Remembering Nelson Mandela

LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- The Olympic Games produce moments. Those moments become memories. Those memories inspire the hopes and dreams of generations. At the 1992 Barcelona Summer Games, Derartu Tulu of Ethiopia would win the women's 10,000-meter run, the first black African female gold medalist in Olympic history. After Tulu crossed the finish line, it took Elana Meyer, a white South African, almost six seconds more to get there. A few more steps past the finish line, Mayer found Tulu. They kissed. Then, hand-in-hand, they ran together, black and white, first and second, yes, but equals in sport and spirit, symbols of hope and possibility for South Africa, for all of Africa, indeed the world.

Because of its apartheid policies, South Africa had been banished from the Olympics after the Rome 1960 Games. Barcelona 1992 marked its return to the world stage. Those Olympics took place about two and a half years after Nelson Mandela's release from prison.

Mandela was then 74. In the hours before the South African team would march in the opening ceremony, he arrived in the Olympic Village to speak to the team. This, as a Sports Illustrated story reported, is what he said:

"All I want to say is that our presence here is of great significance to our country, a significance which goes beyond the boundaries of sport. Our country has been isolated for many years, not only in sports but in other fields as well. We are saying now, 'Let's forget the past. Let bygones be bygones.' I want to tell you that we respect you, we are proud of all of you and, above all, we love you."

Mandela died Thursday at 95, an icon of hope and possibility. In sport he often saw a pathway toward reconciliation.

The president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, said Friday the Olympic movement would be mourning a "great friend and a hero of humanity."

Bach, before a meeting at IOC headquarters along Lake Geneva, recounted how he met Mandela. In telling the story the IOC president paused to collect his emotions:

It was a private gathering several years ago, Bach said, and so he could ask Mandela the question he had always wanted to ask:

"You invited to your [May, 1994, presidential] inauguration even the worst from Robben Island. Don't you feel hate?"

Bach went on:

"His immediately response was no."

The IOC president said:

"I think he saw the doubt in my eyes," the kind that says, "You don't believe."

Bach continued:

"I said, 'Mr. President, this is really hard to believe after all you have been suffering."

"He said, 'I can tell you why.'

"I said, 'Why, Mr. President?'

"He said a sentence which still gives me goosebumps today. I will never forget it. He said, 'Because if I hate, I would not be a free man.' "

Usain Bolt's tweets since the announcement of Mandela's death included these:

"Just here thinking that Mr.Mandela in prison for 27 years is how long I'v been alive..Words are inadequate to describe this man #RIPMandela"

And: "One of the greatest human beings ever..May your soul rest in peace..The worlds greatest fighter."

In sport Mandela could see beyond fight. He was often quoted as saying, "Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. It speaks to youth in a language they understand. Sport can create hope where once there was only despair."

Sam Ramsamy, now South Africa's IOC member, also at the meeting Friday in Lausanne, read those words once more to a hushed audience. At that inauguration 19 years ago, Ramsamy recalled, he had the honor of being the first to say aloud, "President Nelson Mandela."

Australian IOC member R. Kevan Gosper, at the Lausanne meeting as well, played a key role in bringing South Africa back into the Games. He, like Ramsamy, returned time and again Friday to Mandela's emphasis on sport as a vessel for potential and for change. And, like Bach, to the elemental humanity of Mandela himself.

In 1995, just a year after he took office, South Africa defeated New Zealand in the final of the rugby World Cup. The Springboks, as the team is known, had long been the favored sport of South Africa's white minority; for many blacks, the team -- and the mascot -- had become symbols of oppression. In the scene commemorated in the movie "Invictus," Mandela famously handed the championship trophy to the Springboks' white captain, Francois Piennar, while wearing a green jersey emblazoned with Pienaar's No. 6.

Since those years, of course, South Africa has become an even more important player in world sport. It played host to the 2010 soccer World Cup. There is talk of a bid for the 2024 or 2028 Summer Games.

To be sure, sport can not -- will not -- itself solve any nation's problems, and it will not solve South Africa's. It is nearly 20 years after Mandela's inauguration, and the country faces a range of serious challenges, including high unemployment, AIDS cases and a culture of violence. The amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius, who at the London 2012 Games emerged as South Africa's most celebrated sports figure, is now facing murder charges in the shooting death of his girlfriend.

Even so, as Bach on Friday ordered the Olympic flags to be lowered to half-mast for three days and Ramsamy conveyed formal IOC condolences to current South African president Jacob Zuma, there was in the remembrance of Nelson Mandela not just gratitude but a sense of bearing witness to what, with the strength of human will, could be made possible.

Sebastian Coe, the Olympic running champion who served as London 2012 chairman, now head of the British Olympic Assn., said in a statement that Mandela "recognized the unique power of sport to unite people from every walk of life."

Coe added, "The values that are at the heart of sport -- equality, opportunity and mutual understanding -- are the very same values Nelson Mandela fought to instill and uphold. He lived his life with courage and conviction, and as we mourn his passing we are grateful for the unending inspiration he has given us all."

The chairman of the International Rugby Board, Bernard Lapasset, said,  "Mr. Mandela was a truly remarkable man. I was honored to be with him during the historic days of Rugby World Cup 1995 and saw his incredible impact on his nation and his people. HIs wisdom, intelligence and sheer presence was a wonder to behold.

"I am so proud that the rugby family could play its small part in supporting Mr. Mandela's efforts to establish the new South Africa and that our tournament came to symbolize the emergence of a new nation. He changed the world and we were privileged to witness and embrace his work."

On Saturday, the IRB announced, a moment of silence will be observed at the Rugby Sevens World Series event at Port Elizabeth, South Africa. That afternoon, all 16 teams are due to join together on the playing field, wearing black armbands as a tribute.

Of course, Ramsamy said, this was a time to mourn. But, he said, also the moment when the memory of Mandela not only could but should provoke an awareness of the good -- the genuine good, as Mandela understood -- that sport can play in our broken world.

In 1995, for instance, Mandela said in a speech, "South Africa remembers with pride the magnanimity in defeat which Elana Meyer demonstrated in Barcelona, when she proclaimed with her vanquisher the sanctity of the Olympic principle that participation is more important than winning."

Bach and Ramsamy have known each other for many years. Yes, Bach said: "As Mr. Ramsamy said, we have to celebrate life. This is the direction Mr. Mandela would have given us, to celebrate life and look into the future."

Awards gala turns to doping talk

MONACO -- Usain Bolt and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the Jamaican sprint stars, were named Saturday the IAAF male and female athletes of the year. To think it would have been anyone else would strain credulity. What, they were going to name Bohdan Bodarenko or Zuzana Hejnova? Only track diehards know he's a high jumper from Ukraine and she is from the Czech Republic and runs the 400 hurdles. Come on.

Bolt and Fraser-Pryce won three gold medals apiece, and in spectacular fashion, at the 2013 world championships in Moscow. Bolt is, more or less, track and field. He was his usual awesome self, winning the 100 at the exact instant a lightning bolt flashed across the sky, the moment captured in a remarkable photo. Candidly, Fraser-Pryce was even better than he was in Moscow, winning the women's 100 by an absurd .22 seconds.

The IAAF did not direct voting for the awards. Even so, the challenge facing it and, more broadly, world sport is that the two Jamaicans were going to be the obvious winners in a year in which matters of doping and its protocols have emerged as a major concern in Jamaica and, indeed, once again, in track and field.

Eight Jamaicans have tested positive this year, including former 100-meter world-record holder Asafa Powell and two-time Olympic 200-meter champion Veronica Campbell-Brown.

This is not -- repeat, not -- to impugn Bolt or Fraser-Pryce or to assign guilt by association.

Bolt has never tested positive and has consistently proclaimed he runs clean. Fraser-Pryce served a six-month sentence after a positive 2010 test for oxycodone, saying it was for a medicine she took after oral surgery. Oxycodone, a banned narcotic, is not considered a performance-enhancer or a masking agent.

Bolt's award is his fifth in six years. Fraser-Pryce's is her first and, as well, the first for a woman from Jamaica since Merlene Ottey in 1990. She said she was "really excited, of course." Saturday's announcement marked only the third time that athletes from the same country have won both awards; Americans Carl Lewis and Florence Griffith-Joyner won in 1988, Britons Colin Jackson and Sally Gunnell in 1993.

Fraser-Pryce's award also is believed to mark the first time an athlete who has previously served a doping suspension has been named athlete of the year. Again, in fairness, her suspension was for a painkiller, not a steroid or blood-booster. Nonetheless, she served six months.

"Jamaica has had some problems this season," Bolt acknowledged, referring not to Fraser-Pryce but to the failed tests by the others, adding, "But that is not part of my focus."

Some problems, indeed:

The World Anti-Doping Agency is now reviewing the apparent systems breakdown by the Jamaican anti-doping agency, which goes by the acronym JADCO. This summer, former JADCO executive director Renee Anne Shirley claimed in a Sports Illustrated story that the agency had conducted just one out-of-competition test in the five months leading up to the London 2012 Games.

This week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Dr. Herb Elliott, JADCO's head, may not have the medical credentials he claims. It's now not clear whether Elliott will stay in his position.

Dr. Paul Wright, JADCO's senior doping tester, told the BBC the rash of failed tests may be the "tip of the iceberg." His comments came just days after a WADA team visited Jamaica.

In Kenya, meanwhile, WADA and International Olympic Committee authorities are growing increasingly impatient while waiting for confirmation that a task force to investigate allegations of a doping culture there, promised more than a year ago, has been set up.

It was noted at the WADA conference in Johannesburg that this IAAF gala was going on at precisely the same time as the WADA event. The IAAF likes to portray itself as the top dog among all Olympic sports. Usually, it has good reason. But for those IOC members now serving on the IAAF council it was apparent that other IOC members here were scarce. Like, maybe even none.

There's a new world order in the Olympic movement. The Jacques Rogge years are done. It's in the IAAF's keen interest to reach out to the IOC and to be tuned in -- acutely -- to what the new president, Thomas Bach, is saying, where he's saying it and how he's saying it.

Like -- a few days ago in Johannesburg, when he's warning Jamaica and Kenya that if this kind of thing keeps up they might be banned from the Olympics for doping irregularities.

In real life, nobody really believes that is going to happen. But -- it's the tone that matters. Keep in mind, too, that IOC vice president Craig Reedie was just voted in as the incoming WADA president.

Yet, at the news conference Saturday afternoon announcing the athlete of the year winners, IAAF president Lamine Diack took the occasion to assert that WADA was running a "ridiculous" campaign aimed in particular at Jamaica and Kenya. Say what?

“I read in the newspapers and it was like a campaign against Jamaica, and I think it was ridiculous,” Diack said. "They are the most tested athletes in the world.

“And so I read in the newspapers how WADA are going there and they are going to suspend," meaning the two nations from the Olympics. "They cannot suspend anybody!

“It was ridiculous, this campaign. After Jamaica, they went to Kenya because some doctor went there and said the Kenyan athletes are not controlled. They are the most controlled -- 650 or so athletes in Kenya controlled, every time, in and out of competition. They went there. What did they find? Nothing.”

Diack said, "So I think we have to stop all this. We are doing our best in athletics. You will never have an athlete suspended for four years in football," meaning soccer.

He said again a moment later, "Stop all this."

Bolt, who is typically guarded with the press when it comes to volunteering information on sensitive subjects, proved quite forthcoming Saturday. He allowed as the relentless drumbeat of news since mid-summer about whether or not JADCO was -- or was not -- doing its job was now having a meaningful impact.

It was, he said, hitting him in his wallet, with a potential sponsor just this week backing out of a deal.

"It is really costing me money now and I'm not too happy about it," he said.

Perhaps nothing, ladies and gentlemen, is likely to spur change faster in Jamaica than that -- its biggest star is now going to demand it, and for the most elemental of reasons. Always remember: money talks.

Also revealing was this:

In an interview Friday, Fraser-Pryce had suggested that Jamaica's track and field athletes might need the protection of a union to better serve their needs. She even said she would be willing to strike if the occasion warranted.

Different people are of course motivated by different things. Fraser-Pryce's rise from one of Jamaica's hardest neighborhoods and whose desire both to serve and give back is well-documented.

To gain any sort of traction, one would have to believe an athletes' union in Jamaica would need Bolt's support. Then again, he typically gets asked at news conferences either about his next party or about his next sequence of workouts -- not his next public-service campaign, though a fair amount of good work back home actually does get done in his name.

Asked Saturday if he would also be willing to walk a picket line, Bolt said, "Everybody has their own personal idea. Personally, track and field is my job."

In that spirit, he reiterated his new goal is to run under 19 seconds in the 200, if his body holds up. His world record is 19.19, set at the 2009 world championships in Berlin.

He said he had just gotten back to training about two and a half weeks ago. "I'm just getting soreness in my muscles now," he said.

He said he never sets out each year to be athlete of the year. "I just want to run fast. I want to keep my titles," he said, adding a moment later, "I just do my best, show the world I want to be a champion."

That was at the afternoon news conference. Later, at the evening awards show, with the cameras rolling for a broadcast going live around the world, it was back to the doping talk -- if obliquely.

“I know track and field’s been through a lot, but I see a lot of positive things coming out,” Bolt said. Directing his remarks to young athletes, he said, "Show the  world that we can do this, and we can make athletics a better place.”

Portland wins 2016 world indoors

MONACO -- The U.S. team has long been No. 1 in the world in track and field. Hosting the world in track and field? Not so much. The U.S. has not played host to a major championship since 1992, in Boston. Before that, Indianapolis staged the world indoor championships, in 1987. Of course, Atlanta and Los Angeles put on the Summer Olympic Games. That was 1996. And 1984.

To say that this has been a recurring sore spot with track and field's governing body, the IAAF, would be putting it mildly. When, oh when, would the United States -- and, more particularly, USA Track & Field -- ever step up?

On Friday, Portland, Oregon, won the right to stage the 2016 world indoor championships, USATF president Stephanie Hightower asserting that under the direction of federation chief executive Max Siegel and in concert with TrackTown USA president Vin Lananna there is energy and synergy to "rebuild the brand of track and field in the United States."

The IAAF Council awarded Portland the 2016 event amid a spirited campaign that also saw it give Birmingham, England, the 2018 world indoors.

The UK is now lined up to stage the 2014 Commonwealth Games (in Glasgow), the 2016 world half-marathon championships (Cardiff, also awarded Friday), the 2017 world track and field outdoor championships (London, at the same stadium that staged the 2012 Games) and, now, the 2018 world indoors.

Talk about legacy from the 2012 Olympics.

The 2014 world indoors will be staged March 7-9 in Sopot, Poland.

Birmingham had staged the 2003 world indoors, IAAF president Lamine Diack at the time calling them the best-ever, and but for the fact of an American bid would probably have won going away for 2016.

"This is a sport that needs to nurture its roots in the United States," UK Athletics chief Ed Warner acknowledged Friday after all the political horse-trading was said and done.

The IAAF's "World Athletic Series," which includes its major championships, is sponsored by adidas; the current deal goes through 2019. It sometimes can seem as though everything sports-related in the state of Oregon is underwritten by Nike. How the two will mesh come 2016 remains uncertain.

Warner also said, "I feel as though Christmas has come early for British athletics."

For Portland and USA Track and Field, as well.

Teen middle-distance sensation Mary Cain announced here Friday that she would be forgoing college and turning pro, and would be based in, where else, Portland, with coach Alberto Salazar, and the Oregon Project, with stars such as Olympic medal-winners Mo Farah and Galen Rupp. Her plan, she said: "To throw myself into insanely fast races and have no pressure."

The Portland 2016 plan:

A three-day meet in March 2016, tentatively March 18-20, the week after the NCAA indoor championships, at the Oregon Convention Center, with seating, Lananna said, for "8,400-plus."

A new 200-meter track will be built and then, as a legacy of the event, repurposed for use -- somewhere. It will be the only indoor track in the track-crazy state of Oregon, Lananna noted.

TrackTown USA served as the organizers for the 2008 and 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials at venerable Hayward Field in Eugene, on the University of Oregon campus. It will also serve as the local organizing committee for next year's IAAF world junior championships, also in Eugene.

The 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials will be back in Eugene, based at Hayward.

All this begs the obvious:

It's fine, maybe even great, that TrackTown has lit a -- or, maybe more accurately, capitalized on the -- spark in Oregon. There's a lot of Nike money behind all this, in Oregon. At the same time, Oregon is a long way away from pretty much everywhere else. Anyone who has ever been to Eugene knows it is hard to get to. And almost no one who gets drafted by the Portland Trail Blazers ever goes, wow, that was my first choice.

When was the last time you ever heard any of your European, Asian or African friends say, gee, you know, I want to vacation in the United States and I think I'm going to go to -- Portland? San Francisco, absolutely. New York, definitely. Disneyland, for sure. Portland? Get real.

Look, there are a lot of reasons to like Portland. Excellent coffee. Fine wine. Lewis and Clark. But it is not a major market, and to argue otherwise strains credulity.

If, as Hightower asserted, track and field is truly to be re-branded in the entire United States, it needs to think about a strategy that gets people where it's at in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, the Bay Area, Boston, DC, Detroit, Seattle, Phoenix, Tampa, Minneapolis, Miami, Denver and on and on.

Asked about that, Siegel said "television properties" were in the works without offering more specifics. Lananna volunteered the example of the MLS Portland Timbers soccer team, saying that a few years ago it was nothing and now it draws "rabid" crowds in a "crazy environment," adding, "We hope to do the same … we feel very confident we will be able to do take those same steps forward."

Those would be giant steps, indeed, off a three-day track meet in an indoor convention center in Portland, which -- let's not forget -- will be staged amid the hoopla of NCAA basketball March Madness.

It's worth noting something else. Cain said Friday that when she was younger she was a swimmer and idolized Michael Phelps. Phelps, by putting himself back in the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency testing pool, has taken his first steps toward being back in the water in Rio in 2016. Don't kid yourself. This, in the sphere of Olympic marketing, is what USATF is likely up against in 2016, too.

Still, give USATF and TrackTown USA credit. This is its first step, a welcome step in bringing world-class international track and field back to the United States after more than two decades. It's Portland, sure, but you have to start someplace, and that someplace has to be where you know it's going to work.

SAFP: no Jamaica doping problem

MONACO -- Jamaica does not have a doping problem, sprint star Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce said. Eight Jamaican track and field athletes have tested positive this year, including former 100-meter world-record holder Asafa Powell and two-time Olympic 200-meter champion Veronica Campbell-Brown. The World Anti-Doping Agency, meanwhile, is now reviewing the apparent breakdown by the Jamaican national anti-doping agency in the testing of the Caribbean island nation's sprinters in the six months leading up to the London Games.

"I don't think we have a doping issue," Fraser-Pryce said in an interview with a small group of international reporters. Instead, she said, at issue in Jamaica are cases of individual athletes "neglecting to correctly check the supplements" they are ingesting, adding, "The truth is, it's a minefield."

She decried a lack of support from both the Jamaican track and field federation and the government, declaring, "Nobody is there to give us guidance and support," and saying the time had perhaps come for the island nation's to unionize: "We as the athletes need a voice."

If need be, unions strike to achieve their goals. Runners run. Would Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, champion of the 100-meters at both the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games, winner of three gold medals at the Moscow 2013 world championships, refuse to run, to support a union, to prove a point?

"If it comes down to actually not competing [because] things are not up to par … yeah, I would," she said. "If it means lobbying for the athletes, yeah, I would. And not having our name tarnished, yeah, I would."

Fraser-Pryce's comments came on the eve of the IAAF's annual gala here in Monaco, normally a festive event free of such politics. She is the odds-on favorite to be named the female athlete of the year at ceremonies Saturday night. The two other finalists: New Zealand shot put star Valerie Adams and Czech 400-meter world champion hurdler Zuzana Hejnova.

Fraser-Pryce, typically, is cheerful and understated. Indeed, though she had much to say Friday, she was her usual soft-spoken self -- her comments delivered so quietly that one had to strain to hear her, even with a microphone.

The recently elected president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, speaking amid the WADA conference in Johannesburg, this week issued a dramatic warning to nations such as Jamaica and Kenya, saying athletes might be denied a chance to compete in the Games if nations were not compliant with WADA rules.

"The [IOC] charter is very clear that this," meaning expulsion, "can be one of the results," he told the British newspaper, the Daily Mail. "It's not the only one and not the exclusive one. But non-compliance can result in the exclusion from competitions."

There would be a long road before the IOC would consider exclusion. Usain Bolt and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce -- and Kenya's 800-meter champion David Rudisha -- are huge stars. Even so, the fact that the new president would even mention it as a possibility is noteworthy, with Rudisha since saying, "It is bad. The faster they tackle the matter the better for our country's image. Not all of us are cheats. Some may have been [mis]led into abusing drugs."

Asked Friday about the possibility of Jamaica being excluded from the 2016 Rio Olympics, Fraser-Pryce said Friday, "I am not the one who writes the rules. I can't answer the question. I hope it never gets to that."

Fraser-Pryce herself served a six-month suspension in 2010-11 after a positive test for oxycodone. She said it was for medicine she took for a toothache. Oxycodone, a banned narcotic, is not considered a performance-enhancer or a masking agent.

She has said since dominating the 100 and 200 and running a leg in the winning Jamaican 4x100 relay in Moscow that some have questioned whether she was doping. On Friday, she said, "There is nothing for me to hide," adding of the rash of positive tests affecting other Jamaican sprinters this year, "I don't think it has cast any shadows on my achievements because I know what I have worked hard for."

She also offered incredible insight into what drives her not just to win but to keep winning.

In Moscow, Fraser-Pryce won the 100 in 10.71, defeating second-place Murielle Ahoure of Ivory Coast by a ridiculous .22 seconds.

She won the 200 -- not her favorite event -- by .15 seconds. Again, Ahoure took silver.

She anchored the Jamaican relay to victory in a championship-record 41.29. The Americans took silver, more than a second behind, in 42.75.

When she crosses the line first, Fraser-Pryce said, she does not exult in victory. Instead, she is even at that instant already thinking -- what's next?

"I am not enjoying it," she said, adding a moment later, "“A lot of athletes become so overwhelmed with their success when it happens, they forget about the next year. I constantly try to remind myself that this is just one chapter in my journey. There are many more chapters to write and finish."

She also said at other moments, "I feel like if I become complacent, then everything I’ve achieved might fall." And, "I never allow myself to fully unwind or have a vacation." And, "It’s always about doing better and taking advantage of the present."

Others, she said, "become complacent and comfortable and believe they have arrived."

Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce -- never.

Big problem: no Munich 2022

What is wrong with this picture? Vienna: no.

Rome: no.

Munich: no.

Even Switzerland, home of the International Olympic Committee: no.

The IOC has a huge disconnect on its hands. At issue, right or wrong, fair or not, may well be the IOC itself. Now: will the IOC recognize this disconnect, and be willing to do something about it?

In the afterglow of arguably the greatest Summer Games ever, London's 2012 Olympics, taxpayers in western Europe -- the IOC's base -- have now shot down three separate Games bids before they even got started, the latest Munich's presumptive 2022 Winter Games campaign, killed Sunday by Bavarian voters.

This past March, voters in Austria rejected a Vienna 2028 plan. Innsbruck just put on the 2012 Winter Youth Games; it staged the 1976 and 1964 Winter Games. And Salzburg bid for the 2014 and 2010 Winter Games.

Just days before the Vienna balloting, Swiss voters in the canton that is home to the ski resorts of St. Moritz and Davos rejected a 2022 bid proposal. St. Moritz staged the Winter Games in 1928 and 1948.

In February 2012, meanwhile, the then-prime minister of Italy, Mario Monti, called off Rome's 2020 bid, though it was already well underway. Rome put on the 1960 Summer Games.

Monti pulled Rome out because of uncertain costs associated with the project.

That's always an issue. Environmental concerns are a factor, too. But now there seems to be something more at work,  the reputation of the IOC itself.

Munich had bid for 2018, won by Pyeonchang, South Korea. Since then, of course Thomas Bach, who played a key role in the 2018 bid, has become the IOC president, and a 2022 Munich bid would have been the presumptive favorite, Munich seeking to become the first city to stage the Summer (1972) and Winter Games.

The mountain resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, about an hour south of Munich, where some of the 2022 events would have been staged, played host to the 1936 Winter Games.

The bid needed to win elections in four communities were the Games would have been held. Instead, the campaign lost in all four, some badly.

Here is the money quote from Sunday's vote, from Ludwig Hartmann, a Greens Party lawmaker and a leader of the movement, called "NOlympia," that led the opposition to Munich 2022: "The vote is not a signal against the sport but against the non-transparency and the greed for profit of the IOC."

If you are tempted to dismiss the Greens as a fringe party, fine. But when a leading German newspaper like Süddeutschen Zeitung, the day before the vote, runs a column that compares the IOC to both the mafia and the "North Korean regime" -- if you are the IOC, you've got issues.

Fifteen years after the Salt Lake City scandal shook the IOC to its core, the organization has -- this is the truth -- undergone significant reforms. Juan Antonio Samaranch lived to see those reforms effected. Jacques Rogge carried them out.

After having written about the IOC full-time since nearly the day the scandal erupted, it is clearly the case that the overwhelming majority of those who are members now believe -- and wholeheartedly -- in its mission. They give outrageously of their time. Their commitment is profound, indeed.

And yet -- how is it that the image of the IOC can conjure such comparisons? A crime syndicate? A rogue state?

"We proved long ago, when I was with Meridian, the IOC's marketing agency, that consumers around the world love the Games and the Olympic brand. That is irrefutable," Atlanta-based Terrence Burns, now the managing director at Teneo Sports, said.

"We also conducted research about the IOC itself -- as an organization. The results of that were not so glowing …

"The IOC has an image problem -- fair or unfair, real or imagined -- it does not matter."

Just last weekend, Bach chaired a "summit" at IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, with more than a dozen senior Olympic officials from around the world. Afterward, the IOC issued a statement in which the new president's agenda, ratified by those in attendance, was made crystal-clear.

The statement identified the "main topics of interest and concern" confronting the movement as these: the campaigns against doping and match-fixing, regulation of the sports calendar, autonomy of the sports movement and, finally, governance issues.

What's missing from that list is elemental. It's what Sunday's rejection by Bavarian voters underscores, and this is way beyond any potential reflection of the vote on Bach, because this is about way more than one individual.

The entire Olympic enterprise is hugely expensive. It depends on cities and countries wanting in.

In our world now, there will always be emerging countries with lots of money -- and the corollary, some measure of risk, possibly significant -- ready and willing to stand up and say, we want the Games.

Is a trend that produces mostly such countries for any given bid cycle in the best interest of the Olympic movement?

If the perception of the IOC in developed nations makes for a bid disincentive, or worse, isn't it thoroughly obvious that the IOC should be doing something about that? Some basic brand management? Some fundamental story-telling about what the IOC itself does?

Munich's defeat, for instance, could well mean no German bid for many years to come. Berlin, which played host to a tremendously successful 2009 world track and field championships, was thought by many to be a viable Summer Games contender.

Michael Vesper, director general of the German Olympic Sports Confederation, which goes by the acronym DOSB, said the rejection of Munich 2022 "clearly means that another Olympic bid in Germany won't be possible for a long time."

Burns, the former president and founder of Helios Partners, served on the winning Beijing 2008, Vancouver 2010, Sochi 2014 and Pyeongchang 2018 bids. He also managed golf's entry to the Olympic program and wrestling's return, and said of the IOC:

"This is an organization that does incredible good in the world, every day on every continent around the world, and no one knows about it. The IOC, for its own reasons, has mistakenly chosen to let the Games themselves be the arbiter of its image. In the consumers' minds, the Games do not equal the IOC in terms of appeal and affection. They are two different things."

The deadline for entering for 2022 is Thursday. Already declared: Oslo; Lviv, Ukraine; Beijing/Zhangjiakou; Almaty, Kazakhstan; and a joint bid from Krakow, Poland, and the nearby mountains of Slovakia. Stockholm is still thinking about it. The IOC will pick the 2022 site in 2015.

The 2018 race produced only three candidates: Pyeongchang, Munich and Annecy, France.

Some will review the early list of 2022 contenders and see a welcome uptick in the number of bids.

Reality check: the IOC is heading to Sochi for 2014 and Rio de Janeiro for 2016, and just awarded Tokyo 2020 with more than one member making it clear amid the 2020 vote, "No more experiments."

Look at the 2022 list again, and Oslo would appear to be your early front-runner. Norway has staged two Winter Games before, in Oslo in 1952 and Lillehammer in 1994. It has a huge offshore oil sector and so it likely can afford the Games, the Oslo 2022 budget already pegged at $5 billion.

But -- what kind of front-runner?

In September, only 55 percent of Oslo voters supported the bid in a city-wide referendum.

To be candid, 55 percent is not a happy welcome mat. Then again, that's better than pre-vote polls had suggested: a survey in the Norwegian daily Aftenposten had put support at 38 percent with 47 percent saying they would vote no, the remaining 15 percent undecided.

"I think that what just happened in Munich," Burns said, "was not a rejection of the idea of hosting the Winter Games, it was a rejection of the IOC itself. That's troubling to me personally because as an insider I have seen what goes on behind the curtain for almost 20 years, and I can tell you the IOC works hard, very hard, on behalf of sport. But no one knows about it.

"Think about it this way:

"Munich, or Rome, had an opportunity to truly make a powerful, positive statement to the world about sport and humanity, frankly on their own terms given the IOC's relatively hands-off approach -- e.g., Sochi -- and they took a pass. How many great cities can the IOC afford to 'take a pass'?

"Isn't it of value to the IOC to have a Munich or a Rome hosting the Games instead of somewhere you've never heard of? There is a mutually beneficial brand transition that takes place and London is a great example -- both the IOC and London greatly benefitted from each other's brand. But London bid for the Games [starting] in 2003 and won in 2005. Would they bid today? Could they?"

At the UN: the Bach Doctrine

The recently elected president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, delivered a remarkable speech Wednesday to the United Nations Assembly, a signal declaration of the role of the IOC and what it can and can't do to effect social and political change in these early years of the 21st century. In essence, he laid out what future Olympic historians might well call the Bach Doctrine -- at least as it relates to the complex and never-ending interplay between sport, government and politics.

Here was a clearly defined and articulated vision of the roles of both sport and political entities. Sometimes, as in the endorsement of the Olympic Truce, as the UN did Wednesday, or to promote certain sports projects in a conflict zone, it works to work together. Other times -- when, for instance, it comes to changing the laws of a particular country -- that's beyond the IOC mandate.

"The IOC is above all a sports organization," Bach said. "Sport is our first priority."

That is the key, and Bach's address ought to serve as mandatory reading for activists anywhere in the world seeking to ride the Olympic rings to advance their own interests, particularly when such activists wonder why the IOC can't or seemingly won't do more.

The IOC is not, for emphasis, itself a government. It is "above all a sports organization."

Later in the speech, Bach said, "Of course, we know that, as in ancient Greece, sport and the Olympic Games can not on their own solve political problems or achieve peace.

"Peace-building is a long process. Sport wants to be a part of this process. However, we are aware of our limits -- but we want to use the power of our values and symbols to promote the positive, peaceful development of global society.

"These symbols, and especially the peaceful competition at the Olympic Games, should inspire all the people."

Bach's address was notable not only for what was said but the timing of his remarks.

Bach was elected IOC president Sept. 10, not even two months ago. His comments Wednesday can leave no mistake: he is not gently feeling his way about the office but rather seizing the pulpit that comes with it to lay out his agenda.

The UN has endorsed the notion of an Olympic Truce before each edition of the Games dating to 1994. In acting Wednesday, the assembly urged its 193 member states to respect the "values of the Olympic truce around the world" even as it agreed to cooperate with the IOC and International Paralympic Committee to use sport "as a tool to promote peace, dialogue and reconciliation in areas of conflict during and beyond" the 2014 Sochi Games. They are set to run Feb. 7-23.

It was in the context of the truce resolution that Bach delivered his remarks.

Bach's comments, of course come amid the ongoing controversy stemming from the Russian law enacted over the summer that purports to keep homosexual "propaganda" from children.

Bach did not pound his fists on any lectern and declare, for instance, that the Russian law must change. Why would he? Two weeks ago, Russian president Vladimir Putin told Bach, "We will do everything to make sure that athletes, fans and guests feel comfortable at the Olympic Games regardless of their ethnicity, race or sexual orientation. I would like to underline that."

This, then, is what Bach said Wednesday: "Sport stands for dialogue and understanding which transcend all differences. Sport, and the Olympic movement especially, understands the global diversity of cultures, societies and life designs as a source of richness. We never accuse or exclude anyone."

He also said that it "must always be clear in the relationship between sport and politics that the role of sport is always to build bridges," adding, "It is never to build walls."

Woven throughout Bach's address were references to what in Olympic jargon is called "autonomy."

It stands as a significant Bach priority, as the new president made plain after calling a "summit" Sunday at IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, with more than a dozen senior Olympic officials from around the world.

Along with the campaign against doping, for instance, the summit detailed "autonomy" as one of the IOC's pressing prerogatives.

In most nations -- the United States is a significant outlier -- responsibility for the national Olympic committee runs through a branch of the federal government. There's thus inherent potential for interference from that government, or from politicians at federal, state or local levels.

The IOC wants "autonomy." It recognizes that the 204 national Olympic committees need to be funded; again, the U.S Olympic Committee, by act of Congress, has to fund itself. At the same time the IOC wants those NOCs -- and their local governing bodies -- to enjoy the authority to pursue sports-related decisions as sports officials see fit.

Similarly, the IOC wants international sports federations to be free of governmental interference.

In real life, this can sometimes create a delicate balance.

At the UN on Wednesday, Bach turned philosophical in explaining why the IOC believes the pursuit of "autonomy" to be so vital:

Sport, he said, is the "only area of human existence" that has achieved what in political philosophy is known as "universal law" and in moral philosophy as a "global ethic."

For instance, anywhere in the world that you want to put on a soccer game, the rules are the same.

Those rules are based on the same common "global ethic" of fair play, tolerance and friendship, he asserted.

But to extend this "universal law" to all four corners of the globe, he said, "sport has to enjoy responsible autonomy," adding, "Politics must respect this sporting autonomy."

Only then, Bach said, can sport retain its great potential to inspire amid all the "differing laws, customs and traditions" in the world.

In exchange, Bach said, it's entirely reasonable to expect that sports officials will exercise such autonomy "responsibly" and in accord "with the rules of good governance."

At this juncture, Bach took on squarely the notion -- often put out there -- that sports and politics do not mix.

In exercising autonomy, the sports movement must remain politically neutral, he said. But this did not mean being "apolitical."

He said, "Sport must include political considerations in its decisions. It must consider the political, economic and social implications of its decisions," and particularly when the IOC chooses the site of the Winter and Summer Games, the bid process fraught with politics.

"In the mutual interest of both sport and politics," Bach said, "please help to protect and strengthen the autonomy of sport."

Please, the new IOC president said: "I ask you all to take this message back to your countries."

A stealth Olympic summit

The International Olympic Committee held something of a stealth meeting of key power-brokers Sunday at its lakefront headquarters in  Lausanne, Switzerland, a move that illuminates the who's who and what's what behind the developing agenda of the recently elected president, Germany's Thomas Bach. Bach convened the meeting, not widely publicized beforehand and in an IOC release termed an "Olympic Summit," to address "the main topics of interest and concern" confronting the movement.

These the statement identified as the campaigns against doping and match-fixing, regulation of the sports calendar, autonomy of the sports movement and, finally, governance issues.

Here, then, is a catalogue of how the new president intends to operate, his key list of action items and, perhaps most fascinatingly, a collection of advisers -- a kitchen cabinet, if you will -- that the release identified as "the senior representatives of the Olympic Movement's key stakeholders."

Like any list, it's not just who is on it but who is not that makes for the tell.

Among those who were there:

The three IOC vice presidents: Craig Reedie of Great Britain; Nawal el Moutawakel of Morocco; John Coates of Australia.

Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah of Kuwait, of course. Marius Vizer, the International Judo Federation and Sport Accord president, naturally. Sepp Blatter, the FIFA president. C.K. Wu, the head of the international boxing federation.

In May, the aquatics and gymnastics federations were elevated to the top tier of Olympic revenues, joining the track and field federation, the IAAF. The IAAF president, Lamine Diack of Senegal, was there Sunday; so was Julio Maglione of Urugay, president of FINA, the aquatics federation. The gymnastics federation president, Italy's Bruno Grandi? No.

The entire winter sports scene was represented solely by René Fasel, president of both the ice hockey and winter sports federations.

More: the heads of the national Olympic committees of the United States, China and Russia were invited to the meeting. But -- not France. Hello, Paris 2024?

Beyond that, the important take-aways from the meeting are these:

Reasonable people can quibble with the notion of whether doping, match-fixing, the calendar, autonomy and governance make for the spectrum of pressing issues facing the movement.

The new president, for instance, is keenly aware that the Olympic Games are the IOC's franchise and that keeping the franchise relevant to young people has to be the IOC's No. 1 priority. Nowhere on that list, moreover, is an exploration of the values central to the Olympic movement and how they might, should or do play out in today's world.

The president "invited the participants to share their ideas on these subjects," and a wide range of others, "and to be part of the permanent dialogue and ongoing reflection that the IOC wishes to increase with its main stakeholders," according to the release.

Bach is super-smart. He understands concepts such as "relevance" and "values." For sure.

But the action-item catalogue clearly and unequivocally demonstrates -- as Bach suggested during the presidential campaign, which ended with his election Sept. 10 in Buenos Aires -- that his focus is in problem-solving.

That means: solving the problems, or at least trying to, that are there, directly and identifiably, in front of him and the IOC.

Look at what the release says:

-- The IOC will set up a task force to coordinate efforts against match-fixing and illegal betting.

-- The participants agreed to set up an "experts' network" that will focus on issues of autonomy and governance.

-- The IOC will set up a "consultative working group" to deal with the calendar.

This calendar group, and it should be highlighted that this panel will be "under the leadership of the IOC," obviously has two unspoken priorities:

One, for those thinking long-range, is the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, and whether -- as FIFA has been mulling, or not -- it can or should be moved to the winter. Such a move could well be problematic for a 2022 Winter Olympics. The IOC statement Sunday noted that the working group will discuss "the priority of current and future sports events within the global calendar."

Two, there's Vizer's suggestion, made when he was running last spring for SportAccord president, for a "Unified World Championships" that would feature 90-plus sports all going on at the same time. The group Sunday, Vizer included, the IOC statement said, agreed that "any new initiative has to respect the uniqueness of the Olympic Games."

Then there is the campaign against doping.

The release affirms the movement's "zero-tolerance" policy against drug cheats and backs the IOC's candidate for the presidency of the World Anti-Doping Agency, Reedie, who is expected to be affirmed at a meeting this month in South Africa. At the same time, it calls for WADA to become more of a "service organization," reflecting tensions with some international sports federations, who have suggested that the agency has been telling them what to do instead of serving their needs.

Whether this proves, in the long run, to actually be a good thing or not, and whether it actually gets played out, particularly with such real-world challenges such as the testing of Jamaican and Kenyan athletes now making headlines, remains to be seen.

Reedie, it should be noted, has consistently proven himself to be a shrewd player in sports politics across many constellations.

In the near term, meanwhile, all this shows conclusively that Bach is not only consolidating but demonstrating his own authority while simultaneously showing if not a bent, then at least a nod, toward collaboration.

It's of course absolutely a good thing that Bach seek the input of key constituent groups. In about a month, he will lead not only an executive board meeting in Lausanne but immediately afterward an EB retreat. Of course, how the EB and this new kitchen cabinet will mesh -- there is some overlap -- remains to be seen.

At the same time, as Jacques Rogge before him and Juan Antonio Samaranch before that proved, while the IOC is something of a democracy, the institution has traditionally functioned best when the president demonstrates a clear and decisive hand.

It took Rogge some time to figure this out. He made a show at the beginning of his first term of wanting the IOC to be far more democratic. The 2002 Mexico City session, which devolved into hours upon hours of democracy -- the members voicing all manner of opinion about baseball, softball and modern pentathlon, and their roles in the program, with nothing getting done -- put an end to that. After that, he started acting way more presidential.

Bach, it appears, gets from the start that he is the man. That's the way it should be.

One other thing that is notable is that the IOC, at the end of this one-day summit, had this multi-point action plan more or less ready to go. Anyone who has done committee work knows that committees don't do action work readily or easily. So this was already well in the works -- the deal points already hammered out, apparently via pre-meetings -- well before the new president summoned all "the senior representatives" to Lausanne for the face-to-face summit that produced the news release.

Note, by the way, the careful use of language. These were not "some senior representatives." The release pointedly makes use of the definite article, the word "the," before "senior representatives." The new president is by nature precise -- that's how that list of people got invited Sunday.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is called leadership.

The relay lights the way

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia -- Moscow Avenue runs for 10 kilometers. It starts at Victory Square, commemorating the sacrifices of World War II. The street sees the Russian National Library. It carries past the House of Soviets, a major command post during the 900-day siege; out front is a massive statue of Lenin. The boulevard runs over the Fontanka River and then, finally, ends at Sennaya Square. Ten kilometers is roughly six miles. It rained on and off Sunday, the day the Olympic flame relay -- as it is formally known -- came to St. Petersburg. It was cold enough that already winter coats and hats were out. Even so, Moscow Avenue -- in Russian, Moskovksky Prospekt -- was jammed, the street lined on both sides, people everywhere and anywhere, just to get a glimpse of the flame.

They were literally hanging out of second-story windows. They were queueing at gas stations. They came sprinting out of a car dealership. Kids, and there were hundreds upon hundreds of kids,  waved flags and danced and pointed excitedly to their parents and uncles and aunts and teachers and didn't mind the rain and posed for pictures. The children acted -- well, like kids everywhere.

It has been nearly 30 years since Sting suggested in song that the Russians must love their children, too. The relay offers powerful proof of what the Sochi 2014 Games, which this week ticked under 100 days away, mean to this enormous, incredible country -- and, at the same time, an invitation to the rest of the world to find out about Russia beyond the well-worn stereotypes.

This has always been the power of the relay.

It symbolizes the better urge in the Olympic movement, the powerful impulse toward excellence, friendship and respect that is, in fact, universal.

Kids everywhere know that.

They knew it on my street in Hermosa Beach, California, in 1996 when I took my daughter, who was then 2 years old, out to see the relay go by right our house on its way to Atlanta for the Summer Games and all the neighbor kids were screaming and yelling in excitement.

Just like they did Sunday in St. Petersburg, Russia.

For much of the rest of the world, the onset of the 2014 Winter Games has meant a rash of controversies: a vague new law purporting to ban homosexual "propaganda" to young people, $50 billion and counting in construction, worries over snow or no, concerns over terrorism, all of it overseen by the face of today's Russia, the president himself, Vladimir Putin.

That catalogue underscores a simple truth: the Russians have not done themselves many, if any, PR favors.

Fundamentally, however, the wonder -- after four visits to Russia in not even six months -- is how much of what gets spun up about this country is still rooted all these many years after the end of the Cold War in what can often seem like an enduring dread, if not outright fear, in many quarters of the press.

Of all the stories and all the broadcasts, how many are from reporters who have ever set even one foot in Russia?

Russia takes time and effort. In today's 24/7, what-have-you-got-for-me-now news-cycle, those are resources that can seem most difficult to justify.

Russia is not, in a word, easy. It's not easy to get to; travel visas have traditionally been complicated and expensive. Moreover, once here, the language barrier is often ferocious. Even the alphabet is different.

Sochi itself, way down by the Black Sea,  is hard to get to. Where do you want to transfer through? Moscow? Istanbul? Vienna?

Then there is Putin, who is typically viewed as The Action Man One Dares Not Cross -- for fear he is at all times carrying plutonium-laced sushi, or something, in his pocket. Or, if he is back to riding shirtless on a horse, in his boots. Who knows?

These absurd caricatures are completely at odds with the Putin that the French ski legend Jean-Claude Killy, the International Olympic Committee's primary liaison with Russia and the Sochi 2014 project, described in a recent story in the French weekly Journal du Dimanche.

"The Putin I know is not the one described in the newspapers, where you see real 'Putin-bashing,' " Killy told the paper.

Killy added, "I have no reason to follow the crowd; I trust what I see. When he calls me from Moscow at three in the morning his time to wish me a happy birthday, I find that nice."

It's not that there is an essential misunderstanding in the west of Putin or, more broadly, of Russia.

There seems to be almost no understanding.

This, then, is the opportunity the Sochi 2014 Games present -- if, and this is a big it, the Russians themselves understand it is at hand.

And -- if they care, and want to do something about it.

To be clear:

There is much to criticize about the Sochi project. And there remains the potential for terrorism or other catastrophe that could further re-shape forever the way the 2014 Games are seen or understood.

At the same time, the relay lights the way toward a new understanding, the possibility that -- over time -- things can change. This is the promise and potential of the Olympic movement in every country it touches.

That said, change takes time, especially fundamental change, and especially in a vast and complicated place like Russia.

Consider, for example, this exchange on Monday between Putin and the newly elected IOC president, Thomas Bach, at the Adler Railway Station, one of the infrastructure facilities built for the 2014 Games. Adler is the town immediately next to Sochi.

"Sochi and the entire region have come a long way in their development over these last years, and successfully, too," Bach said. "This makes a deep impression on us. The Olympic sites will contribute to making the Sochi Olympics unique in the movement's history, and the facilities will offer sportspeople the best possible conditions."

Putin, a moment or two later, said, "It seems to me that you liked the railway station, too?"

Bach: "I more than liked it, not just for its functionality, but for its architecture, too. It impresses me very much that you were able to build this railway station in just four years. Aside from the architecture and the unique solutions to link the old and new stations, I was also impressed by the way the facilities have been designed to allow people with disabilities to use them. I learned today, for example, that a special path has been laid in the terminal for the visually impaired. I think this is an optimistic sign for the future, a sign that shows how architecture and construction are developing in general in Russia.

"Of course, this new station will be used after the Olympics, too, and will become part of the Olympic heritage not just for Sochi but for the whole country."

Putin: "Yes, I wanted to say the same words. It will be an important part of the Olympics' legacy."

Is this revolutionary? No.

Is this important stuff? Yes, just like the handicap ramps that were built as a design feature into a nearby hockey arena, also a new idea in Russia.

A recycling program for water bottles -- a new idea.

Another new idea -- the volunteer program that will make the Games go in a country that previously had no volunteer culture.

On a Sunday morning in St. Petersburg, there they were by the dozens in their blue vests, 2014 volunteers, out in the rain, seeing the relay down Moscow Avenue and beyond, bringing the Olympic flame to a part of Russia nearly 1,450 miles away from Sochi. They made lifetime memories for literally thousands of people, and so many kids.

It was not even seven years ago, the summer of 2007, that Sochi was bidding for the 2014 Games. To have imagined such a scene then -- truly, it was unthinkable.

This just has to stop

The international sportswriters' association, which goes by the acronym AIPS, held its two-day executive committee meeting this week in Doha, Qatar. The meeting's guest of honor was Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, the secretary general of the Qatar Olympic Committee, who is keenly sophisticated and moves fluidly between Arab and western cultures. The Qataris bid -- unsuccessfully -- for the Summer Games of 2016 and 2020, cut early on in each round by the International Olympic Committee. Of course, soccer's World Cup is set for Qatar in 2022.

His Excellency told the ladies and gentlemen of the press that sport is fundamentally one of the pillars of Qatar's development plan. This year, the Qataris will organize 40 major sports events. By 2020, he said, the goal is to stage a big event every week of the year.

And, of course, he said, to bid again for the Olympics. Maybe for 2024. Possibly 2028.

If you have been to Doha, actually been on the ground, you know that there is serious commitment there. The new president of the IOC, Thomas Bach, has long had extensive ties to the Middle East, so one would imagine the climate -- so to speak -- for a Gulf bid would be as good as it could ever get.

There's only one thing that could stop a Doha bid dead in its tracks, and it's not the heat. Nor is it the capacity, infrastructure or even the impact on television schedules.

It's this:

This photo offers irrefutable evidence of everything the Olympic values -- friendship, excellence, respect -- are not.

This sort of intolerance, indeed discrimination, has to stop. Now. And forever more.

This screenshot shows the start of the women's 100-meter individual medley at swimming's World Cup stop in Doha -- happening more or less about the same stretch of time His Excellency and some of the world's leading writers were meeting to talk about all the exciting things happening in the Qatari capital.

In Lane 5 is Amit Ivry of Israel.

The Israeli flag that should be depicted in the graphic display in the host broadcast feed has instead been washed out.

This incident marked just one of several episodes directed against Israeli swimmers at the World Cup stops in both Dubai (Oct. 17-18) and Doha (Oct. 20-21).

On Day 1 in Dubai, Israeli swimmers were not properly identified, either by announcers on the scoreboard. That way, their name and national flag wouldn't have to be shown, a veteran national-team swimmer, Gal Nevo, told a leading Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz.

Things in Dubai were apparently back to normal by Day 2. Nevo, for instance, announced as from the country "I-S-R" on Day 1, was announced as from "Israel" on Day 2.

He said, "Suddenly, you arrive in a country that has refused to recognize you until now, and know that the next time we'll be here they won't play those games with us. I don't know how many television viewers we're talking about but the people in the emirate saw the Israeli flag over and over again, and were exposed to the country's sporting aspect."

That this sort of thing happened in Dubai can not have come entirely as a huge shock.

After all, this was where in 2009 the Israeli tennis player Shahar Peer was refused a visa for the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships; tour officials fined organizers $300,000 and said all qualified players had to be able to play or the tournament's sanctioning would be at risk. Peer has since played in Dubai.

That said, recent years have seen a veritable catalogue of incidents in which politics and sport have mixed in all the wrong ways, consistently with the Israelis as the target.

At the 2004 Athens Olympics, for instance, Iran's judo world champion, Arash Miresmaeli, refused to take to the mat for a first-round match against Israel's Ehud Vaks in the under-66 kg class. Iranian officials later awarded Miresmaeli the same $120,000 given its gold-medal winners at those 2004 Games for what was called a "great act of self-sacrifice."

At the 2008 Beijing Games, Iran's Mohammed Alirezaei refused to compete alongside Israeli swimmer Tom Be'eri in the heats of the 100 backstroke.

At the 2010 Olympic Youth Games in Singapore, in the final of the boys under-48 kg class in taekwondo, Gili Haimovitz of Israel won when Mohammed Soleimani of Iran proved a no-show, officially claiming he had aggravated an old injury to his left leg. Soleimani skipped the medals ceremony as well -- missing the Israeli flag and anthem.

In 2012, Algerian kayaker Nasreddine Baghdadi withdrew from a World Cup event in which Israeli Roei Yellin was entered, and the president of the Algerian Olympic Committee, Rachid Hanifi, said all its athletes might refuse to compete against Israelis at the London Games: "There is an obligation to ask our government if we have to meet Israel in sport."

That prompted the then-IOC president, Jacques Rogge, to declare that only serious injury would be accepted as an excuse for not competing at the London Games, that suspicious withdrawals would be checked by an "independent medical board" and that bogus withdrawals would lead to unspecified sanctions.

Just two weeks ago, Tunisia's tennis federation ordered its top player, Malek Jaziri, ranked 169th in the world, not to play Israel's Amir Weintraub in the quarterfinals of a lower-tier ATP event in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

International Tennis Federation spokesman Nick Imison told Associated Press he believed the case was a first-of-its-kind in tennis.

The constitution of swimming's international federation, which goes by the acronym FINA, is absolutely clear that discrimination on the grounds of "race, sex, religion or political affiliations" is out of bounds.

True, FINA officials absolutely had been put on notice by events in Dubai. But Doha? This was where a 20-year-old Shahar Peer in 2008 -- the year before the episode in Dubai -- had reached the round--of-16. Moreover, her first night in the city, the tourney director had even taken her and her entourage out to dinner at a Moroccan restaurant in the traditional Souk district marketplace.

And yet -- Doha.

According to a report in the Times of Israel, it's not just that the Israeli flag was not displayed in the computer graphics of the races. Some races in which Israelis swam were not broadcast. The Israeli flag was removed from outside the venue; a tweet was posted Sunday complaining about the flag's presence before it was taken down from outside the swim complex, according to the Doha News.

How this all happened remains entirely unclear. Who precisely was responsible -- also uncertain.

FINA on Wednesday issued a statement saying that it reacted to events in both Dubai and Doha as soon as it knew. In Doha, for instance, FINA officials say they were told the full scope of what had happened only 15 minutes before the end of Day 2.

The statement says FINA "guarantees" that "all steps will be taken in the future for such acts not to occur again."

This is particularly key because the world short-course championships are due to be held in Doha Dec. 3-7, 2014. Dubai and Doha are also scheduled to host further World Cup events ahead of the worlds.

FINA's executive director, Cornel Marculescu, told Associated Press the two organizing committees apologized for what he called these "stupid things." He also said, "Next year we have the world championships and these things will not happen anymore."

Marculescu is absolutely right to label the incidents so forthrightly and to  say enough is enough.

Now: Doha has a huge incentive to bid for the Olympics.

There are all kinds of bold steps that could be taken. For instance, there are apologies of all sorts. Some are private. Some are meant to be much more public.

Or: there are ways of reaching out, gestures of goodwill -- say, swim clinics in which regional stars teach local kids. Could it hurt to invite Amit Ivry, winner of the silver medal in the 100 medley at the Doha 2013 World Cup?

At the least -- all the Israelis all ought to be taken out to dinner next December at the worlds, everyone ought to shake hands and pose for some tourist-like pictures in the Souk and then all hands can get on with the business of swimming.

The Israelis -- just like they were anybody else. That's what they, and everybody, deserve.

After all, that's the fundamental promise inherent in Olympic sport -- that everyone can get along and that everyone deserves a chance to do their best, however good-enough that best might be. If the Qataris want to invite the world in 2024 or 2028 and be taken dead seriously about it -- an Olympics is way different than the World Cup -- that is the deal. Anything less is a non-starter.

Putin: one clever guy

It has been just over four months since Russian president Vladimir Putin signed into law a measure that purports to ban "propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations" to those under 18. In the west, activists have howled. In Russia, those howls have left senior officials entirely unmoved. The International Olympic Committee finds itself in the middle -- akin to the position it found itself in five years ago, in the run up to the 2008 Beijing Games, when activists seeking to draw attention to a variety of issues in China, in particular in Tibet, wanted to know why the IOC wasn't pressuring the Chinese government to do more.

The answer, then as now, is that the IOC is not a government. It is not even a quasi-government. Contrary to public opinion, its ability to exert "pressure" on a state authority is limited.

At any rate, an equally intriguing question is why the Russian authorities found it if not necessary then at the least certainly important this past June to pass such a measure. They knew full well the Sochi Olympics were going to start Feb. 7, 2014.

The question is all the more compelling as the University of Southern California's Annenberg Institute of Sports, Media & Society on Tuesday opens a three-day conference in Los Angeles entitled, "Sports & The LGBT Experience."

Surely the Russians had to know they were going to incite a furious reaction. Why invite such controversy?

The answer is telling. No matter the fury, the Russians seem unfazed. The heat to them seems simply more proof their society is different and different is just fine.

"Putin cares less and less about Western outcry -- be it gays or something else," said Sergei Strokan, a foreign-affairs columnist at Kommersant, a leading Russian daily -- and Kremlin-neutral -- newspaper.

"He believes in his superiority over the West. The belief is rooted in understanding Russia as a unique civilization with no Western rot."

A reminder: this law passed the Duma, the Russian lower house, by a vote of 436-0, with one abstention.

Only 12 percent of Russians consider homosexuality fully equivalent to heterosexuality, 35 percent are convinced it is a disease or a result of psychological trauma while 43 consider it a bad habit, according to a survey published in May by the independent Levada Center.

The survey was conducted April 19-22 among 1,600 respondents from 45 Russian regions; its margin of error is 3 to 4 percent.

It is not a crime to be gay in Russia. Then again, homosexuality was decriminalized in Russia only 20 years ago and, obviously, anti-gay sentiment remains powerful.

"It's about politics. It's not about gay people," said Sufian Zhemukov, the Heyward Isham visiting scholar of Russian and East European studies at George Washington University and co-author of a forthcoming book that uses the prism of Sochi and the Olympics as a case study of Russian life.

He added a moment later, "Adopting the anti-gay law gets some points for the current regime because they are adopting a law [about] which most of the population approves."

Then there's this:

When you bid for an Olympics, it's generally the case that you make the campaign all about what you can do for the Olympics. Then the next seven years are all about what the Olympic movement can do for you, the winner. The fixed deadline of the opening ceremony concentrates the mind: you build bridges, metro lines, stadiums, all of that, and then you show off what you've done to the world.

In this instance, Putin seems to have learned the lesson, and ramped it up a notch.

The Sochi Games are reportedly the most-expensive ever, with costs already estimated at north of $51 billion to build a winter destination from a Black Sea summer resort.

In essence, what Putin is doing is using the Olympics not just to assert Russia's place in the world --a reprise of  the Chinese play for 2008 -- but to remind Russians themselves that Russia is, in these first years of the 21st century, still a force with which to be reckoned.

Russia's population is dwindling. Across its multiple time zones there are infrastructure challenges large and small. Yet in Sochi Putin audaciously said, we will build it and you will come.

Of course, most everyone who will come will be Russian. It's too far and too complicated for most everyone else. Is that OK by Putin and senior Russian staff? For sure.

After the Games, what about those facilities in Sochi? For years to come they can be the training base for Russian teams.

One of the things about an Olympics is that exposure to the big, wide world out there tends to bring about the percolation of ideas. But these things take time. Like -- years.

Already, because of the forthcoming Games in Russia, there is a volunteer program, a recycling project for water bottles and handicap ramps at the Sochi 2014 arenas. Those are big new ideas in that country.

All societies evolve.

It wasn't so long ago that the idea of gay marriage in the United States was a political non-starter; this week, New Jersey is just the latest to allow same-sex marriage.

For that matter, it wasn't all that long ago that a law very much like the one at the center of the controversy in Russia was on the books in the United Kingdom.

That law, called "Section 28," outlawed the promotion of homosexuality in Britain's schools. Introduced in the late 1980s, it was finally repealed across Britain in 2003. The current prime minister, David Cameron, has acknowledged himself not having a perfect record in voting for gay rights and in 2009 apologized for Section 28, calling it "offensive to gay people."

One strains to remember American bartenders pouring Scotch whiskey down the drain because of Section 28 in the way that activists earlier this year were calling for vodka boycotts.

Indeed, it is hardly a stretch to observe that it was only the spotlight of the Olympics that brought so much attention to the Tibetan cause five years ago -- and now to the issue of gay rights.

Both sides are, in their way, getting exactly what they want.

In the United States, for instance, the U.S. Olympic Committee this month amended its non-discrimination policy to include sexual orientation. The spark for that change happening now was the Russian law.

The USOC's move is, its senior leadership made plain, the right thing to do.

For Putin, too -- it underscores distinctions in a way he couldn't possibly articulate better. He must be just short of gleeful watching the dominoes do their thing.

"Putin," said Strokan, the Kommersant columnist, "sees no major controversy that can spoil the atmosphere of the Games."

This is someone who, when he came back to office on May 7, 2012, scheduled his very first meeting that day with the-then IOC president, Jacques Rogge. Who, when Thomas Bach was elected last month, managed to track down the new IOC president just minutes later via cellphone, as Bach was working the line with reporters in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and wish him congratulations.

There's zero wonder why this measure came up months before the Sochi Olympics. Vladmir Putin did not get to be president of Russia -- repeatedly -- without being a very smart and calculating guy.

Always -- always -- remember that.