Talking the talk: IOC elects Beijing for 2022

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Earlier this week, when he opened the 128th International Olympic Committee session, president Thomas Bach declared of Agenda 2020, his would-be reform plan, “We need to demonstrate that we are indeed walking the walk and not just talking the talk.” On Friday, the members — the very same ones who fell into lockstep in approving Agenda 2020 last December — voted for Beijing to win the 2022 Winter Olympics. The count: 44-40, Beijing over Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Beijing, stage for the 2008 Summer Games, will become the first city to put on both the Summer and Winter Olympics.

Friday’s vote, the first major test of the 40-point Agenda 2020, revealed emphatically its major challenge: it is, in large measure, just so much noise until the IOC members actually follow its prescriptions.

There’s only one way for the IOC to really walk the walk. Therein lies a huge opportunity for the U.S. Olympic Committee and, now, Los Angeles for 2024.

Agenda 2020 promotes sustainability and feasibility. LA is tailor-made for such a blueprint. Almost all the venues stand ready, on the ground, for an Olympics; political and business support is rock-solid; the locals are hugely in favor of the effort, with poll numbers in favor of the Games in the 70s.

The Boston debacle, which ended Monday, is not going to make things easy for the USOC. Nor will the FIFA indictments. Nonetheless, Friday’s vote spotlights the path by which LA not only can but should win for 2024.

If LA saved the Games in 1984, now LA can not only save the USOC but Agenda 2020 — that is, make the reforms real, and make it possible for western democracies, and their taxpayers, to believe again in the Olympic Games.

Based on the chatter here in Kuala Lumpur, if Los Angeles bids, it would immediately become a formidable 2024 contender — with a real chance of winning.

Indeed, a strong LA bid would turn Boston into a fleeting memory -- an appropriate casualty of what now, via Agenda 2020, is called the "invitation phase" of the bid process. The USOC actually could, and should, emerge stronger for having gone through the months of Boston dithering.

On the other hand -- no LA bid will result in four years, or more, of Boston post-mortem.

That’s not the talk of someone who has lived in Los Angeles for more than 20 years. That’s talk that simply reflects what Bach says — if, that is, the IOC is going to walk the walk.

Paris is always awesome to visit but the French have to prove that they can overcome their traditional political and bid difficulties. (See Annecy 2018: seven votes.) Hamburg is not Berlin, and it’s now unclear how dramatically Friday’s vote for Beijing might impact the forthcoming Hamburg referendum, particularly since German voters shot Munich down not all that long ago.

Rome and Italy have financial woes. Budapest is uber-chic but 2024 in Hungary is likely going to be a hard sell. Toronto? Not yet a reality, and in choosing between Canada, which played host to the Games in Vancouver in 2010, and the United States, where the Olympics haven’t been held in a generation despite U.S. financial contributions, that’s a slam-dunk.

Baku? Not ready, at least for 2024, for prime time.

Been there, done that? That’s the knock against LA?

Not after Friday -- not after the IOC voted for Beijing in 2008 and again for 2022. That kills that LA-three times argument, and totally.

Listen to the words of Craig Reedie, an IOC executive board member from Great Britain, who earlier this week observed, “They won’t have to build temporary stadiums, which is expensive. It could be third-time lucky for LA. It was third-time lucky for London,” for 2012.

LA would make it so easy. Not to mention — obviously — fun.

The beaches. The weather. The restaurants. The stars.

Bach this week has made it abundantly clear that he expects a bid from the USOC. Indeed, he used the word “commitment" in emphasizing at a Wednesday news conference that an American bid is expected; on Thursday counted the USOC among those who had "already committed themselves to a candidature"; and on Friday published a pre-vote op-ed of sorts in which he noted that the United States was on the list of nations "seeking to host the 2024 Games."

Please pay close attention, each and every one of you on the USOC board of directors. Bach could not have made himself more explicit: there must be a 2024 U.S. bid. And not bidding for 2024 will not go down well for, say, 2026.

Logistically, the USOC has until Sept. 15 to name its candidate.

LA, San Francisco and Washington were the finalists against Boston. San Francisco and Washington were never viable candidates. That leaves only one option. Especially given the time constraints.

If the USOC wants to, say, hold sailing in San Francisco Bay — the kind of shared-city prospect Agenda 2020 expressly envisions — hey, have at it. That would, among other things, enable the Olympic Rings to go up the Golden Gate Bridge, which Bach is known to find a keen proposition.

But to be clear: this would be a Los Angeles bid. Never in a million years would the IOC be good with a joint bid, a suggestion floated this week in the San Francisco Chronicle. IOC rules say there is one person who signs the host-city contract, which provides guarantees against any financial shortfall — the mayor of the host city itself. That would be LA mayor Eric Garcetti, a huge backer of the Olympics.

For its part, LA officials should proclaim, loud and often, that Garcetti will sign that contract — the thing that purportedly caused Boston Mayor Marty Walsh to withdraw his support.

Any project involves risk. Such risk in LA is, however, extraordinarily minimal. The 1984 Games made a surplus of $232.5 million.

This 2024 bid thus offers LA, the USOC and the Olympic movement a new way forward, particularly in the United States, which the IOC — to be candid — seriously needs.

Chicago 2016 and New York 2012 foundered in part because of the demands of this contract.

For 2024, LA and the USOC should acknowledge that they are honest-to-goodness real partners, and that as partners the USOC would cover 25 percent — or some other equitable slice — of any shortfalls, should they occur.

The likelihood of which, again, is super-low.

It’s a no-lose, win-win proposition all around.

This would get LA and the USOC in the game, and with emphasis — showing that, especially in the United States, a Summer Games is a proposition not to be voted down but to be welcomed.

If the knock on the IOC right now is that only autocratic or dictatorial governments want the Games, what better?

So why, Friday, did the IOC membership vote for China?

Despite significant human rights concerns?

The awful air pollution?

The fact that there isn’t going to be anywhere near enough natural snow in the mountains?

That the Chinese are going to have to spend billions and billions to build a new high-speed rail line to connect the mountain venues, now hours away, from Beijing itself — and are not going to include that money in Olympic budgeting, making a mockery of Agenda 2020 concepts such as “transparency,” all just to avoid a Sochi-like financial reckoning?

Because, simply, with the Chinese the IOC knew it can — as the saying here repeatedly went — sleep at night.

In putting on those 2008 Games, the Chinese government, with its immense resource, spent at least $40 billion.

In a video shown Friday to the IOC members, Chinese President Xi Jinping expressed his “strongest support” for the Games. The project was described as a “national priority.” Xi promised a “fantastic, extraordinary and excellent” 2022 Games.

With that kind of backing, the IOC could be assured that — amid any and all controversies, now and into the future — the 2022 Games will, no problem, come off.

This was particularly key after difficulties in Sochi as well as the struggles in Rio for 2016.

Also: 1.4 billion Chinese represent a huge marketing opportunity for the international federations, sponsors and others. The sports industry in China was represented Friday to grow to an $800-billion industry by 2025.

Even before the vote, the IOC knew that it was headed back to Asia for a third straight Games — Pyeongchang, South Korea, in 2018, and Tokyo in 2020.

Over the course of the 2022 campaign, four western European democracies dropped out, all put off to varying degrees by the $51 billion figure associated with the Sochi 2014 Games or with the IOC itself: Oslo; Munich; Stockholm; and Krakow, Poland.

A fifth European city, Lviv, Ukraine, fell out because of war.

That left Beijing and Almaty.

The super-direct Almaty presentation on Friday, building off its slogan, "keeping it real," made for arguably the best any bid city has mounted since London, in 2005, won those 2012 Games.

“We want to help the IOC show the world that a country does not have to be a superpower, or spend tens of billions of dollars, to host the Winter Games,” Erlan Idrissov, the Kazakh foreign minister, told the members.

Prime Minister Karim Massimov directly confronted the notion that China was a safer choice.

“We’ve heard the sentiment that if you don’t select Almaty, then you, the IOC, can ‘sleep well at night’ for the next seven years. I find that a curious statement.”

He said the IOC had been “brave” on a number of prior occasions: challenging apartheid in South Africa, selecting Moscow for 1980 at the height of the Cold War and going to Beijing in 2008.

“Those were visionary, heroic declarations,” he said, “about sport’s ability to serve humanity. And, in each case, you were right. So today, we ask you to have faith in us, to have faith in Kazakhstan. Our request is not simply based on blind faith. It is based on facts, the facts that you need to make an historic decision — historic not only for Kazakhstan but for the Olympic movement as well.”

IOC sessions are typically long on diplomacy. Massimov, however, all but called the Chinese out, saying of Almaty 2022, “There were no fabrications about our compact venue plan, our travel times or our accommodation resources.

“There was no overstatement about public or political support, or our ability to host large-scale winter sports events.

“There was no enhancement of our beautiful mountains in the city, or our abundant, real snow and winter atmosphere.

“And there is no doubt about Kazakhstan’s financial stability.”

44-40. A new electronic voting system -- by tablet -- didn't work so ballots were, in the end, cast the old-fashioned way: by writing. Immediately unclear: whether the many conversations in the election room in the transition between the electronic and paper ballots proved pivotal in what amounted to Round 2 in a two-city vote.

44-40. Much closer than expected but nonetheless, in the end, Beijing prevailed.

Action speaks louder, way louder, than words. Agenda 2020 -- for real?

Now the page turns. Here comes the contest for 2024, and the chance to, as Bach said, walk the walk.

Ding, dong, the wicked Boston bid is dead

From the opening words of Mayor Marty Walsh’s hastily called news conference Monday morning, it was apparent that the wicked Boston 2024 bid was dead. He started by talking about how, back in January, when the U.S. Olympic Committee picked Boston, there was a big celebration. This is how you tell a story when the story is over — going back to when it all started. This news conference became a sweet trip down memory lane, with thanks to everyone who had taken part, before abruptly making a segue into political comedy and absolute farce. After avowedly being a supporter of the bid for months, here was the mayor now in a race to beat the USOC to the punch in announcing the candidacy was over — saying he would not sign the host-city contract. This even though he had repeatedly committed in months prior to doing just that.

Thanks for being such a great “partner,” mayor!

Some three or so hours later, the USOC issued a statement saying it and Boston 2024 had come to a  “joint decision” to withdraw the candidacy.

All in, the timing offered a measure of big-picture irony: it was three years ago, to the day, that the London 2012 Games opened. And here were the USOC and Boston 2024 saying, see ya.

The three-page statement makes no mention of a USOC board vote. You can believe that if there had been one, it would have been so noted. So why no vote? Because the mayor made this super-easy Monday for all involved.

Out. Done. In New England, everyone, it's back to the intrigue surrounding Tom Brady and Deflategate. Or the godawful Red Sox, in last place in the American League East.

The action Monday marks the very first time a U.S. bid has been so pulled — though Colorado voters essentially gave the 1976 Winter Games back to the IOC, which then staged them in Innsbruck, Austria.

This move also marks a third straight fail for the USOC, after bids from Chicago for 2016 and New York for 2012.

This last point is likely to be made repeatedly in the time ahead.

Even so, there is at least now the opportunity for a fresh start, presumably in Los Angeles.

LA Mayor Eric Garcetti issued a statement that said, "At this time, my office has not had conversations with the United States Olympic Committee. I continue to believe that Los Angeles is the ideal Olympic city and we have always supported the USOC in their effort to return the Games to the United States. I would be happy to engage in discussions with the USOC about how to present the strongest and most fiscally responsible bid on behalf of our city and nation."

The International Olympic Committee has made it abundantly clear to the USOC that it wants an American bid.

Understand that because of the Boston disaster a U.S. bid for 2024 now faces considerable odds.

Too, the FIFA indictments brought by the U.S. Justice Department hang over any American effort. As well, the developing field in Europe — Paris, Hamburg, Rome, Budapest — is compelling and the Games have never been away from Europe for more than 12 years; London 2012 plus Rio 2016 plus Tokyo 2020 equals? Also, Toronto is now mulling a 2024 bid and it’s in the eastern time zone, gravy for U.S. and Canadian broadcasters.

But, again, the IOC, and in particular key influencers within the movement, are keen on a United States effort for 2024.

Now the issue is whether the USOC board will pick up the signals that have been delivered in every which way to its senior leadership — and go with LA.

Time is keenly of the essence, with an IOC all-members meeting this week in Kuala Lumpur and a Sept. 15 deadline for the formal submission of any 2024 candidacy.

Scott Blackmun, the USOC’s chief executive, said in that statement, “When we made the decision to bid for the 2024 Olympic Games, one of the guiding principles that we adopted was that we would only submit a bid that we believed could win.”

He also said, “The USOC would very much like to see an American city host” in 2024, adding, “We will immediately begin to explore whether we can do so on a basis consistent with our guiding principles, to which we remain firmly committed.”

And: “We understand the reality of the timeline that is before us. We will brief the media on our progress towards a decision later in August …”

With that in mind, there is only one option: LA.

It’s so super-obvious.

As three-time Olympic gold medalist Rowdy Gaines said on Twitter, “RIP Boston … time to come to the rescue Los Angeles #2024”

Los Angeles staged the Games in 1932 and 1984. The stadium is in place and ready for some $600 million in improvements, to be paid for not by taxpayers but by the University of Southern California.

Since 1984, moreover, new venues such as Staples Center have been built that make a 2024 version — with the IOC emphasis on sustainability — all the more attractive. And a new NFL stadium appears increasingly probable.

Some $40 billion in transit improvements, with a focus on light rail, are already underway in and around LA.

Political support for the Olympics, from Garcetti to the city council to the board of supervisors to state legislators to the governor, is rock solid.

Poll numbers are in the high 70s.

Ongoing right now in LA? The Special Olympics World Games. To enthusiastic support from the public and the city, which has committed $12 to $15 million in in-kind services. And from the likes of swimmer Michael Phelps, skater Michelle Kwan and diver Greg Louganis, among others.

And there is more, much more, in the city where an Olympics is just part of the fabric of life. Where 10th Street is Olympic Boulevard, because the X Olympiad was in 1932.

Doubtlessly, there will be questions and calls for review of the USOC process that led it to select Boston over LA in the first instance.

Poll numbers in Boston were always dismal — now in the 30s and 40s, with opposition at 50. The USOC cited lack of public support in making Monday’s move, saying it did “not think that the level of support enjoyed by Boston’s bid would allow it to prevail over great bids from Paris, Rome, Hamburg, Budapest or Toronto.”

Note, incidentally, no mention of Baku, Azerbaijan, also considering a 2024 bid after the first European Games there earlier this summer.

Walsh sought Monday to downplay local push-back to the Games: “The opposition for the most part is about 10 people on Twitter and a couple people out there who are constantly beating the drumbeat. This is about the taxpayers and what I have to do as mayor.”

The Boston bid was presented originally as a walkable, city-centered Games, with an emphasis on the many local universities. Then it morphed into a statewide thing, in an effort to win support for a referendum in November 2016 — a referendum that originally was not envisioned in any way.

As things unraveled, it became clear that Boston 2024 had been — from the start — an exercise in futility.

Bid 2.0 proposed a temporary stadium. For $1.376 billion (at least)? Just to tear it down?

Last Friday, it emerged that the original bid, in December, was short $471 million in proposed organizing committee revenues — but neither that gap nor the fact that additional revenues would be needed were mentioned in a January submission.

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker was always lukewarm, at best, to the bid. He said in recent days he was waiting on a consultants’ report, due in August, to analyze whether Boston 2024 was financially viable — when he and the USOC knew the USOC needed his out-front support.

And then, ultimately, there was the mayor. Walsh, in Monday’s news conference:

“I cannot commit to putting the taxpayers at risk. If committing to sign a guarantee today is what’s required to move forward, then Boston is no longer pursuing the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.”

Fascinating.

Last October, the mayor sent Blackmun a letter saying, in part: “… in my capacity as the 54th Mayor of this great city I hereby confirm the ability of the City of Boston to sign the Host City Contract with the USOC, respect the Olympic Charter and re-affirm our previously stated support.”

The December bid submission to the USOC declared the city of Boston “will agree to the terms, without reservation,” of the host city contract. It also said it would agree to sign the contract “unedited,” adding the bid and the city “recognize the necessity in agreeing to sign the 2024 Host City Contract in the form to be provided by the IOC.”

In January, and again in February after a brouhaha about a non-disparagement clause, Walsh signed a joinder agreement on behalf of the city with the USOC. In that document, the city agreed — meaning it would be legally bound — to sign the host city contract.

See, in particular, Section 2.01: “The City shall execute and deliver the Host City Contract, the Joint Marketing Program Agreement and any other Candidature Documentation as the IOC shall require.” In legalese, just as in plain English, “shall” offers no wiggle room.

And yet, here, too, was Walsh on Monday before the cameras:

“I refuse to mortgage the future of the city away. This is a commitment that I can’t make without ensuring the city and its residents will be protected.”

The only real wonder Monday is why it took so long to wave bye-bye to all this.

But at long last, it’s done.

And, finally, it’s time to look ahead.

Hey, Boston 2024, it's not US(OC) -- it's you

Hey, Boston 2024. It's not US(OC). It's you. You have rightly earned the execution that common sense and political reality says you deserve on Monday.

It's this elemental. The International Olympic Committee is holding its annual get-together later this week, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. At that meeting the IOC will select its 2022 Winter Games city, either Beijing or Almaty, Kazakhstan. The U.S. Olympic Committee simply cannot put itself in the position of going to a meeting at which the IOC is going to select an Olympic city without itself having a viable Olympic bid.

The USOC has given Boston 2024 time to prove itself. Too much time, to be blunt. But now time is up.

It's thus time to accept the inevitable and look ahead to what's next if the USOC has any hope for winning in 2024: Los Angeles.

In 1984, Los Angeles saved the Olympic movement. Now LA has to save the USOC.

And maybe win for 2024. Los Angeles is an Olympic city. It is America's Olympic city.

Recent events have pointed out the vivid contrast between Los Angeles and Boston.

Over the weekend, tens of thousands of fans went to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for the opening ceremony of the Special Olympics World Games. The city of Los Angeles is spending $12 to $15 million in in-kind services in support of the World Games. A torch relay rolled through town before the ceremony.

Boston, meanwhile, has over the past six months proven to the world what most stereotypically consider its worst trait -- coming off as an insulated, angry group of navel-gazing NIMBYs who don't trust outsiders and don't think there is anything in the world that is better or can be improved about the place.

The Hub? Ha.

This Boston bid is so wretched that it has now emboldened Toronto -- which staged he Pan American Games this month -- to seriously consider a candidacy. Let's say Toronto ultimately jumps in. How is the USOC supposed to make the case for another city in the eastern time zone? Against a competitor that is hip, trendy and readily touts its status as the fourth-biggest city in North America? (Mexico City, New York, LA.)

On Friday, the Boston 2024 bid committee released the damning last details of Bid 1.0.

In December, the bid presented certain assertions to the USOC. In January, when Boston was selected, an amazing number of changes had been made. Later still, more changes.

Never even mind the trivial stuff, done for PR purposes, maybe, such as Patriots owner Robert Kraft originally said in December to be on board but mysteriously gone by January.

In the December file: a $471 million revenue gap in the committee's proposed operating budget. January: no mention of that gap or the fact that additional revenues would be needed.

$471 million? Not accounted for? What, it just vanished? No explanation?

December: opposition to the bid characterized as minimal. “Four local activists formed a group in opposition to our bid, and while we respect their differing views and their right to promote them, our polling data shows that they do not represent the majority of public opinion,” Boston 2024 wrote. “No elected official has publicly endorsed the group, they have not received significant financial backing and their efforts have been limited to social media.”

Reality: poll numbers have been -- from the start -- dismal, approvals now in the 30s or 40s. Opposition is a solid 50. The IOC won't go for those numbers. No way.

The televised debate last Thursday between USOC board member Dan Doctoroff and Boston 2024 bid leader Steve Pagliuca, on the one hand, and No Boston Olympics co-chair Chris Dempsey and Smith College economist Andrew Zimbalist, on the other -- it was always going to be a Hail Mary.

It ended up being most memorable for Zimbalist's observation that the bid committee's numbers reflected "drunken optimism." And of course the scene of Doctoroff, who is one of the smartest people anyone could ever meet, being portrayed -- predictably -- as the New York wise guy coming to tell the Boston people what they should do.

Back to December: no referendum. Now: referendum in November 2016.

This alone offers the USOC the easy way out. The IOC's Olympic Agenda 2020, president Thomas Bach's would-be reform plan,  considers the time before September 15, when applicants must be formalized, an "invitation" phase -- when bids are explored in a less-formal sense than before.

The IOC could rightly insist that any such referendum be held before "applicants" become "candidates," which would enable the IOC to kill off Boston early on in its IOC process, causing the USOC -- and the Olympic movement in the United States -- damage for years to come.

All the USOC has to do is hang its hat on Agenda 2020 -- that is, say Boston was an exploratory matter and switch to LA.

The details released Friday don't give the USOC any choice, really.

It would appear that Boston lied, cheated or misrepresented to win in the domestic phase against LA, San Francisco and Washington.

So which is it -- lying, cheating or misrepresenting?

Whichever --  the USOC can't be in the position of aligning itself with an effort where that is a central question.

Note that the Boston people didn't defend what was released in Bid 1.0. Instead, they said the focus now is on 2.0, released in late June. So telling.

If you are the USOC, one, how do you live with that? You hold yourself out to be the standard for the highest sorts of ethical conduct. Yet you would allow people to misrepresent, cheat or lie to you? You accept that -- you look not only foolish but incompetent.

Two, USOC board chair Larry Probst and chief executive Scott Blackmun have spent five years doing good work in the international arena. Should they now go abroad now and expect to be asked, which is it -- lying, cheating or misrepresenting -- and why in the world would you be sticking with this effort?

And there's more.

-- Boston 2024 fundraising? Millions of dollars, yes, but in the low single digits when the number that would be needed is roughly $75 million. Boston 2024 says, in essence, trust us. Query: why? On what basis has Boston 2024 earned public or corporate trust?

-- Mayor Marty Walsh's dithering on the host city contract.

-- Governor Charlie Baker? He has more information at this stage of the bid process than any elected official in history. (Not an overstatement.) And, still, he purportedly can't make up his mind.

These make up the financial and political currents that, finally, would reasonably compel the USOC to action.

You can't run a winning Olympic bid without strong -- indeed, unwavering -- political support.

The USOC, according to an Associated Press report, pushed Baker for support last Friday. (Did the USOC deny the report? Hardly.)

He responded by saying he's still waiting for a consulting report, due out in August.

The governor is due to call in Monday to the USOC's teleconference on 2024. He is on record as saying he's going to tell the USOC board the very same thing he said Friday: he's waiting for that report.

You can understand why, with the poll numbers in the tank, the governor might want to keep his distance.

Compare to Los Angeles:

Poll numbers in the high 70s. The mayor, Eric Garcetti, eager to bring the Games to town. The city council -- 15 members -- unanimously in support. Same for the five-person county board of supervisors: unanimously in support. Backing as well from all around Southern California, including the mayors of towns such as Santa Monica and Pasadena, where events would be held. The governor -- Jerry Brown, everyone -- on board, too, with a signed letter of support to the USOC. The leaders of the state legislature -- they're in support, too.

Indeed, Los Angeles provided to the USOC the signatures of the governor and state senate and Assembly leadership, what in California political circles is called the "Big Five." That letter got done in one day. What does that show? Not only that LA is America's Olympic city. But it's where Olympic stuff gets done.

This is all public. This is all on the record.

Behind the scenes, meanwhile, the IOC has made it clear what should be done. It knows, too, that change is hard and that a switch out of Boston might yield one rough week of bad PR for the USOC. But then that will be that, and the IOC will have what it wants -- a credible American candidate.

That's why, too, the time is now for the switch to LA -- to recognize the inevitable, and move forward.

Time for a shot at winning a 2024 race that might yet be winnable.

#USOCGoHome: seriously, how bad can this get?

Here is a group from the Rome 2024 campaign. They met Thursday at International Olympic Committee headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, with, among others, the IOC president, Thomas Bach. Afterward, it was all smiles.  

Now let’s search for a Boston 2024 group picture with Bach.

Oh, wait.

You mean there aren’t any? Not even one over the past six months?

Ladies and gentlemen, you know what they say: a picture is worth a thousand words.

To reiterate a point made often in this space, there is only one reason to play the Olympic bid game. It’s to win.

Boston 2024 is not a winner.

The Pan American Games are going on right now in Toronto. Guess who was there just a few days ago? Bach. It’s not far from Toronto to Boston, if you had the inclination to, say, talk up the advantages of Agenda 2020, the IOC’s would-be reform plan.

In bid offices overseas, they have to be gleeful at how bad this Boston 2024 effort is. Because what should be a time for an American bid to shine is, instead, day after day, week after week, a succession of headlines that figuratively scream, how bad can this get?

Indeed, if you’re Toronto, aren’t you thinking a good Pan Ams might just jumpstart your way into the 2024 race? The way it did for Rio de Janeiro in 2007 en route to IOC victory in 2009 for 2016?

The Canadian Olympic Committee even shrewdly put on a gala event in Montreal — where Bach won his gold medal in fencing in 1976. He was the special invited guest, and grew emotional in his reminiscing.

Just what the USOC needs — another contender in the eastern time zone.

In Paris this week, a huge crowd gathered on the Champ de Mars to celebrate Bastille Day and the launch of Paris 2024. The president of France was there. The mayor of Paris. Bid leaders. More than 100 athletes. The Eiffel Tower was lit up.

In Boston on Thursday, the two top USOC officials met with Mayor Marty Walsh — again, zero photo op — and afterward put out a well-intentioned news release.

But even that release made plain why Boston 2024 is a bad slog.

"We’re pleased to have the support of the Mayor and look forward to working with Steve Pagliuca and the entire team at Boston 2024 to make this bid a success,” USOC chief executive Scott Blackmun was quoted as saying.

Fascinating. Where was the governor, Charlie Baker?

Amazing that Blackmun, along with USOC board chair Larry Probst, could fly all the way to Boston, and take a meeting with the mayor, but the governor was available only by phone.

What the governor is doing right now is waiting for a report from consultants. They’re supposed to assess whether the Boston 2024 plan, dubbed Bid 2.0 in a release made public June 29, is financially feasible.

This is hardball realpolitik.

If this report comes back — next month, probably — and says Bid 2.0 would be a hard sell financially, the governor has the out he needs.

Without key political support, any Olympic bid is a dead-bang loser.

But that’s exactly where Boston 2024 is already.

Compare: in Lausanne Thursday, the Rome delegation was led by the mayor and included a senior representative from the prime minister’s office. That’s important generally but more so now for Rome because the former prime minister was the one who, in February 2012, pulled the plug on Rome’s 2020 effort.

Baker, as demonstrated again Thursday, has shown distance in his approach to Boston 2024.

When Bid 2.0 was released, meanwhile, Walsh — and it’s a bid city mayor who has to sign a host city contract — was nowhere near the scene.

Check Walsh’s Twitter account. There’s he’s a rah-rah cheerleader of sorts, posting regularly — in the last couple weeks, for instance, sending congrats to the U.S. women’s World Cup soccer champs, even wishing the Dalai Lama happy birthday. The last time he posted something about the bid? That appears to be a little over five weeks ago, when he declared, “I will not use public money to build Olympic venues.”

You wonder why Walsh would keep his remove, at least in public, from Boston 2024?

Let us count the ways:

— Post-Bid 2.0 poll numbers in favor of the project range from 37 percent to 42. Worse, 50 percent opposed. That 42 percent is the current WBUR poll; for anyone inclined to say it’s an improvement over last month’s 39 percent reading, that very slight increase falls within the margin of error.

— A stadium design that is estimated at $1.376 billion. For something due to be torn down. This at a time when cost estimates for the Tokyo 2020 stadium have spiraled north of $2 billion, up some $700 million from the original estimate. Who seriously believes that $1.376 billion would be the final number?

— Agenda 2020 is big on the use of existing and temporary venues. Nowhere does Agenda 2020 promote the idea of a temporary $1.376 billion facility. That runs counter not only to policy but common sense.

— Bid 2.0 features no plan yet for an aquatics center or velodrome and a media center priced out at a laughably low $51 million. How can taxpayers be expected to know whether there might be cost overruns when there are no costs to begin with?

— And, as longtime Olympic reporter John Powers points out in the Boston Globe, “What began as an intimate and walkable scheme — the non-LA alternative — now involves half a dozen counties and five of the state’s six largest cities.”

Too, the Globe reports, there’s suddenly going to be a public debate on Boston 2024. On the one side, there’ll be bid chairman Pagliuca and Dan Doctoroff, a former deputy New York mayor and New York 2012 bid leader who is now on the USOC board of directors. On the other, Chris Dempsey, a co-chair of the opposition group No Boston Olympics, and Smith College economist Andrew Zimbalist.

Pagliuca is a basketball guy. But this debate next Thursday is less two-on-two than the feel of something more evocative of football: it’s the Boston 2024 version of a political Hail Mary.

Like, just to be obvious, especially when there are locals who are affiliated with the USOC board of directors: why invite the New York guy to woo the gentle folk of Boston? Should he wear a Yankees cap for full effect?

In Boston, what was the top trending hashtag Thursday? “#USOCGoHome”

Also Thursday, as the Globe reported, a group opposed to public funding for an Olympics filed papers with the state attorney general, aiming to put a question on the November 2016 ballot that would largely prohibit the state from spending money to support the Games.

The USOC has a Sept. 15 deadline by which it must decide what to do.

Upcoming next is the IOC session in Kuala Lumpur, at the end of the month. There you can bet senior USOC officials will hear the same thing they heard in Toronto — you’re making this unbelievably hard and you need to do something to change it.

The answer is so blindingly obvious.

Again, the idea is to win, and to do so within the constraints of Agenda 2020. It’s not to engage in 20- or 30-year urban planning; that’s the lesson from Sochi 2014, and the $51 billion figure associated with those Olympics. Indeed, the unhappy fallout from that $51 billion clearly animates Agenda 2020’s call for restraint.

In Los Angeles, the stadium is a real thing.

Not only that, it was announced this week that USC, which now controls the LA Memorial Coliseum, reportedly has chosen Fox Sports to sell naming rights to the venue.

USC is committed to renovating the facility. Renovations figure to be in the $600 million range. Naming rights figure to bring in huge dollars; the Coliseum, site of the 1932 and 1984 Games, among other spectacles, has never had a naming rights partner.

At the same time, the NFL appears closer than ever to being back in LA. Hello, Coliseum rent.

USC is acting boldly.

The USOC could, too — and here’s how.

The newest initiative on the Olympic scene is what are called the "ANOC World Beach Games." They are now being pushed, and hard, by one of the most influential people in the Olympic scene, Kuwaiti Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah.

The sheikh is the president of the Assn. of National Olympic Committees and, as well, the Olympic Council of Asia.

The first edition of the Beach Games? Perhaps as soon as the summer of 2017.

The 2024 vote? August 2017.

What’s going to be the hot ticket at the Rio 2016 Olympics? Beach volleyball.

Worldwide, everyone knows the home of beach culture: Southern California.

Would it really be that difficult to stage a Beach Games — and win incredible goodwill — in, say, Venice, California?

Venice is hip, urban, has a famous stretch of beach and, not incidentally, is now the home of Snapchat, the way young people increasingly talk to each other. The Beach Games assuredly is aimed at the demographic the Olympic movement has had such difficulty reaching, teens and young 20s.

Imagine.

Also imagine: the IOC is said to be very supportive of this ANOC proposal. At the same time, IOC rules prohibit members from visiting bid cities. But, you know, what about seeking a waiver for those interested in seeing the Beach Games?

If that notion would work the IOC ethics people into a frenzy, there’s always San Diego. It got cut from the USOC 2024 list but is known since to have expressed interest in the Beach Games. San Diego is not Los Angeles; just ask anyone in San Diego. But say what? San Diego is only a two-hour drive away?

This, of course, underscores the fallacy of the no-visit rule. But that’s a topic for another day.

Right now, the days are counting down to Sept. 15. Kill the Boston bid. It's time for the USOC to move with boldness, creativity and resourcefulness. The United States deserves at least a winning chance at pictures with the president of the IOC that are all smiles.

Predictable, unfortunate: Boston 2024 for now

Predictably if unfortunately, the U.S. Olympic Committee on Tuesday decided to stay the course — at least for now — with the “partners” who threaten to drag it down, Boston 2024, officials saying they want time to judge if Boston’s Bid 2.0, a nakedly jacked-up economic development project, can turn matters around.

An Olympics is supposed to be about the athletes. A celebration of sport and ideals: friendship, excellence and respect. You wouldn’t have known that from the news conference immediately following the USOC’s board of directors meeting, in which USOC and Boston 2024 leaders focused almost exclusively on urban development, Boston 2024 chairman Steve Pagliuca saying of Bid 2.0, “What has transpired since [its] release yesterday is the discussion now is this is an amazing economic development program that allows the state and city to accomplish a lot of goals, including jobs.

“This program includes 100,000 job years,” he said, adding, “That’s the gross number of jobs created by the Olympics itself, and by the infrastructure that’s needed for the Olympics. It brings in billions of dollars to the region. Housing. And all sorts of other educational and other opportunities for youth. I think we have to have a new discussion on that opportunity and that we represent the United States in one of the most important sporting events in the world.”

A moment later, again: “This is a rare opportunity. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I haven’t seen an economic development opportunity this large in the last 35 years in Boston. It’s the opportunity of a generation.”

Gosh, if only Bud Greenspan were still alive to have filmed such a moving and touching soliloquy to the Olympic Games and all they stand for.

If the USOC had the guts to do what it should do, what it knows it needs to do, it would drop this nonsense and get on with a bid from Los Angeles.

It would run LA for 2024 and, if need be, 2028.

The low polling numbers in Boston, with approval ratings at 39 percent — or if you want to be charitable, in the 40s — are evidence of how poorly this thing has been received.

But no.

After the board meeting in Redwood City, California, both Larry Probst, the USOC board chair, and Scott Blackmun, the USOC’s chief executive, took pains Tuesday to stress that the intent is to give Bid 2.0 time, to see whether the poll numbers can creep up to acceptable levels.

The IOC wants 70 percent.

Like any guest who comes to someone’s house, the IOC wants to feel welcomed. At 70 percent, it feels the love.

As Blackmun said, “At the end of the day, it’s about the fact that we have a new plan. That plan has not had a chance to be rolled out in Boston yet. We are very intrigued by it. We are very excited by it. It is, as I said earlier, a plan that is really consistent with the vision that formed the basis of the USOC’s decision in January,” when it picked Boston over LA, San Francisco and Washington.

How that can possibly be the case — consistent with “the vision” earlier in the year — is, at best, problematic.

The January plan was based on “walkability,” the idea of Boston as an “Olympic Park” and the intense involvement of area universities to engage young people.

Now, for instance, Harvard is in only for archery.

Venues are being spread all over Massachusetts, in a clear play to try to win votes for a November 2016 statewide referendum — a measure that Probst acknowledged the “IOC has expressed some concern about,” which is code for a tremendous amount of concern.

Boston as Olympic Park? Try beach volleyball, which originally had been set for Boston Commons, now in Quincy.

Because venues all over the state, so much for walkability. As even Boston 2024 vice-chair Roger Crandall noted Tuesday, the original concept was “originally envisioned as a completely Boston-centric plan.”

And as of Monday the Bid 2.0 focus is on a Boston Games as urban catalyst — when Sochi 2014 cost $51 billion, Beijing 2008 at least $40 billion, London 2012 some $14 billion, Rio 2016 now pegged at $16 billion.

This is why the Olympics are now such a tough sell in western democracies. Yet this is precisely the sales job the USOC and Boston 2024 want to try to foist upon taxpayers?

Pagliuca took some time Tuesday to try to explain levels of insurance as backup. Good luck explaining that around town. For most people, listening to that is like listening to the teacher’s voice in the old Charlie Brown cartoons: wah wah wah wah. Something about insurance, right? And didn’t he say that the Olympic Village is going to cost $2.8 billion? That’s a lot of money!

Pagliuca, obviously new to the Olympic bid scene, also committed the two cardinal sins for any American — lasering in on the financial upside of a Games and proclaiming that “we” will win.

The IOC traditionally has displayed an intense disfavor for Americans who focus on money. Moreover, the IOC wants Americans to show humility in every regard.

Pagliuca: “Any great project, anything that can be so transformational, create a whole new neighborhood, parkland, connections, leave Boston in a much better place in 2030, 2040, that dovetails with the mayor’s plan in terms of urban renewal and growth, I think people will decide that small risk is well worth taking to get those incredible benefits, and bring in the billions of dollars for the Olympics, and the thousands of spectators from all over the world to showcase Boston as a world-class city.

“So we are very confident that the voters and anybody who looks at this will say this is a very sound, prudent plan that minimizes the risk and maximizes the opportunity, and fits in well, and perfectly, with Agenda 2020,” IOC president Thomas Bach’s would-be reform plan, “and I think will be the winning bid on the world stage.”

So backward.

A winning bid focuses not on what an Olympics can do for a city. It’s what a city can do for the Olympic movement.

Yet here was Pagliuca talking about new neighborhoods, jobs and economic development, and the USOC leadership resolutely sticking up for this noise in hopes of seeing poll numbers tick up?

When there’s an alternative where the poll numbers are already way, way up? Like, in the high 70s?

Where the focus is putting on a great Games in service to the Olympic movement? Just like in 1932 and 1984?

There is so much good that can be said, and sold, about an Olympics, particularly in the United States.

Yet now we are already reduced to the pros and cons of a public-policy exercise?

That’s not what an Olympic bid should be about.

It should be about inspiration.

Not contracting.

Which, by the way, this Boston bid gets totally wrong, too. If you get a bid on work in your house, do you really, truly expect the contractor to deliver the job for the amount it was bid for? How often in real life does that happen? Isn’t it more like x plus 30 percent? If you’re lucky?

In the Olympic world, 30 percent would be a godsend.

Those London Games — again, finally, $14 billion — were originally pitched as a $4 billion exercise.

When the Games were awarded to London in 2005, it was said Olympic Stadium would cost $440 million. Now, after transforming it to a 56,000-seat soccer stadium, with track and field facilities: $1.1 billion. West Ham, the Premier League soccer team, is contributing all of $24 million. Thanks, West Ham!

In Tokyo, site of the 2020 Games, according to reports out just this week, the National Stadium is now due to cost $2 billion. Original estimate: $1.3 billion.

This, by the way, after Tokyo 2020 officials have cut $1.7 billion overall via Agenda 2020.

Who in their right mind really thinks Olympic budget projections end up being the real deal?

Boston 2024 is proposing a temporary stadium that would cost — they say — $1.376 billion. It would be torn down after the Games.

Blackmun: “The thing we want to avoid more than anything else is building expensive permanent stadiums that [are] un-used after the Games, so whether it’s a temporary stadium that’s relocated or a permanent stadium that’s used by somebody else, the thing we want to avoid are permanent stadiums that aren’t used. So if this is a cost-effective approach that minimizes the budget expenditure of the stadium, we are completely in favor of it.”

As opposed to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which is already there, which is twice a proven Olympic success, which is going to be refurbished — without cost to taxpayers for up to $600 million — by the University of Southern California and which is guaranteed, no matter what, to be used?

In that comparison, and an Olympic Stadium is the centerpiece of any bid, it’s very difficult to see the logic that favors Boston.

The looming problem, as all associated with this process know, is the fixed Sept. 15 deadline by which to submit an American candidacy.

In July, the USOC intends to see where the poll numbers stand.

Another problem: Boston 2024 and the USOC are playing an old-fashioned game, trying to win support through the Boston Globe and other traditional, mainstream avenues.

What, at 3:10 p.m. eastern, was the No. 1 trending topic in Boston on Twitter?

“#NoMoreBoston2024”

At 7:10 p.m. eastern, as the news conference was wrapping up in California, the No. 1 trending line in Boston?

“#NoMoreBoston2024”

A sampling:

Catering to corruption and a few elitists is not what this city has ever been about. We defeated tyranny 239 years ago. #NoMoreBoston2024

— Jonathan Hurst (@hurstjs) June 30, 2015

#NoMoreBoston2024 @Boston2024 has taught us all the power of sport. We all join together to run away from their bid as fast as possible.

— BostonActivist (@BostonActivist) June 30, 2015

You want inspiration? You're going to get hardball, bare-knuckle politics. What an Olympic dream!

Speaking of political intrigue: when it comes to the 2024 bid, Mayor Marty Walsh is increasingly looking like Waldo.

The USOC took pains to highlight a constructive working relationship with Walsh, who flew to California to meet with its board Monday night, stressing that he is purportedly a solid backer of the bid.

OK.

Was the mayor at the Tuesday news conference? No.

Was the mayor in Boston Monday at the Bid 2.0 unveiling Monday?

Isn’t this supposed to be now about winning public support, not schmoozing with the USOC board behind closed doors? Which plays right to the hands of the many vocal activists who complain that this entire thing is a real-estate play that has little to do with sports or the Olympics and a lot to do with people of power and means talking to each other in confidence?

Which after Tuesday -- the rebuttal is, what?

Weird but so predictable. Just like the decision Tuesday to go forward with Boston.

Bid 2.0 is DOA: the Barcelona model is done

It’s natural for proponents of an Olympic campaign to be all cheery and optimistic, and such was the case Monday when Boston 2024 unveiled its so-called Bid 2.0, new bid leader Steve Pagliuca declaring, “We’ve now done the ‘little-picture' thinking. We think we’ve made the major leaps.”

On the eve of Tuesday’s key U.S. Olympic Committee meeting, however, this reality check: Bid 2.0 is rife with revenue and expense issues that call into question not just its fundamental premises but also, bluntly, the integrity of the process. Moreover, the Boston bid — as the pronounced absence of the mayor at Monday’s event emphatically underscores — faces political problems galore.

No one likes to admit to a mistake.

But when it meets Tuesday in Redwood City, California, the USOC board of directors would do itself — and the Olympic movement at home and worldwide — a huge favor by killing off this troubled Boston bid.

Boston 2024 hasn’t been good from the start. Bid 2.0 is not going to help matters.

The obvious answer is to move to Los Angeles, for 2024 and, if need be, 2028. The USOC knows this. It’s now a question of finding the courage to do the right thing.

Time, indeed, is of the essence.

There is within the IOC, which is based in Lausanne, Switzerland, something of a movement to see the Games return to the United States in 2024.

But not Boston.

Over recent weeks in Lausanne, and in Baku, Azerbaijan, where the first European Games just concluded, there has been talk. And that talk, as it relates to Boston — by at least a third of the members of the IOC, if not more — has been uniformly negative.

It's easy to understand why. The poll numbers of 39 percent. The leadership shuffles. The changes from the original “walkability” plan. And more.

In the meantime, there is so much wrong with Bid 2.0, it’s truly difficult to know where to start.

Deep breath.

Here goes.

The overarching problem is this:

It is commonly said that the 1984 Los Angeles Games transformed the Olympics. That is true. Under the leadership of Peter Ueberroth, they ushered in the commercial era that now dominates the movement.

But it is also true that Barcelona 1992 may be just as, if not, more important: those Games showed mayors, governors, prime ministers and presidents that the Olympics could serve as a catalyst for an urban makeover on a grand scale.

Because an Olympics comes with a seven-year hard deadline — the time from the awarding of a Games until opening ceremony — it offers the opportunity to get done in seven years what would otherwise take, public policy-wise, 20 years, 30 or more.

Barcelona was a middling city on the Mediterranean before 1992. Now it is one of the world’s most desirable tourist destinations.

Since 1992, Olympic bid cities have used Barcelona as a model for hugely expansive urban makeovers.

That, in a nutshell, is what Boston 2024 Bid 2.0 is selling:  the creation of two new neighborhoods. One would be “Midtown,” an 83-acre neighborhood at Widett Circle, the site of what would be a 69,000-seat temporary Olympic stadium. The other revolves around development of 30 acres at Columbia Point, the proposed waterfront site of the athletes’ village.

The problem is elemental.

This urban-catalyst approach to the Olympics came to a screeching halt with the 2014 Sochi Olympics, and the $51 billion figure associated with those Games.

No one is suggesting that Boston would be a $51 billion noose.

But the idea of using the Games, Barcelona style, is over. Yet that is the fundamental driver of Bid 2.0.

You see the comparisons throughout Bid 2.0 to New York’s failed 2012 bid, and the Hudson Yards project. New York ran that bid in 2004 and 2005. That, in Olympic terms, is a long, long time ago.

Indeed, the entire premise of IOC president Thomas Bach’s Agenda 2020, his would-be reform manifesto, is to move away from these enormous urban makeover projects.

The IOC is still big on "legacy." In the jargon, that's what a Games can mean to a community during and after the 17-day run of an Olympics.

But after killer cost overruns in Sochi, Beijing (2008), London (which won for 2012) and, now, Rio (2016), the mega-city turnaround game is over.

Especially Sochi — this is the reason so many taxpayers in western democracies have turned against the Olympic movement. They fear the problematic nature of the costs associated with an Olympic Games.

As even the Boston 2024 people note in their glossy packaging, the Tokyo 2020 people have saved $1.7 billion via Agenda 2020.

So why go with a plan that proposes the construction of two new neighborhoods?

Does that, in our world as it is today and is likely to be in 2024, make sense?

Moving on to the details of Bid 2.0 itself.

The key document in everything that was made public Monday is called “planning process, benefits, risks, opportunities.”

First, revenues.

Some background. There were four U.S. bid city finalists: Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington.

All four bid cities last year received a set of numbers from the USOC. All four were told to use certain figures to assess projected revenues in developing their bids. The big-ticket items were, as ever, an IOC contribution, ticketing and domestic sponsorship — all in, about $3.8 billion.

That $3.8 billion, however, was in 2024 dollars.

Adjusted to 2016 dollars, that $3.8 billion is really more like $3 billion even.

On Monday, turning to page 20 of the document, Boston 2024 projected $4.27 billion in those three big-ticket items.

That’s up roughly $1.25 billion (given rounding errors).

Think about a bid that San Francisco, Washington or — in particular, Los Angeles — could have put together with an extra $1.25 billion.

These next questions deserve to be asked:

Is what Boston 2024 has done in this instance fair? Does this sort of financial maneuvering demonstrate integrity, particularly when the bid people are fully aware that only a very few people know, truly, how the system works?

Some more finances, just to show the import of what’s on the printed page.

Back to page 9, entitled “Increased Boston tax revenues: Opportunity for significant investment.”

Here it purports to show that the city of Boston would earn $362 million in tax revenues by the year 2080 at Widett Circle.

That $362 million sounds impressive, right?

If you put $5 million into the stock market today and got a 7 percent return for 65 years, until the year 2080, you’d have $400 million.

So even though that $362 million looks big, it’s really nothing compared to the investment the people of Boston would be making.

Which makes for an excellent segue to expenses.

Let’s go there.

Pages 31 and 32: no aquatics center, no velodrome, no press center.

The Boston 2024 people keep asking for time.

Just give us time to make our case, goes their refrain.

And yet after a lengthy domestic bid process, a presentation last December to the USOC, being picked in January by the USOC and nearly six months’ more work — these three major items still can’t be produced?

Come on.

Moreover, the press center is low-balled at $50 million. That’s laughably low, probably a third of what it would really cost.

Turning to the stadium, and here you have to cross-reference between pages 22 and 35.

If they wanted to make this easy, they would have, right? But no.

Page 22: the temporary Olympic stadium costs pegged at $176 million.

That’s $176 million from the organizing committee’s budget. That’s one column of money.

But wait, page 35: $1.2 billion in additional costs for the stadium site, including land acquisition and relocation, “infrastructure” and contingencies.

This, then, makes up an entirely separate column of cash, to be paid for by a “master developer,” to be named in the future.

So: $1.376 billion, which is starting to sound about right, since NFL stadiums these days are in the $1.8 billion range.

Now let’s ask the common-sense questions:

Boston 2024 is asking a developer to spend $1.2 billion before it, the would-be Olympic organizing committee, spends a nickel. Who wants to step up?

If it’s such a great opportunity, why hasn’t it already been done?

As this prospectus of sorts notes, “Risks include higher than predicted costs for the land, relocation and decking. Current land owners could refuse to negotiate reasonable value for property. Risks also include failure to deliver proposed rezoning or tax agreement.”

All that? Really?

Just for the sake of being obvious: Los Angeles already has an Olympic stadium. The Games were held in the Coliseum in 1932 and 1984. The University of Southern California, which now manages the Coliseum, has committed to renovate it, whether there’s a Games or not, to the tune of up to $600 million.

So:

Option 1: LA will have a fully state-of-the-art facility available to the USOC without spending anything.

Option 2: Boston would spend $1.376 billion, at the least, for a stadium that is going to be torn down.

Which makes more sense?

For the sake of fairness: Los Angeles would obviously have to spend money on the Coliseum to get it particularly ready for an Olympics. The Boston bid is pegged at $176 million for stadium work; an LA committee was prepared to spend twice that.

Moving on to the athletes’ village, and turn, please, to page 37.

Here, Boston 2024 would have to find another master developer to spend another $1.9 billion. Risks include “higher costs associated with Athletes’ Village” and more.

At any rate: In Iraq we called this nation-building. Now we call it neighborhood-building.

How about security?

Please turn to page 50. The 2024 Olympic Games would be a massive security undertaking, almost surely what’s called a “National Special Security Event” like the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City. Federal agencies take the lead in such events.

“Federal funding for security will be required,” the document asserts, and while there are dollar figures aplenty throughout the rest of its pages, there curiously is no mention here of what this might cost taxpayers throughout the United States for the Games.

Figure at least $1 billion.

Once more: is this honest? In keeping with (Agenda 2020-mandated) best-practices standards of transparency?

You wonder why key Massachusetts politicians have kept their distance?

U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, the Democrat who represents the district that includes the site of the temporary stadium, said a few days ago, “I really think it’s a bad idea. I think we can come up with a better solution.”

More critically, where was Boston Mayor Marty Walsh on Monday?

He was in Colorado, at the "Aspen Ideas Festival."

Just brutal.

The mayor is per IOC protocol the bid's political point person.

This is the bid’s big revival? And the mayor is talking up ideas instead of Bid 2.0?

Doesn’t that tell you everything you need to know?

If the United States is to have a chance at 2024 — indeed, if the IOC is to have a chance at giving the U.S. a chance — there’s only one option.

Mistakes are never fun to admit. But better to do it, and get it over with, and move not just along but ahead.

Kill this thing now. And get going with Los Angeles. Time is of the essence.

Justin Gatlin: flag-bearing ray of sunshine?

EUGENE, Oregon — The weather forecast Sunday for the cathedral that is Hayward Field promised patches of sunshine. So apt. The U.S. team now heading to Beijing for the August world championships could be, may well be, the best-ever. Don’t say 30 medals. But, you know.

At the same time, can this team, this sport run away from the storm clouds? Say Justin Gatlin. Say Galen Rupp. You know.

Gatlin, who hasn’t lost at the 100 or 200 meters since 2013, ran away with the 200 Sunday at the U.S. nationals, ripping off a 19.57. That was a new U.S. outdoor national championships record. It made for the fifth-fastest 200 ever.

Gatlin’s performance highlighted a meet at which the U.S. team served notice of depth across the board. When Allyson Felix wins a 400 in which Sanya Richards-Ross doesn’t even make the final and Francena McCorory takes fourth — that’s evidence of how good the Americans are, and that’s just one event.

The list of potential multiple medal events is long. Just for starters: men’s shot put, men’s and women’s sprints, men’s and women’s sprint hurdles, men's triple jump (four qualifiers, all from the same university -- Florida, go Gator fans).

The U.S. women are really good in the 800 — Alysia Montaño winning Sunday in 1:59.15, Brenda Martinez just back in 1:59.71, Ajee' Wilson coming in third in 2:00.05 on one shoe. Maggie Vessey fell and didn’t have a chance.

At last year’s championships in Sacramento, Montaño was heavily pregnant with her first child, a daughter, Linnea, born last Aug. 15. You want sunshine?

As the U.S. team proved in the Bahamas this past May, it now has the recipe, assuming of course no baton drops, to beat Usain Bolt and the Jamaicans in the men’s 4x100 relay.

The key is getting way ahead of Bolt by the anchor leg. It’s simple: Gatlin, who runs one of the middle legs.

Take it to the bank: head to head, Gatlin, right now, absolutely would beat Bolt at both marquee distances, 100 or 200, and it might not even be close. Line them up: Gatlin is your guy. Bolt’s 2015 best in the 200, just as a for instance, is 20.13 in the Czech Republic on May 26.

So: how is Gatlin, age 33, 11 years after winning the 100 at the Athens Olympics, running better and faster than ever? More to the point: is Gatlin running clean? Better question: what if, truly, he is?

Questions, questions, questions all meet long for Rupp. There were British reporters here for the duration, and not for the Oregon sunshine.

Rupp, and his coach, Alberto Salazar, have been at the center of doping-related allegations for the past several weeks. All smoke, no fire. But a lot of smoke. Like, a lot.

Rupp is the London 2012 silver medalist in the 10,000 meters — behind his Oregon Project teammate, the British runner Mo Farah, who in recent days has been facing the same sorts of questions. Here on Friday, Rupp won the 10k and on Sunday took third in the 5k. Rupp also put on a bravo performance for the media after that 10k, scrupulously sticking to talking points, and talking points only — oh, and was that his agent, and Bolt’s as well, Ricky Simms, right there?

“I believe in a clean sport,” Rupp said, time and again. “I’m not going to lie. It’s been hard,” he said, over and again. And so on.

As was observed in the press tribunes at Hayward — so curious that Bolt did not run this week in Jamaica. Maybe Simms had more pressing business in Eugene.

Earlier this month, ProPublica and the BBC published allegations by, among others, the U.S. distance runner Kara Goucher and a former Salazar assistant, Steve Magness, that Salazar encouraged elite runners at the Oregon Project, which he leads, to push if not skirt anti-doping rules.

On Wednesday, just before the start of the meet here, Salazar published a 12,000-word online manifesto disputing the allegations. The Oregon Project, he said, “will never permit doping.”

A significant chunk of those 12,000 words went toward Salazar’s relationship with Goucher.

On Sunday, after her 5k-race, in which she finished 18th, Goucher said she doesn’t like “being labeled a liar.” At the same time, she asserted her “love for the sport is much stronger than my passion to have people like me.”

She said she first met with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency on Feb. 1 or 2, 2013. Why that hadn’t emerged until now, she said, will all come out in due time.

“I believe in the truth,” she also said, “and I know that these things take time. I believe USADA is doing everything in their power. Think of how long it too for Lance,” a reference to the cyclist Lance Armstrong, “and I believe the truth will come out.

“When, I don’t know.”

Gatlin, meanwhile, who is often labeled a two-time doping loser, tried something of a media reach-out strategy here, talking to Reuters and to Sports Illustrated in a bid to get ahead of what he and everyone in the sport knows is going to be the other major U.S. track storyline come August and Beijing.

This is how it’s going to be: Tyson Gay, who served a one-year ban, won the 100 here on Friday, in 9.87 — his first world championship slot since 2009.

This is also how it’s going to be, absent injury or something freaky:

This year, Gatlin has run 9.75 and a world-best 9.74 in the 100. The sprints historically have been the domain of the Americans. Yet Gatlin would be the first American to get back on top of the world-scene sprint podium since 2007 — since Gay won the 100 and 200 at the worlds in Osaka, Japan.

It's all been Boltus Interruptus since, if you will, albeit with that 2011 worlds 100 false-start hiccup for Yohan Blake.

Bolt’s best 2015 100 is a 10.12, in April — though he did run a fantastic anchor leg at the World Relays.

Maybe the yams in Jamaica will prove super-potent this summer, or something.

Otherwise, this is a pretty easy call.

On Sunday, after winning the 200, referring to that Bolt-led Jamaican sprint domination of the past few years, Gatlin said, “I think a lot of sprinters are waking up and understanding that, you know, it’s time to fight back. It’s time to be able to represent your country. It’s time to work hard and go out there and bear your American flag with honor.”

Is the world, captivated by Bolt since 2008, ready for Gatlin to rule the sprints in Beijing? At the very Bird’s Nest where Bolt became, well, Bolt?

“You know what? I don’t know. At this point in time, all I can worry about is myself. That’s all I can do. I can only wake up as Justin Gatlin and go to sleep as Justin Gatlin.”

Earlier in the meet, Gatlin had suggested to Reuters that his first doping matter — when he tested positive in 2001 for an attention-deficit disorder medication — doesn’t deserve, really, to be counted.

“Last time I checked, someone who takes medication for a disorder is not a doper,” he said.

“Other people in the sport have taken the same medication I had for ADD and only got warnings.

“I didn’t,” a two-year ban that was later cut to one.

Gatlin’s second go-around with the doping rules has proven far more problematic.

In 2006, Gatlin tested positive for testosterone. He has consistently maintained he was sabotaged by a massage therapist with a grudge against his former coach, Trevor Graham; the therapist is alleged to have rubbed testosterone cream onto Gatlin at the 2006 Kansas Relays.

Query: does that pass the my-dog-ate-the-homework test?

Gatlin got four years.

He was eligible for eight but argued, successfully, that the ADD strike shouldn’t count against him in aggravation.

So — to his position.

Gatlin told SI, “That makes me a two-time doper? I don’t understand that at all,” and the man has a genuine point.

The hangup for many is the sabotage story. Maybe it's true. Maybe it's not. Without more in the public domain, who can say?

In the end, the thing is, Gatlin has done his time. The rules say he can run. What more, now, should the guy do?

If he were to get caught again, surely Gatlin -- who is a smart guy and has been around -- knows the consequences. It'd be over and done, however many prior strikes he wants to count. Is that risk worth whatever reward?

How about this: if this were the NFL, would this be such a big deal? Don't those guys get busted all the time, and it's small-point news in the back of the newspaper? Why is it seemingly such a bigger deal in track and field?

All of you who now want to stand up and scream, lifetime ban for even a first offense! Go away. That's not feasible, because of right-to-work and other legitimate concerns. If you want to mutter and sputter about such things over a pint in a pub, fine. The rest of us are going to live in the real world.

So what is it? Is track the last refuge of moralists? Come on. The world is not black and white. It's full of shades of grey. Elite track and field is, in every way, big-time, professional sport. So are sprinters supposed to be held to a different standard than linebackers? Really? Why?

So what is it?

Is it that, at 33, Gatlin is running so damn fast?

What explains that?

His 2004 best in the 100 was 9.85. Now he’s a full tenth of a second faster, and every sign is — aiming toward August — he probably will go faster still.

Until Sunday, Gatlin had a 2015 world-leading 19.68 in the 200 — here at Hayward, at the Prefontaine Classic, on May 30.

He ran a 19.92 in the first round, then 19.9 flat in the semis, then that 19.57.

His 200 times were all in the 20s until last year, when he posted 19.68 in Monaco.

The testing system is too fraught with uncertainty to declare that Gatlin — or, for that matter, anyone — is 100 percent clean.

For instance, and without reference to Gatlin — or, again, anyone — the British newspaper the Daily Mail on Sunday, quoting the American Victor Conte, the doping expert at the center of the BALCO scandal who now is in the supplement business, explained in lay terms the art of using a slow-acting substance called IGF-1 LR3.

Total cost for a 40-day cycle: as little as $200. Use: 100 micrograms per day.

“I believe there is rampant use of it right now,” Conte told the paper.

Then again, it is also the case that Gatlin is 25 pounds lighter than he was in 2010. What sport scientists have discovered is that upper body weight is, literally and figuratively, a drag for sprinters. Be as scrawny as you want up top. Just be able to pound it, and hard, with your lower body, because that’s what exerts mass and force.

If you’re carrying 25 pounds less, it stands to reason that you might well run faster, right?

Even a lot faster.

What if, for the sake of argument, Justin Gatlin is indeed running clean? What then?

“When you come out to Hayward Field,” Gatlin said atop the medals stand, “you have to come out and make a statement.”

“Look out, Jamaica?” Dan O’Brien, the 1996 Olympic decathlon champ who was doing PA duties at Hayward.

“Look out world,” Gatlin said. “Here we are — USA!”

Big decision but not difficult -- kill Boston 2024

The U.S. Olympic Committee has a big decision on its hands at the end of the month: whether to kill off the Boston 2024 bid.

Big, yes. But not difficult. It’s obvious, made more so by an informal survey of key International Olympic Committee members a few days ago in Lausanne, Switzerland, who could not have made it more plain: do the right thing, they said in straightforward, indeed blunt, language, and put this Boston 2024 bid out of its, and everyone’s, misery.

Time is of the essence.

“Move,” said one senior IOC member, often a confidante of IOC president Thomas Bach’s, speaking — like the other members quoted here — on condition of anonymity. This member added, referring to the Boston bid team, “They had their opportunity. They fucked it around.”

“Los Angeles is better than Boston,” said another senior member. “The USA has to change its image.”

Said another, making an imaginary trigger with index finger and thumb, “The sooner the better. It has to be now.”

Get the picture?

Here is the deal, again as candidly as possible.

There is one reason, and one reason only, for the United States to enter the 2024 bid race: to win.

It’s a $75 million gamble, maybe more, in this kind of race. For that kind of money, which in the United States means private investment, that can yield only one satisfactory result:

Winning.

That, after the October 2009 first-round exit that Chicago 2016 suffered, even with President Obama himself lobbying in person at the IOC session in Copenhagen for his hometown, is what the USOC took to heart.

That is why the USOC did not run for 2020.

All conversations now about how an Olympic bid process can be a great learning process, maybe even a swell stimulus, can be lovely exercises for urban-planning seminars.

But winning is way, way, way better.

Ask London. Or Paris. Which of the two has been on the upswing since that 2005 vote for 2012?

Or New York. Do you really think New York would have preferred to have lost, or won, that 2012 race?

The peril and promise of an American bid

Last week, the IOC’s policy-making executive board met in Lausanne. After a few days, they were joined by almost all the IOC members for briefings related to the  2022 Winter Games race.

The only thing predictable about an IOC election is its unpredictability. That said, there is clearly a feeling within the most influential IOC circles that the time could be right for the Americans.

This despite the FIFA indictments brought by the U.S. Department of Justice — which, truth be told, have caused U.S. interests and in particular the USOC real damage in sports politics, the measure of which remains to be calculated.

The challenges any American bid faces ought not to be understated. One member, reflecting on the imminent signing of a Texas law allowing the open carrying of handguns in public and of concealed handguns on state university campuses — the governor would sign it last weekend — said that measure alone ought to spell the end of the Boston bid. Or, for that matter, Los Angeles, if it came to that.

Who, the member asked, could reliably trust the safety of one’s university-age children in a country with such a law?

For Americans, who understand the differences, geographical and cultural, between Texas and the two coasts, such a rhetorical question might seem — unusual. This, though, is the way it is.

For all that, it is the case that Larry Probst, who is the USOC chairman, and Scott Blackmun, the USOC chief executive, have spent since January 2010 repairing relationships and building international goodwill, in particular among the IOC’s — to use a phrase — thought leaders.

Within the IOC, a good many people have taken notice.

What they can’t now understand is why Probst and Blackmun didn’t do in January, when the USOC seemingly made its 2024 choice, what is expected in Olympic circles — tell the USOC board that Los Angeles was the right choice, and get on with it.

Democracy can be a good thing. But not necessarily in a board setting — at least an Olympic-style board.

In this instance, as was related time and again in Lausanne, Probst and Blackmun should have done what Bach does in the IOC: just do it. The IOC works better when the president is in charge. Same, it was related, for the USOC.

Without a doubt, Probst and Blackmun know full well what will win in Lausanne — or at least have a chance. It’s LA — for 2024 and, if it doesn’t work out, 2028.

One of the fundamental mistakes the U.S. makes is not running the same city, if it loses, again. The IOC likes it when they see cities keep trying — Pyeongchang, South Korea, bid twice before winning a third time for 2018.

It’s time now, it was said in Lausanne, for Probst and Blackmun to tell the USOC board what’s what  — to right the mistake that was made in January and, again, get on with it.

The idea of not bidding for 2024 is, of course, one option. But it’s a very poor option. Reading the tea leaves in Lausanne, it’s clear that not bidding for 2024 will — like the Chicago 2016 defeat — set the Americans back three to five to as many as 10 years in IOC circles.

Will the USOC likely encounter a dash of unfavorable publicity if it kills off Boston?

For sure.

For about a week. And that will be that.

Will Los Angeles be relegated for the next two years to a status as “second choice”?

Maybe. But probably not.

Why?

You know what they know how to do in Los Angeles?

Tell stories. In film and in our increasingly digital world.

You know what wins Olympic bids?

Story-telling. And humility. Which the USOC, the embodiment of the American medal machine, could use a dose of — if it manages this turn-around the right way, which actually could and should be super-easy.

Just come right out and say, we made a mistake.

For the sake of clarity:

San Francisco and Washington, the other two 2024 finalists, offered some upsides. But neither, to stress, emerged as a plausible IOC candidate. San Francisco, for all its beauty, can hardly get artificial turf put down in a local park; imagine trying to prepare for, and put on, 28 simultaneous world championships, which is what a Summer Games involves. DC, to many overseas, represents the seat of American imperialism; meanwhile, the very last thing the USOC needs is the oversight of 535 self-appointed mayors, meaning the various members of Congress, casting an eye on seven years of preparations.

So it was Boston or Los Angeles.

If you haven’t been to Los Angeles recently, if you’re stuck on a vision of LA as 1984 or 1992, and can only see it as traffic and been-there, you really need to think again.

This from, of all sources, the New York Times, just last month:

“Los Angeles is an incredible city and is in the center of a creative explosion right now,” Christopher Bailey, Burberry’s chief creative officer and chief executive, wrote [to the newspaper] in an email. “There is an amazing and inspiring mix of people from the worlds of film, technology, music, architecture, food and culture and now fashion, all doing such interesting things there.”

Boston has more than had its chance

The primary problem with Boston is not that the USOC didn’t do its due diligence. It’s that the USOC board chose to dismiss or ignore that diligence, and in particular the low approval numbers in the polls.

Now the figure stands at 39 percent. That is, in a word, abysmal.

The IOC wants 70 percent.

In LA, the poll numbers were in the high 70s.

When the poll number was 67 percent in Chicago, there was something approaching panic.

Now it’s 39 percent in Boston, and they seriously want to talk about keeping this thing going?

Be real.

So:

Enough, already, with comments such as these from current Boston 2024 spokesman Doug Rubin, who told the New York Times this week, with the committee rolling out new venue plans, “Give us a chance to make the case.”

No.

Boston has had, at the least, a full year to make its case. It was named one of the four USOC finalists in June 2014. Last Dec. 16, those four cities made presentations behind closed doors to the USOC. On Jan. 8, the board picked Boston.

Boston has had ample opportunity to make its case. To say now that it should get more time is, as this space has written before, not fair and not right to the other cities in the domestic campaign, and in particular to the other three finalists.

It’s particularly embarrassing, if not egregious, for Boston 2024 to have sold the USOC on one “concept” and then, six months later, be trotting out a whole new “plan.”

The first “idea” was a walkable, transit-oriented notion in which the city of Boston would be an “Olympic Park.”

This week came word that shooting, originally planned for Boston Harbor, will be 25 miles away, in Billerica. Beach volleyball was originally pitched as Boston’s equivalent of London’s Horse Garden Parade, an iconic, centrally located venue with history; on Wednesday, it was moved to a field in Quincy, just south of Boston. Sailing, it was announced earlier this month, would be moved from Boston Harbor to New Bedford, near Cape Cod.

Attention, Hertz!

We are all still waiting on word from Holyoke, in western Massachusetts, and the proposal from the mayor there to move snatch up volleyball.

What’s next? Is basketball going to go to from TD Garden, the home of the Boston Celtics, to Springfield, Massachusetts, two hours away, because it’s the birthplace of the game and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame?

All this is a ploy clearly designed to try to win votes for a November 2016 statewide referendum.

As if.

Do you call all these changes "interesting" or do words such as “fraud” start exploding in your head?

The original “concept” made such a big deal, meanwhile, out of involving so many colleges and universities in and around town.

Tennis had originally been planned for Harvard. Now it would be at a facility in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood, with the university apparently distancing itself from the bid.

This from Associated Press, regarding the tennis venue: “They had initially been proposed for Harvard University in nearby Cambridge, Mass. but the Ivy League university, which had once been a prominent component of the city's bid, has been distancing itself from the efforts in recent days.”

When a big dog like Harvard starts laying down, what about others? You seriously expect to run an Olympics without the out-front support of a leading institution such as Harvard?

Again, be real.

Enough, already, with the leadership shuffles at Boston 2024. From all accounts, new bid leader Steve Pagliuca is a decent guy. But starting from scratch — with him a few weeks prior, at a separate meeting in Switzerland, making the rounds of the Olympic Museum in Lausanne and not knowing whether for voting purposes the museum officials are important or not — is not the way to win.

Enough with the Massachusetts Rocky Horror political picture show. Here, alone, is a stand-alone reason to kill Boston 2024:

Mayor Walsh tells WBZ re: Olympic bid:" I won't be signing any document that will have the City of Boston responsible for any overruns."

— Jon Keller (@kelleratlarge) June 11, 2015

Boston 2024 may be angling to make this more of a Commonwealth of Massachusetts deal -- maybe even beyond -- but contractually the IOC deals formally with a single entity, and that entity is a city. If Boston Mayor Marty Walsh isn’t willing to sign the host-city contract, that in and of itself is enough to kill the deal. Right now. Done.

Enough, too, with the contrast between the Olympic values — friendship, excellence and respect — and a man later identified as the mayor’s cousin, at one of the various community meetings this spring, calling a woman expressing opposition to Boston 2024 a “fucking piece of shit.”

Enough as well with Pollyanna-ish op-ed pieces like the one posted Wednesday on Huffington Post from Angela Ruggiero, the IOC (athlete commission) member who is also a USOC board member. It was outdated even as it went up, touting the athlete experience — the city as Olympic Park — when that very same day the beach volleyball-to-Quincy announcement was being made, following the shooting-to-Billerica and sailing-to-New Bedford switch-outs, with more almost certain to follow.

Come on.

Ruggiero, who like Probst was in Lausanne last week, surely has to know better. She has to know the prevailing mood among their fellow IOC members. If she doesn’t, she’s not talking to the right people — or, as someone who, as she acknowledged in her HuffPost piece, got her undergraduate and M.B.A. degrees in Boston, has a serious conflict of interest and ought to recuse herself from any June 30 vote.

Time is of the essence.

“Better faster than later,” an IOC member who is the president of one of the most important international federations said in Lausanne. “It’s an uphill battle.”

“If it’s inevitable,” said another IOC member, “it’s obvious it needs to be pulled immediately."

Sepp Blatter is resigning -- or is he?

Way back when in journalism school at Northwestern, they taught us to be entirely skeptical about a great many things. The lesson they taught us in Evanston went like this: if your mother says she loves you, check it out. This maxim comes to mind now in assessing the state of soccer’s world governing body, FIFA, and in particular the status of its president, Sepp Blatter. Thousands upon thousands of words have been written since he purported earlier this month to be resigning. Yet among all those words, perhaps the most relevant seem to be missing amid that “resignation”: a resignation letter.

It’s axiomatic that a genuine resignation leads to the execution of such a document. Has one surfaced?

Curious.

Or, perhaps, not really, not if you believe that Blatter never had any intention of resigning and, all along, his “resignation” has been the first step in an elaborate dance that he concocted to buy time.

And why not?

After all, he got 133 votes in that election on May 29.

Who then can really be surprised at reports this week that maybe, just maybe, Blatter might not really be out the door?

To be clear, and for maximum emphasis: allegations of systemic corruption have shadowed FIFA for years, and now the time would seem to be upon it for change. But simply shouting, over and over, loud and louder, for Blatter’s head, is not necessarily in and of itself change.

A journalistic mob brandishing the digital equivalent of pitchforks and torches is not helpful. It might feel swell to be part of the mob. But it’s empty.

The serious questions that need to be asked are these: what kind of hard change needs to be effected, and who are the right people to effect that change?

A few years after journalism school, I went to law school, to the University of California’s branch in San Francisco. I graduated and even (first try!) passed the California bar exam. Maybe, over the years, I have proven to be a better journalist than a lawyer. But along the way I did manage to pick up a few lawyering tips. Here’s one:

The rules matter.

At the San Francisco law firm where I worked after graduation, a senior partner once advised that it was a good idea at the start of each calendar year to review the particular statutes of each and every area of what lawyers like to call “subject-matter jurisdiction.”

To make it easy, in the case of FIFA the relevant statutes at issue are Articles 22 to 24.

Article 24 lays out who can be a candidate for president. Blatter knows this one well.

Article 23 details the one-country, one-vote rule that is so essential to the 209-member FIFA system, and that assuredly has to be a focus of the moment for reformers and conservatives alike.

It’s already common knowledge in international sport circles that Michel Platini, the UEFA president, met last week in Lausanne, Switzerland, the International Olympic Committee's base, with Kuwait’s Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah, the president of the Assn. of National Olympic Committees and, as well, a new member of FIFA’s executive committee, which in soccer circles is commonly called the ExCo. All anyone had to do was be at the plaza bar at the Beau Rivage hotel to see what was what.

Platini’s name keeps getting floated as a Blatter successor, as if Europe is somehow entitled to get its way next, again, after 17 years of the Swiss Blatter. The sheikh, meanwhile, who has a way of making things happen in whatever arena he plays in, has been mentioned as a potential successor as well, even though he is likely far more interested in ANOC, and in particular the promise of a Beach Games project.

At any rate, for Blatter’s purposes going forward, it is Article 22 that is most essential.

In theory, that would be as a predicate to revisiting Article 24.

The issue is, how does Article 22 relate in practice to Article 24?

Because it would appear there's a serious disconnect.

Recall that on June 2, when he said he was resigning, Blatter said he was calling for an extraordinary congress. Or, maybe, he was calling on the ExCo to set up such a congress.

The distinction is rather important.

Here was Blatter at the news conference that day: “Therefore, I ask to convene an extraordinary congress as soon as possible.”

Here was Blatter in the same-day news release from FIFA: “The next ordinary FIFA Congress will take place on 13 May 2016 in Mexico City. This would create unnecessary delay and I will urge the Executive Committee to organize an Extraordinary Congress for the election of my successor at the earliest opportunity.”

According to multiple reports, including the BBC, FIFA appears inclined to schedule the extraordinary congress for Dec. 16 in Zurich. An ExCo meeting, at which the date of the congress would obviously be high on the agenda, is set for July 20.

Back to the rules.

Article 22 says clearly that the ExCo may convene an Extraordinary Congress “at any time.”

But not at the president’s request.

Only if “one-fifth of the members make such a request in writing.”

One-fifth of 209 is 41.8.

Thus 41 or 42 nations, depending on whether you’re rounding up or down, have to ask — in writing — for an extraordinary congress.

In an era of purported transparency and ferocious interest in its business, doesn’t FIFA owe it to the world to make public the list of the nations requesting this extraordinary congress?

Next:

“An Extraordinary Congress shall be held within three months of receipt of the request.”

The ExCo meeting is scheduled for July 20.

Three months past July takes the calendar to, at the latest, October.

Further complicating matters, a FIFA statement issued June 11 — announcing that July 20 ExCo meeting — said, “During the meeting, the agenda for the elective Congress will be finalized and approved. The extraordinary elective Congress will take place in Zurich between December 2015 and February 2016 as announced by the FIFA president on 2 June 2015.”

So what’s going on?

Dec. 16? When the rules clearly say three months max after, in this instance, July 20?

Here’s a theory, with several layers:

There’s going to be a fall guy, for sure, and despite the rush to judgment in the mainstream press — in the United States, in Latin America and in western Europe — who is to say it’s going to be Blatter?

As for Blatter himself being a “focus” of the Justice Department case: Blatter presumably learned after the ISL mess some years ago not to leave his fingerprints on anything substantive.

And as for that DOJ case:

Any evidence that Chuck Blazer might have to offer might well have to be submitted by deposition because by the time these cases make it to trial Mr. Blazer might or might not still be with us on this earthly coil. Feel free to ask a more experienced lawyer than me whether such evidence is in the first instance admissible in federal court or, next, liable to amount to a winning strategy.

As for Jack Warner — again, ask a more experienced lawyer whether he or she would relish the opportunity to cut Mr. Warner up on cross-examination. The very first item would be Mr. Warner’s video brandishing The Onion, the satirical newspaper, and let’s take it from there.

If one reads the FIFA website carefully, one would have noted on June 4, just two days after his “resignation,” a release touted Blatter’s proclamation that meaningful reform was already underway.

So, again, why Dec. 16?

Recall that the Swiss authorities have launched their own investigation into FIFA’s affairs.

In these sorts of things, June to December can be a long, long time.

What if, say, by December, that Swiss inquiry turns up nothing of significance?

You don’t think so? The European legal system can be very different than the American. The U.S. system, for instance, is premised on plea-bargaining, and such deals are typically used to pressure those caught in the system to sing in an effort to nail those higher up; it often doesn’t work that way in Europe, where singing is thought to be a means of inventing. Also, the emphasis in Europe is typically in “keeping your collective nose out of other nations’ legal affairs,” according to a quote to be found in no less than the Economist, which assuredly has been zealous in its anti-Blatter reporting.

If Blatter gets a free pass or its equivalent from the Swiss inquiry, he would then be able to appear before the extraordinary congress and say, 133 of you voted for me in the spring — would you like me to continue my mandate?

Who’s to say the members wouldn’t — in December, just nine days before Christmas — be feeling the holiday spirit?

Fanciful?

Really? Any more than winning re-election just days after the U.S. indictments themselves?

Remember, some 15 years ago Juan Antonio Samaranch led the IOC through the Salt Lake City scandal.

Don’t fall into the “Samaranch was a fascist loser” trap that is the trope among many on the outside looking in. Within the IOC, Samaranch was, and remains, revered. The issue is, how within FIFA is Blatter viewed?

The answer is pretty obvious: 133 votes from the delegates. And that widely reported standing ovation from the staff.

To those who insist soccer needs an outsider: recall the U.S. Olympic Committee’s experience roughly six years ago with Stephanie Streeter as chief executive. It simply did not work. She and it proved a bad fit, and anyone who would come in from outside to try to run FIFA almost surely would prove the same, and for the same reason — culture. You have to know soccer to run soccer.

You can like it or not. But you can almost hear Blatter saying just that, can’t you?

Of course, maybe FIFA is, actually, committed to fantastic reform.

Back to the future: Sepp Blatter said June 2 he is resigning. Do you believe him?

Agenda 2020 -- keeping it real

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — The International Olympic Committee is trying, really trying, to prove that Agenda 2020, the would-be reform plan that president Thomas Bach and the members passed last December in Monaco, amounts to significant change. But when confronted with real-world realities, like the two candidates for the 2022 Winter Games, Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan, which made presentations here Tuesday to the members, the question must be asked: how much change, really, is in the air?

This is the predicament the IOC has put itself in, and it has only itself to blame.

To be clear, Agenda 2020 is at best aspirational. The only concrete point among the 40 that the members approved in Monaco is the development of a television channel.

The rest are in line with prior efforts at reform — in particular, a 2003 package of 117 specific recommendations that included the format of the Games, the bid process, TV coverage, the extravagance of the opening and closing ceremonies, fiscal accountability and more.

In recent days, the IOC has done self-congratulatory cartwheels over changes, purportedly spurred by Agenda 2020, to venues in Tokyo for the 2020 Games; those moves will save $1.7 billion. Saving that much money is of course to the good. But if the IOC were really that interested in saving money in the first instance it would have chosen Madrid for 2020 — where, all-in, the construction budget totaled a mere $1.9 billion.

We live in the real world. Tokyo was going to be elected because that was part of the three-way deal at the IOC session in Buenos Aires in 2013 — Tokyo for 2020, wrestling getting back on the Summer Games sports program and Bach for president against five challengers.

We live in the real world.

While it is true that Agenda 2020 has considerably strengthened Bach’s standing as IOC president — and the IOC traditionally works best when the president is firmly in charge — Agenda 2020 now has to be measured against the real world.

For the IOC, the first significant test is this 2022 process. To be real, for the IOC this 2022 process probably can’t end soon enough. After the hangover of Sochi 2014, and the $51 billion figure associated with those Games, a handful of western European cities pulled out of the 2022 contest, leaving only Beijing and Almaty.

Almaty presents a compact bid with real snow. That’s far more in line with the spirit of Agenda 2020.

But Beijing, with China’s political and economic strength, has assuredly emerged as the overwhelming favorite.

Even with Agenda 2020, the IOC stuck with the post-Salt Lake City rule that prevents the members from visiting any of the bid cities.

Of course, a significant number of the members spent 17 days, or more, in Beijing at the 2008 Summer Games and, as well, visited China last summer for the Nanjing Youth Games. Big advantage to Beijing.

Because there are no visits, the IOC prepares a report after visits to the candidate cities by what’s called an evaluation commission. The commission visited the cities earlier this year. Many of the members candidly admit they don’t read the report. It’s full of facts, figures and coded double-speak.

Our real world is full of uncertainties. In the 2022 report, 137 pages long, this is the one paragraph that jumps out, from the Beijing analysis:

“Overall, the [organizing committee] budget appears to be well thought-out and presents a viable financial plan. Upside potential on marketing revenues, strong government support and experience gained from hosting the 2008 Games suggest that the degree of financial risk should be relatively low.”

To hammer home the point that the members can sleep at night if the Games go to Beijing, there’s this as well:

The 2008 Games generated $1.2 billion in sponsorship. The 2022 estimate is only $740 million. The commission said the 2022 bid team “appears to have significantly underestimated sponsorship targets” — that is, they significantly low-balled the number.

From the report on Almaty:

“Kazakhstan has limited experience with complex high-value marketing programs relating to sporting events.”

And: “The guarantee regarding the financing of venue costs involving multiple parties, creating ambiguity on the division of responsibility including ultimate financial responsibility.”

And: “Economic factors, including low oil prices and exchange rate issues, could negatively impact Games preparations and the government’s capacity to provide financial and other support.”

How does all this jibe with Agenda 2020?

Let’s see, because the IOC put out a statement Tuesday after both bids made their presentations to the members in which Bach said, “You could see a clear focus in both bids on sustainability and affordability.”

Turning to the Beijing bid, and focusing first on sustainability:

There is no little to snow in the mountains there. The evaluation report is clear that the Chinese would have to use artificial snow, requiring diversion of water from existing reservoirs, which may impact other land uses. The proposed alpine ski and sliding venues as well as the Olympic village in the mountains are next to a nature reserve, which would “impose a number of environmental requirements.” Travel times will be long. Air pollution is a “prime concern.”

Again, from the report: “Northern China suffers from severe water stress and the Beijing-Zhangjiakou area is becoming increasingly arid.”

And: “The commission considers Beijing 2022 has underestimated the amount of water that would be needed for snowmaking for the Games but believes adequate water for Games needs could be supplied.”

It’s almost laughable, really, because the Beijing slogan is “Joyful Rendezvous upon Pure Ice and Snow.”

Pure?

From the IOC evaluation report: “The word ‘pure’ conveys China’s desire to create a cleaner environment.”

To piggyback off the Almaty slogan, “Keeping it Real”: how has that worked out since 2008? Earlier this year, there were pictures of runners wearing masks at the Beijing marathon. That was, for sure, real.

Continuing from the IOC report on Beijing: the ski jump there would require the relocation of 400 people, one of the Olympic villages another 1,100. All 1,500 have been offered “new housing or compensation.”

As for affordability?

Almaty 2022 said its infrastructure budget totals out at $1.853 billion.

For comparison, Beijing said its capital works would cost $1.511 billion. Less than Almaty! For real?

Who believes — after a reputed $40 billion was spent for 2008 — that a 2022 Beijing Winter Games, considering for starters the environmental work that needs to be done up in the mountains, would cost only $1.511 billion? Again -- for real?

There’s a new train line needed between Beijing and the mountain venues. Intriguingly, that’s not included in the $1.511 billion figure.

So now we have a new way of Olympic accounting, to compensate for the Sochi hangover.

Before Agenda 2020, there used to be there were two columns of numbers: 1. Games costs and 2. infrastructure that went with the Olympics.

Now there are three: 1. Games costs, 2. infrastructure that goes with the Games and 3. infrastructure that goes with the Games (like that train line) but is not being identified as going with the Games so that it can never, ever be counted because that way there can never, ever be a $51-billion figure ever again.

Is that even remotely honest? Either from our Chinese friends or the IOC? How is that in keeping with Agenda 2020’s demand for financial accounting and transparency?

This is what the IOC will have to answer for if the members elect Beijing, not to mention seven years of human-rights protests, just as in the run-up to 2008.

This is the opening the Kazakhs tried to take advantage of on Tuesday — hammering, time and again, on the proposition that they were “keeping it real,” reminding the members that they have snow, and lots of it.

To be real, the odds are still against Almaty. But maybe it's a race.

Kazakh prime minister Karim Massimov headed the Almaty delegation and was widely credited with giving an excellent performance, longtime IOC member Dick Pound of Canada, for instance, saying he was “very, very agreeably surprised” by the presentation.

That 2003 IOC report, with the 117 recommendations? It was headed by Pound.

Massimov told the members the bid was a “national priority,” and that Agenda 2020 aligned “perfectly” with the desire to leave “lasting economic, health and sporting legacies for future generations.”

“To put it simply,” he said, “Kazakhstan not only wants the Winter Games, we need the Winter Games.”

The vote in Kuala Lumpur is July 31.