and the only bummer is that it's going to take a good long while to see what's in the 400,000 pages that fill 350 or so boxes. Pound, the former World Anti-Doping Agency chief and International Olympic Committee vice-president, is of course well known within Olympic circles for his candor and wit. So there's bound to be some juicy stuff in those boxes.

The collection, which marks a remarkable coup for the Texas Program in Sports and Media, includes not only Pound's papers, among them some 700 printed titles, but his computer files, pretty much anything and everything relating to his years at the Canadian Olympic Committee, the IOC and WADA, dating back to the late 1960s.

Let's see. The investigation into the Salt Lake City corruption scandal. The founding of WADA. The boom years of U.S. marketing and television rights.

And more.

"I don't want this thrown in some vault where it's not used," Pound said in a telephone interview. "The purpose is to have available for scholars a resource that is probably unique in North America, perhaps the world …

"The further advantage is because it's mine it's not subject to the organizational limitations," meaning for instance IOC rules about mandatory waits that run to the decades to see certain materials, such as the minutes of executive board meetings.

Now the cautionary note to all this.

There is still going to be some waiting. It's likely going to take months, maybe years, before anyone sees any of this stuff in any significant detail.

Think about how long it takes you to scan stuff on your own home computer. Now think of scanning 400,000 pages. That's what "digitizing" means.

Moreover, some of this stuff is bound to be sensitive; there are bound to be reputation interests that come up. The University of Texas has really good lawyers on staff, and the University of Texas is simply not going to open these files up to just anyone when it might be sued for doing so.

Now, for another of the interesting corollary questions.

Why Texas?

After all, Pound would seem to have no obvious connection to Texas, or to Austin.

Three reasons.

One, they think creatively there. Woodward and Bernstein's Watergate papers, for instance, are now in Austin.

Two, they have resource. In January, ESPN and the university said they would be launching a new network dedicated solely to all things UT. The deal is worth $300 million over 20 years. The "Longhorn Network," as it will be called, is due to go live later this year.

Three, they have vision. The Texas Program in Sports and Media, announced in late 2009, would seem poised to become an Olympic study center of a sort the United States has arguably never had. (Disclosure: I saw it for myself first-hand last month, invited to Austin to speak to journalism and law school students.)

"The Pound Collection is a gem and will be a great asset to scholars and researchers studying the interface of sports, business, law, broadcast rights and the culture of sports media," said Steven Ungerleider, the program's chair who is also a psychologist and author of the 2001 book "Faust's Gold," an insightful study of the East German sports doping system.

As ever, the last word here ought to go to Pound. When the files finally do get opened up, he said. referring to the IOC, "You can find out whether they served croissants or fruitcake for 30 years."

Remembering Michael Lohberg

Two summers ago, during a break in the action at the world swimming championships in Rome, Michael Lohberg and I found a quiet little trattoria on the east bank of the Tiber River, just across from the Castel Sant' Angelo. We had a lovely lunch. The antipasti was excellent. So was the spaghetti carbonara. And the tiramisu, too.

Both of us knew enough about what was really going on to savor the moment. He was desperately ill. Neither of us knew how much time he had left.

Michael had been diagnosed with a rare blood disorder called aplastic anemia. The disorder causes the bone marrow to shut down -- that is, the factory that makes blood cells within the body stops making them. He was alive solely because of regular transfusions of blood and platelets.

It is testament to Michael's resolve and zest for life that he hung on for a good long while. But now he is gone. He died last week, just 61.

His passing is beyond sad. It is heartbreaking.

Not Michael's courage in fighting the fight. That was amazing.

It's just so sad because Michael Lohberg was one of the most genuinely decent people you would ever want to meet.

Michael was, in recent years, swim star Dara Torres' coach. He came to the United States in the early 1990s, from Germany, and quickly became a fixture in the South Florida swim scene.

Two years ago, he was inducted into the Broward County Hall Sports Hall of Fame.

Michael was a great coach at the elite level -- he coached at six Olympic Games. His swimmers qualified for every Games from 1984 through 2008. They held national records in places as diverse as Germany, Kazakhstan and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

He was a great coach at the local level, too.

He was, physically, a big man. At first he could come off as all gruff. But he was really all teddy-bear. Maybe that's why hundreds and hundreds of people turned out for the post-funeral reception at (where else?) the pool, the Coral Springs Aquatic Complex.

"He had such an ability to communicate, whether you were 15 or 44 years old," Dara was saying on the telephone.

So true.

I loved hanging out with Michael in person at meets, or following him with up on the phone or by email. He had a real way with words.

One story:

At the 2008 Games, Dara finished second in the 50-meter freestyle. A year later, essentially racing on one leg and with limited training, she somehow gutted it out and made it to the 50 finals in Rome. She finished eighth -- that is, last in the race.

No matter -- she had made it to the finals. She was, at age 42, still one of the eight best in the world.

"She deserves all the respect in the world for stepping up against the odds," Michael said then, adding, "With basically 20 percent of training September through April, two months of training, no leg work … I think to expect anything else is unrealistic and somewhat stupid."

Another:

Last September, Dara announced she was planning to launch a try for the London Games. I suggested -- using this reference from Michael -- that  pretty much anything Olympic was more interesting with Dara around: "The movie is more attractive when Julia Roberts is in it."

If Dara qualifies for London -- by then she'll be 45 -- perhaps enough time will have passed so that any racing she does there can serve as a tribute to Michael.

Bruno Darzi and Chris Jackson, who had helped Michael get her ready for Beijing and 2008, are still on board, so there's continuity.

Right now, though, no one's thinking much about any of that.

Right now, it's all just so raw. Right now, every little thing feels like heartbreak.

At practice these past couple days, Dara said, she does a flip-turn and sees the flags at half-mast -- and here come the tears.

"This whole week there hasn't been a time at practice when I haven't been crying," she said.

"I know it's going to take a while," she said. "Everything in my swimming world is a reminder. It's really tough right now."

For her and for all of us who knew, and appreciated, Michael Lohberg, a good and decent man.

On Natalie Coughlin's greatness

Natalie Coughlin, who over the past two Summer Olympics has won 11 medals, opened her 2011 season by racing in three finals this past weekend at the Eric Namesnik Michigan Grand Prix, held at one of America's best swim halls, Canham Auditorium, in Ann Arbor. She won the 100-meter backstroke and came in second in both the 100 freestyle and 100 butterfly. Dana Vollmer won both those events.

It is the nature of Olympic-style racing that when a great swimmer such as Coughlin goes one-for-three in an early-season meet there is the temptation from some quarters to wonder if something is somehow amiss.

As if she's supposed to win every single race she enters.

"Am I supposed to?" she said with a bewildered laugh.

That, truly, is the greatness of Natalie Coughlin.

She has won three Olympic gold medals. She has won four Olympic silver medals. She has won four Olympic bronze medals. In London next year, Coughlin could become the most-decorated American female athlete in Olympic history, depending perhaps in part on Dara Torres, who -- like yet another swimmer, Jenny Thompson -- has 12 medals.

If it can be incredible to be normal, what sets Coughlin apart within the Olympic scene is her normal-ness -- arguably, that's not even a word but there's seemingly no other way to put it - as well as her remarkably refreshing perspective on competition and on what constitutes success.

Indeed, her attitude ought to be packaged up and shipped out to playgrounds everywhere where winning-is-the-only-thing jerks hold sway.

It's a little bit like the bit of philosophy she offered in her Twitter feed from the Michigan meet: "Swimming is funny; effort & force don't always translate to fast swims. The water is dynamic & doesn't always respond to sheer force."

Natalie Coughlin is living proof that you can train hard, eat right, maintain balance in your home and professional lives, be happy puttering around your garden, derive satisfaction as an amateur photographer, root for the California Golden Bears, watch the sun set over the Golden Gate, all of that.

And win, at the highest level. More -- not only win but win with great elegance.

And reflect thusly: "Swimming is important to me. It's not everything to me."

That is not to minimize the import of swimming in her life.

Rather, Natalie Coughlin offers evidence that what counts in life is really living -- that it can be a good thing to, say, step out of your comfort zone by doing something like going on "Dancing with the Stars."  All along, that was the sort of deal that carried the risk of messing up in front of millions of people. So what? Moreover, everyone knew from the get-go that she was a swimmer, not a dancer. So she didn't come in first place. Again, so what? She loved it, loved the experience. That's a win.

"The reason I did [the show] and I don't think people believe me," she said, "is I just wanted to learn how to dance."

Success, she said, is "different for everyone."

"For me," she added, "it's doing my best. Obviously, I am not saying I don't appreciate gold medals or world records or winning. I don't think that should define a career. For me, that doesn't define a career."

She also said, "One of the most frustrating things for me, after watching a competition or the broadcast of something, is when the announcer says, 'How disappointing for so-and-so -- they get the silver medal.'

"I don't think anyone but the athlete gets to decide that. It's a dangerous message to kids to tell them they have to win to be successful. There's only one winner in every event. If everyone else is a failure, what are we doing?"

Think back, she said, to the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, and the men's 200-meter freestyle. Michael Phelps won, and set a new world record. "The silver medalist in the 200 free," Park Tae-Hwan of South Korea -- "wasn't he successful?"

She paused. "Because he was beaten by Michael, that doesn't mean he wasn't successful."

Another pause. "If you can say you did your best, that's all you can do."

And enjoy it along the way -- you have to enjoy it along the way. There's so much attention in a sport such as swimming to the peak moment that is the Olympic Games. But the focus on that moment, even if it's understandable, ignores all that it takes to get there.

"I love training," Coughlin said. "I love pushing myself every day. I love working out."

Soon enough, it will be summer, and the world championships in Shanghai will be here. For Coughlin, that meet in Michigan was not only her first long-course meet of the year, it made for her first long-course meet since last summer.

Those second-place finishes behind Vollmer, who is herself of course an excellent swimmer -- in each of the two races, they came by about a half a second. Come on. It's April.

Again from her Twitter feed -- Teri McKeever, her coach, had told her to "fly & die" in the 100 free, which she did, finishing in 54.93, just back of Vollmer's 54.52. "Great start to the longcourse season," Coughlin wrote.

She said, "If you're going to be sad you lost a race -- how many people are in a race? 200? 199 are going to cry about it? I've been competing for 20 years. If I freaked out about little things I would have gone crazy by now."

No crazy here. It's all good.

Her times were good. Her strokes "felt great." Overall, she said, "I was really, really happy."

Money, geography and a three-horse race

LONDON -- From the moment in December that Edgar Grospiron resigned, throwing Annecy's bid for the 2018 Winter Games into turmoil, it was never quite certain whether the campaign from the French Alps would ever again regain enough balance to again become a credible contender. At times, to be frank, it was like watching a train wreck. The Annecy bid stumbled along for weeks without a leader. Finally, Charles Beigbeder, a French entrepreneur, was convinced to take the job. Budget-wise, they've acknowledged many times since, they are running on the low side. They have struggled to cobble together a narrative.

On Thursday, however, here before the SportAccord convention of influential sports leaders from around the world, it all came together.

For arguably the first time, the Annecy campaign put together a coherent and credible pitch for a village-style Alpine Games: A  "bid from the mountains with the athletes for the future," with an emphasis on what they called an "authentic" Winter Games.

People noticed.

"It is a much better race than many in the IOC thought it would be six months ago," Craig Reedie, the British IOC executive board member who helped lead London's winning 2012 bid, said after watching Annecy's presentation, along with those from rivals Munich and Pyeongchang.

"The two front-runners," he said, "have developed extremely well."

And, Reedie said, "The improvement in Annecy is -- "and here he paused, searching for just the right word -- "marked."

Annecy's chances? There aren't even 100 days to go until the IOC's July 6 vote for 2018 in Durban, South Africa.

Does Annecy have enough on stage and screen to overcome the strong presentations from Munich and Pyeongchang?

The odds remain long, particularly because Annecy was yet again lacking again on Thursday the key element -- the in-person presence of Jean-Claude Killy, the superstar of French and Olympic winter sport, who appeared Thursday only in a short video?

Yet for Annecy -- indeed, for the IOC -- the issue has always been to make this 2018 derby a three-horse race, not just two.

"It's a three bid-city race. That's clear," Beigbeder asserted at a late afternoon news conference, adding a moment later, "They have to choose one, meaning the IOC, "and we have to make a difference."

Annecy went first Thursday. Then Munich. Then Pyeongchang.

No surprise, Munich's presentation proved robust. Following a strong presentation in March to the IOC's evaluation commission, the Munich team proved strong here in London, too.

The chair of the Munich bid, Katarina Witt, in a pinstriped black Strenesse coat-dress and stunningly high Michael Kors pumps, in her best breathy stage voice, kicked things off by unveiling the "vision" of a "festival of friendship in a setting that reveals the full possibilities of Olympic sustainability for all the world to see."

From there, the Munich team talked up money and geography.

Ian Robertson, BMW's head of marketing and sales, noted the Munich-based company now supports not only the bid but London 2012, the U.S Olympic Committee, national Olympic committees in France, Greece, China and several international sports federations. German business, he said, underwrites 50 percent of the revenues of the seven sports on the Winter Games program.

This winter, he said, Germany played host to 12 World Cup events and three world championships that attracted nearly one million spectators and a cumulative German television audience of over one billion viewers. "That's the kind of reach sponsors want," he said.

Back to Katarina for Munich's line of the day, and an unsaid but nonetheless obvious poke at Pyeongchang.

"… When you choose a host city for the Olympic Games -- Summer or Winter -- it is about more than just geography," she said, Pyeongchang touting "new horizons," the promise of taking the Winter Games to new markets in Asia.

She said, "It is about the kind of experience the athletes of the future should have," a suggestion that there might be a livelier place to spend 17 days in February -- say, Munich, one of the world's most interesting cities -- than, oh, Pyeongchang.

Which is why, the Koreans said as part of a powerful performance of their own, they've planned for a "Best of Korea" experience in Pyeongchang. Already, they said, they've signed up 39 companies with 120 brands -- world-class amenities, dining, shopping, entertainment and more.

You want to talk money?

The Koreans clearly had been anticipating the German strategy. Let's put it this way: if 50 percent of your portfolio rested in one stock, wouldn't you kinda want to diversify?

"We believe," Theresa Rah, the Pyeongchang director of communications, said from the stage, "that diversifying the financial support of winter sport from new markets makes sense for the winter sport industry, federations, the athletes and the Olympic and Paralympic movements."

By 2030, according to an Asian Development Bank Study, Asia will comprise 43 percent of worldwide consumption. From 1990 to 2008, the middle class in Asia grew by 30 percent, and spent an average of an additional $1.7 trillion annually. "No other region in the world even comes close," Rah said.

The South Korean sports and culture Minister, Byoung-gug Choung, announced Thursday that the government would invest $500 million to help promote winter sports and groom Korean athletes in a program dubbed "Drive the Dream" from 2012-2018.

Also in the works -- a $1.8 million plan to pay for visits from national Olympic committee officials from 2012-2017, and a $1.05 million plan for trips by international federation experts.

Completed in October, 2009: the Alpensia resort in Pyeongchang, at a cost of $1.4 billion.

You want to talk geography?

"The argument," Rah said, in front of a map of the world that showed the Winter Games having visited Asia only twice, both times in Japan, in 1972 and 1998, "really isn't about 'new versus old' or 'traditional markets versus new markets' or even clever metaphors about 'roots and new horizons.' No.

"The real decision is about maximizing the opportunity for winter sport for as many young people as possible, wherever they may be."

All of which surely made for Pyeongchang's counter-punch of the day.

But not the line of the day.

That went to the French sports minister, Chantal Jouanno, as part of an again-relevant Annecy bid.

"It is a great pleasure to be here in London," she said, "a city that in the sporting context has taught us French two things:

"That favorites don't always win," a reference to the 2012 contest. Paris was heavily favored to win. Instead, London did.

When the laughter in the hall died down, the minister, smiling, finished: "And that any bidding city must understand the challenges sport faces -- and offer a true global vision to resolve them."

--

Of special note:

The Korean presentation opened with Yang Ho Cho, the Pyeongchang 2018 chairman, saying:

"Before I begin, please allow me to send our deepest sympathies to the people and the [national Olympic committees] of both New Zealand and Japan.

"The world is with you, and we look forward to seeing your great teams in London next year."

Jumping for joy, finally

LONDON -- Sometimes long, hard fights take a long, long time. And when you win, it's that much sweeter.

That's how it was Wednesday for advocates of women's ski jumping. For years, they tried to get into the Winter Olympic Games. For years, they met mostly with resistance and heartache and frustration.

On Wednesday they knew elation.

The International Olympic Committee's policy-making executive board approved women's ski jumping, along with four other new events, for the Winter Games in Sochi in 2014.

""I’ve dedicated my life, hopes and dreams to ski jumping and I’m thrilled that our sport will be showcased at the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi," American Lindsey Van, the 26-year-old 2009 world champion, said. "We are ready.

"For our sport this means a huge step in the right direction. Women's ski jumping has been developing a lot over the past 10 years, but the Olympics is what our sport really needed to take the next step."

Coline Mattel of France, a 2011 world championships bronze medalist, said, "The fact that women's ski jumping has finally been recognized rewards all the girls that have been fighting for such a long time, and gives me the motivation to work even harder."

The other four events also added to the Sochi program: ski halfpipe, biathlon mixed relay and team events in luge and figure skating. The figure skating event is not, IOC sports director Christophe Dubi hastened to add, a synchronized swimming-style event; one skater will follow the other on the ice.

IOC President Jacques Rogge called the additions "exciting, entertaining events that perfectly complement the existing events on the sports program, bring added appeal and increase the number of women participating at the Games.''

Bill Marolt, the president and chief executive of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Assn., said, "This is a special day. The IOC's decision to include women's ski jumping and halfpipe skiing marks a truly progressive era in the Olympic sports movement.

"Today is the beginning of a chapter in the history books that will showcase these great athletes' talent and dedication on the world's stage in 2014 and beyond."

The IOC put off for a couple of months consideration of proposals for inclusion of slopestyle events in snowboard and freestyle skiing and in team alpine skiing.

The lengthy process by which women's ski jumping finally made the program shows in revealing detail how the IOC truly moves.

For one, the IOC absolutely, positively refuses to move until it is ready to do so.

Moreover, it does not like being told by outsiders what it should be doing, or that it should be moving for reasons of political correctness, or being compelled to move by the threat of legal action.

None of those things typically occasion the desired response -- not even the whole court case thing.

In 2006 the IOC turned down a women's ski jumping event for the 2010 Vancouver Games. The jumpers took their case all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, but lost, the court saying it wasn't its place to tell the IOC what to do -- which was what the IOC knew all along was what would happen.

The IOC was never against women ski jumpers. Just the opposite. It's in the IOC's interest to have more women at the Games -- as Rogge observed in welcoming the women jumpers.

After all, ski jumping -- and, now, Nordic combined -- were the only disciplines in the Winter Games that did not allow women to take part. No matter what anyone might think, that's not what the IOC is about anymore.

All along, the IOC wasn't simply being patronizing or paternalistic. After all, Joan Benoit ran that marathon in Los Angeles a long, long time ago.

The IOC kept saying to the jumpers --  show us that there are more of you, from more countries, and that you're better at this, and we'll let you into the Games and we'll do it with big smiles all around.

In 2006, according a release put out Wednesday by the advocacy group Women's Ski Jumping USA, 83 women from 14 nations were registered to compete on the FIS Continental Cup. In 2010: 182 from 18 nations.

In 2009, according to that same release, 36 jumpers -- from 13 nations -- took part in the world championships, held in Liberec, Czech Republic.

This year's world championships were held in Oslo, before a crowd of some 10,000 people, and in super-crummy weather that tested fan and athlete alike. There were 43 jumpers from 15 countries; five of the six top finishers were from different countries and ranged in age from 14 to 27.

"You have much more quality and depth," Dubi said. "If you compare to Liberec back in 2009, you had a handful of top jumpers. Now you have 30 jumpers who would jump between 80 and 97 meters."

Dubi was asked point-blank if the IOC needed to see something big like that in Oslo for the jumpers to make it. Yes, he said: "It was really critical. And what we've seen there is extremely positive."

As for Nordic combined? "Well, obviously, for Nordic combined there is not yet the universality and the numbers to consider it [for women] an Olympic sport," Rogge said at a Wednesday evening news conference.

He added a moment later that if time shows better quality and quantity in participation in women's Nordic combined events -- then the IOC will bring it on board, too.

He said, "You need the numbers … you  need more competition, you need more international participation and hopefully I would say the example of women's ski jumping will serve as a catalyst for that sport, too."

The athletes themselves, finally, had reason Wednesday to jump for joy. Here was another American, Alissa Johnson: "This inspires me to continue training hard to be the absolute best athlete that I can be, so that when I have my chance at the Games I can finally fight for the gold medal I have been dreaming of since I was five."

A very British row that matters well beyond Britain

LONDON -- Sign the thing, Dan Doctoroff and Jay Kriegel kept saying, the leaders of the New York 2012 bid about out of time and out of patience. It was extraordinarily late in the game, already July in 2005, the International Olympic Committee poised to decide after a campaign that had carried on for nearly two years who was going to get the 2012 Summer Games, and still this one document had yet to be executed. Too, it was late at night in Singapore, then morning, the vote now just hours away. Peter Ueberroth, the chairman of the United States Olympic Committee, simply did not want to sign the joint marketing and promotional agreement, as the document was called. It simply was not good for the USOC, he believed.

What to do?

If Ueberroth didn't sign, New York might as well withdraw from the contest. But if he did, it would be with the greatest reluctance. Moreover, everyone already knew that the Americans didn't really like the deal, or want it, and so even if he signed New York's chances were already dimmed.

Ultimately, Ueberroth agreed to a basic set of terms. Even so, New York got all of 19 votes, bounced early in the voting, won by London.

Now, as history would have it, that very same sort of document is at the heart of a disagreement between the London 2012 organizing committee and the British Olympic Assn., a dispute that underscores both the present and the future of the way cities and countries bid for the Olympic Games.

On one level, the issue is simple enough: does a one-size-fits-all marketing agreement work?

The battle has erupted here amid an annual Olympic-themed convention called SportAccord at which the International Olympic Committee's policy-making executive board also convenes. This year's convention is being staged in London; it got underway here Tuesday.

An "embarrassment," the British Olympics minister, Hugh Robertson, acknowledged Tuesday.

Four of the first five questions IOC president Jacques Rogge was asked at a news conference Tuesday related to the dispute. He dodged them all, saying the issue is for lawyers to decide.

Which is true enough.

But the reality as well is that the matter presents a far more fundamental issue --  has it become all but mandatory that a national Olympic committee be fully funded by its federal government?

The emerging trend certainly seems to suggest so. See, for example, Russia in 2014, Brazil in 2016. And, for good measure, China in 2008.

Meanwhile, the losing efforts of New York for 2012 and Chicago for 2016 offer instructive evidence to the contrary.

As does the London battle of 2012 and the ongoing case of the British Olympic Assn., complicated by personality politics involving the polarizing figure of Colin Moynihan, its chairman.

In its particulars, the dispute revolves around how one defines the word "surplus." The BOA wants more of any such surplus the 2012 Games generate. Under that joint marketing agreement, signed in 2005, it's entitled to a 20 percent cut. The BOA maintains that cut should be calculated before the costs of the Paralympics are figured in.

Get real, London 2012 says. For accounting purposes, it counters, the agreement is straightforward -- both the Olympics and Paralympics should be treated as one event. The IOC agrees with London 2012.

The BOA can hardly be faulted for seeking money. That's its job -- to get money to boost the performance of the British team.

You have to wonder, though, about the efficacy of a tactic that involves trying to obtain more money by, in effect, being widely portrayed as being against disabled people. Which the BOA has strenuously argued that it's not -- indeed, it shares office space with the British Paralympic Assn.

Though this issue has erupted publicly over the past few weeks, it seems difficult if not impossible to believe that the BOA didn't tell the IOC about it long ago, perhaps even years ago.

Why? Because this was eminently foreseeable. Like the USOC, the BOA's challenge is that it must raise its own money.

This is why the USOC has -- and by extension, American bids have -- repeatedly faced such challenges in the bid game, and why until this issue is re-framed it's not at all clear that the USOC should entertain, even for a minute, another bid.

Again -- why?

To reduce a complex economic matter to a simple math problem:

Let's say the USOC generates $100 million annually in domestic sponsorships (a tad high, perhaps, but rounding things up to make the example easier).

It's roughly seven years from the day you're awarded the Games until they're over.

That means the USOC would be walking away from some $700 million in revenue.

What national Olympic committee could afford to do that? More precisely -- without the security of a federal-government guarantee, could do so?

Is it really any wonder why Peter Ueberroth had qualms?

This math problem is why the Atlanta marketing program for the 1996 Games and the Salt Lake program in 2002 were set up differently -- staffed jointly by the local organizing committees and the USOC and marketed together with revenue shared on a sliding scale.

This, you might say, is a form of American exceptionalism.

In the Olympic movement, American exceptions have consistently been viewed dimly.

It's widely known within the movement, of course, that the USOC -- and only the USOC -- gets special broadcast and marketing revenue shares. Rogge said at a meeting early Tuesday with the summer sports federations that ongoing talks with the USOC aimed at re-calibrating those shares after 2020 are "making good progress." He declined to provide details.

The summer sports assembly, which goes by the acronym ASOIF and represents the 26 sports in the Summer Games, asked Rogge if a new deal could start sooner than 2020. ASOIF president Denis Oswald said, "It seems a long time to wait."

"The answer is no," Rogge said.

It remains uncertain, meanwhile, how the dispute between the BOA and London 2012 will ultimately be resolved.

The BOA wants to take the case to the Lausanne, Switzerland-based Court of Arbitration for Sport, the sport's world's highest tribunal; CAS has yet to say whether it will hear the case; London 2012 chairman Sebastian Coe has called the BOA's move "spurious"; Oswald, who is also the IOC's chief liaison to the London 2012 Games, said the IOC believes CAS has no reason to hear the matter.

"It is an embarrassment and we need to get it sorted out," Robertson said Tuesday at a forum sponsored by a British sports journalists association.

Perhaps the time has come as well for the IOC to take a fresh look at the way it approaches marketing agreements in bid-city arrangements. Rightly or wrongly, this one has caused a significant "embarrassment" in the run-up to the 2012 Games. Fairly or not, the standardized approach has sharply limited the ability of the United States to compete for the Summer Games.

Maybe that's the sort of thing the IOC might want to get sorted out.

Update: In a move welcomed by the IOC, the BOA announced Wednesday that it had suspended the CAS case and would start talking again with London 2012 in hopes of resolving the dispute.  IOC spokesman Mark Adams observed, "It's a good thing if people are talking. As Winston Churchill would say, 'Jaw-jaw is better than war-war.' "

Kelly Clark's season for the ages

The calendar says it's already April. Track and field's outdoor season will soon be here, and swimming's, too, and with world championships coming up in both sports -- this the year before the London Olympics -- it promises to be a summer to remember. But before the likes of Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps dominate the headlines, before the skis and snowboards get put away, it is appropriate indeed to single out the one and only Kelly Clark.

She had a winter for the ages.

It is an amazing thing, really. Snowboarding is hip. Perhaps the teenager in the house could thus readily dish about Kelly Clark, who won nine of 11 halfpipe competitions. If you include the Burton New Zealand Open last Aug. 14, make it 10 of 12.

On top of which -- she became the first woman to land a 1080 (three full revolutions) in competition, at the X Games in Aspen in late January.

The crowds at the X Games were, as is typical at a snowboarding jam, feverish. Yet for all the fun and for all its sizzle, snowboarding -- like all winter sports -- typically remains consigned to the back pages of most newspaper sports sections. It's even buried in web-only full-featured sports sites.

Attention, newspaper editors and internet sports savants. Wake up!

You want a winner?

You want a role model?

You want someone who not only brings it but is thoughtful and articulate and can describe not only why she wins but how she goes about planning her victories and then executing them?

America, once again -- we present Kelly Clark, your 2002 Salt Lake Games halfpipe gold medalist and 2010 Vancouver Games bronze medalist. And, as well, the fourth-place finisher in Torino in 2006 -- fourth because she went for it all in a bid to get back to the podium but crashed, a thing that those who know and appreciate snowboarding appreciated profoundly.

Kelly Clark is now 27. "I know who I am," she said. "My identity isn't wrapped up in my snowboarding. My identity isn't wrapped up in my results. So I am able to enjoy them."

She said, "After these last Olympics," in Vancouver, "some of my competitors came up to me and said, 'I am so glad it's over. I don't have to compete anymore.' I had to go to my coaches and say, 'I want to go compete,' " to finish out the season.

"I was like, 'Is that OK?'

"'They're like, 'OK!'

"I have fun."

That, truly, is the amazing and genuine thing about Kelly Clark, the difference-maker.

She has been competing for roughly 12 years. There is an undeniable glamor to the circuit. But there is a grind to it, too.

For her -- it's still fun.

That mental edge is huge. What pushed her this winter back to the top was the other part of the equation -- the physical part of being a top athlete.

Last summer, she committed herself to being in better shape than she had ever been before. She ran miles. She ran intervals. She did core work, agility work, cardio, weightlifting and more.

The goal, she said, came in two parts:

-- In prior years she might max herself out at 100 percent at a particular competition. She might win but feel exhausted. This season the idea was to raise her baseline fitness level to a solid 80 or 90 percent. That way she could run solid and tough from December through March without feeling worn out.

-- She also wanted each and every weekend, moreover, to be in such good shape that her last run of the day in the halfpipe not only could but would be her best run of the day.

That 1080 in Aspen, for instance? That  came on what snowboarders call the "victory lap," a final run. She had already won the competition.

"From the beginning of the season, I decided to be intentional," she said, meaning to approach each competition with deliberate intent -- a plan and purpose.

"That was one of my core values. Whether it was an Olympic year or not, whether it was a big contest or not, I had goals and tricks and things I wanted to accomplish.

"That's why you saw at events if I had first place -- then on the victory lap you saw tricks. I had things I wanted to accomplish. I did things because I wanted to. It simplifies things a lot."

Kelly turns 28 this summer. You bet she's planning to be at the Winter Games in Sochi.

In February of 2014 she would be 30. Laughing, she said of the entertainment value of being a 30-year-old halfpipe icon, "I am aware."

Someone, however, has to be the first. And in her career, that has typically been Kelly Clark.

First and, often, best.

This 2011 season -- for sure the best.

"I want to inspire people and show them what's possible on a snowboard. I want to bridge that gap between the possible and the impossible. I want," she said, "to lead the way."

IOC's Urs Lacotte resigns

The press facilities at the Chateau de Vidy, the International Olympic Committee's lakefront headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, used to be an after-thought. Whatever little closet they could squeeze us into -- that's where we went. Now, though, thanks to a recent remodel at Vidy, there's a real press room, with pretty much everything you'd want, even space to just hang around after the news conferences that are held there break up, and that's what the IOC director general, Urs Lacotte, and I were doing after the most recent executive board meeting, this past January.

For a good long while, he and I talked about matters philosophical. Lacotte, and this may surprise anyone who doesn't know him well, who knows only that he came to the IOC after years at the top echelon of the Swiss military, can be a surprisingly gentle, indeed soulful, guy. He cares deeply about the values that underpin the Olympic movement.

We talked about the ancient Games, and then generally about the state of the movement now, about threats such as doping and gambling, and then about the IOC's myriad social responsibilities. Then, though, he excused himself because he had another meeting to make, and as I always did after such conversations, I thought it a very good thing indeed that someone with such conviction played such a central role in IOC decision-making.

The IOC on Monday announced Lacotte would be resigning from his post, effective Thursday, for health reasons.

The bad news is that his day-to-day counsel will surely be missed.

“Urs Lacotte has performed his functions with competence, integrity and loyalty, and the IOC looks forward to benefiting from his commitment and experience in the future," the IOC president, Jacques Rogge, said in a statement, adding, "The IOC thanks Urs Lacotte and extends its best wishes for his health.”

The good news is that Lacotte will continue to serve. In that same statement, the IOC said the position would be called "assignments adviser." In a phone call, Lacotte said his new role might best be described in French as chargé d'affaires, in English as special adviser.

It is certainly a positive that Lacotte will continue to be around, in his low-key way.

"I have tried," he said, "to manage the organization from the backstage."

Lacotte joined the IOC in 2003, taking over from François Carrard. The director general's job is to oversee the IOC's administrative offices in Lausanne.

Carrard served as something of a highly visible prime minister in the presidency of Juan Antonio Samaranch -- that is, Carrard was often in front of the cameras and microphones, in measure because Samaranch was far more shy, because the IOC during those years could be less press-savvy and because Carrard was not only fluent but fluid in American-style English. Also, as a general rule, Carrard kind of liked hanging out with the press gaggle, and vice-versa.

Lacotte, from the outset, was far more of a -- as he aptly put it -- backstage presence. He would seek you out to talk one-on-one, quietly.

And make no mistake. He was, and is, a man of distinct values.

To be sure, the IOC president and others in his cabinet, among them Christophe de Kepper, arguably Rogge's key adviser, understand fully and wholly, with moral and ethical certainty, the raison d'être of the Olympic movement. So did Samaranch. So, too, does Carrard.

To offer praise of Lacotte is by no means to diminish Rogge or anyone else, even by implication.

"Let's face it," Lacotte said in our phone call Monday. "The Games are the engine of the movement. We need a healthy Games. It's a big business," meaning the movement.

"But for me, it's absolutely clear the movement survives when we are clear and credible," in particular on challenging issues such as those he and I discussed in that quiet corner of the press room in January, doping and gambling.

The reason for the IOC's announcement Monday was hardly a surprise. In 2007, Lacotte underwent bypass surgery. The next year a neurological issue emerged.

Lacotte is 58. He and his wife, France, have two children, a 27-year-old son who is an engineer, and a 24-year-old daughter who restores antique furniture. They were trying to balance his work life with his health and their personal lives.

"I didn't imagine to step down," he told me. But in the end, he said, "I had no choice."

De Kepper will take over Lacotte's duties, and it's unlikely Lacotte will make an appearance at SportAccord, the convention at which the IOC's executive board will next convene, in London early next month.

He may well be afforded the opportunity to address the IOC session in Durban, South Africa, in July.

If so, and for the record, I will be among those keenly interested in what he has to say that day from the lectern. The wisdom he has offered in those quiet corners fully deserves that wider audience.