Straight talk about wrestling's future

Finally -- some straight talk about why the International Olympic Committee moved to kick wrestling out of the Summer Games in 2020, and  what to do about it. All you have to do, it seems, is tune in to radio station KCJJ, "The Mighty 1630," in Coralville, Iowa.

The Mighty 1630 would be all of 10,000 watts beaming out to Coralville, Iowa City and the rest of eastern Iowa, and earlier this week you could have heard Terry Brands, the associate head coach of the University of Iowa wrestling team and a 2000 Sydney Games bronze medalist in the sport, tell you in plain terms what happened and what needs to be done now.

FILA, the sport’s international governing body, was asleep at the switch, he said.

The IOC had been sending it signals for years that it "perceives us as different from how we perceive ourselves" but that message "went unheeded," with the result that the IOC executive board moved two weeks ago to remove wrestling from the list of 25 "core" sports on the 2020 Summer Games program.

What needs to happen going forward, he said, in the wake of leadership change at the top of FILA -- president Raphael Martinetti, a Swiss businessman, out in favor of acting president Nenad Lalovic of Serbia -- is elemental.

It's called lobbying. It's relationship-building. It's what FILA should have been doing all along.

All with the aim of getting wrestling included on the list of sports the IOC general assembly can review in September in Buenos Aires. The IOC board will draw up the list at its next meeting, in May in St. Petersburg, Russia. It's unclear how many sports the board will put forward for September review; the current odds favor three, with wrestling competing with the likes of squash, karate, sport climbing and a combined bid from baseball and softball.

There's room for just one more sport on the 2020 program -- if, and that's a big if, the IOC decides to include one more sport. The number, including golf and rugby, now stands at 27. By rule, the maximum number for any Summer Games is 28.

"If I'm a FILA rep," Brands said, "then I'm going to go out and I'm going to have dinner with people and I'm going to listen to them and I'm going to act like I care. Because I do care.

"Because that's what my job is. It's not about acting any more. I mean, are we with FILA because we want to have a status symbol or a resume booster? Or are we with FILA because we actually give a crap about wrestling?"

Truly, this is the fundamental question.

With some key exceptions, much of the outcry in the United States over the IOC’s move to exclude wrestling from the program core has been – as the saying goes – preaching to the choir.

It has been wrestling proponents talking to each other, most acting like the guy on the football team who didn’t see the crackback block coming.

For those feeling blindsided, Terry Brands has crystalized your question.

The course of action is also super-evident, at least at the IOC level – which means that, if the answer to his question is in the affirmative, everything said and done ought to be directed toward one goal:

It’s all about winning votes.

Understand, though, that the IOC plays by its rules. That’s the way it is.

That does not – repeat, not – mean the IOC is corrupt or venal. It means there’s a process, and it’s helpful to understand both context and process.

To begin:

Most talk since the IOC action has focused on how wrestling is a sport that is practiced the world over, with proponents noting there are 177 member nations of FILA.

But the numbers in the report that formed the basis of the IOC action also tell a different story.

The London 2012 Games welcomed 205 national Olympic committees. The wrestling competition included 71, or only 34.6 percent. Does that seem, to use the IOC’s phraseology, “universal”?

There are 12 African IOC members. In London, there was one African wrestling medalist. What is the African interest come September in seeing wrestling in the 2020 Games?

There are 10 IOC members from South or Latin American nations; their wrestlers won two medals last summer. Same question.

Of the 71 nations competing in London, wrestlers from 29 won medals.

By far the most medals went to European nations – 12 men and four women.

There are currently 101 members of the International Olympic Committee; the IOC is traditionally Eurocentric; 43 members are European.

Right now one of the moves within the broader Olympic movement is to establish or grow continental Games; the first European Games are scheduled for 2015. Yet Around the Rings, an Olympic newsletter, reported last week that wrestling officials had inexplicably not returned multiple calls to discuss being included in those 2015 Games.

The head of the European Olympic Committees? Patrick Hickey of Ireland. He also sits on the IOC executive board. He was quoted as saying he found the situation “exasperating.”

It’s little wonder that Jim Scherr, the former USOC chief executive -- and former executive director of USA Wrestling -- acknowledged in a conference call Thursday with reporters the sport now faces a "major challenge" in regaining its place for 2020 and beyond.

At the same time, he said, "It is a tremendous opportunity to make a real and lasting change for the future of the sport."

Wrestling, he said, needs to simplify rules, enhance the sport's presentation and create a better media model and sponsorship platform. It also, he said, needs to be a better member of the so-called Olympic family, which goes back to the person-to-person thing that Brands identified, as well as a broader understanding of what works in the IOC and what doesn't.

Here, though, is where things can get tricky. It takes relationships. It takes experience.

Candidly, it's not certain whether a hurry-up effort -- being pieced together on the fly with the aim of getting a job done by September after a February wake-up call -- is going to be enough.

It’s also not clear how some of the published responses in U.S. newspapers are going to play come September. Memories in the IOC can be vivid.

The Washington Post published an op-ed by Donald Rumsfeld, who served as U.S. secretary of defense for President George W. Bush, urging the IOC to reconsider, Rumsfeld saying he learned many life lessons as a high school and college wrestler.

In the Eurocentric IOC, reference to President Bush almost inevitably leads to mention of the U.S.-wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Who prosecuted those wars as secretary of defense? Rumsfeld, of course, who began the piece by attacking the IOC, saying it had in recent years “drawn fire for its lack of transparency,” later saying wrestling called to mind traditional values “rather than the arts festival and Kumbaya session that some may prefer the modern Games to be.”

If the former secretary was trying to win votes – what, exactly, was his strategy?

The Los Angeles Times published an op-ed praising the potential of relationship-building after American wrestlers were among those taking part recently in an event in Iran called the World Cup.

The article described Americans walking the streets of Tehran “not as people from the ‘Great Satan’ but as comrades in the union of athletes.” Awesome, right?

Wrestling is very big in Iran. Last summer in London, Iranian wrestlers won six medals; that was tied for third-best at the 2012 Games, along with Japan and Georgia. Azerbaijan won seven. Russia topped the medals table with 11.

Asked at the end of Thursday's call if there might now be plans for a USA vs. Iran match in the works like last year's pre-London Games USA vs. Russia freestyle headliner in Times Square, the current executive director of USA Wrestling, Rich Bender, cautioned that any such notion was "premature" but allowed, "There are some large-scale plans and ideas that can showcase our sport."

Certainly, sport can sometimes open doors diplomacy can't.

But, again, it’s votes, votes, votes. There aren't any Iranian members of the IOC.

Amid any high-fives over the Iranians' seemingly gracious welcome to the Americans, did anyone bother to wonder what would happen if an Iranian wrestler was at the Olympics and, say, drew an Israeli. What then?

The Iranians’ ongoing refusal to engage Israeli athletes on the field of play, citing all manner of excuses, has been a contentious point of intolerance for years now. Are the Iranians suddenly good partners for a campaign of purported fraternity and goodwill?

Just imagine a match like last year’s, but this time with Iranian wrestlers, and again in New York – home to the second-largest Jewish population in the world.

As for Japan -- there is only one Japanese member of the IOC, Tsunekazu Takeda, and he became a member only last year. Moreover, he is the president of the Tokyo 2020 Summer Games bid. How much time and energy does he have in each and every day to devote to Tokyo 2020 -- which would be worth billions of dollars to his country -- and then to wrestling?

There are no Azerbaijani nor Georgian members.

The United States used to win a lot of medals in wrestling. No more. The Americans won four medals in London, out of 104. That's two percent of the medal total.

If you were in business, how much time and energy would you devote to something that was worth two percent of what you did?

Even so, it's probably worth it to the U.S. Olympic Committee to do more; chief executive Scott Blackmun and board chairman Larry Probst know full well they are in the relationship business, and for them wrestlers have undeniably proven a vocal constituency.

That said, this would seem to be a play the USOC would make in support of or in concert with the Russians, and their three IOC members. Those 11 medals made up 13 percent of the Russians’ 82 total in London, which is why President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said last week Russia would work with the IOC at "all possible levels" to keep wrestling in the Games.

There's also the strategy that Terry Brands suggested on The Mighty 1630.

"I would," he said, "start with prayers."

Mustache party: historic bronze for U.S. Nordic combined team

Anchored by Billy Demong, the fan favorite from the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, the U.S. Nordic combined team raced Sunday to a history-making bronze in the relay at the 2013 world championships at Predazzo, Italy. The third-place finish made for the first-ever U.S. team world championships medal in Nordic combined. The best prior world championships result? Fourth, in 1995.

Of course, the U.S. men took silver in the relay at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

The bronze Sunday came as U.S. women -- Kikkan Randall and Jesse Diggins -- won gold in the team sprint at the 2013 worlds. That made for the first world championships gold medal the U.S. cross-country team has won, ever; the only Olympic medal the U.S. cross-country team has won dates to 1976, Bill Koch's silver in the 30-kilometer event.

For those who believe third is just two lonely places away from first, Sunday's bronze serves as an important reference beyond its place in history. It gives renewed legitimacy to prospects the U.S. Nordic team might -- might -- be able to recapture the magic of its breakout performance in Vancouver.

Candidly, and everyone in the United States associated with a sport like Nordic combined will acknowledge it, as satisfying as a bronze medal at the world championships is, and it is, what matters is the Olympic Games. That's when America pays attention.

That's why what happened in Vancouver was so big. Demong won individual gold (on the large hill), Johnny Spillane two silvers (the large and normal hill) and then there was the relay silver. For years and years, Demong, Spillane, Todd Lodwick and Brett Camerota had put in the work; U.S. Ski Team officials had launched a plan for medals in 1996, and never wavered. Vancouver brought the payoff.

The night he won gold, Demong proposed to his longtime girlfriend, Katie Koczynski. Then he was chosen to carry the U.S. flag in the closing ceremonies.

Heady stuff for a Nordic combined guy, for an athlete from an American program that before Vancouver had never, ever won an Olympic medal of any sort.

Now Billy and Katie are the parents of 2-year-old Liam.

Now Billy is 32; he'll be 33 next month.  Lodwick, who skied Sunday's third leg, is 36; he will be 37 in November.

Now, too, the program has seen the emergence of the Fletcher brothers, Taylor and Bryan, who -- like Lodwick and Spillane -- are from Steamboat Springs, Colo. Demong -- originally from the area around Lake Placid, N.Y. -- now calls Park City, Utah, home.

Bryan, now 26, was named the FIS Nordic combined athlete of the week at the end of the 2012 season, after his victory at the World Cup finale at Holmenkollen in Oslo, Norway.

Taylor, 22, won the same award last month for his fifth- and third-place finishes -- his first career podium -- in Seefeld, Austria.

Taylor might well be the fastest skier on the circuit, testament to his own talent and U.S. coach Dave Jarrett's training program, which calls for repeated blocks of intensity workouts.

What has been the sticking point -- as the U.S. team builds toward Sochi -- is not the skiing.

It has been the jumping.

On Sunday, the Americans got a big break.

Taylor Fletcher got a wind-based re-start. Essentially, he got a do-over on his jump. His first jump? 79 meters. The second try? 93 meters. Big difference.

With that, the Americans started the skiing in fifth, about a minute behind the best-jumping Japanese. Taylor Fletcher skied first, Bryan next. Bryan moved to second early in his leg, then tagged to Lodwick in third, 23.3 seconds behind Austria.

Lodwick tagged to Demong with the U.S. a close fourth.

Early in his anchor leg, Demong surged to the lead, ahead of Japan, France, Norway and Austria. With under two kilometers to go, he still held the lead, followed by Norway's Magnus Moan and France's Jason Lamy Chappuis.

Those two attacked on the final climb. Demong fell back.

Lamy Chappuis broke to the finish, crossing four-tenths of a second ahead of Moan. Demong held off Japan's Yusuke Minato and Austria's Mario Stecher; Demong finished 4.2 seconds back of first.

"Honestly, going into the last leg I had a goal to just ski a smart race and not lead it all," Demong said. "I ended up leading almost the whole thing.

"In the end I was a little unsure if the other guys were really going to be fresh, and coming down the last hill, I’m like, 'Don’t look back, you don’t want to know. Just keep chasing Magnus and Jason.’ So I think it was really a relief to come within five meters of the finish line and just glance and say, 'OK, yeah, we’ve got this.' "

All four guys wore U.S. flag mustaches -- a team-bonding thing. They had agreed Saturday night they would do it, and the mustaches were the talk of the news conferences afterward.

Maybe it'll be a trend for Sochi 2014.

"We came in this knowing that we were going to be close for the cross country, knowing the jumping had put ourselves in position," Taylor Fletcher said.

"We don’t come to this competition to lose so we did our best to fight for the podium and fight for the victory. I give it up to our staff, teammates, coaches and, of course," he said, "the mustache was the deciding factor in this."

U.S. wins first-ever cross-country ski gold

Kikkan Randall and Jesse Diggins, racing Sunday with quiet confidence, won the team sprint at the 2013 world championships in Val de Fiemme, Italy, the first-ever gold medal for the United States in cross-country skiing. Again, and for emphasis -- the first-ever American world championships gold in cross-country skiing.

Randall and Diggins actually won big, by 7.8 seconds over Sweden's Charlotte Kalla and Ida Ingemarsdotter, women -- and good friends -- the Americans trained with over the summer.

Finland's Riikka Sarasoja-Lilja and Krista Lahteenmaki finished third, 10.95 seconds back.

"It feels incredible," Randall said afterward, adding, "This is something we have looked forward to for a long time. This is my seventh world championships. I've had to spend a lot of time watching awards ceremonies. So we're pretty excited to do it -- in a team event, especially -- and finally get the U.S. on the podium."

Randall and Diggins make for an intriguing pairing.

Randall is 30, from up in Alaska and, as she said, has been around. The 2014 Sochi Games will be her fourth. She has methodically built her way up to become one of the world's best sprint skiers; last season she won the World Cup sprint title, a first for an American woman.

In Sochi, incidentally, the sprint will be run as a freestyle race, which plays to Randall's strength. She took silver in the individual freestyle sprint at the world championships in the Czech Republic in 2009.

The team sprint was freestyle on Sunday in Val di Fiemme; in Sochi, it will switch to classic.

Diggins, meanwhile, is 21, from Minnesota. She's not awed by any of this big-time stuff. Indeed, in the  news conference after the victory, she said of the Swedes, "This is weird. I still have pictures of these guys up on my wall. They probably don't know that."

Randall and Diggins made it plain that they were for real when they won Dec. 7 in Quebec City. That victory was the first-ever U.S. World Cup team event win.

The Swedes were thought by many to be Sunday's pre-race favorites.

The Americans thought differently.

The plan, which Randall and Diggins and their coaches set out, was to be aggressively conservative.

That is not an oxymoron.

Both women have a strong finish -- a strong kick, just like in track and field -- if there's something left in the tank.

The trick would be to stay in close contact with the race leaders through the first two legs. Then it would be go time.

Diggins skied the third, and decisive, leg. It was here that she broke the Swedes and the Finns -- and, on a steep climb, one of her own poles, too.

As luck would have it, a U.S. coach, Erik Flora, sprinted down the track to give Diggins another pole. She didn't even lose momentum.

All Randall had to do in that final leg, to control the race, was ski under control.

"That was so incredible, just seeing that clean snow in front of me and crossing the line," Randall said. "I tried to be stoic and stand up for a while but my legs were pretty dead. That moment when your teammate comes running out and it starts to sink in that you’re world champions -- it’s incredible."

Diggins said, "We both knew that if everything came together just right and we skied really good we had the chance of a medal, but it’s sprint racing, things happen. Your poles come off. People step on your poles. It all came together anyways and that’s a really cool feeling to be able to share with our whole team."

Sarah Hendrickson's Italian fairy-tale victory

Sarah Hendrickson's victory Friday at the ski jumping world championships made for an emotional victory high in the Italian mountains that seemed like something even a Hollywood scriptwriter might not offer up for fear it would seem, well, not real. But it really happened.

Hendrickson is just 18. She out-jumped Japan's Sara Takanashi in a thrilling duel to win the 2013 worlds.

On the jumps in the narrow Italian valley where her coach grew up. The jumps the coach's father helped build. At the championships the coach's mother was so excited to have here -- except that she passed away, unexpectedly, just a couple weeks ago.

So Sarah went out and won the contest -- for herself, of course, and her mom, dad and brother, who were there watching, and the entire U.S. team, cheering her on, and of course, her coach, Paolo Bernardi, who as it happens is one of the world's nicest guys and, obviously, a first-rate coach.

Jessica Jerome of the United States finished sixth.

Five jumpers, including Jerome, hit jumps of 100 meters or longer, and what was abundantly plain Friday -- this could have been seen two years ago at the world championships in Oslo but for many got lost that day in the fog -- was that women's ski jumping doesn't have to prove anything to anyone any more.

It's just one more winter-sports discipline, with depth and talent. The big fight before the Vancouver Games over whether it belongs -- that's yesterday's news. Next February in Sochi, it will make its Olympic debut.

What that means is there are already better stories in women's ski jumping than the issue of ski jumping itself.

Among them: Sarah Hendrickson. Sara Takanashi. And Paolo Bernardi.

Hendrickson's victory makes for the second significant U.S. teen victory in just a few days at a winter world championship. Mikaela Shiffrin, 17, won the slalom title at the alpine world championships last week in Austria.

Sarah Hendrickson is from Park City, Utah. She grew up on the 2002 Olympic jumps there. She is the 2012 World Cup season champion.

Sara Takanashi is already the 2013 World Cup season winner; she clinched that title last weekend in Slovenia.

Bernardi is from Predazzo, Italy. That's the little spot where the ski jumping potion of the Nordic world championships is being held this week -- on the very ramps his dad literally helped construct.

Three years ago, at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, Bernardi was a ski tech for the U.S. Nordic combined team. What that means, in plain English, is that he waxed skis. That was his job.

It happened after Vancouver that he was hired to become the U.S. women's ski jumping coach. He has not only helped develop their ski jump talent, he has developed a culture within the team of trust and confidence.

Because Predazzo is home, Predazzo has become something of a second home for the U.S. team. They go there to train. They know the hill. They like the hill. At last year's World Cup, a two-day event, Hendrickson won both days -- and on the second jump on second day, she jumped way out there, 108 meters.

Last month, as the women's tour was in Japan, Bernardi's mother, Gina, passed away.

He left the tour and -- this is how it is -- some foreign-tour coaches stepped in to help the U.S. athletes. He rejoined the team at the stop in Ljubno, Slovenia.

Before her first jump Friday, even though she knew the hill well, Hendrickson would say afterward, "My heart was beating and everything was shaking."

Why? Probably because it was the worlds. And because Takanashi had whomped the field in Ljubno and that coming into the worlds she -- Hendrickson -- "definitely had doubts."

Then it all settled down and, on her first jump, she rocked it for 106 meters.

Takanashi jumped 104.5.

"The first jump is important for me mentally," Hendrickson said. "If I have a good first jump, I know I can have a good second jump. If I have a hard first jump, sometimes I mentally shut it down, so it was really important for me."

On their second jump, both went 103.  "I had to stay strong and do my jump regardless of what the results were after the first round," Hendrickson said.

With style points, Takanashi finished at 251.

Hendrickson -- 253.7.

Jacqueline Seifriedsberger of Austria took third, with 237.2.

"This is hometown for Paolo -- born and raised," Hendrickson said. "His dad built these ski jumps. I've had an amazing relationship for the past two years he's been coaching. To share this with him in his hometown is awesome. No words need to be exchanged. Just hugs and happiness."

"When we all went out to celebrate with Sarah, we were pretty much all crying." Jerome said. "I think that as a team we do really, really well together."

There's a traditional champagne toast in the U.S. team hotel after a gold medal. At the one late Friday, Paolo Bernardi took note of everything, his dad, his mom, the jumps, what Sarah Hendrickson had done, and then he said it was the most important day of his life.

And then he popped the champagne.

It happened, really, just like that.

Lindsey Vonn makes like the Terminator: I'll be back

Lindsey Vonn, two or so weeks after ripping her right knee up in a gruesome fall at alpine skiing's world championships, said Friday she has no doubt she will be back for the Sochi 2014 Olympics. It's a race against time, one that positions Vonn, the 2010 Vancouver Games downhill champion, winner of 59 World Cup races and four World Cup overall titles, not just as an underdog but as the comeback story of the 2014 Games.

She made it plain Friday in a conference call with a group of selected reporters that it's a race she intends -- as usual -- to win.

"It all depends on me," she said. "I have to work hard and take my time and do it right. I can guarantee I will do that."

Vonn, 28, tore the anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments and broke a lower leg bone during the super-G, the first race run at the 2013 worlds in Schladming, Austria.

She was critical Friday of race organizers. Fog, snow and clouds had made course conditions extraordinarily variable the day of Feb. 5, leaving athletes, coaches and staff unsettled for hours, wondering, obviously, was the race going to be run, or not?

Finally, the race was a go -- but, as Vonn noted, she had no idea what the snow itself was going to be like. Instead of being packed icy-hard the way it should be, it was "too soft," she said, "broken down," and when she flew too far off a jump, she hit a patch of loose snow, her right knee buckled and -- that was that.

As she was lying there in the snow, in pain, she recounted Friday, she told Alex Hoedlmoser, the U.S. women's alpine head coach, "They should stop the race right there."

They did not. Ultimately, however, the race was delayed 14 times due to the weather and called after 36 skiers. Tina Maze of Slovenia won, with Lara Gut of Switzerland second and American Julia Mancuso third.

Vonn flew back to the United States and, on Feb. 10, underwent surgery, performed at the Vail Valley Surgery Center by Dr. William Sterett.

It went, she said as expected -- the major issue the ACL. The MCL and bone break are, by comparison, relatively minor concerns.

If all goes well, Vonn added, she expects to be back on skis by November.

November? With the Olympics in February?

Perhaps, she said, a little sooner. Then again, maybe a little later.

Later?

Not to worry, Vonn said:

"I'm not extremely concerned when I'm going to be back. I just want to make sure that when I do get back my knee is 100 percent. It doesn't take a lot of training for me to be ready to race again."

She noted that knee injuries are something of a fact of life in alpine skiing and that she has taken comfort in seeing others -- in particular her very good friend, Germany's Maria Höfl-Riesch, winner of two golds in Vancouver, the 2011 World Cup season overall champion -- come back from knee injuries.

Höfl-Riesch told the Associated Press Friday in Meribel, France, that she is making plans to come visit Vonn after the World Cup season ends and expects Lindsey to come back strong:

"She's totally motivated, and I also know from my own [experience] that it's not so easy after injury to get full gas again. But I'm sure Lindsey's so strong she can get this feeling and the risk back pretty soon. Maybe at the beginning the first time on skis it will be difficult for her, too. But not for a long time."

Picabo Street, one of Vonn's childhood idols, busted up her knee in December 1996, then came back to win the super-G at the Nagano Games in February 1998. So, absolutely, it can be done.

"Picabo is definitely a great example of that," Lindsey Vonn said Friday. "As I said, I have no doubt I will be back and be able to ski the same if not better than I did before."

No surprise: Armstrong doesn't talk with USADA

Lance Armstrong declined Wednesday to tell what he knows about doping in cycling to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. Because here is the critical part. USADA would have had him talk under oath.

So, really, who is surprised?

Armstrong faces potential criminal and civil exposure. No way he was going to talk -- at least not while the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth could be used against him.

Intriguingly, Armstrong -- who sought in his televised interview with Oprah Winfrey to appear at least a little bit humble, a little bit contrite -- seemed through his lawyer, Tim Herman, to revert Wednesday right back to the sort of language that had for years come to characterize his position in dealing with the anti-doping authorities, the press and virtually anyone who challenged him.

Herman's statement started off by saying:

"Lance is willing to cooperate fully and has been very clear: He will be the first man through the door, and once inside will answer every question, at an international tribunal formed to comprehensively address pro cycling, an almost exclusively European sport."

Lance willing to cooperate fully? That would appear so commendable, right?

If only it didn't also seem so disingenuous.

For years, Armstrong kept his doping and bullying secret. Now, though, he would now be willing to tell all? Conveniently, he would be doing so at an international tribunal, likely offshore, where the reach of American law would not extend -- and those comments presumably would not be used against him in the same way as if they were made, under oath, back home.

In that way he would be the "first man through the door" and answering "every question"?

Just one further issue.

There is no such international tribunal. None exists. Maybe one will one day or maybe one won't.

It's hard to know, given the complex relationships among cycling's governing body, the UCI -- for which Armstrong has said he currently has little love, given the way it dropped him last fall -- along with the World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Olympic Committee.

So, again, what was this about?

And why the reference to cycling being a European sport? Why bring that up? Simply to play to what remains of Lance's American audience? Or -- to whom?

"We remain hopeful," the statement goes on to say, "that an international effort will be mounted, and we will do everything we can to facilitate that result. In the meantime, for several reasons, Lance will not participate in USADA's efforts to selectively conduct American prosecutions that only demonize selected individuals while failing to address the 95% of the sport over which USADA has no jurisdiction."

Demonize? Selected individuals?

To whom could those words be referring? Lance, obviously, right?

USADA's aim, of course, is full disclosure. It wants to know what he knows. That's just common sense. Wouldn't Armstrong stand to know as much as anyone about how to dope, and get away with it?

Plus, if ever there was a time to get him to talk, now would be it. Armstrong has finally been unveiled as a serial cheater. He has been stripped of his seven Tour de France titles.

Moreover, WADA told Armstrong that coming in to talk to USADA was the appropriate thing to do if, as USADA chief executive Travis Tygart put it in a statement of his own Wednesday, "he ever wanted to be part of the solution."

Now, though, look at it from Armstrong's point of view. What did he have to gain from talking with USADA?

In October, in making public the scope and extent of Armstrong's cheating, calling it the "most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program the sport has ever seen," USADA imposed on Armstrong a lifetime ban.

Armstrong, 41, wants to run in sanctioned triathlons. Cooperation with USADA might -- that's might -- get that life ban reduced to an eight-year ban. That means he'd be almost 50.

For someone used to being in control, used to dictating the terms of how the deal is going to go down, it's hardly surprising Armstrong decided in the end not to talk.

"At this time," Tygart said in his statement, "we are moving forward with our investigation without him and we will continue to work closely with WADA and other appropriate and responsible international authorities …"

That's not surprising, either. This matter is a long, long way from over.

USOC's 2024 triple-play bid-city letter

Finally, a U.S. Olympic bid process that, from the outset, takes the long, strong view. It only makes sense.

The two people in charge of the U.S. Olympic Committee -- chairman Larry Probst and chief executive officer Scott Blackmun -- are themselves typically calm and deliberate. But also thoroughly in charge. So it only makes logical sense to see them working this way through the early stages of what might be an American bid for the 2024 Summer Games.

The USOC on Tuesday sent out a letter to the mayors of 35 cities that purports to gauge interest in each and any of their towns in making a 2024 bid.

The letter is a triple play.

It is, on one level, genuinely what it purports to be.

It's also a clever marketing and public-relations device that simultaneously buys time.

It keeps the notion alive in places like Tulsa or Minneapolis that the Summer Olympics might, just might, happen there in 2024. Which makes the USOC look really, really good in places like Tulsa or Minneapolis and everywhere else around the United States, which is really, really good for the USOC.

Never say never but -- let's be honest. The odds are long indeed of the Summer Games happening in Tulsa, Minneapolis or anywhere on that list but a handful of cities -- most likely San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York.

Chicago. the U.S. bid city in 2009 for 2016, would make anyone's short list as well, of course. But Chicago is not interested, the mayor's spokeswoman said Tuesday, according to the Chicago Tribune.

To win the Summer Games, it takes a combination of factors. It takes, for instance, name value. It takes resource. It takes the story that will convince the International Olympic Committee.

The USOC doesn't have to decide anything right now. The International Olympic Committee's deadline for applying isn't until 2015; the 2020 vote isn't until 2017. More to the point, the IOC vote for 2020 is this September, and that gives the USOC time enough to graciously let the good people in Indianapolis, Baltimore, Rochester, Charlotte, Philadelphia, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Seattle, Columbus and more down gently.

New Orleans -- which just hosted the Super Bowl -- is not on the list of 35. The USOC made it plain, however, the list is not exclusive nor exhaustive; officials said they would be glad to talk 2024 with any reasonable party in the 50 states.

Note that while the USOC had previously expressed interest in exploring opportunities for both the 2024 Summer and 2026 Winter Games, and that while those more interested in the 2026 Winter Games might say this letter merely is going out now because the 2024 deadlines are first -- that is probably not the case.

The better bet is 2024. That has been clear since the USOC and IOC last year resolved their differences over a longstanding revenue dispute over marketing and broadcast shares, a deal that essentially cleared the way for the USOC to again begin considering Olympic bids.

The USOC letter inviting 2024 interest spells out some of the basic requirements for hosting a Games: 45,000 hotel rooms, an international airport, an Olympic village that sleeps 16,500 and has a 5,000-person dining hall, a workforce of up to 200,000 and more.

It does not -- repeat, not -- touch on the sensitive issue of the government guarantee the IOC  demands from all bidders, a huge challenge for any U.S. bid given the complexities of the American local-state-federal private-public way. That's for way down the road.

Instead, it does broadly sketch out, albeit unmistakably and unequivocally, and to the USOC's credit, that the USOC is in charge.

"Our objective in this process," the letter says, "is to identify a partner city that can work with us to present a compelling bid to the IOC and that has the right alignment of political, business and community leadership.

"We are seeking a partner that understands the value of the Olympic Games and the legacy that can be created not only for their community, but for our country."

Translation:

The USOC is seeking a partner that understands, fully and completely, that this is an Olympic bid campaign. This is not a campaign for school board, City Hall or even the U.S. Senate. There is nothing remotely like it in American politics.

In this niche, the USOC is the Olympic entity -- by order of Congress -- in the United States. If you, Mr. or Ms. Mayor, would like to play in the Olympic space, be crystal clear going in you will do so as the junior partner.

Politicians like credit and glory. There will be lots of credit and glory to go around if the bid wins. It may seem elemental but a bid wins by swaying votes within the IOC. There, success or failure truly rests with the USOC.

Also understand this: the United States has never put forward a truly national Olympic bid.

Such a bid holds the potential to be enormously powerful.

It's why, among other reasons, the USOC is taking its time now for 2024. Because it can.

"Now more than ever, we need to use the power of the Olympic and Paralympic Games to encourage our youth to be active and engaged in sport," the letter says.

That right there is a tagline, and it would be shocking, indeed, if that line, in some form, doesn't show up in one of the bid-city videos in the summer of 2017.  Whatever city it is.

U.S. Ski Team: on its game

There once was a time when the Europeans scoffed at the U.S. Ski Team. The Americans have the icy low hills back east and the amazing Rocky Mountains, Sierras and Cascades out west, and yet every winter the Americans would roll into the World Cup tour and maybe there would be the occasional breakthrough -- Phil and Steve Mahre in the 1980s, for instance -- but not the sort of consistent, across-the-board dimension that would make the Euros, the Austrians in particular, snap to and say, whoa, the Americans are so for real.

Ladies and gentlemen, that time is now.

Know, too, that the 2014 Sochi Olympics could well be the U.S. Ski Team's moment in the sun, testament to the culture behind its claim to be "best in the world."

Once, that notion seemed so audacious as to be absurd.

Now -- well, at the 2013 alpine world championships, which wrapped up Sunday in Schladming, Austria, the U.S. won more gold medals -- four -- than any other nation.

Ted Ligety won three gold medals, the super-G, super-combined and then his specialty, the giant slalom. Teen Mikaela Shiffrin won the slalom. Julia Mancuso, as ever a big-game racer, took bronze in the super-G.

The U.S. team's performance came even though Lindsey Vonn -- the Vancouver 2010 downhill winner and indisputably the best female skier the United States has ever produced, with four World Cup season titles and 59 World Cup wins -- tore a knee apart in the very first event, the super-G. She has vowed to be back for Sochi.

Further, Bode Miller -- before Ligety, no question the best American male skier of all time -- is taking the year off to give a knee time to heal. Nolan Kasper, who probably would have been a medal contender in the slalom, crashed in December and is out, too.

There are many, many reasons the U.S. team has risen to the top.

Among them: sponsor support; cutting-edge scientific and training methods; the opening of an early-season speed-racing training base in Copper Mountain, Colo.; a winter-time training base in Sölden, Austria, to reduce back-and-forth travel across the Atlantic; summer training in Portillo, Chile, and down under in New Zealand.

It all goes back, however, to culture -- the idea that the Americans not only can but should win and, moreover, that they're all in it together.

This is the notion behind the 85,000-square foot Center for Excellence, the ski team's headquarters in Park City, Utah, that doubles as world-class training center. It's not just the alpine team that works out there. The cross-country team, the freestylers, the Nordic combiners, the guys, the women, the teenagers, the athletes in their 20s and 30s -- everyone.

That was the idea when the place opened in 2009 -- it was where the U.S. Ski Team, all together and altogether, would work out. It's how culture happens.

Skiing is an individual sport. And yet the U.S. Ski Team has bridged the gap. It is, indeed, a team.

You see it now in small but utterly revealing ways.

After her divorce, Vonn found a welcoming home with the women on the U.S. team. There were hugs all around in a conference room in Lake Louise, Canada, when she said, simply, "I want to be your teammate," and from then on -- that's the way it has been.

Last month, the U.S. women were talking -- with admiration -- about Chip White, for 17 years a U.S. team coach, now in charge of the speed team (events such as the downhill).

"If we miss a day of skiing, he is so bummed," Leanne Smith said. "He is just sad and inconsolable and feels like it's his fault. He cares so much. He knows all of us at a personal level and wants to see us to what we are all capable of."

Vonn -- this was before her injury, obviously -- said, "He cut his finger off," with a table saw last fall, "and he was still out on the mountain. He had one hand all taped up and he was still carrying gates around and wrenching in gates and working just as hard as he always does, even though he was in excruciating pain."

Shiffrin and Vonn are now known to paint their fingernails together. Shiffrin is 17, Vonn 28. Vonn was one of Shiffrin's childhood heroes.

Ligety is also 28. It would be so easy for there to be a do-not-cross sign between the men's and women's teams, which travel all winter on different circuits. Instead, here was Shiffrin after her victory Saturday, underscoring the connection:

"Ted was so inspiring these world championships. It's really hard to have a good race every few days and that's what he's done. You get tired and you're trying to extend your mental capacity for an entire two weeks. He seems to have done it flawlessly."

The U.S. Ski Team is, of course, more -- way more -- than just the alpine team.

Even as the posters came down and the bags got packed in Schladming, consider what else was going on that was relegated to the back pages, if that, of America's newspapers -- the stuff that come next February will become front-page news at the Olympics:

At a test event in Sochi, American halfpipe freeskiers Torin Yater-Wallace and Gus Kenworthy went one-two. Seven of the 12 finalists: American.

Also in Sochi, Hannah Kearney -- the 2010 Vancouver champion -- won in moguls with Eliza Outtrim second; Heather McPhie took fourth on a tiebreaker. Six U.S. women made the round-of-16 semifinals. On the men's side, Patrick Deneen took second.

In Davos, Switzerland, at a cross-country World Cup sprint, the final tune-up before the Nordic world championships this week in Val di Fiemme, Italy, five Americans -- three women and two men -- qualified into the heats, with Andy Newell taking his best finish in three seasons, fourth in a classic sprint. He now stands second in the World Cup sprint standings. Kikkan Randall leads the women's sprint standings.

At another World Cup tune-up Sunday before the Nordic worlds, this one at Ljubno, Slovenia, American women ski jumpers finished third, fifth and seventh. Japan's Sara Takanashi won the event and clinched the World Cup title.

Does all this guarantee anything next February in Sochi? No.

Does it, however, mean things are headed in the right direction? For sure.

The U.S. Ski Team won 21 of 37 American medals in Vancouver. In 2010 there were 24 medal opportunities in snowboard and freeskiing; in Sochi, that number will be 48. It's easy to see: the action in Sochi figures to be up in the mountains.

"We had great success in Vancouver and we worked really hard to position ourselves to use that success and that platform to continue to push for another really successful Olympics," Bill Marolt, the president and chief executive officer since 1996 of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Assn., said in a telephone call from Sochi.

"The momentum we are seeing this year is going to be really motivating. The success will focus the athletes and the coaches and I think we'll get a really good effort next summer, with a lot of really good hard work. I think it will go up a notch from what we've done. We'll go in fully prepared, with no stones unturned, and see where we are where it's over."

Mikaela Shiffrin's star turn

Mikaela Shiffrin was already a big deal in skiing circles. Now she is a full-fledged star. And still only 17. Her 18th birthday is next month.

With a fantastic second-leg charge, Shiffrin won the women's slalom Saturday at alpine skiing's 2013 world championships in Schladming, Austria.

Shiffrin became skiing's youngest world champion since 1985, third-youngest women's world champion in the event, eighth-youngest world champion in any event.

More: she also became the first American woman to win the slalom in either a world championship or an Olympics since Barbara Cochran in 1972.

The winning combined time: 1 minute, 39.85 seconds.

Michaela Kirchgasser of Austria finished second, 22-hundredths back. Frida Hansdotter of Germany took third, four-hundredths further behind.

The medal was the U.S. Ski Team's fourth gold, its fifth overall at the 2013 worlds -- more than any other nation.

They talk about prodigies when it comes to the arts -- say, the piano or the violin.

Mikaela Shiffrin is a prodigy on skis.

Because the Winter Olympics will be on TV next February from Sochi and alpine skiing will be broadcast into living rooms across the country, everyone will get to see what it's like to watch Shiffrin do her thing.

They are in for a treat.

Skiing insiders have known for a long time -- a long time in teen years, that is -- that Mikaela Shiffrin could be something special.

In a question-and-answer in the fall of 2011, for instance, the Canadian ski expert Michael Mastarciyan asked Mikaela if she was ever afraid of failing or considered herself a perfectionist.

The reply:

"I don’t have a fear of failure in skiing. I don’t really want to make a fool of myself, but skiing is something I know by heart and failure isn’t really a concept for me, and it shouldn’t be a concept really for any skier, because you’re out there doing something you love so how can you fail at it if you love it?

If you could bottle that single sentence and sell it, you would be a gazillionaire.

When you think like this -- when you believe in yourself like that -- how can you not win?

There are, of course, other pieces to the puzzle.

Mikaela Shiffrin has great support: from her parents, Jeff and Eileen, and family; from the U.S. Ski Team; from her sponsors.

She's obviously in top-notch physical condition.

But, bottom-line, that passion for the sport and that no-fear approach is how you win.

At 15, Mikaela ran her first World Cup race. At 16, she won her first World Cup medal.

This season, in December, she won her first World race, in Are, Sweden. In January, she won two more, in Zagreb, Croatia, and Flachau, Austria. No other woman has won more than once; she leads the season World Cup slalom standings.

On Saturday, she ran third in the opening leg. In the second run, she charged the lower half of the course to take that 22-hundredth of a second advantage over Kirchgasser; Finland's Tanja Poutianen ran next but couldn't beat Shiffrin, ultimately finishing fourth; then came Hansdotter, who looked like a winner until the very end, when she faded to third.

On top of everything else, Mikaela Shiffrin is remarkably well-spoken, collected and poised for 17 going on 18.

In a news conference, she was asked whether the "fight with her emotions" she showed in the finish area was tougher than the fight on the hill itself.

The response?

"Doing what I did on the hill today, especially in the second run - skiing is like dancing or flying, there are so may ways I can describe it, but it just is. And it works for me.

"But coming down to the finish, just knowing it worked, and the whole day came together and I had all these opportunities and it worked out, is unbelievable. And I can't find an emotion to describe it. It's been 17 years in the making. I'm finally here and doing what I set out to do. And it's a really cool feeling. But when people ask me what I'm feeling and how do I do this - I just don't have an answer. I'm just doing what I do and I don't want to wait."

A few minutes later, in a conference call back to the States with a group of journalists who regularly cover alpine racing, referring to her gold world-championships medal, she said, "It's very hard to process. A lot of people never realize their full potential. Their dreams, in a sense, don't come true.

"I'm lucky enough to have gotten opportunities, amazing opportunities. I have a support system around me to help me capitalize on those opportunities. I have opportunities no other girl, no other athlete, might ever get a chance to have.

"It's really crazy. I could never say that I've done this alone -- because that's the opposite of the truth. I've had so much help. But it feels really good to know I've done what I could do to get to this point. It's really amazing, and I'm so grateful for everything that is happening to me."

Ligety: first to three

Ted Ligety didn't just win the giant slalom Friday at the alpine skiing world championships. He crushed it. Which means that in the way Lindsey Vonn was the It Girl before the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, Bode Miller the It Dude before Torino in 2006 -- America, you are going to be seeing a lot, and then a lot more, of Ted Ligety before Sochi next February.

Ligety's victory made for his third win at the worlds at Schladming, Austria. He already had won the super-G and the super-combined events.

He became the first man to win three titles in a single worlds since the legendary Jean-Claude Killy of France won four in 1968, when the Olympic Games counted as the worlds.

That's 45 years.

Ligety is the first American skier to win three medals at a single worlds. He is the first non-European to do so.

His four career golds match Miller for most by a U.S. skier.

He is the first skier -- male or female -- to win the super-G, super-combined and giant slalom at a single world championship.

He became the seventh man to win the giant slalom at two worlds, and the sixth back-to-back.

All of this means a great deal, and at the same time very little, come Sochi.

It means Ligety, 28, of Park City, Utah, rocks.

Ligety is already an Olympic gold medalist. He won the combined in Torino.

To be hugely obvious, he is now more mature, smarter, better, totally on his game, and barring injury he will be a medal favorite in Sochi in the giant slalom, and perhaps other events as well.

But, because alpine racing is enormously variable, with course conditions, the course set, the light and more, it could all slip away -- literally -- in an instant.

He acknowledged as much Friday, saying, "Ski racing is such a tough sport. In a way -- it's hard to really replicate these kinds of wins. You've seen Lindsey. She was by far the favorite -- won a gold medal, for sure," in the Vancouver downhill.

"She had the ability to win far more. That's just the tough thing about ski racing. It's so far from guaranteed. It's not like running -- all you have to do is run. Or swimming. There are so many more variables than that. It's just so hard to replicate good performances. The hill changes every single guy. So it's not so easy."

Ligety said he is well aware that, for an American audience, he will now be The Guy heading toward Sochi.

"I don't know what it's going to be like," he said, adding in a reference to Vonn before Vancouver and Miller pre-Torino, "I know they had a lot of external pressures, a lot of things they had to go through for being the favorite -- we'll see how that goes. Hopefully, it doesn't take too much out of my summer. It should be fun."

Sochi will be Ligety's third Games. He said, "I'm always looking forward to the Olympics. It's a really cool experience. This has definitely set the bar high. I don't know if this is repeatable," adding the thing was to "maintain the same level of skiing and give myself good chances there."

Ligety admitted to feeling nerves before Friday's racing.

If so, it didn't show.

The giant slalom is a two-race affair.

In the first piece, Ligety went out and built a lead of 1.31 seconds.

In alpine racing, 1.31 seconds is huge.

In the second run, Ligety's primary rival, Austria's Marcel Hirscher, went out and threw the huge crowd -- more than 35,000 people -- into a roar by moving into contention.

"Running 30th," Ligety said, "it was really bumpy in that second run, and the light was pretty flat," adding, "I had to charge. I was making mistakes," including one that almost sent him, his left ski flying, off the course. "But that's part of ski racing. I had to charge through that. I was glad I had that buffer I did after that first race."

Ligety's combined winning time: 2 minutes, 28.92 seconds.

Hirscher finished 81-hundredths back. At one point, Ligety had increased that 1.31-second lead to 1.68, then slowed to make sure he got to the finish in one piece.

Manfred Moelgg of Italy finished third, 1.75 seconds behind.

Tenth place was another second back. Twelfth place was more than full three seconds back of first. In alpine racing, these sorts of differentials are ridiculous.

"This week has been the best week of ski racing in my life," Ligety told a news conference. "I still don't think I have recognized what I have done so far this week. It has been so phenomenal."