Olympic channel and 39 more bullet points

MONACO — Of the 40 recommendations the International Olympic Committee made public Tuesday after a year-long study, there’s one, and perhaps one only, that is a game-changer. The rest would appear to be absolutely well-meaning but let’s-wait-and-see how they play out in practice. The difference maker? The creation of an Olympic channel.

The channel, particularly if you know the IOC, which typically moves with great tradition and caution, holds enormous potential to make the Olympic enterprise — at least in the public imagination — more than just a once-every-two-years event.

If the Olympic movement can, truly, become an everyday presence on-air and online in the lives of young people, then the IOC will have effected not just significant but perhaps revolutionary change through president Thomas Bach’s “Agenda 2020” year-long study process, which went public with the release Tuesday of the 40 recommendations.

The full IOC membership will meet here in Monaco Dec. 8-9 to vote on the full package.

In a statement released by the IOC at its Lausanne, Switzerland headquarters, Bach said Tuesday, “These 40 recommendations are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. When you put them together, a picture emerges that shows the IOC safeguarding the uniqueness of the Olympic Games and strengthening sport in society.”

This must be stressed:

What was released Tuesday is a framework, a structure, a road map. Call it what you will.

What will make any of it meaningful — beyond merely the channel — is, assuming the members vote it in, the implementation. The devil is in the details and there are literally hundreds if not thousands of details to be thought about if not worked out.

That’s why, on the one hand, the 20+20 recommendations, as the IOC likes to promote them, must be viewed with sensible caution.

On the other hand, they surely should be seen with some due optimism as well.

In a piece published Monday in the British newspaper the Daily Telegraph, Sebastian Coe, who headed the London 2012 Summer Games, reminded one and all that he closed that event by saying,

“If the 20th century was about the globalization of sports, largely through the Olympic movement, then the first decade of the 21st century must be about reconnecting young people with sport.”

Coe, at a meeting here where the IAAF voted Tuesday to award its 2019 world championships to Doha, Qatar, also said in the Telegraph piece, “The challenge the IOC laid down for itself covered three fundamental areas of its proposition. How can we be sustainable so more cities in more countries around the world are able to host the Olympic Games? How can we remain credible – the athletes, the organization, the events? And third, how do we give greater access to Olympic sport to people 365 days a year?”

And: “Some will think the IOC has gone too far, created too many recommendations and addressed too many things, taken a scattergun approach. Others will think it has not gone far enough, that the recommendations will take too long to implement. I do not think it matters. What matters most is that the IOC has chosen to take its destiny in its own hands rather than wait for others to impose a route map.”

This, truly, is the key.

Along with communication.

Sometimes, especially these past few weeks as the 2022 Winter Games bid process has teetered, you do wonder if the IOC gets both communication strategy and the corollary optics.

Why, for instance, was it so important for the IOC to release the 40 recommendations at the very same time the IAAF, the federation that is the most important of the summer sports, was meeting to decide the site of its 2019 championships? Isn’t this a movement? What about the concept of an Olympic family where everyone is in this together?

The IOC went to lengths Tuesday to invite a number of athletes from around the world to a “roundtable” chaired by Bach at which the 40 recommendations were purportedly discussed.

The IOC in its release Tuesday described an “inclusive and transparent Olympic Agenda 2020 process.” True, the IOC solicited submissions from all over — which led, in turn, to a year of closed-door debate that produced 40 recommendations just made public for the first time Tuesday. That’s “transparent”? As for “inclusive”? Of the 11 athletes invited to IOC headquarters, seven were European. Not one was from the Americas. Two were German, like Bach. One came from Iran, where the government is currently holding as prisoner a British-Iranian woman, Ghoncheh Ghavami, 25, who had the gall to attend a men’s volleyball match.

Under what circumstances did the IOC deem it so vital at this particular moment to invite Kaveh Mehrabi, who represented Iran in men’s singles in badminton at the 2008 Beijing Games, finishing in a tie for 33rd? That he was a representative of the WADA athletes’ committee? There was no one else in the entire world available?

Bach has made it a point of his presidency to note that sport and politics do indeed mix. In this instance, the odds are very good that the Iranian government has told the IOC in a short note that the Ghavami matter is all politics, not sport.

Sometimes, you just wonder.

Like, when recommendation 21 suggests the IOC should strengthen the IOC’s advocacy capacity, particularly with “intergovernmental organizations and agencies,” and notes the IOC should “encourage and assist [national Olympic committees] in their advocacy efforts.”

How?

The outside world has paid little attention to the Youth Olympic Games. So it would seem a very good idea to evaluate the YOG proposition and, at the least, move them to a non-Olympic year beginning in 2023. (Recommendation 25)

Maybe, as all involved would quietly understand, this is the first step toward eliminating them altogether.

Moves to blend sport and culture (Recommendation 26) were part of the discussion during last year’s IOC presidential election.

It’s practical in the extreme to comply with good governance (Recommendation 27) and, please, further increase financial transparency (Recommendation 29).

The world is, as is understood, full of white papers. Is this destined to be one of those? Or will it lead to real change?

See Recommendation 8: “forge relationships with the professional leagues.” What does that mean? How does one describe the IOC’s relationship with Major League Baseball, given that baseball is on the Olympic outs? Or with the NHL, where every four years it’s a hold-your-breath to see if the best players in the world are going to take part in the Games?

As for the first few recommendations: these seek to limit the cost of bidding for the Games, to make it more of an “invitation,” to promote the use of existing facilities, to allow organization of sports or disciplines outside the host city or “in exceptional cases” outside the host country notably for reasons of geography and sustainability.”

Bach, speaking to a small group of reporters at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, said, “We want to create more diversity in the candidatures. There is no one-size-fits-all solution,” according to Associated Press.

Hypothetically, say, Los Angeles gets picked for an Olympics. But San Francisco offers better sailing. OK. That’s easy. But what if it makes sense to play, say, basketball in the Bay Area as well? Or rugby? The U.S. Olympic Committee gets to promote a Los Angeles-based California bid.

But what does it mean, really, to promote a two-country bid and how would that play with the members? No one knows.

Are these changes really going to make bidding for the Games cheaper? Here’s a bet: no. When countries want the big prize, there is very little the IOC can do to stop them from doing what it takes.

Recommendation 3 calls for the IOC to create and monitor a list of bid-city consultants. To repeat a joke that quickly made the rounds Tuesday: what, like, are they sex workers?

The 2020 plan calls for the Summer Games program to be capped at 10,500 athletes, 5,000 accredited coaches and support personnel and 310 events. That’s more or less the same number of athletes and up eight events from current levels. (Recommendation 9)

The idea (Recommendation 10) is to move from a “sport-based to an event-based program.” Again, all well and good. So where are the cuts from the existing sports going to come from so that, for instance, surfing, skateboard, rock climbing and others are going to get their athletes in?

Is the IAAF, just to take one, happily going to start chopping its events to make way for the new kids on the block? Swimming, which just got promoted to A-level status, joining track and field? Gymnastics? Volleyball? Something’s got to give. Where?

Recommendation 10 also says that the IOC session itself gets to decide on the inclusion of any sport, which for an American is akin to getting a Constitutional amendment passed (for non-Americans: extraordinarily difficult). But it then allows for flexibility: it also says organizing committees can make a proposal for the inclusion of one or more additional events for their Games. (hypothetical: baseball and softball for Tokyo 2020.)

One more thing.

Recommendation 15 says the IOC’s “ultimate goal is to protect clean athletes” and that, when it comes to the use of performance-enhancing drugs, there needs to be a philosophy change. Instead of a focus on cheats, it says, “change the philosophy to protecting clean athletes.”

That would be most welcome.

The IOC talked a big game Tuesday. In December it will be time to vote on this plan. Then, if it really means what it says, it will be time to put all these words into action.

That will be the real test of Agenda 2020.

From the heart, Doha wins for 2019

MONACO — Qatar’s Mutaz Essa Barshim is just 23, a bronze medalist in the men's high jump at the London 2012 Olympics, silver medalist in the event at the 2013 world championships, gold medalist at the 2014 world indoor championships. Speaking here Tuesday with real passion and soul to the 27 members of the ruling council of international track and field’s governing body, the IAAF, Barshim said, on behalf of Doha’s bid for the 2019 world championships, “Are you willing to expand the sport that we love?”

Doha had it all Tuesday: facilities, resource, ambition, the advantage of coming back humbled after losing to London for 2017. With Eugene, Oregon, pressing hard, plainly presenting for one and all the question that dared to be asked — was the IAAF willing to entertain the notion of going, finally, to the United States — Doha played the trump card.

Mutaz Essa Barshim.

The IAAF awarded its 2019 championships to Doha in a close vote, the Qatari capital winning over Eugene in a second round of voting, 15-12.

In a first round, Doha had gotten 12 votes, Eugene nine. The third city in the mix, Barcelona, got six votes and was eliminated.

It is entirely typical in bid contests, whether for the Olympic Games or otherwise, for bid cities to put celebrity athletes front and center to troll for votes. Usually, these athletes read from cue cards or look uncomfortable and the whole thing seems forced and weird.

When it works, however, it really works.

Three years ago, for instance, the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Games bid committee relied on Toby Dawson, the U.S. skier who had been born in Korea, then adopted by an American family. His heartwarming story tugged at emotions as Pyeongchang rolled to a landslide victory.

On Tuesday, the U.S. sprinter Allyson Felix was — as always — elegant in advancing Eugene’s case. Giving of her time on her (29th) birthday, she said, “Putting your event in Eugene will launch a revolution of throwing, running and jumping in our country."

The Americans had made it abundantly clear that they saw the 2019 vote as a defining moment for the IAAF. If not now for track and field in the United States, when?

“Destiny is calling us,” bid leader Vin Lananna said. “America is waiting. Eugene is ready. Let’s tell our story together.”

From the American view, there was so much positive about this Eugene candidacy:

A re-done Hayward Field. The potential of packed stands, morning and night, a marked contrast to the worlds in 2013 (Moscow) and 2011 (Daegu, South Korea), which suffered from empty stadiums.

As the Americans told the council in the last question to be asked, a 2019 Eugene championships would be broadcast live on NBC. As Felix and others made abundantly plain, the worlds would re-energize the sport in the United States — the engine for much more to come in bigger cities.

What was left unsaid but nonetheless clearly understood, meantime, were other factors. Consider:

— Doha would put on the 2019 worlds from Sept. 28-Oct. 6. For contrast, the 2015 worlds will be Aug. 22 in Beijing, the 2017 edition Aug. 5-13 in London.

Doha 2019 would be just 10 months before the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo. How would that affect athlete training?

That time frame, moreover, lines up in the middle of other peak broadcast seasons, including the NFL.

— This was the rare circumstance in which the U.S. could actually be seen as the developing market.

In his remarks to the council, Lananna said, “Really, what is the takeaway? The United States promises to you today to deliver an unbelievable world championships.”

The challenge for Eugene: Doha promised the same thing, albeit in so many words.

While the U.S. is still climbing back into the international bid game, Doha — and Qatar — are by now seasoned veterans.

Over the next year, Qatar will play host to 43 international sports events. It will stage world championships in swimming and team handball, among others. In 2018, it will put on the world gymnastics championships. Of course, in 2022 it gets the soccer World Cup.

Perhaps of most relevance to the IAAF, Doha bid three years ago for the 2017 worlds. London won, 16-10, amid a pledge from Sebastian Coe, the leader of the London 2012 Games, to keep track and field at Olympic Stadium after those Games.

“When you lose, you should be humble,” Sheik Saoud bin Abdulrahman al Thani, the Doha 2019 bid leader and general secretary of the Qatar Olympic Committee, said. “Not every game will you win.”

For 2019, the Qataris promised a 100-meter video board atop the stadium. Five-star accommodations. A night marathon along the Corniche.

The late September start, they said, means that futuristic air conditioning systems in the stadium won’t be needed — but they have it and, they declared, can get temperatures down in two hours.

A Be In TV executive, Yousef Al Obaidly, promised “the most comprehensive promotional package ever.”

There’s a new mega-airport in Doha. Qatar Airways rocks.

And on and on.

“Today,” Dahlan al Hamad, president of the Qatar Athletics Federation and an IAAF vice president told the council, “we have the choice to make a deep impact, in a place where our sport can really grow, with a partner that can help us to make it happen.”

To critics of Doha, Sheikh Saoud had this to say in an interview: “We tell them to come and witness for yourself. Come and see. A lot of people don’t have the financial power [that Qatar does]. Not a lot of people choose to use sport … for everything. We believe in sport.”

Last week, at a major Olympic meeting in Bangkok, the feeling was Eugene was looking at five -- maybe eight -- votes maximum, in the first round. It wasn’t clear whether the Oregon city would even make it through to the second round.

The Eugene presentation Tuesday was, in every way, first rate. That clearly helped.

But so, too, Doha.

And only one of the two had Mutaz Essa Barshim.

“We need you to be the spark,” he told the IAAF council.

“We need everybody’s help. We need to make an impact. We need to take athletics to a new place. I’m not the only one sharing this dream.”

He added for emphasis a moment later, “We need everybody to come together for the sport that we love.”

None of this was rehearsed. Barshim spoke without notes. He did not pause or need for an instant to collect himself. “No script,” he said.

“Almost I had tears,” Sheikh Saoud, who has seen it all, said later. “The way he spoke — he was not just a star athlete. He was a star of expression.

“Most council members,” the sheik reminded, “were athletes. They were in his shoes. They know how it is.”

“From the heart,” Barshim would say later.

It’s a lesson worth remembering. For all the resource, it always comes down to this: sport — even, perhaps especially, the bidding for the events at which high-level sport is contested — is about emotion, about human connection.

On this day in Monaco, Doha had it. See you in 2019 in Qatar.

Sheikh Ahmad at ANOC gala: "Our job is to make dreams come true"

BANGKOK — Far too often, Olympic meetings are tedious affairs in which reports that have already been passed out well ahead of time are then read out from the lectern, word for word, to those seated at banks of tables below. Little wonder time sometimes seems as if it is passing like molasses. And then there is an affair like the more than 200-nation Assn. of National Olympic Committee meeting here in Bangkok, headed by the charismatic Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah of Kuwait, punctuated by Friday night’s first ANOC gala awards dinner, which may yet assume the role — which it clearly aims to be — of the Oscars of the Olympic sports world. Here was an assembly that, mostly, got it right. Starting with a focus on the athletes.

There were presentations Friday afternoon, yes, from Beijing and Almaty, the two remaining candidates in the 2022 Winter Games race, Beijing promising a safe and secure “joyful rendezvous upon pure ice and snow,” and note the emphasis on “pure” amid significant pollution concerns, Almaty claiming it would be not only affordable but the most compact bid in 30 years.

The emotional touchstone, however, came just a little bit earlier in the day, when an ANOC youth working group, chaired by Sebastian Coe, the London 2012 Summer Games chairman who himself won four Olympic medals in the 1980s, two gold, and is now an IAAF vice president, put forward Isabel Goodall, 19, from the remote Pacific island nation of Palau.

Isabel was, for sure, nervous to be standing in front of so many people. She would say afterward that she practiced her speech “quite a lot, quite a lot.” Asked how many times she went over her remarks so she would not make not even a single mistake, she said, “I lost count.”

She nailed it, and this came toward the end of what she had to say:

“We all believe that sport can change lives. We learned that we can improve our reality when we open our minds and try to understand the reality of others from different countries.”

This is the essence of the Olympic mission.

The IOC is trying to figure out what it is that the cherished teen and young 20s demographic wants.

There it is, and in just a few words.

It is what Beijing and Almaty are trying to win for. And even now, all those thinking about bidding for the Summer 2024 Games.

It is why Rio is in it for 2016, Pyeongchang for 2018, Tokyo for 2020.

At least in theory.

It’s also what should — emphasis, should — be at the core of each and every one of the 40 recommendations underpinning IOC president Thomas Bach’s “Agenda 2020” potential reforms, to be distributed soon to the IOC membership for review and a vote at an assembly in early December in Monaco.

Bach, addressing the ANOC session Friday, said, “The time to change is now. We have been discussing for one year. Now is the time for agreeing on something.

“If we want to preserve our values, we have to move. If we stand still, we are falling behind.”

There were a fair number of IOC members in the house Friday night for the gala.

Here were the values not only to be preserved but to be advanced.

Canadian women’s hockey player Caroline Ouellette now has four Olympic golds, including that memorable gold from Sochi, as well as five world championship golds and four world championship silvers. She accepted the ANOC award for “best female team [from] Sochi 2012.”

When boys and girls are given the chance to play sports, she said, they are “empowered” to dream big and change the world.

Scott Blackmun, the chief executive of the U.S. Olympic Committee, similarly accepted an award for “best team [from] London 2012.”

Doing so on behalf of America’s athletes, he said, he and everyone at the USOC is “proud to be part of something much more important,” the big-picture ideals of the Olympic movement, one-to-one change through the inspiration that heroes and dreams can bring, of “making the world a better place.”

The sheikh had said before the event, highlighting as well cultural performances by each of the five continental associations paying tribute to the diversity among the world’s national Olympic committees, “Sport has the power to bring us all together and unite us, and that is what we will be celebrating at the [gala].”

Frankly — these are technical issues for a show clearly aiming big — with dance performances Friday that included the likes of an Olympic-caliber flamenco show from Spain, samba from Brazil and haka from New Zealand, and more, the cultural elements ran on too long.

Yes — the show started late and ended on time. Even so — the dance performances were too much.

OK. What to expect? It was the first ANOC gala.

But since the gala was broadcast live in Thailand, as well as distributed to more than 25 broadcasters around the world with a potential reach of 350 million households, it was way more than just a dinner. Think about all good awards shows — they’re more than a banquet. You have to imagine way more than what’s happening in the room itself. If something is going to play on global TV, it needs way more rigor than the show presented Friday night.

Also: IOC member and former equestrian champion Mikaela Cojuangco-Jaworski of the Philippines and Brazilian actor Juliano Cazarré served as co-hosts.

Let’s just say this about Cazarré: for sure Cojuangco-Jaworski ought to be asked back.

Back to the sheikh: after he got off the stage, he was mobbed like a rock star. His security guy stood patiently by as he posed for pictures with Bach, with former IOC president Jacques Rogge, with everyone and anyone.

The sheikh has, in two-plus years, turned ANOC into a formidable institution in Olympic politics; here he was re-elected ANOC president. He is himself one of the singularly most interesting figures in the movement — a creative and innovative thinker and wielder of significant influence who may yet play an outsize role in deciding, among other things, whether China or Kazakhstan wins for 2022.

Among his other positions: the sheikh is head of the Olympic Council of Asia. Remember, one and all, China and Kazakhstan are both in Asia.

If the conventional wisdom is already that Beijing is the heavy-money favorite — well, the vote is a long way away. (It’s next summer.)

Friday night was all about the athletes.

Really.

It was a good reminder.

For everyone involved in the Olympic movement.

Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah said from the stage, closing the first ANOC gala, “This is only the start,” adding, “We have to create,” to “dream, dream, dream.”

Because he said, for emphasis, “Our job is to make dreams come true.”

IAAF 2019, IOC 2022: why so different?

The International Olympic Committee’s Winter Games bid 2022 process is, to put it charitably, struggling. Six cities have dropped out. Just two are left, Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan. At the very same time, the IAAF’s bid contest for the 2019 track and field world championship seemingly couldn’t be going better. On Friday, an evaluation commission, headed by Sebastian Coe, the 1980s track star who is an IAAF vice president and of course oversaw the 2012 London Summer Games, wrapped up a worldwide tour that took it across the world to the three cities in the race: Barcelona; Eugene, Oregon; and Doha, Qatar.

It’s almost impossible not to compare and contrast, and to wonder what the IAAF is obviously doing so right.

Because it’s not just 2019.

The 2013 world championships were in Moscow, at Luzhhniki Stadium, site of the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1980 Summer Olympics; 2015 will be in Beijing, back at the Bird’s Nest; 2017 in London, at Olympic Stadium. There’s a good case to be made that the 2021 worlds will likely fall in Tokyo, to make use of the new Olympic Stadium there after the 2020 Games.

Absolutely, the IAAF is not perfect. Far from it. The 2013 worlds, in particular, were marked by attendance woes early in the championships. The 2011 worlds were in Daegu, South Korea, hardly one of your must-see tourist hot spots.

But even significant glitches such as these have hardly stopped some of the world’s great cities from lining up to bid for what is, after the Summer Games and FIFA’s World Cup, indisputably one of Olympic sport’s glamour events — a nine-day run featuring some of sport’s great stars, including the likes of sprinters Usain Bolt of Jamaica and American Allyson Felix and the French pole-vaulter Renaud Lavillenie.

If 2011 was in Daegu, remember, 2009 was in Berlin, at historic Olympic Stadium. And it was in 2009 in Berlin, on the blue track, that Bolt ran his signature world records: 9.58 in the 100, 19.19 in the 200.

Even the United States wants in for 2019, with Eugene launching the first American bid since Stanford’s 1999 and 2001 unsuccessful efforts.

No way Eugene is one of the world’s great cities. Absolutely it is one of the world's great college towns. It is also home to one of the most famous track facilities anywhere, venerable Hayward Field. This summer, it put on the IAAF junior championships.

Barcelona of course staged the 1992 Summer Olympics. More recently and relevantly, it played host to the 2010 European track and field championships and the 2012 IAAF juniors.

Doha put on the 2010 IAAF world indoors. It finished second, behind London, in the race for the 2017 outdoor worlds, and is due in the coming months and years to host any number of other championships, including short-course swimming (December), team handball (early 2015), gymnastics (2018) and, certainly, soccer’s World Cup in 2022.

Barcelona assuredly can count on support from track and field’s European center; Eugene would refurbish “iconic” Hayward; Doha would present the championships not in August but in late September and early October and, moreover, run the marathon at night under floodlights, conjuring up memories of Abebe Bikila at the Rome 1960 Summer Games.

To be clear, there are manifest differences between an Olympic Games and a track and field world championships.

An Olympics features multiple world championships all going on at the same time; an IAAF worlds is just one. An Olympics runs for 17 days; an IAAF worlds, only the nine. And so on.

Even so, an IAAF worlds — especially in comparison to a Winter Games — is still a pretty darn big deal. There were roughly 2,850 athletes from 89 countries at the Sochi 2014 Olympics. Moscow 2013, meanwhile, saw 1,974 athletes from 206 nations.

To underscore: a track world championships typically means an assembly of more nations than anywhere but a Summer Olympics.

The track championships are hugely international but manageable, not the sort of thing that requires a city or nation to undergo a perceived onerous investment. In short, it doesn’t cost, just to pick a number out of the blue sky, $51 billion.

Which everyone knows is what a Winter Games costs, right?

Oh, wait.

The IOC now stands poised in Monaco at an all-members session in December to assess president Thomas Bach’s review and potential reform session, dubbed “Agenda 2020.” That $51 billion figure, widely associated with the Sochi Games, is the number believed to have played a role, big or small, in scaring off the six cities now out of 2022 — Lviv, Stockholm, St. Moritz/Davos, Krakow, Munich and, most recently, Oslo.

Of course It’s more than that.

It is absolutely the case that in this last year of his presidency, the IAAF, under Lamine Diack, is in something of a holding pattern. It is also undeniably true that over the past 15 years track and field has seen more than its fair share of doping-related scandals, some involving its biggest stars.

The latest, which dropped Friday: a reported positive A test for Kenya’s Rita Jeptoo, winner the last two years of both the Boston and Chicago marathons.

None of this, however, has stopped cities from wanting its biggest event — including the robust campaign going on now for 2019.

Why? Because for all its flaws, and there are many, track and field is and forever will be the sport, the one nearly everyone can do, the one that despite its highly professionalized nature remains the “vintage” sport — if you will — of the movement.

It is, despite everything, elemental.

All of this is part and parcel of the underlying contest within the 2019 contest, which all involved with track and field are keenly aware — one for 2019, the other the looming contest for the IAAF top job.

Coe has been the point man for the evaluation commission.

Meanwhile, his presumed rival for the IAAF presidency, Ukraine’s Sergey Bubka, the 1980s and ‘90s pole vault star, himself another IAAF vice president who is also a member of the IOC executive board, has been simultaneously traveling the world.

While Coe was in Doha, there was Bubka in Algeria, meeting with top African Olympic and track officials and tweeting about it.

Official dinner hosted by Mr Palenfo. Reporter asks how I feel in #Africa. I feelhere like I'm at home' @ACNOA_ANOCA pic.twitter.com/zRpCFk9Dgw

— Sergey Bubka (@sergey_bubka) October 30, 2014

When Diack -- who is from Senegal -- approached Coe to head the evaluation commission, meantime, close observers took that as an unmistakable signal about what in the world of track and field is what. For his part, through the October tour of Spain, Oregon and Qatar, Coe has stressed time and again that he is fulfilling this role in service to the IAAF.

For those who wondered if this world tour was going to be all about Coe -- no. To reframe Meghan Trainor’s hit song — it’s all about the bids.

To be honest, Coe has to do it this way, all the while being completely upbeat about all three cities — because, at the 2019 election Nov. 18 in Monaco, there is going to be one winner and two who go home empty-handed. Any perceived negativity anytime, anywhere — that wouldn’t serve anyone in that position well for the presidential election next August in Beijing.

This shadow dance is reaching a stage where the two undeclared candidates, Coe and Bubka, should soon be publicly forthcoming about their intentions — perhaps at the IAAF gala in Monaco in November, the same week as the 2019 elections, or soon thereafter.

Which leads back to the IOC.

The fix the IOC has got itself in has to be seen big picture.

When Juan Antonio Samaranch was president, from 1980 until 2001, one of the most clever — and under-appreciated — aspects of his tenure was to “hide” the Games themselves behind the concept of the movement.

The movement was all. The Games, while essential, were simply part of the overarching movement.

Under Jacques Rogge, whose term stretched from 2001 until 2013, this scenario switched.

The Games achieved primacy.

The unintended consequence:

By putting the Games first, the IOC is now increasingly seen worldwide as an event-maker — to take it further, an event-maker in a business where money, not the stories of the athletes, has become a central concern.

This was perhaps unavoidable after Games in Beijing ($40 billion-plus) and Sochi ($51 billion).

Regardless — it is profoundly unfortunate.

Money, though necessary, is not at all the IOC’s mission: it is to move the world forward, little by little, piece by piece, day by day, through one-to-one change via the athletes and the young people of the world. The shorthand for all this is expressed through the key Olympic values: friendship, excellence, respect.

A few voices would be eager — who are even now trying — to say what the IOC is truly about.

Why are those voices not being heard? Because the IOC is an easy target. And because the IOC is not telling its side of the story clearly, concisely or even well.

In politics, especially sports politics, it’s a raw truth that the truth matters — but what matters more is perception.

Perception is what is dragging at the IOC.

The IOC has a chance to effect significant change at that Monaco session, though with Bach announcing recently that bid-city visits by the members won’t be considered anew it’s not clear how far any real reform might stretch.

In the meantime, the IAAF — despite its figurative hurdles — heads into its November election for 2019 in a position of considerable strength. And seemingly poised, with a new generation of leadership at the ready, to grow the sport further.

At the closing news conference Friday in Doha, Coe was naturally asked about 2022, and the many allegations around the soccer tournament there.

“We came here to make a judgment about the worthiness of the city to stage a track and field championships,” he said, “so our focus has been entirely of this city and the other two cities to deliver this championships.

“We haven’t spent, and nor should we spend, any time worrying about other sports and other situations."

Coe praised each of the three 2019 cities. He also said the one that wins will be “the one in position to present the sport in the best possible light,” adding, “We are looking for a city that understands why it wants to host [the championships]."

Eugene's improbable 2019 bid: can it be a winner?

EUGENE, Oregon -- It rained, hard, Sunday afternoon. Then, abruptly, it stopped. On Monday, no rain. Was that random -- or, you know, a sign from above that Eugene's audacious bid for the 2019 track and field world championships is somehow feeling the heavenly love, too? Is this all just cosmic destiny, or what?

How is it that Eugene is not only in this thing but could actually win? For sure it could lose. But, seriously -- it might just win.

The logic of cold, hard rain says Eugene, a college town in the remote Pacific Northwest, has no business being in a contest with two world-class cities, Barcelona and Doha, Qatar. An IAAF evaluation commission, headed by Britain's Lord Sebastian Coe, the 1980s track star who is an IAAF vice president and of course served as boss of the London 2012 Summer Games, wrapped up its two-day visit Monday to Eugene; the IAAF commission visited Barcelona Oct. 14-15; it is due to go to Doha from here, with the visit there Oct. 30-31. The 2019 election is Nov. 18 in Monaco -- essentially, three weeks away.

What, meanwhile, is logic when it confronts passion? Doesn't track and field, more than anything, need passion?

These are but some of the several elemental questions underpinning this 2019 IAAF election.

As Coe -- who is relentlessly neutral about the entire 2019 process -- made plain in a news conference Monday at the University of Oregon basketball arena, it's apparent there is great enthusiasm in and about Eugene, indeed throughout Oregon, for track and field. That has nothing to do with the other two 2019 candidates; it doesn't reflect on them or the process in any way; no clues should be divined, because there are none, about whether Eugene is favored or definitely is not. The enthusiasm here is just -- obvious.

"This," Coe said, "is a community that understands track and field."

He outlined, too, five "really important values" the IAAF is looking for: the nature of the community itself; the necessary partnerships (think security, transport and the like); making sure the event is not "hermetically sealed" from life in the community; ensuring as well that the event would be used in alignment with local ambitions (think health and wellness); and, last but surely not least, the ability to use a championships to attract young people to track and field.

Now, getting down to business:

All in, there are 27 possible votes. How many of those are -- or might be -- likely to be favorable to the United States?

The outdoor worlds have never been to this country. Stanford put forth bids in 1999 and 2001. There’s abundant reason there haven’t been other bids — see above, 27 votes, in a world in which over the years “United States” has not reliably been a vote-getter.

The last Summer Olympics? Atlanta, 1996. The last Winter Games? Salt Lake City, 2002, and those were rocked by a corruption scandal.

Indianapolis played host to the 1987 world track indoors. Portland will put on the 2016 world indoors.

Aha, say the sunny-side up people! Portland!

Indeed.

This frames the crux of the matter:

Everyone connected to track and field in the United States agrees it would be a great thing to stage the worlds. Is 2019 the right time, and is Eugene the right place?

There are two theories at work:

One, the idea of having the worlds in Eugene is patently ridiculous.

Two, the dominoes may be falling just so and Eugene might sneak this one out.

In order:

No way Eugene can win, ought to win, should win, and here are just some of the reasons (among many) why:

— Eugene put on the six-day junior world championships at Hayward Field last summer. They were more than fine -- for a juniors. Guess what? The logistics of the juniors proved that Eugene is light years away from what it takes to run the nine-day, far more complex senior championships.

— Eugene is, at best, a sleepy college town far away from anywhere. It’s two hours-plus to a decent airport (in Portland). The late-night West Coast time-zone is a killer. Track and field is already a niche sport. Putting the 2019 worlds in a niche town in a niche state will further serve only to consign, indeed condemn, the sport to little or no notice in the United States for a long, long time.

-- When you are in a town not your own for nine days, it can seem like a lot longer when you are trying to discern something else to do and, especially, find places to eat.

Here was the local paper, the Register-Guard, in an editorial Sunday that can only be described as either "boosterish" or "loving" below two headlines, one that proclaimed, "Championships belong in Eugene," the other, "To a greater degree than anywhere else, track and field is in the city's DNA."

Pause here for a moment.

Disclaimer: obviously the newspaper is not part of the bid committee. Even so, this fact is difficult for non-Americans to understand and these kinds of headlines are head-scratchers in the international bid game. When will some Americans, even if well-meaning, understand that non-Americans do not appreciate that we are not the end-all, be-all in the entire world?

Do they comprehend at the Register-Guard that because of a crazy thing called the "internet" this stuff can get read now beyond the borders of the United States? Do they appreciate that these headlines were the talk -- with heads shaking in bewilderment if not dismay -- among those in the know Sunday night?

Who says any championships "belong" in Eugene? The sense of entitlement that word connotes is precisely the attitude the U.S. Olympic Committee has spent nearly five years not just running but sprinting away from.

And what wise minds on the newspaper board decided that Eugene, Oregon, had more in its cultural heart and soul than literally "anywhere else" on Planet Earth? For real?

Anyway, from the editorial:

"A member of the evaluation committee, torn by having to choose among a twilight walk on Doha’s corniche, an evening at a Barcelona tapas bar or an August afternoon at Hayward field, might consider stopping a runner at random on one of Eugene’s trails, and asking what a good split time would be in a 1,500 meter race.

"That should settle the matter in Eugene’s favor."

Or -- a member of the commission might stop that same runner and ask where in the hell you might eat on Day Eight in the greater Eugene scene. Don't miss Track Town Pizza (but not for a week straight). So what's an out-of-towner to do? Not everyone is going to Marché, next to the boutique Inn at the 5th. Again, what to do? Elmer's for comfort food in Springfield, hard by the I-5 and Beltline Road? (Bonus: Gateway Mall and Target just down the street!) How do you think Elmer's would stack up against the amazing seafood in Doha or the paella in Barcelona?

— Consider this cycle: Beijing 2015, London 2017, Somewhere 2019. After the Summer Games in 2020, wouldn’t it makes sense — in the same way it did to make post-Olympic use of the stadiums in Beijing and London — to go back to Tokyo in 2021? Further, assuming the United States wins in 2017 for the Summer Games in 2024, wouldn’t it again make eminent sense to stage the test event in the winning city in 2023 — just for the sake of conversation in, say, Los Angeles?

If you were trying to grow the sport of track and field in the United States, would you rather have a world championships at Hayward Field or at the LA Memorial Coliseum, site of the 1932 and 1984 Summer Games? Hayward was repeatedly described Monday as "iconic." You want "iconic"? Let's match Hayward against the Coliseum.

Even USA Track & Field has already recognized that LA maybe has something going for it: the U.S. marathon Trials are going to be there in 2016.

Yes, yes, yes -- Los Angeles and Eugene share the same time zone. But LA has the ESPN and Fox studios. In LA, the worlds would be a story, maybe the story. Remember, there's no NFL team in LA, and unless that changes, in late August a track worlds might well own SoCal.

Thank you, downer cows, for your views. Your time is up.

OK, cheery optimists. Your turn:

— The outgoing IAAF president, Lamine Diack, has always wanted a worlds in the United States. Diack's political acumen should not be underestimated, even on his way out.

— Since 2010, the USOC, and in particular board chairman Larry Probst and chief executive Scott Blackmun, have traveled the world, emphasizing relationship-building and stressing that the United States is keen to be a partner in the so-called “Olympic family.”

Eugene’s campaign is clearly a major USOC priority: Blackmun, recovering from shoulder surgery, was nonetheless here Sunday, when the rain was coming down hard, to make the case to the IAAF. Look, a 2019 worlds would be the biggest Olympic sports event in the United States since Atlanta 1996. After the Summer Games themselves and soccer’s World Cup, the track championships are the next big thing — so this is, indeed, a very big deal.

How big? Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber appeared Sunday evening at the traditional welcome dinner.

"We’re at the vanguard of a national quest — a quest to bring the world back to the United States,” Vin Lananna, the senior University of Oregon athletic director and president of the local entity called TrackTown USA that is pushing the bid, was said to have told the IAAF working group Sunday behind closed doors.

— Maybe, just maybe, the world of Olympic sport is increasingly hospitable to the Americans. The alpine ski worlds are in Vail and Beaver Creek this coming February; that is the biggest event on the winter sports calendar. Is the IAAF going to be the first of the major summer sports to show that it’s time to come back to the USA as well — to be, if you will, the group of thought leaders showing the way?

— USA Track & Field, often maligned over the years, has quietly been on something of a positive roll, building up sponsors and momentum since Max Siegel took over as chief executive two-plus years ago. A 2019 Eugene victory would give the sport five years in the national spotlight — with the possibility of five more if the USOC were to win for 2024.

Siegel said Monday, “An event of this magnitude on U.S. soil will allow us to galvanize and focus this entire country over a sustained period of time in bringing awareness and promoting the sport.

“What it does it allows you to come up in a strategic way in engaging fans and sponsors, further educating them about the sport and the commercial opportunities available in the space.

“We'd have five years to rally everybody.”

-- It's no secret that Eugene and seemingly most of Oregon is Nike country. USATF has a new deal with Nike. The IAAF and adidas have long been partners. But, you know, what if?

— Perhaps, too, it is now the case that in our increasingly convergent 21st century you don’t need a big city as the stage for a world championships. The 2015 FINA swim championships are in Kazan, Russia, in the dead-center of nowhere. Kazan?! Plain fact: wherever you are, television and social media carry the event to the world.

Reality checks:

Eugene has two primary weaknesses — size and venue.

Full details of the Eugene 2019 plan have not been made public.

But enough is known about what matters.

When the U.S. Olympic Trials are on, Hayward Field holds roughly 20,000 people. That’s not anywhere enough for a worlds.

If Eugene wins for 2019, Hayward would be renovated with seating for 32,000. If the bid is not successful — and the plan has always been for Hayward to be re-done — the facility would be built out so it can play host to NCAA championships on a regular basis.

For emphasis, none of this would be public money — all of it would come from private fundraising.

You can bet, too, that a re-done Hayward would be a world leader in technology and innovation. Lananna, at Monday's news conference, dropped sly hints about just that.

Secondly, accommodation.

In Eugene right now, the count of existing hotel stock — that includes university residence halls and housing, which can be used for athletes and others — stands at roughly 11,000. Don’t be quick to dismiss some of that university housing; some is pretty darn nice condo-style stuff.

The rise of the Oregon football program means that Autzen Stadium is now packed on multiple football Saturdays every year. Where do those people stay? If you go 90 minutes out from Eugene, that total of 11,000 rises to 17,000 rooms and 20,000 beds.

Meanwhile, nine new properties with over 3,000 rooms are already in the works.

Speaking of convergence — what if this Eugene 2019 bid marks the perfect coming-together of relationships, partnerships and opportunity?

“We have a strong desire to host this championships,” Lananna said. “This is what we do here. We work at it: 24/7, 365 days a year, we do track and field.

“We have the resources, we have the commitments, we have the community behind us. Therefore we can do it.

“Lastly, we will pack the stadium every single day for every single event for the world championships. Every single young man, every young woman will be treated to the experience of their lives in the sport they have dedicated their lives to. That is why we are trying to host the championships. This is not a legacy for Eugene or for the United States. This is a legacy for the sport. This IAAF council,” he said, “has an opportunity to create their own legacy.”

No bid visits: will 'Agenda 2020' yield real change?

The International Olympic Committee tends, generally speaking, to move with tradition and with careful adherence to process in mind. Thus perhaps, maybe, possibly the final outcome of the all-members session in December in Monaco, at which the IOC will review President Thomas Bach’s “Agenda 2020” review and potential reform plan, will produce far-reaching change. But the signal sent at the close of Thursday’s policy-making executive board meeting seems decidedly otherwise.

In announcing that the ban on IOC member visits to bid cities will remain locked into place, Bach shot down what could have been one of the most welcome changes to IOC practice, a move that could have ushered in an era of fresh transparency and governance.

Instead, even as he sketched out for reporters on a teleconference some of the highlights of the “Agenda 2020” recommendations — saying he wants the bidding procedure to be more of an “invitation” to cities than an “application for tender” and wants proposals for a more flexible sports program — the concern reasonably has to be that change will end up, in practice, being incremental or at the margins, not the sort of shake-up that quite clearly is in order.

The challenge, as is evident to everyone familiar with the Olympic movement, is that it needs to figure out the 21st century.

When, as a for instance, you only have two cities in the entire world — Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan — that want in on one of your flagship opportunities, the 2022 Winter Games, and when, moreover, you, the IOC, have $880 million to give away to a winning city’s organizing committee and still there are only two entries in the derby, something systemic is not right.

On a different level, the IOC needs a crash course in how today’s teens and 20-somethings talk and think so it can then speak to these young people, wherever in the world they are, in the language of their hopes and dreams.

Full details of the set of 40 Agenda 2020 recommendations — or as the IOC press release slyly put it, “20 + 20” (get it?) — were not released Thursday; they need to circulate yet to the IOC members; all 40 are due to be made public in November.

One significant change was disclosed: the introduction of an Olympic TV channel. This is, for the Olympic movement, big stuff.

The rest: unclear.

What is absolutely clear is this:

The IOC works best when the president is large and in charge.

Unquestionably, this is Bach’s IOC. That executive board meeting was supposed to run three days. They got through everything in two — less, actually, because the closing teleconference was at 2:30 in the afternoon central European time.

This is indicative of a president who had his priorities for the meeting detailed and his board, well, on board.

Ladies and gentlemen — nothing wrong with any of that. Thanks now for the good work, and go home. See you in Monaco in December for the discussion and the voting, everyone.

Presumably, by the way, the votes will be more or less worked out ahead of time. There will be a lot of phone calls between now and then.

This is the way the IOC functions most smoothly. There's nothing undue or nefarious or even just weird about it.

It took Bach’s predecessor, Jacques Rogge, years to figure this out. Rogge experimented with enhanced democracy within the IOC and — it was a mess. Elected in 2001, it perhaps wasn’t until after the 2004 Athens Olympics, maybe even a couple years later, that Rogge made it clear that, OK, I’m the boss.

Bach — this analysis is absolutely intended to be complimentary — came to office last September and, in a myriad of ways, in particular the robust manner he has sought to delineate sport’s role in a political world, wasted zero time making it plain he is running the show.

There have always been two ways to view Agenda 2020, the blueprint of which was right there in Bach’s campaign manifesto.

You could say it has left the IOC in the stasis that marked Rogge’s final year-plus in office for yet another year. (While, of course, to be thoroughly fair, the IOC got through the Winter Games in Sochi and the Youth Games in Nanjing.)

Or you could argue that Agenda 2020 gave Bach a year to get buy-in from most (no one ever gets all) of the stakeholders throughout the Olympic movement, and beyond.

If you see it this latter way — pretty darn clever, right?

It’s pretty darn clever because Bach is himself a most shrewd guy and, as well, learned a great deal from many people, including Rogge and, before that, Juan Antonio Samaranch.

The overarching question throughout Agenda 2020 has been how far Bach can — could? is willing to? — push the IOC.

This is where the bid visits issue is so telling.

The visits were banned as a response to the scandal that erupted in late 1998 amid Salt Lake City’s winning bid for the 2002 Winter Games. Ten IOC members resigned or were expelled for taking cash, gifts or other inducements.

In recent years, some have pushed to reinstate the visits.

For instance, would the IOC really have voted for Sochi if the members had been able to go there and seen — what? Virtually nothing was there in 2007. Could the IOC have saved itself a (purported) $51 billion headache if there had been visits?

Further, the real issue is one of trust — revolving around the members themselves. If you take a step back, there are two parties in the bid game, the cities and the members. The IOC long ago purged itself of those members it couldn’t trust. Remember, the cities are the ones seeking favor — they’re the ones with the gifts and inducements most readily at hand. So, now, who needs to be curbed, the cities or the members?

To that end, Bach faces a credibility gap when he flies around the world and talks to anyone — you name it, anyone from prime ministers to civic groups — about the IOC itself. Is he supposed to be taken as seriously as he could be, as he should be, when his own members can’t be trusted to visit the cities bidding for his franchise?

This is why a debate in Monaco about bid visits could have been one signaling a renewed era of IOC transparency.

Instead, Bach said Thursday to reporters: “I hope my executive board members and other members will forgive me if I say here already, but there will be no recommendation for a change in this regard.”

Change is what the IOC needs.

How much it’s going to get is what remains to be seen.

Time for IOC leadership, not lip service

Friendship, excellence and respect — these are the key values underpinning the mission of the International Olympic Committee, indeed the Olympic enterprise worldwide. Moreover, the IOC likes to say that athletes are at the center of everything everyone in the Olympic movement does. Two episodes over the weekend raise serious questions about whether both are true, or just so much lip service. And with the IOC’s policy-making executive board meeting later this week in Switzerland, the issue becomes what — if anything — the IOC is going to do about it.

The first:

Shamil Tarpischev, the head of the Russian tennis federation and an IOC member since 1994, got caught saying on a talk show that sisters Serena and Venus Williams were “brothers” and and “scary” to look at.

He denied any “malicious intent,” according to Associated Press and said his quotes had been taken out of context.

“The IOC will directly contact Mr. Tarpischev to ask him for a full explanation of his comments,” a spokesman said Monday in response to a request for comment.

The second:

Many runners at Sunday’s Beijing Marathon opted for particle-filtering surgical masks to cope with the oppressive smog blanketing the city. The smog was so bad the U.S. Embassy rated the air quality hazardous.

“Actually, on a normal day, nobody would run in such conditions," Liu Zhenyu, a runner and computer engineer, told Associated Press. “But the event is happening today, so what can we do?”

Even the People’s Daily China acknowledged conditions were bad.

Some of the runners have given up in the 2014 Beijing Marathon due to the serious air pollution in Beijing. pic.twitter.com/GoVpxcPcKH

— People's Daily,China (@PDChina) October 19, 2014

To be clear, the IOC itself had nothing to do with the Beijing Marathon.

But — Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan, are the only two cities in the world that are left in the race for the 2022 Winter Olympics.

So here are the choices:

Beijing, where the air is so bad — and this, six years after the 2008 Summer Games, amid promises then by the Chinese authorities that it was going to get better, instead of worse — that runners are wearing surgical masks to try to get through the running of a marathon?

Or Almaty, where remarks last week from the director of the ice rink in Astana proved unusually revealing. The Asian Winter Games in Kazakhstan in 2011 split time between Astana and Almaty; the 2022 plan, at least for now, is to focus solely on Almaty.

“We have to formulate our bid something like this: ‘The Olympic Games in Almaty — the cheapest, thriftiest, smartest Games,” said rink director Nail Nurov.

He went on to say, referring to the $51 billion figure associated with the 2014 Games, “What the Russians have done in Sochi is a serious problem,” because by spending so much, “they raised the bar to “unbelievable organizational heights.” The perceived “rule” that each edition of the Games must better the preceding one was, he said, probably why Oslo, Munich, Krakow, St. Moritz/Davos, Stockholm and Lviv had said no thanks to 2022.

Oh, and in 2013 voters in Austria said no to a 2028 Summer Games bid as well.

If you were writing a slogan, and at the risk of being perhaps overly glib, what would you have?

Beijing 2022: “Most Polluted Games Ever And No Mountains Remotely Close.”

Almaty 2022: “Cheapest Games Ever.”

To use an American saying: this is no way to run a railroad.

Three times in recent weeks, after Oslo dropped out, reducing the number of purportedly viable candidates from three to two, this space has urged the IOC to consider whether the 2022 campaign as it stands now is best practices, and to put the whole thing on pause for six months.

The IOC has said it is committed to its process.

In ordinary times, that would be a defensible position.

As this space has pointed out, however, this is an extraordinary situation, and extraordinary times call for an extraordinary re-think — and leadership.

Lest all this be seen as the promotion of a 2022 late-stage bid by the U.S. Olympic Committee from Denver and Salt Lake City — there is no signal that is in the works. The USOC is intent on 2024, if that still seems do-able after the IOC’s all-members vote on President Thomas Bach’s “Agenda 2020” review and potential reform plan in December.

What has to be asked, however, is why other cities aren’t even being given a chance to see if they might be interested. Is the IOC quietly doing due diligence? Shouldn’t it be?

To reiterate: the IOC has $880 million to give to the winning city, which would cover nearly half, if not more, of a prudent organizing committee’s operating costs.

When Oslo dropped out, the IOC said it intended “to communicate, to communicate, to communicate” about the advantages of bidding for the Games.

It has been nearly three weeks now.

There has been no such communication.

There has been an announcement that the IOC intends to meet with sports officials in Norway about what went wrong there.

Why meet with sports officials? If you want a debrief, fine. But in this context, what authority do such sports officials have? It was the government that pulled the plug. The politicians are the ones paying the bills. If you want to do something constructive, meet with the politicians, as awkward, weird, uncomfortable, whatever it might be.

Remember: the Lillehammer Youth Games are in 2016. Who’s paying for those?

As Bach said in September in South Korea at the Asian Games — and it is a profound mystery why more people have not picked up on this huge statement — sports and politics absolutely do mix.

Which leads, in its way, back to Tarpischev.

Tarpischev is close to Russian president Vladimir Putin. When Bach was elected IOC president, the very first call he — that is, Bach — took was from Putin.

So whatever is going to happen is going to be complex and layered.

Tarpischev, 66, has already been fined the maximum $25,000 and banned from the WTA Tour for a year.

According to RT.com, Tarpischev appeared Oct. 7 on a show called “Evening Urgant” — the host’s name is Ivan Urgant — with former WTA player Elena Dementieva.

This was part of the dialogue:

“I was at the Olympics and saw Maria Sharapova play her … him …," Urgant said.

“… One of the Williams brothers,” Tarpischev finished.

Can there be little question that his remarks were not only insensitive but also sexist and racist?

Serena Williams certainly thought so, adding, “I thought they were, in a way, bullying.”

Sharapova, who has played Fed Cup for Russia throughout her career, said of Tarpischev’s comments, “I think they were very disrespectful and uncalled-for, and I’m glad that many people have stood up, including the WTA. It was very inappropriate, especially in his position and all the responsibilities that he has not just in sport but being part of the Olympic committee. It was just really irresponsible on his side.”

Tarpischev said, according to RT.com, “I am sorry that the joke which was translated into English out of its context of a comedy show drew so much attention. I don’t think this situation is worth all the hoopla because those words were said without any malice.”

He also lamented, the website said, that the situation was “hyped to an absurd level,” adding that Russians do not file complaints when there are jokes elsewhere about “vodka, balalaika and bears.”

Friendship, excellence and respect is a long way away from vodka, balalaika and bears.

Tolerance and making the world even just a little bit better — this is what the International Olympic Committee, indeed the entire Olympic movement, piece by piece, day by day, person by person, is (supposed to be) about.

Whether or not Tarpischev intended to hurt anyone is not entirely relevant. In this case, the person whose feelings are at issue is Serena Williams. She is a big person and doesn’t need anyone to defend her in this sort of context but, honestly — four Olympic gold medals, three in doubles with her sister, and then of course the thrilling singles victory at Wimbledon in 2012?

Remember, the athletes are at the center of everything, right?

Tarpischev, whether he or Putin like it or not, has to be held to a higher standard. Too often the IOC is criticized for reaching for a utopia of sorts in which sport can not make a difference in showing the world how to get along. This incident offers a teachable moment.

To begin, the International Tennis Federation has been deadly silent on this issue. That is indefensible. The WTA has taken strong action. So should the ITF.

So, too, the IOC.

European soccer has been marked by ugly incidents of racism. Here is the perfect example for the IOC to demonstrate that words, even if meant in jest, which these arguably were not, can be just as hurtful as, say, throwing a banana on a soccer pitch.

In a world in which racism and sexism are regrettably yet virulent, the IOC can, and should, provisionally suspend Tarpischev.

You want the legal hook? He has brought the IOC into disrepute with his remarks. The IOC ethics commission can take it from there.

You want common sense? Everyone knows that hurtful words are the trigger for more.

And that saying something was just a joke is often just a lame way of covering up.

Again, extraordinary times call for extraordinary leadership. If the IOC means what it says, then there has to be more than just lip service.

Hey, IOC, let's go surfing -- now

Hard to believe but snowboarding, which is basically now the it-sport of the Winter Games, has been on the program only since 1998. It has really been a big deal only since 2002, when halfpipe took off. The International Olympic Committee has had one undisputed big winner in recent years at the Summer Games: beach volleyball. BMX? Kinda. The real ticket is at the beach, with the hard bodies in their bikinis or board shorts and the California-cool, surfer-dude lifestyle.

This is the farthest thing from rocket science. With the IOC in the midst of a potentially far-reaching review and reform program — all the members meeting in Monaco in December to debate President Thomas Bach’s so-called “Agenda 2020” program — the time is right to figure out how, or better yet how now, to get the sport that’s at the core of it all into the Games: surfing.

Again, this is super-obvious.

There’s nothing like surfing on the program. (Windsurfing is totally different. It’s a sailing sport.) And if you think beach volleyball is a hot ticket, the sort of thing that has proven its appeal to the very demographic the IOC is trying to reach — hello, surfing?

Think again what snowboarding has done for the Winter Games. Now imagine what surfing could do for the stagnant Summer Games.

You think, just as a for instance, the IOC would be delighted to count on super big-wave surfer Laird Hamilton as an ambassador?

In considering surfing for the Games, what’s different from prior years is the advent of artificial wave technologies. That makes the sport far more accessible and controllable — and thus do-able in an Olympic context. Translation: surfing no longer has to rely -- indeed, should not have to count on -- having a nearby ocean.

Big, big, big picture: surfing right now is practiced by about 35 million people worldwide, according to estimates. Artificial wave technology is likely going to explode the sport’s potential, bringing it to hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people everywhere on Planet Earth, people not lucky or wealthy enough to live by the sea. The IOC is often at the forefront of showcasing precisely this sort of growth (see Summer Games Rio 2016 — first time in South America, Winter Games Pyeongchang 2018, first Winter Olympics in South Korea).

Currently, the International Surfing Assn. counts 89 member nations. For 2015, it plans to rocket past 100; 20 more nations are in the pipeline.

As this space has pointed out before, it’s skateboarding’s time in the Games, too. For many if not all the same reasons.

The thing that makes surfing such a remarkably easy sell is the guy at the top — Fernando Aguerre, 56, the ISA president, who is up for re-election next week at the federation’s meetings in Peru.

Aguerre, born and raised in Mar del Plata, Argentina, has lived in the seaside San Diego neighborhood of La Jolla for roughly 30 years. The story is perhaps well known about how he and his brother, Santiago, started Reef Sandals from scratch; they sold the company in 2005.

What is not as well known, maybe, is that Aguerre starts every day by surfing. Still. Typically, at 8:05 in the morning — his favorite spot is a break known locally as Windansea.

Name another international federation president who does that.

Aguerre and Nenad Lalovic, the president of the international wrestling federation, which now goes by the name United World Wrestling, are examples of the new faces — with first-rate passion, energy and ideas — who have arrived, and can be expected to be important for years, within the Olympic scene.

So, too, Marius Vizer, the International Judo Federation and SportAccord president.

Last year, when Aguerre was given the “Waterman” award — the surf industry’s highest honor — Bob McKnight, the executive chairman of the surfwear maker Quiksilver, referring to the way Aguerre views each day, said, “He’s always in attack mode,” adding, “He understands the business, understands the people, the culture, what we do, where it’s at, why we do it.

“I think he just looks at himself in the mirror every morning and asks, ‘Who am I? I’m Fernando, and I’m the man. I go attack!’ That’s how he has always been.”

Added pro big-wave surfer Greg Long, “I tell you one thing: Fernando loves to have a good time. That’s one of the first things I remember about him — his contagious energy and excitement. There’s the whole business side to him. Everybody knows that. They’ve seen that. They have seen what he has created — time and again in this industry. But, more importantly, the guy loves life.”

The IOC members see a lot of BS, a lot of false smiles. In Aguerre — who walked into his first Olympic meeting in 2007, not knowing a soul — they have seen authenticity.

With his brother, he started a company from scratch. They made it, and made it big. But — always — there is for Fernando Aguerre the memory of his grandmother in Argentina, who worked as a maid, and his grandfather, a taxi driver.

When Fernando was 15, his grandmother gave him a parka, which had to have cost her a big piece of that month's paycheck.

“She said,” he recalls, “you are too young to understand -- but giving is better than receiving. If you give a lot, you have a chance to be a better person.”

Later, when she was getting on in years, he said to her, what kind of flowers do you want for your funeral?

She said, “I want the flowers now because when I am dead I won’t be able to smell them,” and he says, “Appreciate what you have now. If you take that to the relationships with people then you have a richer relationship with the people in your life.”

Surfing — if you have ever done it — is huge fun. The only thing like it, of course, is snowboarding.

For Aguerre, however, it’s also about one-to-one change, and the way that change ripples out throughout our world.

There are the ISA scholarships aimed at helping kids in places such as Namibia and India.

There are stories like the one of Bali’s only 20-year-old female pro surfer — who says she is inspiring other girls to take up surfing.

Of a woman paralyzed in a car crash 18 years ago who had always dreamed of surfing — and went, duct-taped to the back of a big-wave rider.

There are the conversations Aguerre has had with presidents, prime ministers, tourist ministers and other leaders — in Panama, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, among other places. In Costa Rica, the official numbers last year showed 2.4 million visitors, of whom 10 percent were surfers, or 240,000. Their average expenditure: $1440. The math: $345 million.

“For Costa Rica, that’s not small change,” Aguerre said.

“For me,” he said, “I feel like my role as an international federation president is not just to develop the sport or run high-quality world championships — to be sure there is fair play and no doping, all the things a president must do.

“It’s also to educate leaders about the powerful relevance of surfing as a social and economic force. That is probably what catches most people by surprise.”

Really, it’s time. Surfing in the Games. As soon as possible.

The Phelps suspension: why the rush to judgment?

Cross-country ski champion Petter Northug was sentenced last Thursday in court in Norway to 50 days behind bars after being convicted of drunk driving. Which brings us to Michael Phelps, the 24/7 media spin cycle we live in and the rush to judgment that led to the significant suspension USA Swimming levied against Phelps for his recent DUI arrest in Baltimore. What was to be gained by USA Swimming rushing to this judgment? More — what was lost by waiting?

Clearly, USA Swimming did what it felt like it needed to do. In some quarters, it is getting kudos for taking decisive action. But was it appropriate — or, better, right?

At issue are several thoroughly basic principles.

One, the media is not running anything. We can’t even run ourselves. Who cares if we are shouting? Or tweeting? Seriously. This is what is called a diversity of opinion. The counterpoint to that is called calm leadership.

Two, bad facts make for bad law. This is elemental. Phelps’ case is not one on which to make, or rest, broad-based policy.

Three, as everyone who has read Orwell knows, all the animals on the farm are not equal. Or are they? Which is it going to be?

To recap:

Phelps, 29, is charged with DUI, excessive speed and crossing double lane lines. Police stopped him outside the Fort McHenry tunnel at 1:40 a.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 30, saying he was going 84 in a 45 zone; he had spent the hours before at the Horseshoe Casino. Police say his blood alcohol level was 0.14; the state’s legal limit is 0.08. Phelps is due to appear in court on Nov. 19.

The arrest is Phelps’ second for drunk driving. He pleaded guilty to driving while impaired in 2004.

USA Swimming did not suspend him after the 2004 case.

Five years ago, British tabloids published a photo of Phelps with his face in a bong.

USA Swimming suspended him in 2009 for three months.

For those unfamiliar with cross-country skiing, Northug won four medals, two gold, at the Vancouver 2010 Games. When you include medals won at world championships, he is right up there with the legendary Bjorn Daehlie.

Northug, 28, crashed his Audi while driving the first week of May. His blood alcohol level was more than eight times the Norwegian legal limit, according to Reuters. Norway’s limit is 0.02. A friend who was in the car was slightly hurt. Northug was not injured.

Northug was also fined $30,000 and banned from driving for life; Associated Press said that “normally means a minimum of five years.”

The accident and aftermath have been front-page news for months in winter sports-crazed Norway. Northug said, according to reports, that the episode would “follow me throughout my whole life.”

Here is the kicker:

The Norwegian Ski Assn., according to AP, said it would not punish Northug because his accident “had nothing to do with competition or training.”

The association president, Erik Roeste, told the Norwegian news agency NTB, “It’s not in sports regulations to punish him from our side in any way.”

So how did USA Swimming come to sanction Phelps?

Through Section 304.3.19 of its rule book.

It allows sanctions for “any other material and intentional act, conduct or omission not provided for above, which is detrimental to the image or reputation of USA Swimming, a LSC (local swimming committee) or the sport of swimming.”

Six days after Phelps’ arrest, USA Swimming announced it had suspended him for six months and he had withdrawn, by mutual agreement with the federation, from the U.S. team for the 2015 world championships in Kazan Russia. He also agreed to forfeit a $1,750 USA Swimming stipend for six months.

Phelps’ arrest came amid the controversies that have enveloped the NFL and stirred headlines since the video surfaced — on Sept. 8 — of Ray Rice punching his then-fiancee in a casino elevator. You can be sure that played a part in the decision-making at USA Swimming.

The hammer came the day after Phelps announced he was headed to a six-week, in-patient treatment program.

Even if you decide that this arrest warrants sanction — that’s an entire column in and of itself — what was the goal here?

To penalize Phelps? Deter him or others? Rehabilitate him? Make sure he doesn’t drive drunk again? Send a message — to him, others on the national team or other swimmers in clubs across the United States?

Why was it so important to suspend Phelps when not even a week had passed?

Did acting so quickly make it more — or less — likely to achieve the objective? Which, again, was what?

Isn’t it more likely that we were all left with one obvious reality? That USA Swimming acted get itself out of the spotlight -- or, more precisely, to cover its backside amid media pressure?

So, now what?

Did anyone watch Ryan Lochte’s reality TV show? In the realm of possibility: were there off-camera escapades that might now bring embarrassment to USA Swimming? Do you think TMZ is asleep at that switch? Really?

Further, are we all willing to believe there isn’t even one coach affiliated with USA Swimming, or one athlete anywhere in the United States with a DUI that has yet to come to light? Truly? How soon before one such case emerges? Would any such case bring embarrassment to the federation? How much embarrassment?

You see how problematic this is?

What about this: reasonable people can agree to disagree about whether USA Swimming executive director Chuck Wielgus should or should not have drawn so much criticism earlier this year when he was nominated for the International Swimming Hall of Fame amid concern the federation should have done more to prevent sexual abuse by coaches.

In June, Wielgus formally apologized — four years after saying on national TV that he had nothing to apologize for.

Phelps apologized, too, and in short order after arrest.

These two scenarios admittedly are in many ways apples and oranges. However, the question is nonetheless worth posing, especially if you're asking forthright questions: big-picture, which of the two holds the greater potential to embarrass USA Swimming -- Phelps' situation, or Wielgus'?

The federation, it must be acknowledged, has taken undeniably constructive steps in reordering its safe sport policies. At the same time, right or not, fair or not, Wielgus found himself this summer in an uncomfortable spot.

So why is Phelps getting six months plus the Worlds?

The problem is there is no spelled-out policy here. A catch-all is not good enough.

Another problem: there is inconsistency in the broader U.S. Olympic sphere.

Compare:

Rule 4 of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Assn.’s code says: “USSA members shall maintain high standards of moral and ethical conduct, which includes self-control and responsible behavior, consideration for the physical and emotional well-being of others, and courtesy and good manners.”

In 2010, when then-USSA chief Bill Marolt was arrested for DUI — he took responsibility and apologized, just like Phelps — was he suspended? Hardly.

More current: Hope Solo, U.S. Soccer’s goaltender, is facing two counts of misdemeanor domestic violence linked to a June incident at Solo’s sister’s home in Kirkland, Washington.

In a September 23 Facebook post, Solo declared: “… I continue to maintain my innocence against these charges. And, once all the facts come to light and the legal process is concluded, I am confident that I will be fully exonerated.”

Not only has U.S. Soccer not suspended Solo, she has continued to play and, indeed, has once been honored with the captain’s armband.

USOC chief executive Scott Blackmun last month told USA Today, “Abuse in all forms is unacceptable. The allegations involving Ms. Solo are disturbing and are inconsistent with our expectations of Olympians. We have had discussions with U.S. Soccer and fully expect them to take action if it is determined that the allegations are true.”

Three things:

The reason U.S. Soccer hasn’t moved is because you can bet there would be a counter-move rooted in the 1978 Ted Stevens Amateur Sports Act.

Solo’s case is yet to be decided in the courts. Yet USA Swimming took action even though Phelps’ matter is only at the arrest stage. He, just like Solo, is due the presumption of innocence.

Finally, this suspension was pushed through when Phelps was on his way to treatment. The skeptic might say Phelps is going to treatment in a bid to prove to the courts that he’s being proactive. Or maybe he is, genuinely, recognizing that, at 29, he needs help, and now is the time to get it.

The difference between the Solo and Phelps cases is that Phelps accepted the suspension. Query: on his way to six weeks away, did he really have any choice? Was he really going to fight that fight? Right then and there?

Now that it’s all said and done, maybe everyone ought to take a deep breath.

Near-term:

At the least, USA Swimming has gone one step too far with Phelps.

On the one hand, six months is arguably thoroughly arbitrary. For legal purposes, the first DUI is absolutely, totally irrelevant. (To show you further how arbitrary: what if Phelps were photographed now with his face in a bong pipe in Colorado, where -- along with Washington state -- pot is legal? Colorado, of all places, home of USA Swimming and the USOC. Things evolve.)

On the other, you can make a pretty strong argument for six months. Let’s be plain: there’s no excusing drunk driving and Phelps is profoundly lucky no one got hurt, or worse. Phelps’ blood-alcohol level was, again, 0.14, and that was not in the field — that was after he had been taken to the police station. He likely had to have been doing some serious drinking. A 200-pound male, about what Phelps weighs, would had to have had 12 drinks to blow a 0.152 after four hours of drinking, according to this chart.

Assuming there’s no wiggle room with the six months, the crux of what really ought to be at issue is the Worlds. Why beat Phelps up over the Worlds? It’s not at all clear that, after six weeks away from the pool, he would even be ready. But it’s just as easy to make the argument that he would be an asset post-treatment to the American team as not — after all, he was a veteran leader in London two years ago, and has increasingly related to younger swimmers.

Here’s one proposal:

After Phelps is done with his six-week, in-patient treatment program, and his court date is through, assuming a conviction but no custody time, he might consider moving to the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. He could eat, sleep, train and focus on nothing but himself and swimming — under the watch of USA Swimming and the USOC and, perhaps most important, the longtime "mom" at the training center, an old friend, Sherry Von Riesen.

If he proved himself a model citizen, then the ban on the Worlds could be rescinded.

Phelps has had only one coach, Bob Bowman. Bowman is in Baltimore. There would have to be some workarounds. Bowman could perhaps come to Colorado every couple weeks. There could be Skype sessions.

All this — Phelps as resident at the USOC training center, with no driving privileges for some period of time — could even be part of a court-ordered probationary term. Creative minds, you know, and all that.

Of course, this all assumes Phelps wants to keep swimming competitively. That is a big if. Post-treatment, who knows?

Long-term:

USA Swimming should strongly consider re-framing its policy for what is “detrimental to the image or reputation” of the federation. That is way, way, way too vague, and likely susceptible to serious legal challenge.

The other NGBs should take a look at what's going down here, too.

Arbitrary policy-making done in a rush is not constructive strategy. It may get you out of a jam. Or make it feel like you’re out. But not really. Life is way too complex. There’s always another turn, and it’s always unexpected.

What's next for Michael Phelps

Michael Phelps is not a bad guy. Let’s start there. In fact, he’s a really, really good guy. He cares — deeply — about his family, his coaches, the people who have been with him for years, his hometown, his country and his sport. He is, genuinely, great with kids. He is, truly, a normal guy who found a genius for swimming and competing.

By driving drunk, according to the allegations levied against him by the authorities in Maryland, Michael made a really bad mistake. Perhaps the hardest piece: Michael has said many, many times, often to audiences of kids, that it’s OK to make a mistake — the trick is not to make the same mistake twice. Now, in the wake of his DUI problem 10 years ago, he has made the very same mistake, all over again.

The separate DUI incidents — of course, Michael is entitled to the presumption of innocence in regard to his arrest this week — are compounded by the 2009 episode in which he was photographed with his face in a bong.

Phelps was stopped at 1:40 a.m. Tuesday after leaving the brand-new Horseshoe Casino in downtown Baltimore, allegedly going 84 in a 45 zone. His blood-alcohol level was a reported 0.14, above the legal limit of 0.08.

The incident leads to all manner of questions, concerns and what-to-do’s — for Michael, USA Swimming, the U.S. Olympic Committee, Michael’s sponsors and everyone anywhere with an interest in the greatest Olympic athlete of all time.

That is, indisputably, what Michael is.

And that, actually, is at the core of all of this.

Michael is 29 now. Old enough, assuredly smart enough to know better, to have the judgment to call Uber. A taxi. A friend. Something or someone.

Michael’s first DUI came when he was 19, in November 2004, after the Athens Games. At that time in his life, as he has said, post-Games he had no structure, no routine. He was on a road trip to Maryland’s Eastern Shore with a friend. He had three beers. His blood-alcohol reading was precisely 0.08.

He pleaded guilty a month later in Salisbury, Maryland, to driving while impaired; was ordered to pay $305 in fines and court costs; to attend a meeting of Mothers Against Drunk Driving; and to speak at a number of schools about drinking, driving and decision-making.

USA Swimming did not suspend him.

The experience would lead Michael to Greg Harden, the longtime associate athletic director and director of athletic counseling at the University of Michigan. Harden gave Michael the advice that Michael would internalize, would make his own, would repeat as if it were a mantra:

It’s OK to make a mistake. Whenever you make a mistake, learn from it. If you learn from a mistake, you’ll be fine. Just don’t make the same mistake twice.

Among the challenges Michael is facing is that he has now violated his own code.

Michael and I worked together on his 2008 best-selling book and for sure we have long had a constructive relationship. We have not spoken this week. But I know him well enough to feel confident that no one feels worse about what happened than Michael.

I know, too, that he will deal with whatever is to come forthrightly. That is his way.

The issue is, what is appropriate?

Michael is a Baltimore guy through and through. He spent a few years in Ann Arbor, prepping for the 2008 Beijing Olympics while his longtime coach and mentor, Bob Bowman, was the head coach at the university. But now they are both back in Baltimore.

Michael is not — will never be — Hollywood. He is, for emphasis, a normal guy. He is happy to be in Baltimore, cheering on his Ravens like most everybody else there.

The deal is this, though: it may not be the best time to be a high-profile athlete facing the bar of justice in Baltimore, what with Ray Rice in the news. Under the law, Michael’s first DUI is irrelevant. At the same time, Michael has to accept that he might draw a judge who wants to make an example of him.

Beyond the legal ramifications, there is the matter of USA Swimming, indeed the Olympic establishment.

USA Swimming suspended him for three months for the 2009 episode. Now?

USA Today’s Christine Brennan suggested in a column Wednesday that Michael ought to be suspended for at least a year. She called his behavior “unconscionable.”

With due respect to my good friend Christine — she and I are from the same class at the Northwestern journalism school— her suggestion is over the top.

To compare:

The NFL suspended Donté Stallworth for a year after he pleaded guilty to DUI manslaughter charges in Florida. On March 14, 2009, in Miami, Stallworth killed a man while driving drunk.

To be clear, driving while impaired — again, Phelps is innocent until proven guilty — is bad no matter the circumstance.

In Stallworth’s case, for context, Stallworth’s blood-alcohol level was 0.126 and, of course, Mario Reyes, a construction worker who was simply trying to catch a bus home, is forever gone.

A prosecution video in the Stallworth case shows Stallworth braking immediately after Reyes ran into the street, outside the crosswalk — meaning, Stallworth has said, that even if sober he likely would have hit Reyes. But as Stallworth said in an interview this past summer, “.. I was wrong. I was driving under the influence and should not have been.”

Now, the argument is that Phelps should be gone for a year when no one -- luckily, true -- got hurt?

Things have to remain in proportion.

USA Swimming has said it’s assessing the situation.

It seems probable that Michael is going to be fined — other athletes are going to want to see that no one is above the rules, especially Michael — and suspended for some period of time. The issue is when and for how long. The 2015 world championships are next summer in Russia.

This leads to the crux of the matter, for all involved.

Michael has a boredom problem. The boredom problem creates a structure problem. The overarching problem is that there's a future problem.

It’s little wonder he is out presumably playing poker — which he enjoys — and, as he purportedly said to the police, having three or four drinks when he should have been in bed getting ready to swim.

Again, here is the deal:

Michael is the greatest of all time. He has 22 Olympic medals.

In Beijing, he went eight-for-eight. It was — incredible.

To do what he did in Beijing took years of monumental discipline, effort, focus and training. (Not to mention an awe-inspiring back-end split from Jason Lezak in the 400-meter freestyle relay.) Who wants to do that all over again? For sure not Michael.

This is the dilemma.

Michael knows that if he puts in the work that he can again be the world’s best swimmer — in certain races. But never again will he do what he did in Beijing. This is a terrible burden. For real. What must it be like to be great but never again as across-the-board great as you once were?

Michael talks about setting new goals. But swimming is the most relentlessly revealing of the Olympic sports. At the elite level, the sport is merciless in making clear whether an athlete has put in the work. You win -- or lose -- by hundredths of a second.

This is, in one fashion or another, what Michael has been wrestling with since the day the Beijing Games ended.

You saw it in 2011, at the world championships in Shanghai, where Ryan Lochte had put in the work, and Michael had not. In 2012, Michael tried the 400-meter individual medley, which he used to rule, and didn’t even medal — because he hadn’t trained sufficiently.

After the 400 IM, it became plain in London that Michael had done enough — just enough — to still star. But because he hadn’t really done everything he could have, he got out-touched by five-hundredths of a second in the 200 butterfly by Chad le Clos of South Africa — an ending that depended on feel in the water, feel that Phelps would have had, did have, in the 100 fly in Beijing, which he won by one-hundredth of a second over Serbia’s Milorad Cavic.

After London, Michael said, enough.

Then he watched the Americans come up short in the 400 free relay at the 2013 worlds in Barcelona and something stirred.

So he kinda-sorta came back.

Then, this year, he came back for real — and did very well at the Pan-Pacific championships in August in Australia, winning three gold medals and two silvers.

The good thing about the comeback is it gives Michael structure. He needs that sort of structure.

But obviously he's not yet all-in. On the road at 1:40 a.m.?

At the same time, and this must be said, this comeback is only prolonging the inevitable.

If Michael keeps swimming through 2016, it seems hugely unlikely that he would not make the U.S. team for Rio. Everyone says, like this is a bad thing, he’d be 31 by the start of those Games, in August, 2016. So what? He’s Michael. He's the best-ever. If he wants it, he will do it -- emphasis on the if.

Who, though, is Michael? Really, who is he? Not Michael the swimmer. Michael Phelps. At 29, who is he? And what is he all about?

Michael should take a good look at the guy looking back at him in the mirror and say, OK, what's the next chapter?

If he can do that, this DUI episode could — in a weird way — turn out to be a huge positive. Again, Michael should count his blessings that no one got hurt. He should not just count this as, but legitimately come to see this as, a second chance -- at everything.

He has it all, you say?

Not really. Michael doesn't know what he wants to do with himself.

When Michael was 16, he had the audacity to tell Peter Carlisle, who would go on to be his agent — still is his agent — that his goal was to grow the sport of swimming. He could see that already.

He hasn’t been able with the same clarity to articulate anything else. That’s where the drift has come. Now is the time to figure it out — especially if there is to be a suspension.

It seems reasonable to assume that, however this shakes out, Michael is going to find himself doing community service. And part of that service will involve speaking to kids. And those kids are going to ask, Michael, you always said it was OK to make a mistake but not to make it twice — what do you say now?

And if the other part of the code is learning from every mistake -- what are the lessons from this one?

Now is the time to figure all this out. Because that is a huge part of this next chapter. Of being accountable to himself and to everyone around him -- because he is normal, and yet in some respects his life is not normal and likely never will be. Of figuring out who Michael Phelps is, and what his next direction holds.