Rogge's IOC presidency 10 years in

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

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

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

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

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

Still waiting.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, the contrast.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 2011 IOC women and sport report

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

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

That's the good news.

And a little bit more:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What now, France?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do they have to show for it?

Absolutely nothing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reality check:

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

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

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

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

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

Here's the bottom line:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is indisputable proof:

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

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

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

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

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

Just one more thing for them to think about.

This, too:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pyeongchang 2018: the secret is now out

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

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

Pyeongchang is next.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For Burns -- it marked his fourth Olympic win.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It all broke Korea's way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Toby Dawson and the promise of hope

DURBAN, South Africa -- Pyeongchang's winning sales pitch here Wednesday for the 2018 Winter Olympics  included the likes of South Korean president Myung Bak Lee,  2010 Vancouver figure skating gold medalist Yuna Kim and a 32-year-old guy whose story speaks to the best of what the Olympic movement can be. "My name is Toby Dawson,"  the 32-year-old guy told the members of the International Olympic Committee.

"My name is also Kim Bong Seok," he went on to say.

"I am a freestyle skier and I am an Olympian.

"I am a Korean by birth. Yet I am also an American."

In a presentation that bridged cultures and spoke to the core of the Olympic values, Dawson all but stole the show.

The entire Pyeongchang presentation was obviously impressive; after falling short in two prior bids for 2010 and 2014, they finally broke through for 2018, winning in the first round over Munich and Annecy, France. The vote totals: 63 for Pyeongchang, 25 for Munich, seven for Annecy.

Dawson's appearance had been a closely held secret. When he took to the lectern, he spoke with clarity and confidence about the essence of the thing that sustains not just sport but, indeed, life.

Hope is real. Toby Dawson is living proof.

"It was nerve-wracking, absolutely nerve-wracking," he said just moments after walking off the stage. "But I thought I had a great story to tell."

Not even 3, little Kim Bog Seok had been abandoned on the doorstep of a police station in Pusan, in the far south of Korea. He spent six months in an orphanage; there he was given he name Soo Chul.

In time, he was adopted by a pair of American ski instructors, Mike and Deborah Dawson, who brought him to a new life in Vail, Colo.

Little Toby was on skis early. He soon became not just a great moguls skier but known as a showman, too. As time went on, he won or earned medals at virtually every level -- the U.S. championships, World Cups, world championships.

All that remained was the Olympics. But he didn't make the 2002 team. In 2004 he broke his leg. In 2005 he sprained knee ligaments. But in 2006 he regrouped and in Torino he seized the moment, winning bronze.

Winning that medal unlocked the past in a way Toby Dawson never imagined.

At a news conference in 2007 in Seoul, where Toby had gone to help promote Pyeongchang's 2014 bid for the Winter Games, in walked Toby's biological father, Jae Soo Kim.

"Flash bulbs were going off everywhere," he said, recalling the event. "Meeting this man for the first time -- I didn't even get the chance to meet him or say hi. I was sitting in a press conference room and he walked in."

There was no question that the man who was said to be his father was, indeed, his father. "The moment he walked in, I said, 'Holy cow, this is definitely my father, there's no two ways about it. We look so similar. For both of us to have a lot of facial hair and long sideburns -- it was obvious I was related."

There was not, however, a lot to say: "I said, 'Hello, dad.' "

Things have gotten better since, Toby said. He, his father and his biological brother, Hyun Chul Kim, have meet three times now. The father has remarried; the circumstances regarding his biological mother remain unclear.

"The last four or five years, after I met my father for the first time, the Korean people have really embraced me. I was really ashamed of being Korean growing up. It was not until my mid-20s that I became comfortable with myself personally that I was willing to accept that I was actually Korean.

"To be able to go through that has made me want to learn more about Korean culture, about the land where I was born, to be a Korean-American. That's why I wanted to be out here, to help out my people, the place where I was born."

It's why Toby Dawson wrapped up his speech Wednesday to the IOC by asking a rhetorical question:

Were were the members listening to Toby Dawson, the American Olympian, or to Kim Bong Seok, "the little Korean boy with the ability to be an Olympian but with limited opportunities to do so?"

"Well," he answered, "to be honest, you are listening to both.

"I came here today," he went on to say, "to achieve two things.

"First, I want to honor my home country and its people -- my people. i want to return, in some small measure, the good fortune that I've receive in my life from sport.

"Second, I want to speak for future generations in Korea and beyond. I ask you to give them the same chance that I received when I moved to America in 1981 -- the chance to hope, the chance to participate, the chance to excel and the chance to succeed."

And he said a moment later, "I believe that there is no greater honor than representing one's country at the Olympic Games. It is my dream that every child, everywhere in the world, can hope for that possibility."

The 2018 race on Twitter

DURBAN, South Africa -- On the eve of the International Olympic Committee's vote for the 2018 Winter Games, with all three candidate cities searching for votes and claiming momentum, clarity can seem often seen elusive and facts few and far between. Two years of campaigning come to a close with the vote Wednesday. Pyeongchang, Munich and Annecy, France, will get 45 minutes to make presentations before the IOC members; 15 minutes of follow-on Q&A are allotted for each city.

The only thing that can ever be said about an IOC election is that it is wholly unpredictable. Anyone who predicted two years ago that Chicago would be booted in the first round of voting for the 2016 Summer Games with just 18 votes -- raise your hand, please.

Pyeongchang comes into the 2018 vote as the front-runner -- this the third Korean bid after coming up short for 2014 and 2010.

It increasingly appeared Tuesday that a majority of only 48 votes would be enough to win. The IOC roster numbers 110. Excused absences and other procedural rules have dropped the number of likely voters to 95, perhaps only 94.

In the 2003 vote for 2010, Pyeongchang led after the first round with 51 votes, followed by Vancouver with 40, and Salzburg with 16. In the next round, Vancouver won, 56-53.

In the 2007 vote for 2014, Pyeongchang led again in the first round, with 36 votes, followed by 34 for Sochi, and 25 for Salzburg. Sochi won, 51-47.

For emphasis, it must be stressed that the only votes that count are the ones that will be cast Wednesday; even so, with everyone looking for a way to assess momentum, here's a new prism:

Twitter.

If the election were on Twitter, statistics suggest, the Koreans would be runaway winners.

The statistics indicate that the Korean Twitter feed, which goes by the name "@2018PyeongChang," will have 5,452 followers by Wednesday, July 6, according to Twitter Counter. The Korean feed will be up an additional 136 followers Wednesday from Tuesday; 92 Tuesday from Monday; 260 Monday from Sunday; 841 Sunday from Saturday.

That's momentum -- a graph-line trending upward.

By comparison, the Annecy and Munich lines trend relatively flat.

Munich's account, "@Muenchen2018org," will be up two followers Wednesday, to 1,246.

Annecy's, "@annecy2018twitt," will be up three, to 360.

In an effort to compare apples to apples, "@Muenchen2018org" is the official German-language Munich 2018 account; the official English-language account, "@Munich2018bid," has 293 followers as of Wednesday.

The Annecy account, "@annecy2018twitt," is the official French-language account. It counts 363 followers, according to Twitter Counter.

There are, it must be noted, slight discrepancies in the numbers. Twitter Counter says "@Muenchen2018" has 1,246 followers; if you go to the "@Muenchen2018" page itself, however, it plainly says "@Muenchen2018org" has 1,273 followers.

It's not clear what accounts for the distinction, and whether in this instance 27 followers makes a difference.

Those who closely study social media will surely note that, as these things go, 5,452 followers is not all that many. Twitter Counter says Yuna Kim, the 2010 Vancouver figure skating gold medalist, will have 357,878 followers on Wednesday, when she is part of the Pyeongchang presentation to the IOC.

Even so, it's intriguing to see how the Pyeongchang account has moved upward over the past six months. It's a progression guaranteed to make for a case study in bids for 2020 and beyond.

Such statistically oriented study revolutionized American baseball, as the publication of the Michael Lewis book, "Moneyball," and the forthcoming movie of the same name starring Brad Pitt, have made clear. Similar stats-based work is now moving into Premier League soccer. Is the IOC bid game next?

A corollary question about the IOC bid process and its susceptibility to such metrics: The IOC now measures support for the Games in a bidding country by conducting public polling. Could Twitter supplement or one day supplant such polling?

Clearly, such Twitter-based analysis, at least in regards to the IOC, is in its very earliest days. It's not at all clear how statistically significant a sample 5,452 adds up to be.

That said -- it's a start.

As of Feb. 15, the day before the 2018 IOC evaluation commission arrived in Korea, the Pyeongchang Twitter feed had a mere 223 followers.

By the 19th, the day the commission left, it had jumped to 375.

The Pyeongchang feed continued to show a steady increase and then took a big leap at the so-called technical presentation in May, when the three bid cities showed off for the IOC members at a meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The meeting was held May 18.

The count right before the start of the meeting, on May 16: 1,248.

By May 19, the count: 2,918, up 134 percent in just three days.

Now -- 5,452.

Even if that's not 357,878, it's the case that 5,452 is a 2,445 percent increase from 223 in about six months.

Who wouldn't want that?

Track needs rivalries -- but now no Bolt v. Gay

Perhaps more than anything, track and field needs rivalries, and when Tyson Gay pulled himself out of the men's 100-meter dash Friday evening at the U.S. track and field championships in Eugene, Ore., it signaled yet another serious blow to the sport's effort to become anything but increasingly marginal. It is no fun to write such things.

Here's how much I like track and field: My wife and two daughters were out of town. The son was over at a friend's for the evening. I had the house all to myself. What did I do? I was one of precisely 3,067 people nationwide enduring the online live-stream of the field events while simultaneously checking the as-they-happened results from the sprints on another website -- which inexplicably were being held back for showing later on ESPN.

Earlier this month, after the Prefontaine Classic, I wrote a column that essentially said track was going nowhere fast in the United States. I proposed some suggestions for change. LetsRun.com, among others, linked to my column; the message boards there picked it up, one of the posters declaring I was an idiot.

Maybe. But that's why I have two dogs. They don't care.

Possibly, though, after more than 10 years of covering track and field, I have picked up a few things.

Like:

Unless and until someone else runs in the 9.6s, as Tyson Gay did, Usain Bolt stands alone in the sprints.

That's not healthy.

It's not healthy for Bolt and it's not healthy for track and field.

Obviously, Gay's problem is in fact his health -- now his hip. Frankly, he has had such a succession of injuries over the past few years that it's not clear, really, whether he can get it back together in time for the Olympics next year.

Where does that leave the state of the sport?

It's far from improbable that the Jamaicans take the top-three spots at the 100 at the world championships late this summer at Daegu, South Korea.

Good for Jamaica, maybe.

Good for track? Uh, no.

Again, the sport needs rivalries, and in particular in its marquee event, the men's 100.

None of the Americans is even within shouting distance of Bolt right now.

Walter Dix, who won the U.S. title on Friday in 9.94, is a really good sprinter, the bronze medalist in both the 100 and 200 in Beijing. His personal best in the 100 is 9.88; problem is, that's a full three-tenths of a second behind Bolt's world-record 9.58.

Michael Rodgers, the 2009 U.S. national champion, ran 9.99 Friday to earn the third U.S. slot at the 2011 worlds. His personal best is a 9.85, at the Pre three weeks ago.

The guy who finished second Friday in Eugene, Justin Gatlin, in 9.95, is of course the 2004 Olympic champion. He is back from a four-year doping ban.

Gatlin has every right to run. He has served his time.

But meet promoters in Europe have made it plain he's still not welcome there. And his appearance in Daegu, wearing red, white and blue with "USA" on it -- which, again, he has earned -- is guaranteed to spark a rash of stories in the feral British press and elsewhere that will a) compare his case with that of Dwain Chambers, b) with that of Marion Jones, c) rewind the Trevor Graham saga, and d) remind one and all that the U.S. track scene suffered for years from doping and wonder if the current crop of athletes, despite well-known advances in testing, can be said to be competing cleanly.

To the dismay of USA Track & Field, it will be no great surprise if one or more stories manages to wrap in e) all of the above.

Track needs to move out of precisely that morass.

Maybe Bolt can run even faster than 9.58.

But he doesn't seem in 2011 to be building toward a lightning strike the way he was in 2009 and 2008; his early-season times in those years were far more suggestive than this year's.

Beyond which -- he simply can not do everything for the sport all by himself. Nor should he be expected to do so.

He needs a rival.

Especially in the United States. Now, though, Bolt v. Gay, the sort of thing that might have gotten track onto the JumboTrons at football stadiums -- just the way Michael Phelps' swim races were shown on those big screens -- is gone for 2011.

It might even be gone for 2012.

And track and field is left to be -- what? Except for one week every four years at the Olympic Games, when it rocks, what then?

American Handball Arrives at a Place Called Hope

When David Thompson, who was in goal that night down in Guatemala City for the United States men's handball team, surveyed the scene playing out in front of him, he didn't just see a collection of guys and stories that even the most imaginative Hollywood scriptwriter might have trouble dreaming up. He saw hope.

He saw a U.S. men's handball team qualify for the Pan American Games for the first time since 2003 by routing Guatemala, 38-24, in the second match of a two-match play-in series. The Americans had tied with Uruguay, 23-23, the night before.

"This was special," the 31-year-old Thompson said, and when he's not tending goal for the U.S. team he knows special when he sees it. He's a Methodist pastor.

The U.S. men were forced to the play-in option after losing another would-be qualification match in December to Canada; the U.S. women punched their Pan Am ticket by beating Canada at that December event.

Suddenly, there are stirrings at U.S. handball, which has always seemed like the one Olympic sport Americans should be great at -- a mix of, among other things, lacrosse and basketball -- but for a mixture of complex reasons has never been much of an item on the U.S. sports radar, not even the Olympic sports scene.

Candidly, the United States is not going to win an Olympic medal in 2012.

Scratch that. All things are possible. Minister Thompson knows this to be the truth.

But let's be practical. For the Americans, it would be enough just to qualify.

Handball is a big deal elsewhere, and particularly in Europe. If the U.S. men in particular had not made it at least to the Pan Am Games, another three or four years would have gone by with probably yet more struggles, operationally and financially.

That's why what happened in Guatemala City earlier this month is so significant.

Especially since the American men broke through without their star player, Adam El Zoghby. He tore his ACL in December, playing against Canada. El Zoghby, born in New York, played in 130 international matches from 2000 through 2008 for Egypt; in 2009, he decided to play for the Americans.

Without him, everyone else had to step up.

What a crew.

"For us," Thompson said, "it has been, well -- there's been a lot of change. The last time we were in the Pan Am Games was in 2003. There were all of three players in Guatemala who were on that team."

Those three:

The two goalies, Thompson and Danny Caparelli. And Gary Hines, consistently one of the team's leading scorers.

Because of the 23-23 tie with Uruguay, the Americans either had to beat Guatemala by nine goals or win by eight and score more than 21. Uruguay had defeated Guatemala 20-12 in their first match.

Hines scored seven.

As he looked out from goal, Thompson could see the 22-year-old guy who had once played on a first-division team from Argentina and who, as things had turned out, had come with his brother to Park City, Utah, to work at a ski resort on his summer break. Guillermo Acevedo scored twice that night.

Here, too, was the 18-year-old from Germany who was born in Kentucky who speaks maybe not such great English but was running the offense from the start of the game like a veteran. "I'm a really proud mom, proud he has the opportunity to be a part of the USA team handball team," Mike Williams' mother, Ceyda, said.

Here, too, was the guy who was born and raised in Sweden who now lives in Norway and works the graveyard shift doing finance work so he can play handball during the days; he scored 11 that night. Martin Clemons Axelsson, whose father is from West Virginia, said, "I can just say from my 22 years playing handball … this was one of the highlights of my career, definitely."

Thompson, incidentally, who usually backs up Caparelli, got the start against Guatemala. By all accounts, he put on a goal-tending clinic.

The obvious way into the Olympics would be for the Americans to win the Pan Ams, in October in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Steady, now. The Americans have to prove they can beat not only Canada but, especially, Argentina.

In the rounds at the 2011 world championships, Argentina defeated Sweden; the Swedes went on to finish fourth. France won the worlds; earlier this month, in an international friendly, the French beat the Argentinians by only five, 35-30.

The 2003 U.S. Pan Ams team finished third. If the 2011 U.S. edition were to finish as high as second or third, there's yet another potential way into the Olympics -- a qualifying tourney next spring in Europe.

"There's definitely hope," Thompson said, and for the American handball program that is absolutely notable. "I think that's what we have. We have hope."

No bum story: Sarah Groff's breakthrough

Six months ago, Sarah Groff could barely walk. This past weekend, she raced to the bronze medal in Kitzbuhel, Austria, the first-ever podium finish for an American woman in the International Triathon Union's world championship series.

When you know the back story of what mental toughness it took to make that breakthrough, it's all the more incredible -- and why she has to once again be considered a real contender to make the U.S. team for the 2012 Games.

This is mental toughness of the sort it takes first to endure. Then to understand who you are. Then, ultimately, to prevail.

Sarah grew up in New England. She went to Middlebury College, where she was not only an All-American swimmer but double-majored in conservation biology and art -- how's that for a combo? -- and graduated cum laude. In 2008 she was ranked No. 4 in the world in triathlon.

In March of 2010, at her training base in Australia, Sarah fractured her sacrum in what didn't seem like much of a fall from her bike but turned out to be, well, a big deal.

There are maybe two ways to describe what she had broken. There's the polite way: the sacrum is that triangle-shaped bone at the base of the spine. Then there's, like, what you'd say in real life, and what she herself posted in a cartoon on her blog, using the English and Australian variation on the word. She had a broken bum.

But being an over-achiever, Sarah didn't really feel much like slowing down.

So she didn't. Even though, as she now says, "I was miserable." The year 2010, she said, "chewed me up and spit me out."

Classic story.

By the end of the year, things seemed to be getting better. So Sarah and some training mates headed to Kenya, to a high-altitude training camp in a little town called Eldoret.

It's a base known the world over in running and triathlon circles because of Kip Keino, a middle-distance running pioneer and multiple Olympic medalist from the 1960s and '70s who is now an International Olympic Committee member.

A couple days in, on another bike ride, a wheel slipped. Sarah took another fall. "A nothing fall," Sarah said.

Except it wasn't.

Within a few days, she couldn't run.

What she could do, however, was spasm. Involuntarily. Her legs would just start shaking.

Of course she had no idea what was going on. And no easy way to find out. Eldoret is a long way from anywhere. It's in western Kenya and thus even a long way from Nairobi, the Kenyan capital.

Sarah decided the smart thing would be to head home and find out what was going on.

The international flights out of Nairobi operate overnight. Sarah was stuffed into economy class. Carrying a backpack that was too heavy.

She flew to London like that. Then she flew back to Colorado Springs, to the U.S. Olympic Training Center. There she underwent an MRI.

Three guesses what it showed.

Her sacrum was fractured -- and in the exact same spot.

For emphasis now -- imagine flying overnight out of Africa, with a broken bone in your butt, stuffed into a tourist-class seat, your legs given to spasm, not knowing why. For added emphasis -- you're in pain.

Literally, she had to learn to walk again.

And, after that, to run again. Her mind had to accept that it was okay for her feet and joints and pelvis to accept the shock and pounding of running, of hitting the ground again.

Which is where the best part of the Kenya trip came in handy. In Eldoret, she and her coach, Darren Smith, who is Australian, met another Australian coach, Rob Higley, whose life quest has been for the perfect human running model and who has been a presence in Kenyan running circles for many years now.

"Trust me, I'm a long way off," Sarah said with a laugh, referring to her running form and meaning from perfection. "But at least my pelvis is stable!"

The Kitzbuhel race, Sarah said, was -- well, it was fun. That's what happens when you're healthy and fit. For most of the race, she said, it felt like she was "playing triathlon with a whole bunch of girls from around the world," and during the run, when triathlons increasingly are won and lost, "I was just thinking about maintaining good technique and focusing on every second.

"When the last two girls surged on me with a lap to go," Sarah said, "that's when it wasn't easy anymore. I hadn't been in that position before. That's going to be the next level.

Paula Findlay of Canada won the event, in 2 hours, 5 minutes, 52 seconds over the Olympic-distance course. Helen Jenkins of Great Britain took second, four seconds back. Sarah finished in 2:06.27.

Laura Bennett of Boulder, Colo., finished sixth, in 2:06.44. The Kitzbuhel event marked the first time two American women finished in the top-six of a WCS event in the history of the three-year-old series.

Thirteen months now until London, and the Olympics.

"Between now and then I am just trying to stay healthy," Sarah said, and in this instance that's all the more reasonable, "and become a better triathlete every day."