Why Stephanie Hightower is up for IAAF council

Political and organizational culture can be a famously difficult thing to articulate. But as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said in a very different context, you know it when you see it. What’s coming this summer at the IAAF, track and field’s international governing body, is a “climate of monumental political change,” according to a memo sent out Saturday from the USA Track & Field board of directors. And that, it says, is why Stephanie Hightower, not Robert Hersh, is unequivocally “the best candidate for 2015 and beyond” to be nominated for the U.S. seat on the ruling IAAF council.

The three-page memo went out to USATF association presidents, zone representatives and committee chairs. The next USATF board meeting is March 14, in advance of the Los Angeles marathon.

The memo marks the next step in what has been a controversial, and misunderstood, process stemming from the 2014 USATF annual meeting in Anaheim, Calif.

The memo attempts to clarify, as well as bring some much-needed context, to the process.

At issue: who should get the USATF nomination for a seat on the policy-making IAAF council.

At the Anaheim meeting, delegates voted 392-70 to recommend Hersh for the slot. Key word: recommend. The board then heard from both candidates, Hersh and Hightower. It voted, 11-1, for Hightower.

The backdrop:

Hersh, who turns 75 this coming Thursday, Lincoln’s Birthday, has been the U.S. rep to the IAAF since 1999. He is an accomplished lawyer and expert in the rules of track and field. If Hersh got four more years, he’d see 79 before the end of his term.

It was also in 1999 that Primo Nebiolo of Italy, who had been IAAF president since 1981, died. Lamine Diack of Senegal, the acting president, took over. Diack subsequently has been re-elected president — unopposed — in 2001, 2003, 2007 and, somewhat unexpectedly, in 2011.

Diack is now 81. He will turn 82 on June 7. He has announced that this is his final term.

The election to replace him will take place Aug. 18 in Beijing, immediately before the world championships at the Bird’s Nest Stadium, site of the 2008 Olympic Games.

The list of serious contenders to replace Diack is expected to be two: Britain’s Sebastian Coe, the famed middle-distance runner of the 1980s who led the hugely successful London 2012 Games, and Sergey Bubka, the pole-vault champion who now heads Ukraine national Olympic committee and is, as well, a member of the International Olympic Committee’s executive board.

There are four IAAF vice presidents. Coe and Bubka are two. Hersh is another. The fourth is Qatar’s Dahlan Jumaan al-Hamad.

Hersh, at the most recent IAAF elections, in Daegu, South Korea, in 2011, was given the No. 2 IAAF position, the senior vice-presidency. Saturday’s USATF memo does not say this but this space will: this was not owing to Hersh’s accomplishments or achievements but very likely due to political expediency. Everyone within IAAF circles knew full well by then that Coe and Bubka were lining up for the presidency. Hamad had other battles to wage — see Doha’s bid’s for the 2017 and 2019 world championships (in 2011, an American bid for the world championships was a pipe dream). Who was left? Hersh.

Coe is 58.

Bubka is 51.

Hightower, the USATF chairwoman, was a champion hurdler in the 1980s. She is 56.

Put in plain terms: Hightower, Coe and Bubka are peers and contemporaries. As the memo says, she “enjoys especially good relationships with them, making her a very strong candidate.”

She has strong relationships “throughout the IAAF, and especially among women and federations in the Caribbean, Africa and the Middle East,” which also helps advance her candidacy. She has a “strong track record of advocacy … at the international level.”

This, too: the IAAF has a “demonstrable need for more women and women of color.” Hightower is African-American.

But, the memo says, “the biggest issue [the board] discussed was the current state and future direction of the IAAF and its leadership, and it is the topic on which we must speak most strongly in this memo. It is the decisive reason why we chose Stephanie Hightower as the best candidate.”

When Hersh went on the council in 1999, the memo says, that was part of the “political shift that look place as part of a new era of IAAF leadership.”

Now a new shift is underway.

“With Mr. Diack leaving office this summer, many others will also be leaving their positions of power of authority, just as had transpired after Nebiolo’s death and Mr. Diack’s ascendancy. Regime change at the top brings with it regime change at all levels. At the IAAF, a change in the presidency carries with it huge shifts in political climate and power structure, as well [as] changes in staffing, appointees, voting [blocs], elections, policy, rules … a top-to-bottom change is afoot, on a very broad scale.

“Given this climate of monumental political change at the IAAF, and given how closely Mr. Hersh is connected to the tenure and administration of the outgoing presidency, the board believes USATF would compromise the United States’ political position at the IAAF if we were to nominate a candidate for Council who is part of that past, outgoing power and leadership structure.”

Also this, and it has to be noted, because Hersh is indeed the senior vice-president, even as it should also be noted Hersh has not — repeat, not — been accused of any misconduct or wrongdoing:

“The IAAF is under considerable scrutiny at the moment as the handling of doping protocols and charges of corruption related to certain business dealings within the highest level of the organization are currently under investigation. USATF is not a party to those investigations and, like the rest of the world, awaits the outcome of the investigations.”

The memo continues on page three:

“Even though [Hersh] has served ably since 1999, there is no guarantee of Mr. Hersh’s re-election,” and it says in this space that this point must be emphasized.

“If USATF were to put him up for election amid all the change cycle, we are more likely to be perceived as backward-looking to the previous administration rather than forward-thinking to the next administration.

“Bob has served actively since 1999, but since that time there has not been a specific action at the IAAF that has actively advanced the interests of American athletes or teams,” and the opinion in this space is that this assertion is indeed the case. Through the Sydney, Athens, Beijing and London Olympics; through world championships in Seville, Edmonton, Paris, Helsinki, Osaka, Berlin, Daegu and Moscow; through BALCO and other doping scandals, including the most recent one that has now taken out the immediate past chair of the USATF athletes’ advisory council and one of the leading sprinters in recent memory, the essential question has always been — what is Bob Hersh doing?

The memo continues:

“With a new IAAF president about to be elected — and all that goes with it — whatever ability Mr. Hersh may have had to [effect] positive action at the IAAF for American athletes is gravely mitigated by the new IAAF circumstances and the changes that will happen this summer. We are not saying Mr. Hersh has done anything wrong. We recognize simply that a new leadership structure and IAAF organizational structure — one that Ms. Hightower has close ties to and excellent relationships with — will soon be in place. As [a] result of all the above considerations, Ms.Hightower is the best candidate.”

The memo observes that in its deliberations the board “openly discussed the [392-70] vote on the floor … and took that recommendation very seriously.” It also “listened to presentations” made by both Hersh and Hightower that were “markedly different in respect to future advancement of the sport.”

The memo says, “The facts we based our decision on were not those that had been discussed — and perhaps not even known — by Annual Meeting attendees in the days leading up to the [vote]. Mr. Hersh had addressed many committee meetings to present the case for himself as USATF’s IAAF Council nominee. It is our understanding that the political changes taking place at the IAAF, and how USATF could most effectively be part of them, were not part of those discussions. Those, however, were the considerations that were the crux of our decision.”

It also says, “We fully understood that our choice of Stephanie Hightower would not be popular among the delegates who voted for Mr. Hersh. We fully understood that our selection was in direct conflict with the recommendation, and that some people would be (and are) very upset by the fact that we didn’t simply accept the recommendation. But we also fully understood that our function was to select the best — and not necessarily the most popular — candidate based on everything we know.”

USATF and the notion of homework

For years, the U.S. Olympic Committee and USA Track & Field were the two reliable punching bags in the American Olympic scene. The problem at both was much the same: constant management turnover and an unwieldy governance structure, each encumbered by a board of directors numbering in the triple digits that created an environment rife with petty politics. Over the past several years, both have turned it around. But with USATF in particular, there remains a dissident cohort for whom seemingly nothing seems to be good enough. Case in point: there’s a new, professionally produced commercial featuring several track-and-field stars, and it’s even airing on network television. This has to be a huge win, right? Exposure for a sport that needs it? For some, apparently not.

Chief executive Max Siegel took over USATF on May 1, 2012. In 2013 and 2014, the federation announced nine new sponsorship deals, including seven just last year. The big one, of course — a 23-year deal with Nike approaching $500 million.

At the 2014 annual meeting in Anaheim, Calif., in December, USATF delegates were shown the organization’s rise in revenue from $19 million to $34 million; its jump in net assets from $3 million to $17 million; its commitment to spend an additional $9 million on athlete programs between the years 2015 and 2020.

Moreover, and this diversity statistic jumps out from among the U.S. Olympic federations, which can hardly claim anything like it — two-thirds of the USATF board is African-American.

And now a national television commercial?

Apparently not good enough for some, and in particular Lauren Fleshman, the two-time (2006, 2010) U.S. 5,000-meter champion, who has emerged in recent months as a vocal critic of USATF policies.

The TV spot, entitled, ”You’re Welcome,” features action shots of U.S. stars past and present laced with some of the biggest names from today talking; it ran last weekend on NBC.

On the one hand, Ms. Fleshman called the commercial “awesome.” On the other, she complains that the video contains a “massive disparity” in the way it treats “Nike vs. non-Nike athletes,” asserting this is a “problem that goes far beyond this one video, and will keep expensive initiatives like this one from making a real impact on the lives of athletes going forward.”

Her apparent primary complaint: that USATF cropped the logos of non Nike-sponsored athletes in the commercial.

“USATF has their salaries guaranteed for the next 23 years,” she proclaims at the end of her blog. “We don’t. And if USATF is entering into sponsorship contracts that demand they shrink us, silence us, prevent us from thriving, and stifle competition in the marketplace, that isn’t right. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s illegal.”

Let’s start here: no one at USATF has brought up as a hammer the First Amendment, the Commerce Clause to the Constitution or, for that matter, the notion of monopoly.

Indeed, one of the deals USATF announced in December at that meeting was with shoemaker Hoka One One, to sponsor a middle-distance race, with double athlete prize money and a TV-quality webcast.

Meanwhile, in the very same sentence in which Ms. Fleshman notes that it’s “awesome” to have a commercial, she also — in parentheses — asks “was it an MSI project like Road to Sopot? I’m curious.”

MSI stands for “Max Siegel Inc.”

It’s no secret that Siegel is a businessman. Indeed, on the MSI webpage it declares, “Our access to sports, multicultural, media and entertainment properties helps us to seamlessly integrate clients and properties with their target markets — and beyond.”

What is it about Siegel, who is African-American, that seems to be so off-putting to detractors?

The USOC has made diversity and inclusion a point of emphasis under chief executive Scott Blackmun, particularly in the management ranks of the national governing bodies.

Yet from the start of Siegel’s tenure, it has been as if nothing could be good enough. Consider the controversy over the tie in the women’s 100-meter dash at the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials. Siegel had come on the job just weeks before. Yet he took considerable heat because there wasn’t a proper procedure in place? Where in all of this was Robert Hersh, the rules guru — the longtime U.S. seat-holder on the IAAF council, whom the USATF delegates voted in Anaheim in December to send back to the IAAF, only to see the USATF board opt for Stephanie Hightower instead?

Really, you do wonder.

Because wouldn’t you think that a chief executive who — now two-plus years in — brings in big financial numbers ought to be cut some slack?

At the beginning of her blog, Ms. Fleshman suggests, “Feel free to do your own homework.”

To emphasize, everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion. At the same time, the danger of throwing stuff out there without doing your homework is that it if it’s not opinion — that is, if there are actually facts out there — those opinions, often needlessly, rile people up. And then the stuff that gets people riled up can get repeated as if it were gospel.

Which in the case of Lauren Fleshman’s blog — you have to ask, are there facts?

Or, as she herself notes in her Dec. 19 Runner’s World blog, “… if you’re gonna fling mud, come out with the evidence.”

The videos about which she inquires that recapped the journey to the 2014 indoor world championships? They were called “Path to Poland,” not “Road to Sopot,” and were executive produced — like the “You’re Welcome” commercial — by Siegel in his capacity as USATF chief executive. Not, repeat not, as MSI guy.

It should be worth noting that the “Path to Poland” series last year focused on the the breakout 800-meter star Ajee Wilson (adidas), the middle-distance runner Morgan Uceny (adidas), the everlasting Bernard Lagat (Nike) and shot-putter Ryan Whiting (Nike). If you’re keeping score, that’s two Nike athletes, two not.

The “You’re Welcome” spot features stars from yesteryear as well as now. That means USATF had to use footage owned by the USOC and the International Olympic Committee. Such usage involves specific restrictions from both entities, including what logos could be shown and where the commercial could be aired (to use a term of art, it was geo-restricted).

Such restrictions — and this is a USOC rule, not anything to do with USATF — means the commercial could not show any logos outside the so-called “Olympic family.”

No logos were airbrushed, manipulated, digitally altered. There are and were not any conspiracies.

Of the seven current athletes in the spot, four are not Nike athletes.

Indeed, one of the four, Brenda Martinez, bronze medalist in the 800-meters at the 2013 world championships in Moscow, posted on her Instagram account a retort to Ms. Fleshman’s article that said, in part, “Please take me out of [your] article,” adding, “We have it really good here in the US compared to other countries. Without the support of @newbalance & @usatf I wouldn’t have a medal.”

http://instagram.com/p/ysWM78yd8M/?modal=true

Ms. Fleshman did not take Ms. Martinez out. She did post an addendum to her blog that said, “Others have perfectly valid opinions that differ from mine, including Brenda Martinez.” To her credit, Ms. Fleshman added on Ms. Martinez’s Instagram account, “I’m sorry if my post distressed you.”

Another athlete, David Oliver, the 2013 world champ in the 110-meter hurdles, made these posts to his Twitter account:

Track and field gets a cool commercial on TV and people in the sport STILL find a way to complain about something...

— David Oliver (@doliversub13) February 4, 2015

if USATF only used nike sponsored athletes, people would complain about that. Didn't even notice the "controversy" was happy we were on TV

— David Oliver (@doliversub13) February 4, 2015

And this, referring to hurdles competitors Liu Xiang of China and Dayron Robles of Cuba, and to the IAAF, track and field’s international governing body:

Did IAAF (Adidas organization) ad with Liu and Robles for '11 Worlds. Guess who's logo was shown. Did I care, absolutely not, was very happy

— David Oliver (@doliversub13) February 4, 2015

At any rate, going back to the original assertion, that USATF pits Nike against non-Nike athletes:

Of USATF’s athlete support funds, more than 60 percent of those supported are non-Nike athletes. Here is the real disparity: USATF financially supports more athletes not affiliated with its primary sponsor than it does those who wear Nike gear.

Top-tier athletes get five-figure support each year, the kind Ms. Martinez is talking about. It’s all part of an $11-million annual athlete support package that also includes sports medicine, sport performance workshops, TV and webcast coverage with athletes wearing — whatever.

Is USATF truly discriminating? At the end of 2013, it sent out a photo book to sponsors. The very first picture: pole vault star Jenn Suhr in adidas gear. Go through the book. There’s Duane Solomon, that year’s U.S. 800 champ, in his Saucony gear.

Ms. Fleshman notes that a USATF calendar was “recently mailed out to all USATF members” that included a photo of “Leo Monzano,” note the misspelling, who is the 1500 silver medalist from the London 2012 Games, wearing a Nike uniform. When not wearing a national-team uniform, Manzano is sponsored by Hoka One One. “He was not asked permission nor compensated for a photo being used that undercut his sponsor relationship,” she asserted.

The calendar was given away, not sold, to USATF membership. USATF lost money on the calendar, which it paid to produce and send out. It was a gift to members in a bid to get them excited about the red, white and blue — and Manzano is the first American to have won a medal in the men’s 1500 since Jim Ryun in 1968, more than 40 years.

Then, this — in the third paragraph from the end in her blog, Ms. Fleshman says, “USATF selling the national team uniform is one thing. But what else have they sold? Serious question. Email me if you know.”

How about just doing it right here? Serious answer:

— Major grass-roots initiative to Hershey (Run Jump Throw).

— Program providing educational opportunities to elite athletes, among others (University of Phoenix).

— Program that provides free language training to top athletes and provides royalties directly to athletes (Rosetta Stone).

— An app that provides royalties directly to athletes (Coaches Eye).

— Title sponsorship to the Hoka One One Middle Distance Classic, a meet Ms. Fleshman herself has competed at, with the money going directly to the meet and athlete support.

All of that is in the last year.

As was noted in the last column in this space about USATF, reasonable criticism, delivered in a spirit of tolerance and good will, is always fair game.

But homework — requisite due diligence — is eminently fair, too.

Kobe, Tiger, Lindsey, Rita, First Amendment and more

A quick quiz. How are Kobe Bryant and I alike? For starters, let’s count the ways in which we’re not: he makes $25 million a year, has a cool nickname — Black Mamba — along with a way better jump shot and can dunk. The world has to be different for people who can dunk. I wouldn’t know. That two-handed dunk Wednesday night, in the second quarter of the Los Angeles Lakers’ loss (another loss) to the New Orleans Pelicans, apparently proved too much. Like me -- aha! -- he has a bad right shoulder. Him: torn rotator cuff. Me: torn labrum. Me: surgery last Thursday (thank you, Dr. Keith Feder). Kobe: got examined Friday, and now will be examined again Monday, probably out for the season if he, too, needs surgery.

Kobe, I feel your pain.

I can also recommend many excellent prescription drugs.

So many interesting things have been going on while I have been lying low. Tiger Woods flies to Italy, where he appears with a skeleton-patterned scarf and then a gap tooth. The Kenyan marathoner Rita Jeptoo shows up in Boston 2024 bid committee documents. Then there’s a crazy First Amendment issue in those same Boston documents.

And I’m the one who was on prescription meds?

Let’s start with Woods and significant other Lindsey Vonn. He flew to Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, to “surprise” her on the occasion of her winning her 63rd World Cup victory, most-ever by a female alpine skier.

To be clear: Lindsey Vonn is an amazing athlete. She deserves rounds of applause for this accomplishment, especially coming back from two knee injuries that kept her out of last year’s Sochi Olympics.

Vonn had recorded career win 62, tying Austria’s Annemarie Moser-Pröll, in Sunday’s downhill at Cortina. Victory 63 came in Monday’s super-G.

Cortina has always been one of Vonn’s favorite spots, along with Lake Louise, Canada. Nothing — repeat, nothing — is a given in alpine skiing. But it was hardly a surprise that she would win there.

Vonn’s family, in anticipation, had come to Cortina to share in her success.

It would have been kind of weird if Woods hadn’t been there, too, wouldn’t it?

Here's the thing: Woods doesn’t go anywhere without a security presence.

So he shows up. "Surprise"! But only on Monday, and trying to be all incognito-like, but then with the look-at-me skeleton scarf.

Strange, strange, strange.

Then, somehow the scarf drops, and there’s an Associated Press photo of him with the gap tooth.

“No way!” Vonn exclaimed when she saw him, according to press accounts. She also said, “I knew it was him immediately. He loves that stupid mask.”

Immediately, the gap tooth took virtually all the attention away from Vonn, and her accomplishment. The spotlight shifted to Woods.

His agent issued a statement that, in its entirety, read like this:

“During a crush of photographers at the awards’ podium at the World Cup event in Italy, a media member with a shoulder-mounted video camera pushed and surged towards the stage, turned and hit Tiger Woods in the mouth. Woods’s tooth was knocked out by the incident.”

Seriously?

We are to believe that Tiger Woods showed up at an event jam-packed with cameras and videographers and no one — not one single lens — captured this riveting action? It hasn’t yet shown up on TMZ? For real?

What is this, Cortina by Zapruder? A gap in the teeth but are there holes in the story? What?

As the expert alpine ski writer Brian Pinelli wrote in USA Today, quoting race secretary general Nicola Colli, “If you look at the pictures, there was no blood, nothing of pain in his face. He was calm, he was quiet.”

As for the statement itself from Woods’ agent — that’s it? You go to the effort of issuing a statement to the hungry press but there are no words of congratulations from Woods to Vonn? Just: some cameraman knocked out my tooth?

Further, and more to the point: it might be understandable why Woods — or Woods’ people — would want to villainize the media.

But Lindsey Vonn? What’s in that sort of play for her? Or U.S. Skiing?

She is the one cross-over star in winter sports. She is the one who, after all, got hurt and seized the opportunity to make a documentary out of it, which is showing Sunday on NBC. Football players get knee injuries all the time. Do they make documentaries out of their rehab? Of course not. Lindsey Vonn? Why not?

So what’s really going on here?

Very strange.

As was the decision by Boston 2024 organizers to include the photo of the marathoner Jeptoo in their bid presentation, the one that purportedly wowed the U.S. Olympic Committee board of directors.

Timeline: that presentation was made in December. Jeptoo, winner of the 2013 and 2014 Boston Marathons, among other major races, had tested positive in November for the banned blood-booster EPO.

Hard to understand how the USOC board could have been so wowed when her picture came up. Was anyone seriously paying attention?

Why didn’t Boston 2024 just go with Meb Keflezighi on that very same page, for goodness’ sake? After all, he’s an American, the 2014 Boston Marathon winner as well and the 2004 Athens marathon silver medalist.

Very strange.

The Boston 2024 documents, moreover, repeatedly observe that the city itself will be “Olympic Park” — for instance, “at the heart of the city, at its reinvented waterfront and in its cherished parks.”

It is understood that these documents are a “plan” and not a finished product. Even so, there is a real reason that in recent editions the International Olympic Committee has opted for real Olympic Parks.

The IOC has said time and again that security is priority No. 1. Olympic Parks are more easily, in a word, secure-able.

Think back to the last Summer Olympics in the United States, which featured tremendous open space in a major American city. Within the IOC, Atlanta 1996 is remembered mostly for its transport and technology woes, and for the bomb that went off in Centennial Park.

The less said here about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings the better. Just this: at this very preliminary stage, has anyone stopped seriously to think about the security implications of making the city of Boston “Olympic Park”?

Switching gears:

The provision that caused such controversy mid-week, when it was discovered that the USOC had included in its contract with Boston a non-disparagement provision — that is, city workers would not criticize the Games during the bid process -- this is very serious stuff.

Think back a year ago, before the Sochi 2014 Games, when much of the West was up in arms about a Russian law targeting “propaganda” aimed at gays.

Now the USOC writes into its deal with its chosen bid city a clause that would appear to fairly directly contravene not only the letter but the spirit of the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights? The fundamental thing that makes the United States different from so many places around the world?

This is not, despite anyone’s best efforts to explain it away as “boilerplate,” anything of the sort. This is a deliberate attempt to chill speech. It is not, in any way, acceptable.

Granted, the parallels are hardly precise -- but if you were Mr. Putin, wouldn't you find some ironic comedy in this episode, in the effort by the U.S. Olympic Committee, of all parties, to restrict free speech? Wouldn't that seem to him a little bit like a case of the pot calling the kettle black?

The Boston Globe was absolutely right in an editorial to insist that Mayor Marty Walsh and the bid committee drop that ban. The mayor has since seemingly been backtracking.

While that gets sorted out, mark your calendars: IOC president Thomas Bach is due to attend the Super Bowl next weekend in Arizona.

It will be fascinating to see whether he meets with New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft — assuming, of course, the NFL doesn’t do what it should do, which is disqualify the Patriots for deflategate. If this were the Olympics, there's a very good argument to be made that the Patriots should be out and the Indianapolis Colts in. The evidence would seem manifest that the Patriots cheated.

At any rate, it was always understood that while the USOC was always in 2024 for one thing only, and that was to win, at the same time any American bid for 2024 was going to travel a long road. In that spirit, Bach met Wednesday — at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland — with the head of the Italian Olympic Committee, Giovanni Malago, and the Italian premier, Matteo Renzi, to discuss Rome’s bid for the 2024 Games.

Renzi: “We can say that after this meeting the bid for the 2024 Olympic Games can continue with more enthusiasm.”

Very interesting.

For the record, and with enthusiasm: Kobe has more gold medals than I do. He also speaks way better Italian.

A wink, a nod, an op-ed, insurance, so many questions

Give the U.S. Olympic Committee credit. For years, as the dismal results from the New York 2012 and Chicago 2016 votes proved, it simply was not effectively in the Olympic bid game. What it needed was a wink and a nod, a high sign if you will, from the International Olympic Committee, that the IOC not only wanted a city to bid from the USOC, but which city. The USOC got that last week when IOC president Thomas Bach wrote an op-ed in the Boston Globe two days before the USOC picked its city for the 2024 Summer Games. It picked Boston.

The fascinating question now is whether it’s genuinely in the IOC’s interest, in signaling that choice, for Boston to win.

Or whether in seemingly directing the USOC to pick Boston, the IOC is only playing the USOC — manipulating it so that the IOC gets as strong a field as possible for a 2024 race designed to attract maximum worldwide attention after the debacle that is the 2022 Winter Games race, which has devolved into a two-city derby, Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan.

The IOC won’t make its 2024 choice until the summer of 2017, two-plus years from now.

A lot can, and surely, will happen. Bids are possible from Rome; Paris; Germany; and elsewhere.

If the South Africans finally prove serious about getting in for 2024, they will run Durban. Because of the IOC’s stubborn refusal to allow bid visits — a plank that didn’t make it into the so-called “Agenda 2020” reforms, Bach’s 40-point plan approved last month in Monaco — the members will not be allowed to visit Boston. But most of the members will have been to seaside Durban, because that was where the IOC held its assembly in 2011.

To be perfectly blunt: IOC campaigns are not for the faint of heart or the politically naive.

So many variables.

What if, as is now the talk in some circles, FIFA, the international soccer federation, awards its 2026 World Cup in 2017 — in, say, May 2017? That is, just before the IOC vote.

Wouldn’t US Soccer love to get back on the opportunity it missed out on for 2018 and 2022, won by Russia and Qatar, respectively? Wouldn’t FIFA love to capitalize on the purportedly growing U.S. interest in soccer? Don’t think for a second, by the way, that there is much love lost between FIFA and the IOC.

What then for an American Olympic bid?

While Bach and FIFA’s Sepp Blatter — assuming Blatter is re-elected — sort things out, both for 2022 and 2026, this much is elemental: the way Bach runs the IOC is in many ways evocative of Juan Antonio Samaranch, the IOC president from 1980-2001.

Samaranch knew what he wanted. Bach seems to be following the same path.

As an example: in Monaco, Bach allocated two days for passage of Agenda 2020. Just like Samaranch would have done, however, he clearly had worked things out beforehand via personal meetings or on the phone (or, now, via email). All 40 measures got passed in just one day.

That is why the Bach op-ed piece in Tuesday’s Globe is so telling.

By itself, it was anodyne, a recitation of the passage in Monaco of the 40 Agenda 2020 bullet points.

The issue here is context.

The other three cities competing against Boston for USOC consideration: San Francisco, Washington, Los Angeles.

Did Bach’s op-ed run in the San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times? No.

Did it run in the New York Times, the de facto paper of record in the United States? No.

USA Today? No.

Let’s not be obtuse.

When unusual things present themselves, reasonable people are given to ask, what’s going on?

In this instance: why did the IOC take the unusual step of interjecting itself into the USOC’s domestic bid process?

Theory 1:

Last May, NBC paid $7.65 billion dollars (plus an extra $100 million “signing bonus” to be used for “the promotion of Olympism”) for the right to televise the Games in the United States from 2021 through 2032. The first Summer Games: 2024.

NBC has never -- and would never -- exercise its influence to lobby for a particular city. The network does not do that. That's the gospel truth.

However, this much is not rocket science: an East Coast time zone amounts to a home Games for NBC Olympics, which is based in Stamford, Connecticut.

Washington was never going to get 2024. Never. So that leaves Boston.

If this theory is plausible, then the Globe op-ed signals that what you see is what you get — Bach has given the USOC the wink and the nod and the rest of the next two-plus years is pretty much for show. Hey, Paris, Rome, Durban, whoever: thanks for playing and see you in Boston in 2024.

So is it really that simple? Or are things more layered?

Theory 2:

Everyone connected to the process knew Los Angeles had the best bid. Even the oddsmakers, who made it an even-money choice.

Indeed, the LA bid contained surprises that may never become public, including a big bang that unequivocally wowed everyone at the USOC and would have gone far to enhance the IOC’s furtherance of sustainability and legacy.

Further, the choice of Boston is layered with contradictions.

“Bostonians are well known for their enthusiasm for sport and the city has a great heritage in sport, science and education,” Bach told Associated Press after the selection.

Like Los Angeles doesn’t?

Los Angeles has three top-25 universities: Cal Tech, USC and UCLA. Boston has two: Harvard and MIT.

You want championships: Lakers? Kings? USC in college football? UCLA in college basketball?

The very thing that supposedly worked against Los Angeles in recent bid efforts — that the dorms at USC and UCLA served as housing in 1984 — is now a big plus for Boston’s 2024 bid? College dorms in Boston are a plus but a minus in LA? Say what?

There are dozens of universities in and around Boston. That’s the key demographic the IOC is seeking, and supposedly a big Boston plus. What about all the Cal State schools (LA, Northridge, Dominguez Hills, on and on), the Claremont colleges, the dozens and dozens of community colleges in and around Los Angeles?

The IOC, in Agenda 2020, talks big about sustainability. Yet Boston 2024 has to build an Olympic stadium while Los Angeles is home to the iconic Coliseum.

How much will that Olympic stadium cost? Let’s see. LA has been without an NFL team for 20 years. Last Monday, the owner of the St. Louis Rams — the Rams used to play in Southern California — announced plans to build a stadium in Inglewood, California, the LA Times noting that new stadiums tend to run to $1 billion or more. How is a new Olympic stadium in Boston going to prove in line — in any way — with the Agenda 2020 call for enhanced frugality?

And this: “I knew that Boston was destined to win this,” Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said after the USOC decision. As the Boston Globe reported, Boston 2024 paid about $1 million for an insurance policy of up to $25 million to protect City Hall “from any liabilities associated with the bid,” signing off on the policies Wednesday — that is, the day before the USOC decision.

So interesting. The standard USOC bid city agreement between calls for a city to pay $25 million in “liquidated damages” to the USOC if for some reason something freaky happens and the city drops out. For those not familiar with the term, “liquidated damages” is fancy lawyer talk for “cash money.” Essentially, if indeed that is what the policy went for, what Boston 2024 did was shift it so that $25 million is now some insurance company's worry.

But why?

And why Wednesday, the day before the USOC meeting?

The Globe report also said that Boston officials were the only group from among the four bid cities that insisted on buying this kind of insurance. Why? Also, you know, this kind of insurance takes a little bit of time to line up. It's not like you go down to your neighborhood insurance agent and say, hey, I'd like to lay down $1 million for $25 million, assuming again this is what it was for. Did Boston get a wink and a nod from the USOC in advance, and if so, when?

So many questions.

Good thing Boston officials have pledged transparency. For the sake of Journalism 101, let's hope it's retroactive, not just going forward.

More questions: what was at the basis of all that vigorous debate the USOC said it went through?

The USOC has suggested it will explain why Boston -- perhaps as soon as early this week.

In the meantime, to stick to the core of Theory 2, is it that the IOC could prefer Boston because Los Angeles — especially with the support of key Olympic insiders — might well have been a sure winner?

Did Bach, in any event, want Boston to assert primacy over those others, who were known to prefer LA?

There is this, though, which is easy: it’s in the interest of the IOC president to secure as many cities as possible for whatever race is being run.

No question Bach wants a U.S. bid.

Even so, does he also have a counter-interest for 2024, to make Europe look good, particularly after six European cities dropped out for 2022?

The first European Games, in Baku, Azerbaijan, are due to be held this summer, and will almost surely be a success, giving renewed momentum to that continent’s bids. Always, always, always remember, too: the IOC is Eurocentric.

At most, Bach got three U.S. votes in 2013 for the presidency (there were then three U.S. IOC members, now four, with the addition of USOC board chairman Larry Probst). There are 40-something IOC members from Europe.

Do not be fooled, not even for a second, by the statement from the White House, which said President Obama and the First Lady “strongly support” the Boston bid. Even if the president does, and let's assume for argument he really does, for the sake of securing 55 or so IOC votes, the president's words are -- sorry to say -- dust in the wind.

Note: Bach has visited more than 90 heads of state since being elected IOC president in September 2013. President Obama is not among them.

Note, too: the statement was issued by the White House press secretary. When the president wants to emphasize something, as he did when California Sen. Barbara Boxer last Wednesday announced her impending retirement, that comes out as a different kind of statement — that’s from Obama himself.

These things matter a lot in politics, and they matter for a White House that, as the IOC will readily recall, sent a delegation to Sochi only last February that absolutely was designed to signal a protest about the Russian anti-gay law.

It's instructive to observe that Bach deliberately made public the official letter of support and sympathy he wrote to French president François Hollande after last week's terror attacks in Paris. One can argue whether such a letter is eminently decent as well as a show of humanity or treads dangerously close to the kind of thing you might see from a head of state, which Bach assuredly is not. At any rate, several world leaders attended Sunday's massive rally in Paris, including British Prime Minister David Cameron, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of of Israel and President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority. The United States? Represented by its ambassador to France, Jane D. Hartley.

In the Olympic world, where protocol is hugely significant, appearances matter, too. And can be long remembered.

The White House statement about Boston 2024 also said, “The city has taught all of us what it means to be Boston Strong,” a reference to the 2013 marathon bombings.

Bach, in his comments to AP, said, “The Boston bid will be a strong one.”

With profound and enduring respect for the victims of the marathon attacks, this gentle note: the New York 2012 bid was launched after the Twin Towers went down. The IOC was not sufficiently moved, nearly four years later, when the 2012 vote was taken, to award the Games to New York; they went to London. By the time the 2024 vote is taken, the events that shook Boston near the finish line of the 2013 marathon will similarly have been four years prior.

Bach also told AP about Boston, “The bid also has the great potential to build on the strength of the athletes from the U.S. Olympic team,” adding, “U.S athletes have a worldwide reputation and will be a huge asset for the bid.”

This, to be diplomatic, is phraseology that Bach has borrowed from his predecessor, Jacques Rogge, when Rogge was asked by reporters to asses Chicago 2016 and New York 2012. Recall how those worked out.

To be clear: the USOC has, since 2009, made great strides in building relationships internationally. There seems to be zero question Bach has taken an interest in Boston.

There are also so many questions yet to be answered about why.

And about whether the time is right for the USOC, and Boston, and whether together they can craft a winning narrative to an IOC membership that is no longer widely hostile to American interests, as was the case during the Rogge years, but perhaps still wary and likely knows not very much about Boston.

The USOC is in the 2024 game with one objective only — to win. That has been made abundantly clear, time and again.

In that spirit, this: the Agenda 2020 rules now allow for five exceptions to the rule that IOC members must retire at age 70. In Monaco, one of the five exceptions was immediately granted to Gian Franco Kasper, who is Swiss and the head of the international ski federation.

This is what Kasper told AP about a U.S. 2024 bid, and this is what the USOC is still very much up against:

“Times have changed a little bit, but it depends how they will present their candidature. If they,” meaning the Americans,” come back with the old arrogance they had before, then of course it will not be helpful. But I think they have learned the lesson, too.”

USOC, in it to win it, picks Boston for 2024

In deciding Thursday which city it wanted to put forward for the 2024 Summer Games, there were many considerations the U.S. Olympic Committee had to take into account. Ultimately, though, only one truly mattered: the USOC is in it to win it. It picked Boston. Nearly two years ago, the USOC started with roughly three dozen cities. It winnowed that many to four: Boston, Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco. All along, the Boston plan — despite vocal local opposition and uncertainties about basics such as an Olympic stadium — captured the imagination of USOC leadership and staff.

To hear the USOC tell it Thursday after the announcement was made following a board of directors meeting at the Denver airport, they are, well, excited to get this show on the road:

“We’re excited about our plans to submit a bid for the 2024 Games and feel we have an incredibly strong partner in Boston that will work with us to present a compelling bid,” USOC chairman Larry Probst said in a statement.

Chief executive Scott Blackmun said the USOC “couldn’t be more excited about the partnership we’ve established with the leadership team in Boston,” including bid leader John Fish and the mayor, Marty Walsh.

“I couldn’t be more excited to share Boston’s athlete-focused vision for the Games with my IOC colleagues,” the former ice hockey star Angela Ruggiero said.

The Olympics tell us about which direction our world is headed, and that direction — for all the IOC’s Eurocentric tradition — increasingly has been looking at and across the Pacific.

Of course the 2012 Summer Games were in London, the 2014 Winter Games were in Sochi, the 2016 Summer Games will be in Rio. There are others elsewhere, too: the 2018 Youth Games, for instance, will be in Buenos Aires.

But consider:

The 2008 Summer Games, Beijing; 2010 Winter, Vancouver; 2010 Youth Games, Singapore; 2014 Youth Games, Nanjing; 2018 Winter, Pyeonghang, South Korea; 2020 Summer, Tokyo; 2022, Almaty, Kazakhstan, or Beijing.

What the USOC rolled the dice on Thursday for 2024, with the choice of Boston, is that the IOC wants not only to come back to the United States but to the East Coast, instead of to San Francisco or Los Angeles, which look out across that very Pacific.

DC, and paying due respect to the energy, enthusiasm and leadership of businessmen Russ Ramsey and Ted Leonsis as well as the input of the likes of former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue, was always going to be DOA. Can you say, for instance, CIA? How about that torture report a few weeks back?

Just imagine a two-year bid campaign chock full of headlines blaring “torture,” amplifying the role of the United States of America in overseas adventures. Not to mention the “oversight” of 535 self-appointed know-it-alls, each of the members of Congress. In the IOC, moreover, there are those who well remember the former president, Juan Antonio Samaranch, essentially being hauled before Congress to testify at the height of the late 1990s Salt Lake City crisis.

San Francisco?

There, the IOC would have had the advantage of being able to show off the five rings on the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges. Beautiful, for sure.

But as the New York Times pointed out in a story this week, who wants to go to San Francisco for the complexities of a Summer Games when something seemingly as simple as improving four grass soccer fields last year was met with litigation, protests and a ballot measure?

Plus, there are those in the IOC who remember, too, that the 2008 Beijing torch relay in San Francisco was met with — and had to be dead-ended on the approach to that very same Golden Gate Bridge because of — protests.

Los Angeles made an extraordinary series of presentations to the USOC. And bid leader Casey Wasserman and the mayor, Eric Garcetti, fluent in Spanish, were viewed as stars-in-the-making.

For all that, and for all that is going on in downtown LA — now unequivocally hipster central — the USOC could not, in many conversations with IOC members, apparently get past a “been there, done that” vibe from 1984.

How that jibes with, for instance, London (2012 Games a third time) or Beijing (a 2022 Winter bid favorite, not even seven years after the close of the 2008 Summer Games): unclear.

At any rate, it all pointed to Boston.

The IOC is said to be intrigued by the more than 100 universities in and around Boston, which would be used to house events and athletes. That’s the age demographic the IOC is after, big time.

The Boston plan also features significant numbers of temporary venues. That’s a key feature of “Agenda 2020,” the 40-point plan the IOC membership enacted at a meeting last month in Monaco.

The good news about Boston: it’s a blank slate for many in the IOC.

Boston’s reputation for great sports is, let’s remember, within the United States; that reputation is grossly inflated by ESPN’s incessant showing of Red Sox games and the fact that Tom Brady and the Patriots are on TV seemingly every weekend from September until January.

All that means little to nothing outside the continental 48 states. Brady? Does he play soccer? The Red Sox — overseas, that whole 2004 thing and the 86-year-curse might as well be the far side of the moon. Remember, too: baseball is on the outside of the Olympics trying to get back in.

The USOC, and its new Boston partners, face — let’s be real — a sales job.

The upside: the USOC, and its new Boston friends, get to come up with a story, a compelling narrative, about why Boston, and why the United States for 2024.

Not to say it can’t be done. Or that there are forces that may already want the USOC to prevail.

You don’t think so?

So curious that IOC president Thomas Bach’s op-ed entitled “A New Olympics,” which relayed the highlights of Agenda 2020, ran Tuesday in the Boston Globe, and only in the Boston paper.

Not in the San Francisco Chronicle, or the Washington Post, or the LA Times.

Or maybe that was just a coincidence.

Bids for 2024 are possible from Germany; from Paris; from Rome; and elsewhere.

You might have thought that, back in September, Boston 2024 bid leader Fish seemed to have committed campaign sin No. 1 when he told the Globe he “reckoned” the city’s odds of being named the U.S. entry were “75 percent based on the perceived reaction to Boston’s pitch to USOC officials,” adding, “I’m not in this to lose. I would never bet against myself.”

Over the past five-plus years, ever since Chicago’s 2009 debacle for 2016, the USOC public playbook has been humility and self-deprecating graciousness.

Apparently there was no public reckoning whatsoever.

The USOC is not in this to lose, either. Kudos, Mr. Fish. Congrats, Mayor Walsh.

The legacy of China's He Zhenliang

The Olympic movement is all about changing the world. Very few people actually effect such change. Everything you see now that reflects China the important player on the world sports stage — all of that is, in some piece big or small, the work of He Zhenliang, a former International Olympic Committee vice president who died Sunday at age 85. Mr. He, as it seemed everyone in Olympic circles called him, was a remarkable man. He was not only the bridgehead, as David Miller pointed out Monday in the Olympic newsletter Sport Intern, but then the bridge between China and the world outside. There have been tributes, and appropriately, from around the world. Yet those tributes have missed, or glossed over, the tribulations and complexities that helped shape Mr. He.

And without those it is impossible to fully appreciate not only his story but China’s ongoing story in the Olympic movement and our world, which is entirely appropriate as the Beijing bid committee prepares Tuesday to lodge its 2022 Winter Games file with the IOC.

There are only two 2022 candidates: Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan. If Beijing wins, it would be the first city to stage both the Summer and Winter Games.

Mr. He would doubtlessly find that amazing.

To be honest, everyone ought to find that amazing.

The modern Olympic movement has been around since 1894. The People’s Republic of China, since 1949. The team that we call China — as a point of contrast to the team from “Chinese Taipei,” and by reference this is not intended to be a political discourse — has been back in the Summer Games only since 1984, the Winter Games since 1980.

The IOC president, Thomas Bach, said in a statement issued Monday, “Mr. He was a man of culture and art. He was a true advocate of the social values of sport and of our movement and I would like to pay tribute to the passion and energy he deployed over the years to fulfill his mission as an IOC member in China. He also helped our movement better understand his country, its people and outstanding culture. The Olympic movement has lost one of its most fervent ambassadors.

“For me personally, he showed me true friendship and gave me invaluable advice from very early days as an IOC member. I will always remember this with great gratitude.”

Wei Jizhong, a former secretary general of the Chinese Olympic Committee, told China Daily, “China’s current major-member status in the IOC is inseparable from He’s hard work for decades. His strong enthusiasm and responsibility to China’s sports development as well as improvement of its international image truly impressed me.”

Added Yang Yang, the short-track speed skating star who is now an IOC member, “His fruitful work in the IOC earned a positive impression from the world about Chinese sports, which inspired me and guided me to continue my work as a sports official.”

There will doubtlessly be smiles for the camera Tuesday at the Chateau de Vidy, the IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland.

That’s appropriate.

Mr. He knew great happiness on the Olympic stage. He played a key role in Beijing's win — at the IOC session in Moscow — for the 2008 Summer Games.

He knew disappointment as well. In 1993 — at the IOC session in Monaco — Sydney defeated Beijing for the 2000 Games, literally by a couple votes. Wei said Mr. He wept privately.

Just imagine, though, and it is difficult now, all these years later, having seen the bang of the 2,008 drums in the 2008 opening ceremony, to have seen Michael Phelps go 8-for-8 in the pool at the Water Cube, to have seen Usain Bolt set world records on the track at the Bird’s Nest — imagine what must have been going through Mr. He’s mind.

Mr. He had been exiled to the Chinese countryside during the Cultural Revolution. He literally did hard labor.

During those years, which saw ping-pong diplomacy, the authorities would sometimes call him in from the countryside. Why? Because he spoke French and English, and knew not just how to translate but, even more important, how to conduct himself with the people from overseas. When the foreigners would leave, Mr. He was sent back to the countryside, there to await a next round of ping-pong and artful finesse.

Mr. He had come from Shanghai, and the French Concession there. He earned a degree from Aurora University in Shanghai in electric mechanics in 1950, the year after the revolution. In 1952, he was part of the formal mainland Chinese delegation to the Helsinki Summer Games; to reiterate, there would not be another team from “China” at the Summer Olympics until Los Angeles in 1984.

In the mid-1950s, Mr. He was an international communications official in what was then the National Sports Commission. In the 1960s, he was a senior official for organizations such as the Chinese gymnastics and table tennis federations.

Then, though, came the Cultural Revolution.

“Along with his colleagues [at the sports commission], he was doing hard labor,” said Susan Brownell, a professor at the University of Missouri at St. Louis who is not only an authority on China and the Olympics but translated into English the story of Mr. He’s life, “He Zheliang and China’s Olympic Dream.”

The book is written by Mr. He’s wife, Liang Lijuan, and Brownell said of the years when Mr. He was in exile, “He would see his wife and children for a short time and then disappear again,” adding, “His partnership with his wife is inspiring, just a really great story of loyalty.”

In 1979, Mr. He was made deputy secretary general of the Chinese Olympic committee; in 1982, its secretary general.

That, though, was not his real break.

That came in 1981, when then-IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch worked it so that Mr. He became an IOC member.

This had two results.

One, it helped to significantly advance China’s cause within the IOC. Three years later, in Los Angeles, there was China back at the Summer Games. The next few bid cycles would see it emerging as a serious contender, and then a winner, for the Summer Games — with the bang of those 2,008 drums, it has been said, perhaps signaling the onset of the Chinese century.

Two, Mr. He’s IOC membership gave him a standing within China that would help him navigate any number of shifting domestic political currents. In 1981, Mr. He was still in his early 50s; he would be an IOC member until 2010, which Samaranch and others in the IOC hierarchy knew full well.

Mr. He would serve 16 years on the IOC’s policy-making executive board, four as a vice president.

Even as China increasingly engages with the world, there remains — and sometimes at the highest levels of government — a lingering xenophobia, or as Brownell put it, “a distrust of people seen to be too internationalized, or not Chinese enough.”

She said, “It was really interesting to watch him move among IOC members. The first time I had dinner with him, in 2000, I was watching him converse in French with his IOC colleagues, managing conversation and pouring out wine, and I was thinking I had never seen a mainland Chinese do that.

"He could also manage western facial expressions. I had never met anybody like that — never met anybody who could move in both worlds.”

The last time she had dinner with Mr. He and Ms. Liang was in 2012. “After that time,” Brownell said, “I knew I would never see him again. Sure enough, that was the last time.”

She said, giving voice to an emotion felt by many within the Olympic movement, “I really admired him. He was a really inspiring and admirable person,” a man whose work and legacy will live on, in China and well beyond — perhaps to 2022, perhaps far, far longer.

USATF voices: a call for passion, civility and common sense

Eight years. That’s what Jon Drummond got Wednesday for multiple doping violations. Where are the howls now — and where have they been, because everyone had to know something of this magnitude was coming — from the athletes who filled the room just two weeks ago in Anaheim, California, at the annual USA Track & Field athletes advisory committee meeting, where Drummond was improbably still the chair of that very committee? There’s been silence, mostly, and that is just incredible. No, not incredible. Wrong. Where is the outspoken condemnation? For real? Where is it? Contrast that with the criticism and anger that emerged from some, if not many, at the end of that very same USATF convention. The USATF board voted to put forward federation chairperson Stephanie Hightower for the IAAF council slot at elections next year despite a floor vote for Bob Hersh. This produced raw emotion. Why? Sexism? Racism? Petty personality politics? Some combination of all three? Or something altogether else? The intensity is all the more mystifying given USATF’s fantastic financial performance and the wholesale changes underway at the IAAF level.

Big picture:

USATF, after years of putting the fun in dysfunctional, finally appears to be on the right track under the leadership of Hightower and chief executive Max Siegel.

For some — if not many — in track and field and the broader Olympic scene, that is a hard sentence with which to come to grips.

The evidence is right there, though, plain as day, and the critics have better start dealing with it.

Now.

Because the change is here, now in the United States, and it’s coming internationally, and the opportunity is there for USATF, Hightower and Siegel — repeat, USATF, Hightower and Siegel — to play a hugely significant role in the coming years in the governance of international track and field.

There’s room for everybody who cares about the sport, who loves it, to have an opinion. No problem there.

But here is a call for the discussion to be ramped down to levels of civility and tolerance.

This reminder: the Olympic values, in shorthand, call for excellence, friendship and respect.

Consider:

Distance standout Lauren Fleshman’s website proclaims, “Dwell in positivity — it’s worth the effort!” She is now the mother of an 18-month-old. Would language like this be acceptable at any Mommy and Me class — Fleshman writing at that very same website, recapping the annual meeting: “I don’t know enough about Stephanie Hightower to know if she would be good at the job or not, or better than Bob, etc. But I do know that at this meeting she was full of s***, so that’s not a good start.”

Here is a quote published at Flotrack from USATF activist Becca Gillespy Peter, who also attended the annual meeting:

“Bob is the most upstanding person ever, and what kills me is that he’s not an ass-kisser like Stephanie and he doesn’t play these political games, I mean obviously he knows politics, but a lot of this stuff with USATF is just beneath him. It’s not his style to go on the offensive against something like this.”

The Orange County Register ran a column that said Hightower’s “lack of professionalism and questionable ethics have long been evident,” going back to long-distance telephone calls made in 1992 (22 years ago, come on, really, and more to the point, as the Register noted, the state agreed not to seek repayment). The paper also chose to note that the Columbus, Ohio, school district — she lives there — enrolled Hightower’s child at a sought-after school even though she had not filed the proper paperwork, citing the Columbus Dispatch.

Let’s pause for a moment.

All public figures know that criticism goes with the territory. But making a professional matter personal — by bringing up family business, working in the child and the school, and relying on another newspaper to do it? To allegedly prove favoritism? Isn’t that something of a stretch to insinuate that’s the smoking gun that gets her but good when it comes to that proposition about professionalism and ethics?

To reiterate, everyone with an interest in track and field and in USATF ought to dial down the rhetoric from an 11 — using the Spinal Tap scale — to, say, an eight. Disagreement is fine. Cable-channel nasty name-calling is not. It needs to stop. Moreover, the snark needs to stop, or at least be toned way down. If you think you're the smartest person in the room, or on the message board -- you're not, guaranteed.

Now: who legitimately thinks anyone gets to be the senior vice president of a major international sports federation without playing politics?

Let’s not be naive, people.

There is little question Hersh is the senior IAAF vice president right now because Britain’s Sebastian Coe and Ukraine’s Sergey Bubka, who are also vice presidents, are going to run for the presidency next August, and Hersh was — in 2011 — the very excellent compromise candidate for the No. 2 spot.

All of you who would profess to be so in the know about the IAAF and its ways, and whether Hersh has wielded magic for the United States over the years: if you, like me, were in Daegu, South Korea, for the 2011 elections, let’s reminisce together about that weird technical glitch in the electronic voting system that almost cost Bubka his vp slot.

All right, then.

I have covered the Olympic movement since 1998. Hersh has been on the IAAF council since 1999.

Hersh is now 74 years old, turning 75 next Feb. 12. Lamine Diack, the outgoing IAAF president, is 81. If Hersh were to see four more years, he’d turn 79 before the end of his term.

Coe is 58. Bubka is 51. Hightower is 56. They are all contemporaries, elite athletes from the 1980s (and in Bubka’s case, ‘90s) who are now in their prime as executives.

If, like me, you attended the International Olympic Committee’s 5th World Conference on Women and Sport in Los Angeles in 2012, you would understand the movement is actively looking to bring more women, and in particular women of diverse backgrounds, into positions of management and leadership.

See Stephanie Hightower.

If, like me, you also attended the USATF meeting in Anaheim, all you had to do was sit down at that AAC meeting and listen to Siegel for this reality check:

USATF revenue up 79 percent from 2011 to 2014, from $19 million to $34 million. Assets up 472 percent from $3.6 million in 2011 to $17 million by the end of 2014. And more — including a raft of new sponsors, and palpable energy driven by the long-term Nike deal.

“I am just really excited with the progress of our organization since Max has been at the helm,” Olympic 400-meter gold medalist Sanya Richards Ross said upon walking out of the room that afternoon. “I am excited about the transparency and his accountability to the athletes and I am very optimistic for our future.”

Why would this be? Because, in large measure, USATF is following the exact same model as the USOC — the board chair, Hightower, has empowered the CEO, Siegel, to do his job, just the same way board chair Larry Probst has given chief executive Scott Blackmun the authority to run the USOC.

Now — does USATF still have some governance rough patches to address, which the USOC has reminded it of? Absolutely. Are things perfect? Hardly.

At any rate: it’s against the backdrop of a hugely upward and optimistic trend that the next shoe dropped, the 392-70 vote as the annual meeting was coming to a close recommending Hersh for the IAAF slot. The USATF board then heard from both candidates, Hersh and Hightower, and voted, 11-1, for Hightower.

Here is the thing, and this is what seems so problematic for some: that 392-70 vote was a recommendation.

This reminder: unless you live in Vermont, where town hall meetings are the thing, we do not live in a straight-up democracy. We live in a representative democracy. Votes of more than 400 people can far too often slide into a high school-like popularity contest, or something similarly meaningless.

The USOC’s downfall some 12 years ago was that it had a cumbersome board of more than 120 people, its decisions racked by petty, personal politics. Sound familiar? Now the USOC board is down to 15, and it works.

In his appearance before the USATF board, Hersh absolutely had a chance to make his case. To put it another way: he got to compete.

So did Hightower. She got to make her case, too.

Hersh lost. Hightower won.

This happens in sports, and it happens in sports politics.

USATF had a process in place. The process was duly followed.

The time for whining about it, friends, is over. It’s time to move on. There are far more important issues with which to contend — like why the best track and field athletes in the United States did not rise up and ask that Jon Drummond be immediately provisionally suspended as chair of the AAC as soon as it was apparent that Drummond had been implicated in the Tyson Gay matter.

If Drummond had been exonerated, he could have had his position — or an even more promising future in USATF leadership — back.

Instead, he got eight years. From the decision: “A coach must be a watchdog when it comes to prohibited substances.” From Siegel: "We are all deeply disappointed."

Where, now, are the voices — especially those who were in that room in Anaheim two weeks ago — who will rise up in defense of their peers, the clean athletes who in roughly 20 months will put on the red, white and blue and compete in Rio de Janeiro for the United States at the 2016 Summer Games?

You want something to be passionate about? Be passionate about that.

'America's bid,' whichever city it is

The U.S. Olympic Committee formally announced Tuesday it intends to launch a bid for the 2024 Summer Games, by now the news equivalent of dog bites man. It has been evident for months the USOC would be in the game for the Games. The issue is what city, and when the USOC will finally announce its choice from among four: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston or Washington, D.C. In that spirit, it’s so interesting that International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach is now making plans to attend Super Bowl XLIX on Feb. 1 in Glendale, Arizona. Just imagining here: if you came all the way over from the IOC’s base in Switzerland to Arizona, wouldn’t USOC headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colorado, make for a handy place to ask all four U.S. bid cities to come for, say, a briefing on Agenda 2020, the IOC’s just-passed series of initiatives? Then again, if you were the IOC president spending a little time in the United States, of course you would meet with top-tier sponsors in New York — which would also do just fine, too, for a quiet rendezvous on the side with bid-city teams, right?

If you had an active imagination, you might bet this was why, among other reasons, the USOC didn’t choose one city Tuesday from among the four.

No need. No time pressure. Why, after spending nearly a year getting to Tuesday and board of director approval to jump into 2024, force a decision that doesn’t now need to be made? Early next year sometime — that’s plenty fine.

This is a race with a long, long, long way to go. It holds many, many variables.

There are but a few certainties.

This: come 2024 it will have been 22 years since the Olympic Games were in the United States, since the Winter Games in Salt Lake City in 2002, and 28 years since the Summer Games in Atlanta in 1996.

This, too: 2008 Beijing (Asia). 2012 London (Europe). 2016 Rio de Janeiro (South America). 2020 Tokyo (back to Asia). The IOC has a kinda-sorta continental rotation rule that’s not really a rule but if it were one — it would be time in 2024 to go to North America.

And this: in May, NBC paid $7.65 billion dollars to the IOC to extend its right to televise the Games in the United States from 2022 through 2032. At some point, the Olympics are coming back to the United States; the first opportunity is 2024.

Rome jumped in Monday to the 2024 campaign. Fascinating. For the 2020 race, the economy was so bad in Italy that the then-prime minister yanked the Rome bid right out. Since, all across Europe, cities pulled out of the 2022 Winter Games race, mostly because of the economy (and the prospect of spending billions of euros when measured against that $51 billion figure associated with the Sochi 2014 Games).

Italian premier Matteo Renzi told Associated Press the Rome 2024 campaign “isn’t based on great infrastructures or big dreams but rather great people,” adding, “We will be at the vanguard for all the spending controls.”

Berlin or Hamburg are going to jump, if they can get past voters in Germany. With all due respect to the IOC president, who is German, this proved the challenge in Munich, which — after coming up short for 2018 — tried to mount a campaign for 2022 and could not get past the ballot box.

Paris is making noise about 2024. OK, but have the French learned their lessons from the disaster that was the Annecy bid for 2018? Oh, and the European economy.

Budapest? Where the sports leaders are eager but the political establishment not so much? And about that European economy …

Istanbul? The 2020 bid leader, Hasan Arat, is one of the great guys in the Olympic movement. The challenge there is president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Three weeks ago, at an international conference on justice and rights for women, he said, “You cannot put women and men on equal footing,” and, for good measure, said some forms of work are just not suitable for women: “Give her a shovel and maker her work — this cannot be. It would be primarily against her delicate nature.” One of the 40 planks of Agenda 2020 affirms what’s called Principle 6 of the Olympic movement, which calls for non-discrimination of all sorts.

South Africa. If they win the 2022 Commonwealth Games there, 2024, too?

Doha is often mentioned as a 2024 possibility. The economy is not an issue in Qatar. But there are all kinds of machinations about whether or not Qatar will or won’t bid, or should or shouldn’t. Stay tuned.

At this very early stage — and it needs to be stressed that at the end of 2014 for a vote that won’t be taken until 2017, it is almost comically early in the 2024 race — you see the dominoes potentially lining up.

There is intense interest — again, intense interest — within some of the highest levels of the Olympic movement in seeing a 2024 Games in the U.S.

That was the message Larry Probst, the USOC chairman, put it as plainly as he could — he’s not in the business of giving anything away, nor should he be — in a teleconference Tuesday with reporters.

He said that “all across the board,” from IOC members and leadership, there is encouragement for the Americans, who have spent the past five years — since the debacle that was the Chicago 2016 vote in October 2009 in Copenhagen — promoting humility and repairing relationships in the Olympic sphere.

Or, as Scott Blackmun, the USOC’s chief executive put it, “It is a really good time for us to throw our hat into the ring again.”

So which of the four cities will it be?

“It’s a four-way tie,” Blackmun said on the teleconference, being politically correct, which for now is totally appropriate.

The truth-serum answer: it’s the one that not just can, but will, win.

Which one will that be?

This is where it’s appropriate to ask hard questions, to not hold on to even the slightest bit of romance about what you might think about the cities. Olympic bidding is not for the faint of heart or the naive.

It’s one thing to be able to hang the Olympic rings on bridges or across buildings for postcard-pretty pictures. It’s quite another to actually get stuff done. Little stuff. Big stuff. What do recent events in the cities suggest about that?

It is essential, moreover, to have a team, and in particular charismatic figures, around whom a bid can be built. These are lessons from the Chicago 2016 and New York 2012 bids, and from the winning London 2012 and Rio 2016 teams, too, and this is another reason why the USOC sought Tuesday to buy time.

Another: you can bet that per Agenda 2020 the key watchwords now are sustainability and legacy. Probst, again, responding to a question on that teleconference: “Existing venues are a plus, for sure.”

For now, the USOC is — as it should — playing it cool.

No need to get out in front of the game when, legitimately, time is on the USOC’s side.

This, too, from Probst, and this is yet another lesson from Chicago 2016 and New York 2012, which were bids that were mostly about Chicago and New York. “We want to think about this,” meaning the 2024 city, whichever one it turns out to be, “as America’s bid,” and there you heard first the inkling of a probable bid slogan, “not just that particular city.

“And hopefully we can energize the country, and get the country to engage with the Olympic movement, inspire youth to get involved with sport. So not only do we hope that there are benefits for the individual city but we hope that it will have a positive impact on the country as well.”

Agenda 2020 change: for real, or not so much?

MONACO — From the department of the obvious: no one spends $601 million over seven years unless they’re serious. The International Olympic Committee is dead-bang serious about the digital television channel its members approved Monday as part of president Thomas Bach’s 40-part “Agenda 2020” plan. As for the other 39 components, which call for shifts in the bid process and the Olympic program? History and common sense teach that expectations ought to be tempered.

The IOC is now 120 years old. For all the talk — big talk among some here in Monaco — about how Agenda 2020 is revolutionary or radical, the blunt reality is that the IOC has talked this sort of talk many, many times before.

The issue now is whether it’s going to walk the walk.

To be clear:

Bach deserves significant credit for putting the IOC to and through a year of asking — with the help of considerable number of world-class advisers — what it is and what it wants to be in these early years of the 21st century.

The IOC absolutely, positively needs to innovate.

Just as an example of the kind of comparison that’s readily out there, one that gets almost no attention in the mainstream media but that draws intense focus within the Olympic sphere because the numbers show so plainly what’s what:

The 2014 Winter Games in Sochi: 88 nations (and one independent Olympic participant), about 2,850 athletes. Cost: widely believed to be $51 billion.

The 2014 Asian Beach Games, just a few weeks ago in Phuket, Thailand: 43 of the 45 national Olympic committees showed up (only North Korea and Saudi Arabia did not), about 2,300 athletes. The entire thing — test event, training, competition, demolition — proved a temporary put-up and take-down that required all of one month. Cost: not anywhere in a galaxy near $51 billion.

A consequence, perhaps intended, because sports politics is not a game for the naive, is that this year bought Bach buy-in from virtually every corner of the Olympic firmament — the dozens of international federations, all 205 national Olympic committees, the IOC athletes’ commission and more.

This stakeholder consensus enabled Bach to run the table Monday — to see Agenda 2020 go a perfect 40-for-40, with the IOC members voting “unanimously” for each and then at the end for the entirety of the resolutions, there being zero no votes even though perhaps not all hands were raised at all times.

The only time the members were not in unanimity was mid-afternoon Monday, when maybe five or six said they might like to take a coffee break but Bach opted to push through.

The last time the IOC went through such a far-reaching institutional exercise was under duress, amid the late 1990s Salt Lake City corruption scandal, which saw 10 members resign or be expelled. That prompted the IOC to enact a 50-point reform plan.

It was all this that Bach assuredly had in mind when, at the opening of the 127th IOC session here in Monaco, he made a play on Shakespeare and Hamlet, saying the IOC had to change or be changed.

The TV channel marks such a change. That’s $601 million talking, and that is big money.

Everything else is incremental change, at best, until proven otherwise.

Because the IOC has been there, done that, many times before.

Consider:

“It would be very unfortunate, if the often exaggerated expenses incurred for the most recent Olympiads, a sizable part of which represented the construction of permanent buildings, which were moreover unnecessary — temporary structures would fully suffice, and the only consequence is to then encourage use of these permanent buildings by increasing the number of occasions to draw in the crowds — it would be very unfortunate if these expenses were to deter (small) countries from putting themselves forward to host the Olympic Games in the future.”

That is from Pierre de Coubertin, the French baron widely credited as the founder of the modern Olympic movement, and those are words he penned that were published in the Olympic Review magazine in April 1911.

Fast-forward to 2002 and 2003.

Under the direction of Jacques Rogge of Belgium, who had just taken over as president from Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain, the IOC dialed up an in-depth report, what came to be called the “Olympic Games Study Commission.”

Under the direction of longtime Canadian member Dick Pound, a former vice president who himself had run for the presidency, losing out to Rogge, the panel — just like Agenda 2020 — solicited public input, taking in thousands of suggestions. More than half related to the Olympic program; others were directed to the format of the Games, the bid process, TV coverage, the extravagance of the opening and closing ceremonies and more.

The IOC, according to the report, produced for the IOC’s session in Prague in July 2003, sought “to ensure that the host cities and their residents are left with the most positive legacy of venues, infrastructure, expertise and experience.”

In all, the document contains 117 specific recommendations, each aimed at managing the “inherent size, complexity and cost” of the Games. The IOC adopted all 117.

The upshot:

Beijing 2008 ($40 billion, at least). Sochi (that $51 billion).

And the 2022 Winter Games bid race (numerous cities drop out, only Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan, still in and not clear Almaty will stay in).

Monday’s action includes a provision in which the IOC created an “invitation” stage at which applicants will now be urged to discuss how their bids might be a more holistic fit with the Olympic universe.

OK, but look — this is going to take time, probably seven to 14 years, minimum, to figure out thoroughly.

Also, it’s one thing to say, all dreamy-like, you propose, you candidate city you, whether your butterflies and rainbows fit into your vision of the Games. What happens when that lovely little dream gets put to the acid test of a secret IOC vote?

This is the realpolitik of Agenda 2020.

Bach has, on numerous occasions, referred to Agenda 2020 as a “jigsaw puzzle” or “white paper.”

In a news conference here Saturday, before Monday’s discussion and votes, he called it a “strategy paper,” or “wishes for the future of the Olympic movement,” explaining, “We will not be discussing semicolons and bullet points.”

Now, though, the time has come to punctuate the conversation.

For all the headlines that rocketed Tuesday around the world about countries mounting dual-nation bids, those would be allowed only in “special circumstances.” Such circumstances would be few and far between and, again, the odds of any such bid winning a campaign for the Games — even more remote.

A real-life Agenda 2020 circumstance has already emerged, and it’s not pretty: the pushback in moving the bobsled run out of South Korea for the 2018 Winter Games?  Already intense. And so predictable, the governor of Gangwon province, Moon Soon Choi saying in a televised address Tuesday, “Sharing the competition with another city is not an option we can consider. The South Korean people would never accept it.”

When they were bidding, and they bid three times for the Winter Games, x million for a bobsled run and y million in annual maintenance expenses were legacy costs the Koreans knew they were confronting. The political and cultural costs of asking them to do something else — how much is that worth? Is that somewhere in Agenda 2020?

Just as challenging, albeit in a different context: the real-world hard work that lies ahead in re-shaping the Olympic program now that the IOC has shifted the focus from “sports” to “events.”

IOC policy, renewed Monday, calls for a cap of 10,500 athletes except in “special cases.” This begs the obvious question: which of the established sports now figures to give up spots to sports such as surfing, skateboarding, climbing or others seeking to gain entry into the Olympic program?

Consider track and field.

Seb Coe and Sergey Bubka — Coe has already declared — are going to be the two candidates for the IAAF presidency. Under what theory does it serve either to suggest, before the presidential election next Aug. 19 in Beijing, that track and field should give up even one slot from its Olympic quota?

Now, aquatics:

FINA launched high-diving at the 2013 world championships in Barcelona to great acclaim. It is experimenting with mixed-gender relays. It is promoting men in synchronized swimming, and has changed the name of that discipline — said to be at the urging of Bach himself — to “artistic swimming.” There’s urgency, in the name of gender equality, to put the women’s 1500 freestyle on the program.

So where does it seem likely that FINA wants to bend?

This can go on and on. Shooting. Rowing. And more.

Actually, there is an elegant solution — if, that is, the IOC wants to confront it.

The Olympic accreditation system gives athletes a placard with a capital letter “A” on it. Some of these “A” placards can feature a lower-case letter as well for others in the athlete camp; there are a variety of different letters. Altogether, the different “A” placards total roughly 10,500.

One of the secrets within the Olympic world is that perhaps 900 of those 10,500 “A” accreditations have not over the years belonged to, well, athletes. They have been assigned over the years to sponsors or, very quietly, to security personnel.

If the IOC wanted to take all of those 900 and move them to a new category, voilà! Problem solved.

Even a third, 300, would go far in addressing the practicalities.

Moving on, because the 2022 campaign remains a real challenge, and Agenda 2020 may well accentuate the matter.

One of the 40 resolutions affirms the IOC’s support for non-discrimination.

“It is not only with regard to sexual orientation,” Bach said at a Monday news conference, referring to the firestorm of controversy triggered by Russian legislation in advance of the Sochi Games. “We will be looking for the guarantee of the host country that the principles of the Olympic charter apply to all the participants during the Olympic Games.”

This ought to go over just swimmingly in either Beijing and Almaty.

Who remembers the lead-up to the 2008 Beijing Games? The protests over human rights that marred the 2008 torch relay in London, Paris and San Francisco?

Pound, as the session was drawing to a close Tuesday, dropped the bomb of suggesting the IOC re-open the 2022 race with the newly enacted Agenda 2020 procedures, declaring it would be “leveling the playing field” and “doing our best to promote the Olympic movement.”

No, Bach responded immediately, the IOC’s policy-making executive board had decided a couple months ago that the only cities that could be in the race were those that had applied earlier. “There will be no change in this procedure,” he said.

Thus: the first post-Agenda 2020 Games are now destined to go a non-democratic nation; western protests over human rights would seem an inevitability; and more.

Bring it on, all of you who believe the IOC signed on Monday for big change.

That change, again, is going to take time, and lots of it — if, indeed, it ever manifests itself at all.

The TV channel — that absolutely is for real. Anything else?

Time is the measure of all things.

At that Monday news conference, Bach was asked what he hoped 20 years from now how he would feel about the passage of Agenda 2020.

“When I look from above — this is difficult to say. I hope very much that this then will prove to be an important and positive day for the Olympic movement. I hope very much, I’m confident, I’m sure that today we took the right decisions with a vision for the future of the Olympic movement that we are getting the Games and the Olympic movement closer to the youth and to the people.

“We with this day today and with the Olympic Agenda 2020, we are also fostering our relationship with society at large. I hope in 20 years that I can still live it, first of all. I can look back to this day with satisfaction and happiness and maybe a little bit of relief.”

Agenda 2020 goes 40-for-40

MONACO — To much self-promotion and -congratulation, the International Olympic Committee on Monday “unanimously” enacted all 40 points of president Thomas Bach’s review and potential reform plan, dubbed “Agenda 2020.” The potential game-changer: approval of a digital TV channel. Other significant elements: shifts in the bid process as well as to the Olympic program.

The action Monday gave Bach what he craved, approval of what he has variously described as a "jigsaw puzzle" and a “white paper.” Now comes the hard work: implementation.

How to balance considerations such as finance and the essence of Olympic tradition? Should the bobsled track for the 2018 Winter Games in South Korea be moved to save money? Isn’t it ridiculous — or worse — to pressure the Koreans to give up building a track to move the event to, say, Japan, when, for instance, the matter of the 1936 Berlin marathon, won by Korean Kee Chong Sohn, who had to compete under the Japanese flag, is still very much alive in Seoul and precincts beyond?

To move it to, say, the United States? Canada? Europe? Wouldn’t that make the Olympics something of a united world championships, the very thing Sport Accord and international judo federation president Marius Vizer had proposed just last year?

The Koreans bid twice for the Games, for 2010 and 2014, before winning for 2018. It’s not as if they didn’t know the Winter Olympics included a bobsled run, right?

More of the struggles to come:

Yay for a move from “sports” to “events” if that means the possibility of fresh additions to the program, and particularly in the Summer Games — say, for instance, surfing.

But with a cap of 10,500 athletes except in “special cases,” the policy affirmed anew Monday, which of the established sports can be counted on to give up spots to newcomers? Track and field? Swimming? Shooting? Rowing?

In a word: ha.

To be sure, Monday ushered in evolution, not revolution.

In a style that can only be described as only in the IOC, the 40 measures were voted on one by one and by a show of hands, the 96 members in attendance passing each resolution in what was described from the head table as “unanimously,” even though it was sometimes plain not all hands went up.

To be abundantly clear: no hands went up to register a vote against.

Why did the IOC not register the votes on each measure through electronic ballots, which — in December 2014 — would be simple enough? Which the IOC actually does (though it does not attribute votes cast to individual members) for its bid-city ballots?

For those who might be befuddled, it must be understood that what transpired Monday is, in its way, progress.

In IOC terms, it amounted to something that might be termed transparency. The votes were shown on closed-circuit television that was beamed out to the internet. Thus some — if not all — the members could actually be seen raising their hands.

Moreover, the IOC is not, repeat not, a democracy.

Here is another fundamental principle:

The IOC works best when the president is firmly in control.

Bach, who is German, was elected in Buenos Aires in September 2013, replacing Jacques Rogge of Belgium.

Rogge served from 2001. He took over from Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain, who served for 21 years.

Rogge sat Monday at the head table. Bach referred to him, among others, in the ceremonial introductions of the address that opened Sunday night’s 127th IOC session. That was, well, it. Not a word from the former president.

Since being elected in Buenos Aires, Bach has clearly sought to model himself after Samaranch, who operated with a direct yet deft touch.

For more than a year, Bach has worked energetically to secure buy-in across, within and without the Olympic movement for Agenda 2020. Though Rogge was not invited Monday to speak, Didier Burkhalter, president of the Swiss confederation, was — the IOC, of course, based in Lausanne. Agenda 2020, Burkhalter said, would enable the movement to “be proactive and change rather than be changed.”

The key item on the docket was always the creation of the digital TV channel.

To get there, though, the IOC had to work through hours of agenda items.

First up Monday morning: changes to the bid process, including a provision that in exceptional circumstances would allow events to be held outside host cities or countries.

Insiders noted that many of the bid changes, aimed at streamlining and reducing the cost of campaigning, evoked the Madrid 2020 bid that lost out to Tokyo, also in Buenos Aires.

It takes nothing away from the winning Tokyo bid to note that with as with many things in the Olympic universe, it can be a matter of timing: Madrid’s bids, particularly the 2020 campaign, its third in a row, may well have articulated an apt strategy but caught the IOC at a wrong time.

Around lunch time Monday in Monaco, the IOC moved to change the Olympic program from its traditional focus on “sports” to “events,” a potential boon for sports such as surfing, skateboarding, cricket, climbing and, as soon as the Tokyo 2020 Games, baseball and softball — again, if that is, spots can be found around that 10,500 cap.

“This is really a major step forward in the modernization of the Olympic Games,” Bach said as it passed, of course unanimously.

By mid-afternoon, the members affirmed their support for what’s called “Principle 6,” including non-discrimination on sexual orientation, a response to the firestorm over legislation in Russia before the 2014 Games.

“This is a very important step,” Bach said. “Congratulations.”

Approval of the TV channel came right after that.

Bach, speaking from the head table, called such a channel “crucial” for Olympic athletes and values between editions of the Games.

Yiannis Exarchos, head of Olympic Broadcasting Services, said it would be “the always-on, multimedia platform,” aimed at being the “ultimate” Olympic content source, initially digital only.

“This will be a truly collaborative effort [among] the Olympic family,” he said, also calling it “a challenge of Olympic proportions.”

“This will be a historic step in our existence and one we should embrace,” he urged the members.

Start-up costs were fixed at roughly $446 million euros, plus a 10 percent cushion, meaning $490 million euros all-in, or $601 million at current exchange rates.

Ser Miang Ng of Singapore, a former vice president who now chairs the IOC finance commission, said the channel represented a “substantial but necessary” investment. Break-even, he said: seven to 10 years.

“These figures are more than achievable,” said Bach, who chaired the TV channel working group.

“I think this is an excellent concept and the sooner we can launch this the better,” Larry Probst, the U.S. Olympic Committee chairman and new IOC member, said from the floor.

After the channel was approved, once more unanimously, Bach said, “This is a great, great step forward. I wish all the ones who will be involved in making this happen really good luck. This is really a historical step for the IOC an the Olympic movement. Thank you very much for your approval.”

Richard Peterkin, the witty IOC member from the Caribbean nation of St. Lucia, tweeted early in Monday’s session:

Looks like we will have an abundance of unanimous acceptance votes on the recommendations. Either a good sign or we are a bunch of sheep.

— Richard Peterkin (@rncpeterkin) December 8, 2014

A few minutes later, he posted another tweet:

Just to clarify. There's nothing wrong with sheep. They taste great, make lovely wool sweaters, and know a good thing when they see it.

— Richard Peterkin (@rncpeterkin) December 8, 2014

After lunch, yet again:

My arm hurts from voting yes so often. would it be different if the votes were by blind ballot? I doubt it. Other options in the future.

— Richard Peterkin (@rncpeterkin) December 8, 2014

From the floor in the afternoon, Peterkin said, speaking directly to Bach, “Like President Obama, you are a strong proponent of change. I hope you have more success than he has.”

Bach had predicted at a news conference Saturday that all would go smoothly here.

Of course he did. He had lined everything up in advance, Samaranch-style.

It was “very encouraging,” he said at that news conference, “to see that all the stakeholders of the Olympic movement are actually supporting this Olympic Agenda 2020,” including representatives of the international sports federations, summer and winter, the national Olympic committees and athletes committees.

Beyond which, as longtime IOC member and former vice president Dick Pound pointed out in an interview Monday, the topics themselves lent themselves to an easy show of hands in favor of yes votes.

“It’s pretty much motherhood and apple pie,” Pound said, adding, “These things are obvious. Friction will be in the events. What does athletics,” meaning track and field, “have to give to create some space for new sports? What does shooting have to give? What does swimming have to give? And there will be a lot of wailing about that,” down the line.

“You look at the team sports. Do you cut a 14-team draw down to 12? There are lots of ways to slice the pie.”

Pound served as IOC vice president under Samaranch. The comparisons between Bach and Samaranch seemed manifest.

Referring to Bach, Pound said, “He’s well prepared. You look at those committees, especially the outsiders. He has got good traction there. So you’re getting a lot of good thought having gone into it. Things have been circulated. You read them — there’s very little there that has a big hook out there that you want to grab onto and want to fight. I think it has been well-managed, well-directed, well-meaning."

Pound continued: “… I’m trying to think, somebody raised the visit issue, very tentatively,” meaning whether the members could visit cities bidding for the Games, a notion Bach had emphatically shot down before all arrived in Monaco.

“There may be people with hair my color who may object to having to retire before the age of 70 or something. We’ll see. I don’t think anyone will throw themselves in front of the train for that purpose.”

The image of whether to tinker in any significant respect with the age limit didn’t even begin to come up until 5:45 p.m. — too late in the day, really, for anybody to do anything about it, given that Bach had determined mid-afternoon that he was going to hustle the members through all 40 bullet points in one day.

As the clock ticked toward 6 p.m., Bach did call on Vitaly Smirnov, the Russian member who holds a special place in the IOC, what is called the doyen, the longest-serving member. Smirnov, carefully reading from a script, backed the measure on the table that would allow for a one-time extension of a member’s term beyond age 70, to 74, for a maximum of five cases at a given time.

So deft.

So Samaranch-like, really.

“Even in, as you say, my wildest dreams, I would not have expected this,” Bach said in a wrap-up news conference Monday night, referring to the 40-for-40 unanimous yes votes, going on to deflect credit away from himself and onto the members, just the way Samaranch used to:

“It showed the great determination of the members for these reforms to make this progress and to make this happen.”

Francesco Ricci Bitti, president of the international tennis federation and the association of summer Olympic international sports federations, said, “We did open today a big window but most of the work still needs to be done. That’s the most difficult part of our job. It’s a historical day.

“Now we have to proceed step by step. If someone has signed a contract like Tokyo, they cannot change everything. There must be a balance.”