Game of Thrones, Olympic style

SOCHI, Russia — Lost for almost everyone in the provocative speech that SportAccord president Marius Vizer delivered here earlier this week was a Latin phrase at the very end, one that — now that the Assn. of Summer Olympic International Federations predictably rallied on Wednesday around the International Olympic Committee — sums up the contentious state of world sport politics. Fine primo tempo, Vizer said in closing his remarks Monday: “the end of the first season,” or, better, the end of the first chapter. If this were television drama, the second, or even the third, will surely make for even better stuff.

This was Vizer Wednesday morning, before the ASOIF meeting got underway: “I am ready to fight until the end. I have nothing to lose.”

The American television show “Game of Thrones,” which has resumed its on-air run, has nothing on what is going down this week in Sochi — and what promises to be forthcoming. Because Vizer believes in both words and, better, action. So, too, IOC president Thomas Bach.

What we have here are two strong personalities. Both are very, very smart and, as well, exceptionally strong-willed.

Bach’s background, remember, is in fencing.

Vizer is in judo. Moves and counter-moves.

The Putin factor

The first person to call Bach moments after he was elected IOC president in September, 2013, in Buenos Aires? Vladimir Putin. What country is now a strong supporter of SportAccord? Russia. Moreover, who came here at the start of SportAccord and exchanged toasts with Vizer? Putin.

The IOC put out a news release here from Sochi noting that Bach and Putin on Monday held an hour-long meeting celebrating the "legacy" of the 2014 Sochi Games.

For those skeptics who would focus only on the $51 billion figures associated with Sochi 2014, the IOC noted, apparently via Putin:

"This winter the local authorities say that all the hotels in the mountain cluster were fully booked from the beginning of November until mid-January. Traffic-calming measures even had to be put in place to cope with the numbers. Summer bookings for the hotels in the coastal cluster are said to be equally as successful."

The IOC release also said that Putin praised the “excellent relations” with the IOC president as “leader of the Olympic Movement.”

Back to you, Mr. Vizer, and this photo from SportAccord:

And, for good measure, these words from a SportAccord release:

"Congratulating Marius L. Vizer upon his re-election as SportAccord President, Mr. Putin said, 'Russia has worked very well with SportAccord and we are happy that the election has taken place in our sports capital. Sochi has given us the platform to organize big events and exhibitions. I hope that you will have a chance to enjoy all that is on offer.' "

And that's not all:

“Let me emphasize," Putin said, "that the support of SportAccord and IOC means a lot to us. We will continue to work together and promote peace and sport. I am convinced that the sports movement should be united and not divided by contradictions.”

ASOIF meeting

ASOIF represents the 28 sports on the Summer Games program. This is where things stood after Wednesday's meeting, and going forward:

Vizer is also president of the International Judo Federation. In front of all of his Olympic sport colleagues, he offered an apology for the speech Monday in which he, among other things, described the IOC system as “expired, outdated, wrong, unfair and not at all transparent.”

Vizer said Wednesday, “I regret to create inconvenience … regarding to my way and moment to choose this opportunity. But regarding the content, I expressed my voice and that is my opinion. For the rest, I am sorry. But I think everybody in the world of sport is free to express the opinion, to have vision, to have attitude. That is the world of sport.”

The ASOIF assembly on Wednesday, by a show of hands, ratified the statement adopted Tuesday by its council — suspending relations with SportAccord pending further review.

Twenty-seven of the 28 summer sports signed the petition. ASOIF chief Franceso Ricci Bitti, who is president of the International Tennis Federation, said it was super-easy to imagine which was the hold-out. Moves and counter-moves.

Despite the suspension, Ricci Bitti said, the door was still open for reconciliation.

This poses the question:

Really?

IOC system: how the millions go to sports

Putting a different spin than the one offered by Vizer on the IOC: it is for sure a traditional, indeed conservative, system. It works best when the president is firmly in control — a lesson the former president, Jacques Rogge, learned to his dismay after an exercise in “democracy” at the session in Mexico City in 2002.

That 2002 session was a watershed for Rogge — it marked the end of his honeymoon. He had been elected in Moscow the year before.

Perhaps this Sochi SportAccord convention will, in time, come to be seen as the end of Bach’s honeymoon as well.

It was altogether predictable that the summer sports would rally, and fiercely, around Bach and the IOC. They live in — if you will — a closed system, many hugely dependent on the IOC for financial and creative survival.

These distributions largely tell the story:

After the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the summer sports got $296 million to split up; after London 2012, $515 million, thanks to enhanced broadcast revenues; projected revenues to Rio 2016 are $550 million.

Track and field got $29 million in 2008; $45.2 million in 2012; and is projected to get $40 million in 2016. (The IAAF, incidentally, is working, and hard, for that $5 million back.)

It was the IAAF that bolted SportAccord first, with its president, Lamine Diack, on Tuesday declaring, “What was said by Mr. Vizer was unacceptable.”

Swimming got $14.3 million in 2008; $25 million in 2012; and is due to get $32 million in 2016.

FINA president Julio Cesar Maglione on Tuesday, to Associated Press: “The international federations are independent and they make their own job.”

Track and field and swimming (along with gymnastics) are what are called group A federations.

Even smaller federations can hardly say no to the IOC. Basketball is in B; it got $14.3 million in 2008, $25 million in 2012 and stands to get $25 million in 2016. Rowing is in C; it got $9.6 million in 2008, $17.7 million in 2012 and is due for the same, $17.7 million in 2016. Table tennis is in D; it got $8 million in 2008, $15.3 million in 2012 and stands to take in $17.3 million in 2016.

Ricci Bitti could hardly have been more clear in explaining, ostensibly for the benefit of all involved but really for Vizer, there in the audience, how things work.

“We believe the IOC is not a perfect organization but we can try to improve from the inside,” he said, and he hardly needed to add that for those in the bubble it has never been so financially secure.

And, a few moments later, specifically regarding “our relation with the IOC”:

“Our vision, the vision of the majority … is we can change if possible from inside our world in which we work, which we spend, because [we are] a major stakeholder of the IOC. ASOIF is a major stakeholder of the IOC, together with the [national Olympic committees]. We believe the IOC is a cornerstone machine with very important tools in the world of sport.

“It is a waste of time to make a war, in our opinion, from outside or to try to destabilize the system as your position unfortunately as expressed on Monday.”

A matter of perspectives?

Here is the thing about making "a war," though.

One man’s terrorist is, as the saying goes, another man’s freedom fighter.

There were many in the audience — and, indeed, around the world — who know in their hearts that there was more than just a little truth in what Vizer had to say Monday. As with many things, is it a matter less of what he said than when and how he said it?

“He has a lot of sympathy from a lot of people,” said the president of one Summer Games sport, referring to Vizer, asking not to be identified.

“This was not the right occasion,” the president of another Summer Games sport said, also asking to remain anonymous. “On the right occasion, Thomas will listen.”

There are 28 Summer Games sports and seven Winter. There are more than 100 international sports federations in SportAccord. What about the others not on the Olympic program? What about their financial considerations? Late Wednesday, ARISF, a group that represents 35 non-Olympic sports -- everything from baseball/softball to sport climbing to cricket -- issued a statement calling for "continued constructive dialogue between the IOC and SportAccord."

The fact that there was a break in high-level Olympic politics made news — fodder for sports-talk shows and the like — back home in the States. This is noteworthy. An Olympic story making general-news headlines in an off-year? For all the wrong reasons? Now the altogether foreseeable reaction of the federations rallying around Bach is for sure going to feed into the perception, right or wrong, that the federations (read: IOC members for those who make no distinction) are limousine-riding fat cats who care only perpetuating their own secretive, overblown caste.

You don’t think the opponents of the Boston 2024 campaign are going to seize on this sort of thing as evidence of how the IOC protects its own? Don’t be naive.

In his remarks Monday, Vizer said that in more than 100 countries, sport is “in misery,” with athletes “lacking the necessary basic elements — food, medication, equipment, preparation facilities and possibility to participate to competitions.”

This is, undeniably, true, everywhere in our world, from Laos — where this space has seen a would-be marathon runner running on shoes four years old — to the United States, where the struggle can prove ongoing to find a sponsor to fund the Olympic dream.

Financially speaking, the IOC is essentially a pass-through. For every dollar it takes in, roughly 90 cents go back out. Even so, it is nonetheless incredibly difficult to explain to ordinary folks how an organization that took in — according to tax filings — $5.37 billion for the years 2009-12 can not afford to find enough money to pay for a pair of decent running shoes.

Sometimes it takes someone to speak out to effect change.

Whether or not Vizer — and SportAccord — are appropriate vehicles for such change are, of course, matters for legitimate debate.

In the meantime, sometimes the IOC responds to calls for change. In March, it announced proposed tweaks to Rules 50 and 40, which would relax advertising rules during the Games — a victory for U.S. athletes who were campaigning for such reform.

It was in that same announcement that Bach disclosed the IOC executive board, which for a dozen years has held its spring meeting in line with SportAccord, would not be making the trip this year to Sochi.

Vizer said Wednesday he wrote a long letter to Bach last July. He got nowhere.

So now we are somewhere.

Where depends on your point of view.

The literalist would say, Sochi. Two more days of SportAccord 2015. What could possibly come next?!

The therapist would ask, have we made progress? “We have a conflict between all sport family,” ASOIF vice president Hassan Moustafa, the International Handball Federation chief, said Wednesday from the dais. “How we can solve this problem? We have to sit and we have to discuss.”

The script writer would say, and back to Latin of course: primo enim in capite duo — at the start of chapter two.

The start of an Olympic cold war?

SOCHI, Russia — There is a familiar saying in Olympic circles about SportAccord. It goes like this: SportAccord is the umbrella organization for the international sports federations. Now the key question: is it raining?

The query took on immediate and profound urgency Monday after Marius Vizer, the SportAccord president, launched a public attack on the International Olympic Committee the likes of which has not been seen within the so-called “Olympic family” in recent memory.

With IOC president Thomas Bach listening, Vizer said the “IOC system is expired, outdated, wrong, unfair and not at all transparent,” adding, “The Olympic Games belong to all of us and we need real reforms.”

Bach thereafter took to the lectern and delivered a wry smile that thanked Vizer for his “friendly” welcome. Referring to the 40-point reform plan dubbed Agenda 2020 that the full IOC membership passed last December in Monaco — after an extensive review that from around the world drew thousands of comments and suggestions — Bach said, “Nobody who wanted to listen, nobody who wanted to hear, nobody who wanted to understand, nobody who wanted to have some sort of goodwill … could miss the decisions we were taking.”

This was all Monday morning. In the afternoon session, Lamine Diack, the president of the influential international track and field federation, announced that the IAAF was withdrawing from SportAccord, absolutely a “protest” against Vizer’s position, IAAF spokesman Nick Davies confirmed afterward. The international shooting federation, another Olympic entity, quickly followed suit.

By mid-afternoon, those two were among 16 international sports federations that had signed a letter expressing “disagreement” with Vizer’s remarks and expressing “strong support” for Bach and for Agenda 2020. Some or all of the others, it was said, needed board review to contemplate further action.

Vizer, who was re-elected here Monday to a full four-year term atop SportAccord, said at a news conference, “Everybody is free to withdraw, to do whatever they want. There are two ways in sport — to follow the fairness, the transparency, the unity, the criteria and the principles. Or to choose another home.”

Back in the former USSR, was Monday the start of a cold war in Olympic sport?

Did it herald a split between the federations — those within the Olympic program and those on the outside?

Was it the beginning of the end for SportAccord? Or a distinct new beginning for the organization, which has branded itself as “the world sport & business summit 2015,” with perhaps the only leader in world sport who would dare to speak truth to the ultimate Olympic power?

Who else but Vizer, after all, would say this, as he did:

“In over 100 countries of the world, sport is in misery. Athletes are lacking the necessary basic elements — food, medication, equipment, preparation facilities and possibility to participate to competitions. One of the great questions of sport today is how much should we continue to invest in buildings and infrastructure and how much in people?!

“Furthermore: why invest hundreds of millions of dollars in opening and closing ceremonies, while millions of athletes live in hunger and they don’t stand a chance in sport due to the lack of proper conditions? If indeed the ‘IOC distributes 3.25 million dollars a day, every day of the year, for the development of sport worldwide,’ why do millions of athletes suffer and cannot enjoy or reach performances in sport?

“Together, SportAccord and [the] IOC must find a solution to compensate national federations and athletes [for] their events. Today, the money invested in sport never reaches the athletes and their families. Sport Accord and the international federations are already providing prize money to their athletes in competition, in an effort to compensate for this.”

Vizer, who is also president of the judo federation and who has throughout his career maintained — for anyone who truly would listen — an athlete-first priority, also said that Agenda 2020 “hardly brings any real benefit to sport, to [the international federations] or athletes.”

And he asserted that the key piece of Agenda 2020, the launch of an Olympic television channel, was approved without so much as a business plan.

“Any business project in the world needs a business plan, investors, professional partners, break-even points, strategy, consultation with stakeholders — international federations and to generate a benefit for all stakeholders,” adding, “Only after the decision appears that a plan is in process.”

In the protocol-heavy, diplomacy-filled, nuanced world of the Olympic movement, was such straight talk appropriate? Welcome? Or tantamount to sacrilege?

Immediately after Vizer and Bach made their remarks, Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad Al-Sabah — the hugely influential head of the 205-member Assn. of National Olympic Committees — joined Bach in the hallway outside the ballroom to extend support. So did other leading Olympic figures.

The sheikh and ANOC would later issue a statement in which the organization sought to “stress its full commitment to Olympic Agenda 2020 and its implementation,” adding, “Under Under President Bach’s leadership we look forward to moving towards a more united and brighter future.”

Was the issue Monday not just what Vizer said but that he had not fully consulted his constituents before he spoke? Had he briefed them? Did they have ample warning what was coming?

One insider, asking not to be identified, said, “The headline is: this is the beginning of the end,” meaning for Vizer.

Another: “In a family, if you have a conflict, you don’t go out and express it in front of everybody.”

A third: “it’s a humiliation for the IOC president. He,” meaning Vizer, “certainly went too far. If you have a different opinion, find a private occasion to discuss it. Now we have to wait and see the consequences.”

These sorts of remarks raise perhaps the ultimate question. If you challenge the IOC president, who in the Olympic sphere is likely to win that fight?

Which brings up another question: is the Romanian-born Marius Vizer — and if you know his life story, how he escaped Communism — afraid of any challenge?

Vizer, in an interview, said of his his remarks, “I work for the sport voluntarily, free of charge, all my life, and somebody who is paid, working in the sport and for the sport, [has] to reply to me, no?”

The IOC recently announced that Bach will receive an annual 225,000 euro ($242,000) annual “indemnity policy” covering reimbursements.

“And,” Vizer said, “to reality, to my proposals and my questions.”

These include various multi-sport proposals such as beach, mind, combat and other games. A world championships that would include all 90-plus federations — a plank on which Vizer ran for SportAccord president two years ago — is one of those ideas that now, many agree, perhaps seems better suited to theory than the real world.

“Mr. President,” Vizer said, “please stop blocking the SportAccord strategy in its mission to identify and organize conventions and multi-sport games.”

It has been an IOC tradition in recent years to hold its executive board meetings in the spring at SportAccord. Not this year — the IOC saying it was a way to save money. Bach showed up in Sochi. But it was abundantly clear that the absence of the executive board was a play aimed at minimizing the import of the event, and by implication Vizer.

For that matter, in the appropriate years, SportAccord has also served as a site for IOC bid city presentations. This is a bid year, for the 2022 Winter Games. But, again, there are no bid-city presentations here. Same deal — no bid-city presentations mean, in theory, a lesser event.

For his part, Bach said from the lectern, the TV channel is “open to everybody,” a “worldwide presence” designed to grow sport and “promote the values we all share.”

The IOC has, he said, distributed more than $400 million over four years to “the national level,” emphasizing, “There in the end they and their athletes, they are benefitting.”

He also said, “We should always consider that sport at the end is about results. It’s in the sport competition but it’s also in the work we are doing.

“This is not about plans and projects. It’s about results and actions. When taking these actions, we have to be efficient. We have to avoid that we are working in a parallel way. If somebody starts something, we also start something in this respect. In this way we are wasting time, we are wasting human resources, we are losing efficiency and, in the end, and this is worst of all, we are losing credibility.

“What we all need for sport, if we want to promote our values, if we want to be a respected part of society, if we want to grow our sport, if we want to attract young people … if we want to do all this, if we want then to achieve our mission of organizing sport and at the same time put sport into the service of society, then what we need altogether is credibility. This credibility we can only achieve if we have unity in our diversity.”

He said, “I invite you to bring your diversity to the table … but then bring unity in our concerted effort,” adding to applause, “Thank you very much.”

There was one last little twist on the entire day’s events.

At the end of his news conference, Vizer had this to offer, unprompted: “Be happy.”

Eugene gets the 2021 track championships

For more than 30 years, the United States has consistently produced the world’s best track and field teams. But the track and field world championships have never been held in the United States. Then, Thursday morning, in an unexpected bolt from the blue, came word that the 2021 world championships would be held in Eugene, Oregon — a “strategic decision that enables us to take advantage of a unique opportunity that may never arise again,” the outgoing president of the IAAF, Lamine Diack, said in a statement issued from meetings in Beijing.

Eugene had last November bid for the 2019 world championships and lost narrowly to Doha, Qatar, 15-12.

Typically, the IAAF awards the worlds after such contested elections. For 2021, however, it opted to go straight to Eugene — its 27-member ruling council, guided by Diack, who throughout his 16 years as president has always wanted a U.S. championships, taking the decision Thursday in a special vote.

If anything can ignite a resurgence of track and field’s place in the sporting landscape in the United States, this marks the opportunity.

The sport — under the direction of USATF chief executive Max Siegel, now financially secure in the United States— has six full years and two Olympic Games, in 2016 and 2020, to capture public attention, not to mention the 2016 world indoor championships in Portland, Oregon.

The long-running and very vocal argument over whether a different (read: bigger) city would work as America’s track and field capital is now settled.

It’s going to be Eugene — as the backdrop for a world-class, live (or mostly) TV broadcast.

For sure, the locals know track and field.

The annual Prefontaine Classic at historic Hayward Field is a regular stop on the IAAF’s world circuit.

The NCAA championships are held regularly at Hayward.

Eugene played host last year to the world junior championships.

The U.S. Olympic Trials in track and field were held at Hayward in 2008, 2012 and will be held there again in 2016. The 2016 Trials will be the sixth in University of Oregon history.

Hayward needs a facelift. But that’s now part of the 2021 plan.

That Eugene could grab the 2021 worlds is testament, in large measure, to the vision and tenacity of five people: Vin Lananna, who championed the 2019 bid and would not give up; Bob Fasulo, his consultant and former U.S. Olympic Committee international relations director; Siegel; Diack; and Seb Coe, the IAAF vice president.

Coe headed the 2019 evaluation process and throughout played it studiously neutral. Even so, from the beginning he understood -- anyone would -- the power of having a championships in the United States.

In a phone call from Beijing, he said of Thursday's vote, "This was a strategic opportunity that the council could not overlook.

"We have to be entirely open about this: we have found it difficult to engage the United States at this level of track and field.

"The federation," meaning USATF, "under Stephanie and Max, have really reached out," a reference not only to Siegel but to Stephanie Hightower, who until this week had been the USATF board chairwoman. She resigned, remaining USATF president, and in August will stand as USATF’s nominee for election to the IAAF council.

Coe continued, "We have a world indoors in Portland. We had a very well-organized world junior championships in Eugene. As I said to Stephanie, interestingly, when they were presenting their credentials for world juniors, I said, 'I hope this was a precursor for worlds,' and they said, 'Yes,' and they were back in front of us.

"The council made the right decision. This was not an opportunity that was not going to come around that quickly. Remember, this was only by three votes last time."

Diack is an often-misunderstood figure in the track and field — and Olympic — scene. But Thursday’s decision should serve once more of a reminder of the authority he wields.

Diack has only a few more months to go in his term; either Coe or Sergey Bubka, also an IAAF vice president, will replace him at elections in August. Diack is 81 years old. Even so, Diack managed Thursday to do what Primo Nebiolo, who was his predecessor as IAAF president and who was as fearsome as they come, could not — get a championships to the United States.

And he did so without a bidding process. And without a peep of protest.

There is, to be clear, precedent for no-bidding — the 2007 worlds went to Osaka, Japan, in a similar manner.

“Although this decision departs from the usual procedure," Diack said, "I am delighted that my council colleagues understood the enormous opportunity presented to us to access a key market and have taken a decision in the interest of the global development of our sport.”

For the Americans, after the bitter disappointment of losing to Doha — and for sure it was bitter, with the U.S. contingent in Monaco last November calculating on hotel napkins, trying time and again to figure out how they could have lost by such a close margin — Lananna and Siegel vowed not to give up.

Siegel said Thursday by telephone from Indianapolis, “As a federation, frankly, since I took over,” in 2012, “we have been very deliberate in approaching the sport globally in the same way Scott and Larry have gone about it,” referring to Scott Blackmun and Larry Probst, the chief executive and board chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee, who for years have made a priority of building goodwill and relationships.

“We want to make a statement,” Siegel continued,” that we want to be one of the highest-contributing federations.”

Lananna went back to Monaco the first week of February. There he pitched Diack with what he called a “strategic business plan” — essentially, he said, the same terms and commitments for 2019 but now for 2021.

The state of Oregon, he made sure to note, has all along offered “enthusiastic” support.

Speaking Thursday by phone from Beijing, Lananna said the council voted for the plan by a “landslide” vote.

“We stayed after it,” he said. “I will say that in the end, what I will say about the IAAF, they thought strategically about this and made a bold move. The president did a wonderful job about getting behind this.”

In Monaco last November, Lananna had told the IAAF, “Destiny is calling us. America is waiting. Eugene is ready. Let’s tell our story together.”

Now that destiny is to be fulfilled. Just two years later.

“I mean,” he said on the telephone, “it’s going to reignite America’s passion for track and field. I think you put this in Eugene, Oregon, a town that has the heart and soul of track and field in the United States — the repercussions of this decision will signal a new era for the sport.

“For the IAAF, it’s a new market for the sport of track and field. It ignited the flame that gets our sport rolling in the right direction.”

But not, he cautioned without significant work.

“It’s not good enough to tell each other we have the world’s No. 1 team. We have to work to do — to have them be compelling human interest stories.”

Free Michael Phelps

This space believes in making things simple and easy. So here it is: Michael Phelps should swim at the 2015 world championships in Kazan, Russia. USA Swimming suspended Phelps for six months in the aftermath of his drunk-driving incident in Maryland last September. That suspension has run, and he will open his 2015 season by swimming this week at a meet in Mesa, Arizona. In addition to that suspension, Phelps and USA Swimming agreed — and “agreed” is putting a spin on it — that he would not be on the U.S. team in Kazan. Now the time has come to fix that.

For every reason you can come up with to keep Phelps off the Kazan team, there are better reasons to send him.

First and foremost, there is this:

The American story is, and forever will be, one of redemption. This is who we are. This is the classic, everlasting story of our country.

In the United States of America, we get not only a second chance, but a third, a fourth, a fifth and more.

If anyone has earned that chance, it’s Michael Phelps.

Phelps is one of the great sports heroes of our time, an imperfect human being — we all are — who has won 22 Olympic medals, 18 of them gold, inspiring literally millions of boys and girls and grown-ups, too.

About this there can be no debate.

Our funny face pic yesterday at #theboysandgirlsclub What a blast!

A photo posted by Michael Phelps (@m_phelps00) on Mar 27, 2015 at 8:00am PDT

Disclaimer: I co-wrote Phelps’ 2008 best-selling book. In writing this column, I have not shared even one word with him.

To recap how we got here, and why there must be reconsideration — not just for Phelps but for USA Swimming and even the U.S. Olympic Committee — that Phelps go to Russia:

On Sept. 30, 2014, Phelps was stopped by Maryland police going 84 in a 45 mph zone. His blood-alcohol level registered 0.14.

This was Phelps’ second DUI offense in 10 years.

For legal purposes, the first DUI, when Phelps was a teenager, was completely immaterial during the second case. For the record, he did 18 months probation. USA Swimming took no action.

In 2009, a few months after going 8-for-8 at the Beijing Games, Phelps, then 23, was photographed with his face in a bong. The picture created a major international stir. USA Swimming suspended him for three months.

Then came the arrest last September. Phelps was arrested amid the media frenzy ignited by the cases involving the NFL players Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson and, to a lesser extent, the soccer star Hope Solo, each enveloped in a domestic violence incident.

To be clear, is Phelps super-fortunate no one got hurt? Or worse? Yes, a thousand times over.

Now: was Phelps involved in a domestic violence case? No.

Was it thus apples to apples? No.

Was it his incredibly poor judgment to get behind the wheel of a car, impaired, when the harsh media spotlight had turned on high-profile athletes? Yes.

Was there thus pressure on USA Swimming and the USOC, especially given the intensity of the focus on the Rice and Peterson matters, in particular, to bring the hammer down on Phelps? Absolutely.

Was Phelps in any sort of position, given that intensity, to argue at the time — even though he and everyone else involved knew that the best thing for him was to go to treatment, which was where he was, in fact, headed — about any of the elements of the six-month plus Kazan deal? Hardly.

Was there, as this space pointed out at the time, a rush to judgment? You bet.

When can it be said that a rush to judgment ever proves positive?

Now that time has run:

Rice and the Baltimore Ravens have settled his grievance for $1.588 million, and Rice is eligible to play again in the NFL.

Peterson is eligible for reinstatement on Wednesday.

The domestic violence charges against Solo were dismissed in January. A few days later, she was back in the news in connection with a drunken driving incident involving her husband, ex-NFL player Jerramy Stevens, that led US Soccer to suspend her for 30 days.

At the Algarve Cup in Portugal in March, a key tune-up for this summer’s women’s World Cup, who was that making the incredible late-game save to preserve her 81st international shutout in leading the United States over France, 2-0, for the title? For sure — Solo.

To be clear, one of the reasons to see Phelps swim in Kazan is what would likely happen in the pool. Reports from swim insiders say Phelps is hugely motivated — he is said to be practicing the way he did in 2007 and 2008 — and there is perhaps no sight in sports like Phelps roaring down the pool in the back half of his races.

There is also this: the U.S. team needs Phelps if it has any hopes of winning the 400 freestyle relay the way it did in Beijing in 2008. That’s the race he watched — from the stands — with dismay at the 2013 world championships in Barcelona. You only get so many chances to practice this relay before Rio in 2016.

Beyond that, there is this:

In a weird way, the September DUI arrest may have been the best thing that ever happened to Phelps. It got him to treatment. It forced him to look, and hard, at who he is and what he is doing.

In the months since leaving treatment, he has gotten engaged. He has been a model citizen. Everyone who has been in contact with him has remarked about how he has grown up.

In London, and that was before all this, Phelps was a veteran team leader at the 2012 Games. Wouldn’t you want Phelps 2.0, and this kind of hard-won life experience, on your team in Kazan?

Having reviewed the USA Swimming selection criteria, it is abundantly plain that it would indeed be a complex process — a number of dominoes would need to fall in just the right way — to get Phelps on the Kazan team. But, as always, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Now for some real-life politics, because there are plenty of intersecting currents to factor into the dynamic as well:

USA Swimming and FINA, the international governing body for swimming, are currently not — shall we say — on the best of terms. There are a variety of reasons why, but for this conversation it’s enough to leave it at this: things are business-like.

And to not have Phelps in Russia? FINA is not happy to begin with. Now you throw in the prospect that the best American swimmer ever would not be at its marquee event?

Everyone knows, meanwhile, that the USOC wants to put forward a Summer Games bid for 2024.

Not everyone knows, however, that John Leonard, who is an influential U.S. swim coach, has for months now been leading a largely behind-the-scenes campaign aimed at reforming FINA.

FINA has opted not to respond in public to the Leonard campaign.

The point of bringing up Leonard’s campaign here is not to debate its merits. It’s to put it in a different context.

The president of FINA, Julio Cesar Maglione of Uruguay, was just this past weekend elected interim president of the Pan-American Sports Organization.

Maglione is a key and dependable ally of International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach’s.

Maglione is 79. Elected FINA president in 2009, he was re-elected in 2013. Now there is serious talk that he wants a third term; to do so would require a rules change.

Leonard’s campaign is wondering, among other things, how this can be.

The answer: it’s all part of a complex geopolitical strategy involving interests beyond Maglione with close ties to the IOC president. This strategy might take all of a presumed third Maglione third term to play out. Or just part of it. In that scenario, which leadership at USA Swimming understands full well already, U.S. influence at FINA's top levels might well be further considerably diminished.

This is no small matter. For revenue purposes, swimming is now what's called a Tier "A" sport in the Olympic movement, along with gymnastics and track and field -- in large measure because of the import of Phelps.

Leonard is doing what he justifiably feels is in the right.

In the meantime, the Leonard campaign is not doing a 2024 U.S. Olympic bid any favors — see above, FINA not happy with USA Swimming to begin with.

Moving on:

Understand always that Vladimir Putin made the first call to Bach when Bach was elected IOC president. These Kazan swim championships are a key element in Putin’s strategy to make Russia a world sports destination — along with Sochi 2014 and soccer’s 2018 World Cup.

To reiterate: to not have the biggest star in swimming at the biggest show in swimming? How in the world, come voting time for the 2024 bid, is that going to help the United States? Don’t fool yourselves. Russia is a big deal in the Olympic sphere and people have long memories when it comes time to vote.

Moving on once more:

Katie Ledecky, Missy Franklin and Ryan Lochte are awesome swimmers. But without Phelps, who in the United States is likely to watch a swim world championships — from Kazan or anywhere — on television?

Answer: virtually no one.

Need evidence? Lochte is, truly, a great guy. But there's a reason his reality-TV show was quickly canceled.

If Phelps doesn’t swim in Kazan, it’s a simple matter to look at the calendar and see he would have to swim instead at the U.S. nationals in San Antonio. They’re Aug. 6-10. The swim schedule in Kazan runs Aug. 2-9. Why the two events run simultaneously is a long, and separate, story.

A San Antonio nationals would feature Phelps, Allison Schmitt, Natalie Coughlin and dozens of others — apologies — recognizable mostly to their coaches and parents.

Phelps has for more than a dozen years now said his goal is to grow the sport of swimming. How would limiting him to San Antonio accomplish any of that?

That’s not just a rhetorical question.

It’s way better all around for leadership at USA Swimming to take a deep breath, work out the complexities of the selection process, acknowledge the obvious and get the guy who virtually by himself since 2000 has elevated swimming into the top tier in the Olympic scene back where he belongs.

With the best in the world.

Boston 2024 is doomed: be done with it

The U.S. Olympic Committee should yank the 2024 Olympic bid from Boston, and now. This is a bad situation. It's almost guaranteed to get worse. The damage to the USOC’s brand and its future is verging toward grave, and that would be intolerable to anyone who thinks reasonably and cares about the Olympic movement in the United States of America. Doubling down on Boston would be a very, very bad bet.

The USOC has spent the past five-plus years, since getting kicked in the pants in October, 2009, when Chicago was booted in voting for the 2016 Summer Games, tirelessly working to rebuild its brand, particularly internationally, working on person-to-person relationships and building goodwill. Now, in the space of not even three months, the whole thing is devolving perilously.

Since picking Boston for 2024, it has become abundantly plain to everyone behind the scenes that the Boston bid seemingly sold the USOC a bill of goods; that it has become all but impossible for the bid to recover from the hole in which it now finds itself; and that the only way out for the USOC, despite the pain, is to admit it made a mistake, dump Boston 2024 and assess its options.

One option is to sit out 2024 entirely.

Again, the hole is deep. This has to be acknowledged.

At the same time, it’s still early in the 2024 process, and 2024, for a variety of reasons, should be the Americans’ time. Emphasis: should.

That’s why the better option would be to take a cooling-off period, say 60 to 90 days. After that, the sensible thing would be to do what the USOC should have done in January: make Los Angeles the bid city.

The only way that works, however, is to declare Los Angeles — which it rightfully is — “America’s Olympic city,” and to make it plain now, in 2015, that LA will be the bid city for 2024, and if a 2024 bid falls short, for 2028.

The International Olympic Committee tends to like humble second-time bids, a strategy that has not been the American way.

A cooling-off period, meanwhile, would give the USOC and LA leaders a chance to strategize — about everything from communications to finance to finding an entirely appropriate role in the bid for Anita DeFrantz, the senior IOC member to the United States.

If Agenda 2020, IOC president Thomas Bach’s purported reform plan, means anything, it means creativity and flexibility — the right to implement change to protect your brand and, most importantly, your athletes.

Right now, you’ve got a majority of the people of the city of Boston saying, in essence, we do not want the athletes of the world to come to our city. They may not know that’s what they’re saying. But in Olympic-speak, loud and clear, that is what they are saying.

If I am the USOC, that is not who I want as my partner.

Starting place in assessing 2024: there are big-picture, and conflicting, data points.

One, the Summer Games have not been been in the United States since 1996. Also, NBC just paid $7.65 billion for the U.S. TV rights from 2021 to 2032. The first Summer Games? 2024.

Two, Bach is German. During his term as IOC president, which will almost assuredly stretch from 2013 until 2025, the IOC members will get one chance — and one chance only — to give him a German city for the 2024 Games.

Incredibly, the German Olympic confederation for 2024 selected Hamburg instead of Berlin.

Berlin — what an amazing city — could have upset everyone’s calculus.

Hamburg — assuming it passes a referendum, and there’s no guarantee —  would still be a strong candidate, for the obvious reason.

Then there’s Paris. Paris is Paris.

And Rome. Same.

And this: the Summer Games have never been away from Europe, the IOC’s traditional base, for more than 12 years. Never, ever. The Games were in London in 2012. In 2016 they will go to Rio de Janeiro. In 2020, Tokyo.

In 2024 — hello, Europe?

Always be mindful that one of the jobs of the IOC president is to cobble together the strongest field possible. This has special resonance for 2024, after the disaster that is the 2022 Winter Games race, now down to just two, Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan.

There’s a school of thought that Bach wanted Boston all along to ensure a stronger international field. This argument goes that Los Angeles, with its glitter, celebrities, perfect weather, 17 days of beach and Hollywood parties and technical merit that connects powerfully with Agenda 2020, might be so killer attractive that it could break that 12-years-back-to-Europe cycle.

Just to be super-obvious about this: Los Angeles has an Olympic stadium proven (1984, 1932) for ceremonies and track and field. Boston? It’s got no suitable stadium. There is no such thing as a pop-up Olympic stadium. Why has the IOC never voted for such a proposal? Because it is ridiculous.

What is Boston proposing? A pop-up stadium. Thanks.

Rome, Paris, Hamburg — maybe even, as time may tell, Budapest and Baku, Azerbaijan.

So, Boston is the one that got named by the USOC in January. To the surprise of many.

Even though — and this must be stressed — insiders knew all along that key USOC players wanted Los Angeles.

There were, in January, multiple failures at the USOC board meeting.

There were failures of leadership.

The board should have been lined up behind LA from the get-go. That is the way it works in the Olympic world — see Bach’s performance orchestrating the full IOC in Monaco in December, when he rammed through all 40 points of Agenda 2020, scheduled for two days, in one.

There were USOC staff failures in January — you can read the board minutes and intuit who swayed the board.

As March turns to April, It’s naive to think the USOC isn’t already asking hard questions about what ought to be done.

It’s not going to be fun when this goes down but it has to be done.

And, again, now.

Why?

First, timing.

Almost every article that has been written about the proposed referendum has missed the basic point.

It’s not that the Boston people have suddenly been touched by Olympic lightning and want to have a referendum. It’s that they want to have it in November, 2016.

That is 14 months past the decision date.

The USOC has to submit an "applicant" in September, 2015.

A ballot measure in November, 2016, that tanks — and this one almost surely would tank — does the USOC no good. All it would do is leave the USOC in the worst of all positions.

Why would the measure tank?

Because anyone who works in politics — or covered it for years — knows it is a basic rule that a referendum’s chance of success is abysmally low when polling starts out under 50 percent.

As Kriston Capps writes in Citylab, the referendum “narrows the chance that Boston will host a Summer Olympics from unlikely to vanishingly small. Boston voters are bound to turn it down.”

A recap of the polling numbers from January to March: 51 percent to 44 percent to 36 percent in favor of the bid.

The numbers opposing the bid have gone the other way: 33 percent to 46 to 52.

The margin of error for the poll is 4.9 percent.

Boston 2024 has said time and again that no public funds would be used to stage the Olympics. But 65 percent of people there believe public funds will be needed.

“I don’t know a single person who believes that — that they’re going to build a soccer stadium and all these other facilities at no cost to the taxpayer,” Mike Barnicle, the former Boston newspaper columnist who is now an MSNBC contributor, told the Washington Post. “No one believes that.”

Just for comparison: before the USOC decision, the poll numbers in LA, depending on whether you wanted the LA city or USOC poll, were 77 or 78 percent in favor of the Games. You want higher numbers? Poll a group of golden retrievers and ask if they like bacon.

Big whoop if a November, 2016, referendum in favor of Boston 2024 is 50 percent plus one. To be credible, the IOC wants mid-60s. To be honest: it really wants 70 percent or better.

It’s virtually unheard-of to move up from the 30s to the 60s in a year, and Boston 2024 doesn’t have a year. The old political saying is that it would take Elvis and Jesus to make that happen, and — as the saying also goes — neither is available.

Let’s look at other Olympic measures around the world, just to see how they have been received recently:

St. Moritz/Davos 2022: (In March 2013): fail, 52.7 against. Vienna 2028 (March 2013): fail, 72 percent against. Munich 2022 (November, 2013): fail, 51-59 percent against in four localities. Krakow 2022 (May 2014): fail, 69.7 percent against.

Note that only one of these four took place after the 2014 Sochi Games, with its associated $51 billion price tag.

Obvious question: if these four have gone down in flames, why would Boston be different? American exceptionalism?

We haven’t even gotten to what a Boston referendum might say, or the wording, or any of that. Frankly, for this conversation, it’s a moot point — immaterial.

More real talk:

The ‘no’ side in Boston can go so ‘no’ in a campaign. What is the ‘yes’ side supposed to say? It can’t run a vigorous anti-‘no’ campaign. That’s what normal campaigns do. Not in this context, though. That would not be in keeping with the Olympic values.

Beyond which, as this space has pointed out previously, the Boston bid has virtually no communications strategy.

One small point to illustrate how awful their communications have been, and then the larger point.

Small: the weekend before this one, the bid sent out a tweet — since deleted — of Top 10 Olympic-related movies with this message: “Get inspired. On your couch. #LazySunday #Boston2024”

No. 1 on the list: “Olympia,” by Leni Riefenstahl, the German filmmaker who had a close association with Adolf Hitler. Another feel-good flick on the list: “Munich,” No. 7 on the list, the 2005 Steven Spielberg-directed thriller about the hunt for the Black September terrorists responsible for the abduction and murders of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches at the 1972 Munich Games.

One can hardly find words to describe how tone-deaf, and off-message, this tweet could possibly be for a bid committee.

Good thing it has hardly been seen internationally. Well, until now.

Larger point:

All along, the Boston bid’s message has been diametrically opposite from what it should be.

It is: bring the Games to Boston so we can improve Boston.

It should be: let us in Boston show how via the Games we can make the world better.

This is fundamental bid messaging 101. Just incredible that it's so backward.

More real talk:

Whatever the Boston bid team said to the USOC in December that then became the focus of the board debate in January, this is the case now:

The plan is far from finalized.

Because of that, the budgets can’t be. That’s just logic.

Because of that, no one knows what needs to be built, who’s going to pay for it and why they need it. Or, elementally, should want it.

Just as a for instance: did anyone bother to ask the folks in and around Franklin Park, the planned site of equestrian and pentathlon, if the Olympic agenda met community needs?

Beyond all of that, the would-be Olympic enterprise in Boston is met time and again with suspicion because of widespread memory about the Big Dig, the highway mega-project that for almost everyone in the area screams cost overruns and more. With that, you're supposed to sell an Olympics? In the aftermath of Sochi?

Following on from that:

How is Boston 2024 supposed to raise money for a referendum? And who would then be working on a bid when so much time and energy would be focused on that existential referendum?

The Boston bid committee is a 501 (c)(3). That means it is allowed to raise money for charitable purposes but broadly speaking may not participate in political campaigns. A 501 (c)(3) can engage in limited lobbying with respect to a ballot initiative but lobbying must be an “insubstantial part” of its overall activities — say, 3 to 5 percent.

Obviously, Boston 2024 would need to do way more than that.

That means any real political activity relating to a ballot initiative would have to be done by a separate entity. That could not be a 501 (c)(3).

Which would you rather donate to? The one you can get a tax-deduction for? Or not?

Let’s say that Boston 2024 chair John Fish does the work-around and creates a political action committee to raise funds. That may solve the logistical challenge. But that just feeds right into the very essence of the communication problem confronting the Boston 2024 group as it is already —right or wrong, fair or not, that it’s a group of elites who only are looking out for themselves and don’t really care about the best interests of the public.

Already, there is talk in European newspapers — in Italy a few days ago — of how Boston is on a slippery slope.

Coming up soon, there’s a big meeting in Miami of what’s called PASO, the Pan-American Sports Organization. There will be maybe a dozen and a half IOC members there.

Better for the USOC to cut its losses now. Because what is the USOC supposed to go to Miami and say?

“The Games fit into Boston’s long-term planning?”

Ugh.

It’s hard to admit a mistake but worse when the mistake metastasizes.

The USOC is the steward of the Olympic movement in the United States. It has a responsibility, and now it must do what must be done.

The kabuki theater of the 2022 evaluation commission

The kabuki theater that marked the two-stop International Olympic Committee’s evaluation commission for the 2022 Winter Games wrapped up Saturday in Beijing. In this and a prior trip to Almaty, Kazakhstan, it can be said to have accomplished practically nothing of consequence. Here is why. The technical merits of these two bids are practically irrelevant, even if one might like to argue back and forth about whether the ski jump in Almaty is so close you can touch it or the ski run is so far away from Beijing it might as well be in Mongolia.

This 2022 race is the worst the IOC has conducted in its modern history.

Worse, by far, even than the 1984 Games “race,” when Los Angeles was the only entry.

Then at least you knew what was going to happen.

IOC elections can be unpredictable. Even so, this one would seem to be showing a lot of clarity already.

First and foremost, the 2008 Summer Games were in Beijing.

That means that some significant number of the IOC members have actually been to Beijing.

Moreover, the Nanjing Youth Games were just last summer. That means some number of members have been to China who knows how many times over the past several years and seen for themselves just how incredibly good the Chinese are at organizing Olympic events.

It’s true. The Chinese do grand Olympic scale stuff exceptionally well. Of course they do. This is not difficult: money plus resource plus the ability to tell people what to do equals prime-time showtime.

That gives Beijing a huge — and unfair  — advantage over Almaty.

The dumb IOC rule that says the members are not allowed to visit candidate cities means that in this context they can’t visit either Beijing or Almaty. But most have already been to Beijing. So when the time comes this July 31 to make a 2022 choice at the IOC assembly in Kuala Lumpur, and the members know from just seven years ago, or even just last summer, that the Chinese are hugely capable, what button are they most likely instinctively to push?

This dumb rule, meanwhile, cuts both ways. It’s currently three hours from Beijing to what would be the ski venues in 2022. If the members were able to sit on a bus for three long hours and think about that — even though the Chinese say they’re going to build a high-speed rail to cut the travel time to under an hour — would they still want Beijing?

How does such an expensive high-speed rail fit into Agenda 2020, the IOC’s purported reform agenda? Let’s be real. The Chinese say the rail line to the ski resort is unrelated to the Games. Who believes that? Without the Olympics, is there all of a sudden this drive to get 300 million Chinese — about the population of the entire United States — to embrace winter sports, which has abruptly, indeed over just the past few weeks, become one of the drivers of the Beijing 2022 campaign?

The Chinese are masters of propaganda. Nothing in and of itself wrong with that. All countries engage in the stuff. But the opportunity has been dropped into their laps for Beijing to become the first city in the history of the modern Olympics to stage both the Summer and Winter Games -- and this from a country that didn't even come back to the Summer Games until 1984. Incredible.

More straight talk, meanwhile: when the Chinese government promises its full resource, that’s a huge guarantee. Especially for the IOC, and its Winter Games.

The IOC’s winter franchise is wobbly. Think about this 2022 race. Stockholm, Lviv, Krakow and Oslo all pulled out. Munich, the 2018 runner-up, was going to get in but didn’t after a 2013 no-vote referendum and just a few days ago, the head of the German Olympic confederation, Alfons Hörmann, said what everybody in Olympic circles knows all too well:

“It is bitter that Almaty and Beijing are the only ones left. It is now clear that Munich would have been served the Games on a silver platter.”

With Thomas Bach, from Germany, as the IOC president — Munich would have won not just a silver platter, but one piled high with turkey and cranberries and all the fixings. Or German sausage. Or whatever.

The resource of the Chinese government is important, indeed, because the federal Kazakh authorities have been, for some reason, slow in coming to the table with their full faith and credit.

In so doing, the Kazakh government may have squandered some very valuable backstage relationships — key one-to-one ties that within senior IOC circles are well-known, indeed.

Take, for instance, this seemingly unremarkable picture, captured by Xinhua in mid-January:

It shows Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah of Kuwait, one of the most influential personalities within the Olympic movement, with Chinese president Xi Jinping.

The sheikh is, among other things, head of the Assn. of National Olympic Committees. He is also head of the Olympic Council of Asia. He seemingly has a proven capacity to move dozens of votes.

Just to be obvious, both Kazakhstan and China are in Asia.

How should this simple picture be interpreted?

Until a picture shows up just like this that features the sheikh with Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president of Kazakhstan, it’s pretty easy to understand exactly what this photo says.

Especially when you add in these remarks from the Xinhua story accompanying the sheikh’s visit to Beijing, which on their face would seem completely benign but are actually anything but, you can begin to parse certain key elements of the 2022 dynamic.

“Calling China an important cooperation partner of the ANOC, Sheikh Ahmad said the country had demonstrated its capability to hold large-scale international sport events.

“The Beijing Olympics and the Nanjing Youth Olympics were the pride of China and Asia, he said.”

This is not to say that Almaty is totally foregone. The bid has a great spirit that perhaps is just what the IOC needs. It also speaks far more to Agenda 2020, if indeed that package is real instead of aspirational, than does the Beijing proposition.

There’s little to no snow up in the mountains three hours from Beijing. No worries, IOC executive director Christophe Dubi told reporters this week: the Chinese would store water in reservoirs to make artificial snow. As opposed to Almaty, where every winter there is, like, real snow, and lots of it.

“Basically,” the chairman of the evaluation commission, Russia’s Alexander Zhukov said in Beijing at the wrap-up news conference there, referring to the China plan, “it is cold enough and everywhere there is sufficient water.”

As an environmental proposition, which wins? Moreover, which fits better with Agenda 2020?

Speaking of the environment:

How the IOC can even begin to entertain more jibber-jabber about the unfathomably bad air quality in Beijing when the same noise came forth in 2001 about 2008? This week, while the IOC team was on the ground there, readings for a benchmark pollutant in the air were more than six times what the World Health Organization considers safe.

Politically, as well: imagine seven more years of local and global protests against Tibet and human rights?

Principle 6 of the Olympic Charter, which requires host cities to secure the “rights and freedoms” set out in the charter “without discrimination of any kind,” was revised in December, at the IOC session in Monaco, in line with recommendation 14 of the 40-point Agenda 2020.

Yet, as Human Rights Watch asserted last week, “discrimination — on the basis of sex, gender, ethnicity, disability and sexuality, among others — remains rampant throughout China.”

Sophie Richardson, the advocacy group’s China director, said, “Host selections can no longer be made on promises of flashy infrastructure or glitzy opening ceremonies but now must require respect for fundamental human rights. Will the IOC enforce its own standards?”

In that same spirit, International Tibet Network member groups last week issued a position paper that called on the IOC “to reject [the Beijing bid] and in the context of events in China after the 2001 decision to consider with extreme caution the bid of Kazakhstan.”

This, then, is the dilemma the IOC finds itself in — one entirely of its own making — in the aftermath of the 2022 evaluation visits, full of show and short on meaning.

It could have reopened the 2022 race when there was a window to do so. But no.

Now, having a few months ago enacted the Agenda 2020 package, it remains to be seen whether — aside from the implementation of the Olympic TV channel, which assuredly is real — the rest of it is so much talk or, like many other well-meaning IOC vehicles over the years, just so many words.

A picture, they say, is worth a thousand.

Intolerance in Indiana

To be clear: a bill signed into law Thursday in Indiana allowing businesses to refuse service to same-sex couples in the name of religious freedom reeks of intolerance, indecency and incivility. It’s out of step with the times. It’s also just dumb. Government in our United States, whether federal or any of the 50 states, has no business interfering this way in people’s lives. That said: what is President Obama going to do now, all of you who so vigorously last year opposed the Russian anti-gay propaganda measure before the Sochi 2014 Games? Send Billie Jean King to Indianapolis?

This is why it’s a better course for us Americans to stay out of the business of moralizing about other countries, and their laws.

Because we can come up with some incredibly stupid and offensive ones ourselves.

Gov. Mike Pence, a Republican, signed the Indiana bill into law on Thursday.

Immediately, it put pressure on the NCAA, and other sports entities.

The Indiana law comes at a strange time. The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to rule in June on whether same-sex marriage is constitutionally protected and therefore legal in all 50 states.

Why this reactionary law in Indiana now — it’s like a peek backward into history instead of looking ahead into the progressive future the Supreme Court would seem to be signaling is forthcoming.

Last year, Arizona’s Republican governor, Jan Brewer, vetoed a similar bill, saying, “It could divide Arizona in ways that we could not even imagine and no one would ever want.”

Pence said in an interview with an Indianapolis radio station that the new law is controversial because “of the way some in the media have reported on this.”

Without referring directly to gay rights, he said the bill was “not about any contemporary issue,” adding, “This was a measure that, frankly, Indiana should have enacted many years ago. It gives our courts guidance about evaluating government action and puts the highest standard — it essentially says, if a government is going to compel you to act in a way that violates your religious beliefs, there has to be a compelling state interest.”

One breathlessly awaits the court argument: the state attorney general arguing that there is, in fact, a compelling state interest on behalf of aggrieved Christian bakers, florists and photographers who could, you know, make money by engaging in commerce in same-sex marriage ceremonies -- just as in ceremonies between a man and woman.

Or, as, one Pence ally alleged, "A Christian business should not be punished for refusing to allow a man to use the women's restroom!"

This is for real -- what passes for honest-to-goodness rationalization of legislation in Indiana. This ally, Eric Miller, is an influential lobbyist on socially conservative issues in Indiana. Again, for real.

One also can hardly wait for the state lawyer to explain, exactly, how anyone is threatened by, as Miller put it, "those who support government recognition and approval of gender identity (men who dress as women),” because this bill “will help provide the protection!”

This is 2015?

This is idiocy.

The NCAA, of course, is based in Indianapolis. Next week, the men’s basketball Final Four is due to be held in the Indianapolis Colts’ Lucas Oil Stadium.

Jason Collins, the recently retired center and the first openly gay NBA player, posted this earlier in the week to his Twitter account:

.@GovPenceIN, is it going to be legal for someone to discriminate against me & others when we come to the #FinalFour? http://t.co/uBlKbIf8YK

— Jason Collins (@jasoncollins98) March 23, 2015

Collins should have no immediate worries. The law does not formally go into effect until July 1.

To his credit, Mark Emmert, the NCAA president, issued a statement that said, “The NCAA national office and our members are deeply committed to providing an inclusive environment for all our events. We are especially concerned about how this legislation could affect our student-athletes and employees.

“We will work diligently to assure student-athletes competing in, and visitors attending, next week’s Men’s Final Four in Indianapolis are negatively affected by this bill. Moving forward, we intend to closely examine the implications of this bill and how it might affect future events as well as our workforce.”

Moving the NCAA out of town is a tall order. At the same time, this kind of discrimination simply can not stand.

Indianapolis is the site each year of the Big Ten football championship game. It can be moved.

The NFL holds its scouting combine in Indy each year. It can be moved.

In 2012, Indianapolis played host to the Super Bowl; in 2010, the Final Four.

It is due to stage the women’s Final Four next year, the men’s Final Four again in 2021. They can be moved.

In the aftermath of the Sochi Games, the International Olympic Committee last December affirmed its commitment to what is called Principle 6 —expressly including non-discrimination on sexual orientation in its fundamental principles. This came about as part of what the IOC has called Agenda 2020, a 40-point measure that its president, Thomas Bach, has pushed as a far-reaching reform plan.

The IOC’s fundamental goal is to make the world a better place, little by little, day by day.

The IOC doesn’t always get a lot of things right. This one, though — it’s right on the mark. The governor talked a good game Thursday about being a friendly Hoosier, going on in a statement accompanying the signing of the law about "hospitality, generosity, tolerance and values." The law itself says otherwise. He -- and the state legislature -- could learn a lot from the IOC, and about the realities of life in 2015.

Boston 2024: a Cool Hand Luke problem

Maybe the Boston 2024 bid could have gotten off to a less promising start. Though it’s hard to see how. The latest dose of dismal news, a WBUR poll released Thursday evening: 36 percent of Boston-area voters support bringing the Summer Games to Boston in 2024. That’s down from 44 percent in a poll last month. The poll also found that 52 percent now oppose the bid. That’s up from 46 percent in February.

The poll of 504 registered voters was conducted March 16-18, according to WBUR, and contains a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.

Just for reference: the International Olympic Committee, as a rough rule, wants to see bid-city poll numbers standing at or near 70 percent. Easy math: 36 percent is about half that. So that’s where things stand in Boston.

For entertainment value, according to a story Thursday on Xinhua, the poll numbers in Zhangjiakou, the would-be co-host city for most snow events for the Beijing 2022 Winter Games bid, a town about 120 miles northwest of Beijing — over there, they’re 99.9 percent in favor of the Games.

When the IOC evaluation commission comes to Beijing and Zhangjiakou next week, you bet they’ll be treated to scenes of happy Chinese!

Boston? What if an IOC evaluation commission were to come to town now?

Well, democracies tend to be, you know, a little different. And that’s — OK.

Indeed, it’s more than OK. Which is totally the point here.

The upside for the Boston bid is this: it’s March 2015.

The IOC won’t vote until the third quarter of 2017.

And, as U.S. Olympic Committee chief executive Scott Blackmun rightly pointed out in a teleconference last week with reporters, there’s lots of time for the Boston 2024 people and the USOC to get things right.

It’s little wonder people are cranky in Boston. They’ve just had the worst winter ever. The winter has been so bad a majority would probably be against puppies.

But seriously.

Blackmun also made another hugely relevant point last week.

No one, he said, remembers the London 2012 bid in 2003 -- two years before the vote.

Well, a few of us, who have been at the Olympic bid scene for years, do.  That's when the London bid was run by the American executive Barbara Cassani, who was well-meaning, indeed, and put down a solid foundation but didn’t have what it took to get the bid across the finish line. Some of us well recall the kick-start the next year at the Palais de Beaulieu convention center in Lausanne, Switzerland, when Seb Coe took over.

From there the bid took off. The rest, as they say, is history.

The problem with the Boston bid right now is hugely self-evident.

It’s not John Fish.

It’s communication.

There is, like, virtually none.

It's like Strother Martin says to Paul Newman in the 1967 film classic "Cool Hand Luke": "What we've got here is failure to communicate."

An Olympic bid is a political campaign of the highest order. This is big-boy and -girl baseball. As a reminder: the very first call the president of the IOC, Thomas Bach, got when he was elected in 2013 was from Vladimir Putin. So let’s not kid ourselves about the magnitude of the likes of who can be involved in the Olympic dynamic.

One would think the Boston people would have been, from the get-go, prepared to step into this scene and run like the wind.

But no.

One reads in the Boston Globe about bid-committee salaries of $300,000, $215,000, $182,500, $175,000 and more, and you wonder why ordinary people are — outraged?

One reads, too, in the Globe that Northwind Strategies and Keyser Public Strategies are pulling down $15,000 monthly for their communications advice. Another company is making $9,000 per month; yet another is getting $5,000.

Let’s see: that’s $44,000 per month for communications advice.

That’s a lot of cash. Perhaps it is going for the community meetings now ongoing.

Now here’s the question: what do any of these communications strategists know about winning an Olympic bid?

The guess: pretty close to nothing, zip, zero, nada.

If the question was put to any of them, who is Lydia Nsekera, where is she from and why is she increasingly influential within the IOC (and FIFA) --  how many could answer (and without looking it up)?

Not that anyone owes me anything, but after 16-plus years of covering the Olympic movement, and especially having covered every single Olympic bid campaign since 1999, you might think that at $44,000 per month, someone might want to, you know, maybe give me a shout. Maybe I might know something.

It has been crickets since the USOC chose Boston.

Northwind did issue a news release Thursday night after the WBUR poll numbers came out. Here is the deadly-dull opening sentence:

“In response to recent polls relative to public support for Boston hosting the Olympic and Paralympic Games, Boston 2024 today highlighted its increasingly successful grassroots programs and a recent independent economic impact analysis as evidence that public support is set to rise steadily in the months ahead throughout the Commonwealth.”

Makes you want to stand up and cheer, right? No. It makes you want to slump down in your seat and go, what? That's because it's 50 words long, most of them a mouthful apiece, and you want to scream.

By the way, the USOC has been relentless that this is supposed to be America’s bid. Why the ongoing focus on the Commonwealth of Massachusetts? Hello? Those of us out here in the rest of the country would like to remind you that there is sentient life west of your town, and you should start acting like it. Like, immediately.

Not only is that release dreadfully long and impossible to dissect, it came out hours after the poll numbers. Since it’s not a secret there was going to be a poll, why wasn’t a release worked up ahead of time -- so that it could go out when the numbers themselves went out? This isn't rocket science.

In that same vein, the bid is getting abused on social media, especially by No Boston 2024 community activists. If I am the opposition right now, I am laughing at how easy it is. For them, it must be — fun.

The bid has almost zero positive presence on Twitter, in particular. How can this be? In 2015, when a bid that is supposed to be stressing how smart it is — with purported connections to brainy universities — can’t have some whipsmart college kid at a keyboard? Seriously?

So, now a pause and a deep breath.

As Blackmun said, there’s a long way to go.

Boston caught a huge break earlier this week when, for reasons unfathomable, German Olympic officials opted to put forward Hamburg instead of Berlin for 2024.

Crazy. Berlin would have had an unbelievably great narrative. The emphatic end of Hitler. The stadium where Usain Bolt ran 9.58 and 19.19. The rise of a fantastically cool city after the Cold War. The joy of the 2006 World Cup all over again. And so much more.

But what do I know — all that against a northern European port city?

Maybe Hamburg is the Boston of Germany. So, whatever.

What Boston needs is someone who gets how to communicate, and now.

That person needs to be someone who also knows the Olympic scene, and now.

Yes, 2017 is a long time away, and in some ways it is, but if you are Boston 2024 things cannot keep going this way.

Because Paris is likely going to be out there very, very soon. And Paris is not Hamburg.

Some unsolicited suggestions:

Inevitably, there will be pressure on Patrick Sandusky, the USOC communication chief. Sandusky is not, repeat not, the guy for this job. He already has a big-enough job.

Jill Geer at USA Track & Field knows her business. She is tough and professional and knows New England. She also will kill me for suggesting her, because she just moved her family back to Indianapolis, but she would be a great choice.

At the U.S. Olympic Committee, there are two first-rate options, both Sandusky deputies:

Mark Jones has already spent weeks in Boston. Mark is solid, solid, solid. He would be great.

So, too, Christy Cahill. Christy knows her stuff as well and, intriguingly, she reminds a lot of people of Jackie Brock-Doyle when Jackie took over everything comms in London. Now Jackie is revered across the United Kingdom as the expert she has proven herself to be.

While the Boston 2024 people sort this out, they should reach out, too, to Stratos Safioleas, who is as good at social media as anyone in the Olympic world. If they want to then hire someone at MIT or Harvard or wherever to help Stratos out, fine. But first get Stratos on board if you’re interested in stemming the carnage on Twitter.

Big picture — Olympic bidding is, again, a distinct world way beyond the local give-and-take of Boston politics. You have to think differently.

This should have been so obvious. That’s why you got chosen in the first place, isn’t it?

By the way, Ms. Nsekera is an IOC member (since 2009) from Burundi. She is since 2014 chair of the IOC’s women and sport commission. Since 2013, she has been an elected member of the FIFA executive council.

If you had to look all that up, or you didn’t know that Ms. Nsekera was earlier this week in New York at the United Nations, you need to get out of this game and into another. Maybe local politics is more your thing. Because Olympic bidding is truly for professionals only, who know and understand what’s at issue. There are billions of dollars at stake and communications needs to be a huge priority.

Lindsey Vonn's first next chapter

It was long ago the case that Lindsey Vonn became the best alpine skier the United States ever produced. Now, as this season’s racing draws to a close, with Vonn on a not-really-100 percent right knee, she has written a fascinating first next chapter to the ongoing story that is her singular career.

The day after clinching this season’s World Cup downhill title, Vonn won the super-G crystal globe, too. In all, she now has 19 globes, the same as Swedish great Ingemar Stenmark.

“I am honored to even be in the same sentence as him,” she said afterward in Meribel, France.

Vonn won the super-G title after finishing Thursday’s race 49-hundredths of a second ahead of Austria’s Anna Fenninger.

Fenninger, racing with bib 15, had come down into first place with a time of 1:08.19.

Vonn raced 19th. By the second interval, it was clear she was on her game, up 41-hundredths. By the finish line, after navigating a tricky jump, the margin was up to that 49-hundredths.

The downhill win Wednesday was Vonn’s 66th career victory, the super-G her 67th. Stenmark has 86. Vonn’s plan is to race through the 2018 season, and the Winter Games in South Korea.

Vonn also said, “It’s nice to know I can still win titles,” particularly when there were so many doubters this season, and of course there were.

Vonn blew out the right knee in a super-G at the 2013 world championships in Schladming, Austria. Trying to make the Sochi Olympics, she hurt the same knee again; she did not ski in the 2014 Games.

By the time she came back to the tour, as she recounted Thursday, she had maybe five days of downhill training, perhaps 20 days of training overall.

There were doubters, but only because those who doubt don’t understand that even when Lindsey Vonn is not 100 percent physically right she is 110 percent mentally tough.

She belongs to a special category of athlete.

It is always risky to go here, to say that so-and-so is different from someone — or everyone — else.

But the evidence is irrefutable.

Vonn’s knee is still not, well, right. You saw it at the world championships last month in Beaver Creek, Colorado, when the course was ridiculously hard and icy, and — for her — she struggled, managing “only” to win one medal, a bronze in the super-G.

She alluded to that Thursday, saying that she now will have all summer to get stronger and that the spring snow conditions in Europe the past couple weeks have been easier on her body:

“The soft snow is really nice. It’s really forgiving on my knee. It feels good. It haven’t had any problems since Beaver Creek. It’s only when it’s icy that I run into problems.”

Where you really heard her open up, meanwhile, is in the way she talked about attacking the course in the way that many racers say they do but she actually then does consistently:

“I am going to risk it all every time I am in the starting gate. That is what makes me fast.”

This is why Lindsey Vonn is the greatest of all time. In response to a question Thursday about whether she was still as fearless as she was before wrecking her knee, she said, yes, and that some of her “poor results” this year were because she “risked too much” or didn’t ski with “the same strength and power.”

She is self-reflective enough to know what can be seen at the bottom of the hill, too: her super-G is probably better now but her downhill, even for her, can be better. “I’m not building pressure at the top of the turn like I can,” she said of her downhilling.

All that, obviously, can and will change with a full summer of training.

What’s also going to change is that she is going to get even better — tougher still — mentally.

The best athletes do this, and she will.

She said Thursday that chasing records has been one of her faults.

Everyone in ski circles, especially Vonn, knew that Austria’s Annemarie Moser-Pröll held the record for most World Cup wins by a female racer, 62, until Vonn broke it earlier this season.

Now Vonn is being asked about 86. The math says that if she keeps winning eight races per season, like she did this year, it’s a done deal.

But. as she said on a call with reporters, “”That’s a lot easier said than done,” adding, “I don’t really look at that as a goal right now. My goal is to keep winning races and keep getting as many titles as I can.”

Her mom, Linda, was on that call, and said at the end of it, “It seems like old times, Lindsey.”

Yes, but there’s a lot more yet to be written.

“I’ll call you later,” Lindsey said to her mom. “I love you.”

USATF: 12-1 is one more than 11-1

The USA Track & Field board of directors voted Saturday by 12-1 not, repeat not, to rescind its December decision to nominate Stephanie Hightower for a spot on the IAAF council. Meeting in Santa Monica, California, the USATF vote ought to put to rest the controversy that has lingered since the annual meeting in December in Anaheim. Then the vote was 11-1 in favor of Hightower following a 392-70 floor vote for current IAAF vice president Bob Hersh.

Plain math: 12-1 is one more than 11-1. The dissenter Saturday was one of the athlete representatives, Curt Clausen.

It’s time to move on, people.

“Change is just tough,” USATF board counsel Larry James said afterward, adding a moment later, “As we get to that 90 percent, the last 10 percent is the most painful.”

He also said, “Leadership has to lead.”

The 75-year-old Hersh said afterward, “I don’t want to comment at this time,” adding, “Obviously I have some misgivings about the whole procedure.”

Misgivings?

Just to speak hypothetically, what would you make of someone who would suggest at a public board meeting that a woman had no chance of being elected an IAAF vice-president? Seriously? When women have for years now been International Olympic Committee vice-presidents? Should that person really be representing the United States of America? In 2015?

Again hypothetically, what would you make of someone who might suggest, also at a public board meeting, that Cubans don’t like Americans? In an era in which change between Cuba and the United States is plainly in the air?

At a time in which several of USATF’s seemingly most vocal critics are asking for enhanced transparency, what would you think if someone might hypothetically suggest that a discussion that has attracted keen interest over the past four months be held in executive session?

How about this:

Let’s dial back the wayback machine. It would be fascinating to give Hersh a dose of truth serum and ask: four years ago, did you say to Hightower, give me one final term and I will mentor you, even get you on IAAF committees, and then stand down?

Or if that truth serum was still going: last summer, in a private meeting, were you, Bob, asked in a private meeting if you would mentor Stephanie, and did you say, “I could but I won’t?”

Because Saturday, publicly, Hersh once again committed to mentor Hightower, if only he could get four more years.

As if.

To those critics who decry age-ism: the IOC in December affirmed its mandatory retirement limit at age 70. As a matter of best-practices governance, isn't it common-sense that the IAAF is going to enact a similar provision, and soon?

The winds of change are coming this summer to the IAAF. Either Seb Coe or Sergey Bubka is going to be elected federation president. Both are in their 50s. The USATF board decided in December that Hightower, 56, a contemporary of both Coe and Bubka from their time together as athletes and now as sport executives, would be a better choice as USATF nominee than would Hersh.

This U.S. debate about who ought to get the IAAF nomination has run its reasonable course.

For emphasis: there is nothing good that can come of continuing a dialogue, or debate, on this point any further.

The decent thing now would be for Hersh to concede. In politics, there are winners and losers. He has lost. Now he should do the decent thing, and the sooner the better, for the sake of the sport -- and the organizations -- he purports to love.

There is so much going now on that is good about USATF: financially, grass-roots investment and, of course, the prospect of a great summer at the world championships in Beijing followed by epic performances at the Summer Olympics next year in Rio de Janeiro.

This is the first time in maybe forever that all these things can be said about the state of affairs at USA Track & Field.

You just have to step back to see the big picture.

Those who prefer to dwell in divisiveness and name-calling are living in a past that is rapidly receding.

It’s over, people. Get on board.

Is USATF perfect? Hardly. No institution is or can be.

Does USATF deserve criticism when warranted? Absolutely.

That said, is USATF way, way better than it has ever been?

You bet.

Why? Because Hightower and the board have empowered chief executive Max Siegel to do his thing. She is not, repeat not, a dictator. She has grown into the job — as she would readily admit — and Siegel and the staff are doing what they do. That is how a $13 million business grows into $30 million, and it’s only getting started.

So, as this space has repeated several times: the time is now for civility, tolerance and decency. Of course, to reiterate, disagreements are fine. But, big picture, let’s stop the noise and the over-the-top lectures about history and democracy.

We — Americans — do not live in a democracy. We live in a representative democracy.

On the matter of the IAAF nomination, this representative democracy has now spoken, not just once but twice.

USATF should rightfully be the gracious leader among the nations in track and field. It’s time for everyone to get together so that USATF can humbly assume that role as a partner with others around the world — without unnecessary and unproductive personality politics that contribute nothing.

If you prefer it more plainly:

Complain and scheme if you want. Fine. But here’s the deal: you risk being left behind. Way behind.

At USATF, there are a lot of smart, progressive people now running the show. For real. Change is all around. If you step back and take a look, it’s right there. Is it going to happen in a day? Nope. Over time? Yep. It is happening now, and already? Absolutely.

Hightower, after the vote, had it right. She said, “This for me is about how we move the organization forward.”