If you're worked up about the Russians, what about A-Rod?

If you're worked up about the Russians, what about A-Rod?

Once more, the Russians. Cue the righteous if not hypocritical sanctimoniousness rooted in moral judgment for any and all of you gearing up, or already worked up, over the prospect of 169 Russians, or thereabouts, headed to PyeongChang to take part in the 2018 Olympic Winter Games.

Russia! Bad! Go away!

U-S-A! U-S-A! Win, win, win! Two-four-six-eight, who do we appreciate — yay!

Are we all, each and every one of us, clear on the concept? OK.

To continue the compare and contrast, this space hereby offers for consideration:

A-Rod.

That would be Alex Rodriguez, the former New York Yankee third baseman. Quick recap: suspended for the entire 2014 Major League Baseball season, among other doping-related dramas. 

Every child's worst nightmare: the monster in the room

Every child's worst nightmare: the monster in the room

It breaks your heart to listen to the testimony in a Michigan courtroom where Larry Nassar’s victims have, finally, confronted him.

It makes you so angry.

How could this have happened? And for so long?

This is indisputably one of the worst moments in the recent history of the U.S. Olympic movement. It calls for serious and significant investigation and systemic reform.

To be clear about what happened, and in the most elemental terms: adults failed children. 

There was a monster in the room, every child’s worst nightmare. Who made the monster go away? No one. 

How can that possibly be?

Leadership in action -- and a call to action, too

Leadership in action -- and a call to action, too

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — In September, Hurricanes Irma and Maria ripped through the Caribbean. Only one word describes the two storms: catastrophic.

There is the financial toll. In Puerto Rico, estimates are it may cost as much as $95 billion to recover. That’s billion with a b. 

The structural. It’s already three months-plus since September. Yet basics such as electricity and internet service, for instance, are hardly a given in many of the string of islands in the Atlantic Ocean lashed by the storms. The first time Steve Augustine, president of the British Virgin Islands track and field federation, had seen a working television since September was Sunday night here in San Juan, when he arrived for a Monday meeting.

The emotional. Godwin Dorsette, from Dominica, broke down in tears at that very meeting. “I’m a brave man. I’m a very strong person,” he said. “But I was afraid.”

Across the Caribbean, track and field is unquestionably a — if not the — leading sport. With that in mind, the sport’s global governing body, the International Associaton of Athletics Federations, on Tuesday announced a $500,000 “solidarity fund” aimed at helping those member federations that were pounded by Irma and Maria and, as well, by Hurricanes Harvey and Jose.

Olympics: once more 'a symbol of hope and peace in our troubled times'

Olympics: once more 'a symbol of hope and peace in our troubled times'

On Rodney King’s gravestone at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills, it says, “Can we all get along,” a reference to Mr. King’s plea amid his early 1990s encounter with the Los Angeles Police Department. It’s a very different context but — in just so many words, that is what the Olympic movement, at its best, is all about.

To fulfill the words of the soul poet Rodney King, the movement’s No. 1 mission in our complicated world— its raison d’etre — is not just to be relevant. Or even to remain relevant. It is to assert its relevance.

Over the past many months, the movement has struggled, and mightily, with this notion. A succession of brutal headlines have caused some, if not many, to wonder about the Olympic movement’s place, beset as it has been by Russian doping, sexual abuse and misconduct scandals, skyrocketing cost overruns associated with the Games, diminishing taxpayer interest in staging future editions of the Olympics and more. 

Now, though, comes word of a remarkable breakthrough: North Korea will send athletes to February’s Winter Olympics in South Korea.

Figure skating friends: go big or, really, just go home

In the spring of 1974, as the well-told story goes, the music critic Jon Landau saw Bruce Springsteen play for the first time. Thereafter, in Boston’s The Real Paper, Landau wrote these now-famous words: “I saw my rock ’n’ roll past flash before my eyes. And I saw something else: I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time.”

To be clear, there is no attempt here to draw any parallel between this space and the success, literary or otherwise, of Jon Landau. All the same: in February of 2002, I saw the future of the Olympic Winter Games and its name was Ross Powers. 

The U.S. Figure Skating Championships are ongoing this week in San Jose, California. A certain (diminishing) percentage of people remain interested in figure skating. To be forthright once more, the U.S. team — men’s and women’s, women’s in particular — has not been all that good for years; there are a multitude of reasons for that; in part, it has to do with the Vancouver 2010 victory of Evan Lysacek. Not Lysacek himself. He is and always has been a first-rate champion. It’s that Vancouver gold medal and the style of skating it represents — a combination that, it can be argued, has stalled figure skating’s forward path in the United States.

Mostly, though, there is the development of the Winter Games themselves. Once, figure skating held center stage. Now the Winter Games essentially have become a snowboarding festival. 

Zero facts implicating Justin Gatlin -- that's a 'scandal'?

Zero facts implicating Justin Gatlin -- that's a 'scandal'?

In 1964, the United States Supreme Court decided a case called New York Times v. Sullivan. It established, in libel law matters, what is called the “actual malice” standard.

Before you start rolling your eyes and getting anxious about a bunch of legalese, relax. This is not complicated. Libel, at its core, involves a published statement that damages someone’s reputation. What the Supreme Court said is this: if you publish something about a public official or a public figure, it is “actual malice” if you do so knowing it is false or if you acted in what the court called a reckless disregard for the truth.

This brings us to the American sprinter Justin Gatlin, and the report published Monday in the British newspaper the Daily Telegraph. There is zero question Gatlin is a public figure. Can there be any question the lengthy story the Telegraph printed was aimed directly at Gatlin, and his reputation? 

The altogether cleverness of 'Olympic Athlete from Russia'

In taking action Tuesday on the Russian doping matter, the International Olympic Committee was faced with the delicate task of trying to thread a needle while wearing a pair of those red mittens that were all the rage at the Vancouver Olympics way back when in 2010, which, you know, is more or less when — because the Russian team performed so poorly there — this sordid tale began, right?

The task at hand was to make it seem like the IOC was coming down hard on the Russians — to appease the baying jackals of the western press, in particular the Americans and the Brits — while simultaneously crafting a diplomatic compromise that would serve the IOC’s long-term purposes.

The IOC, seeking to balance a multitude of interests, got what it wanted.

The initial reports screamed out over the news and social media in our 24/7 gotta-have-it tell-me-what-it-means-this-instant world: Ban! Ban! Ban! 

Reality: the IOC made a play for what it always plays for, stability.

And the more sophisticated argument, because as always the real work is in the details, is that the Russians are getting off way easier than would seem at first blush. 

Even Russians deserve due process, and especially cross-examination

Even Russians deserve due process, and especially cross-examination

The lengthy decision posted Monday in the matter of the Russian cross-country skier Alexander Legkov is to be applauded for its extended review of the Russian doping matter.

A three-member International Olympic Committee “disciplinary commission” panel, explaining the rationale for stripping Legkov of the 50-kilometer gold medal he won at the Sochi 2014 Games, found Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, the former Moscow lab director, a “truthful witness.”

It’s also the case that this decision is likely fatally flawed. Legkov ought to proceed directly to the Court of Arbitration for Sport with an urgent appeal -- do not pass go, do not collect $200, all of that. 

IOC president Thomas Bach has promised — most recently in a speech last week to European Olympic officials — that the Russians, Legkov and others, would be assured due process. In a news release accompanying the publication of the Legkov decision, the IOC said, "Due process has to be followed, and re-analysis is still underway."

No way did Legkov get due process.

Why? Because Rodchenkov was unavailable for cross-examination.

Russian doping, and pick-up truck wisdom

Russian doping, and pick-up truck wisdom

Seems like it was only earlier this year that a great many voices were being heard to the effect that the World Anti-Doping Agency, and in particular its president, Craig Reedie, and director general, Olivier Niggli, were ineffective and caught up in this or that conflict of interest.

Now WADA has obtained (via a whistleblower) an electronic file that it says contains “all testing data” from Russia’s national doping lab conducted from January 2012 to August 2015. That’s thought to be thousands of drug tests run on Russian athletes. 

Kudos to WADA and, as well, to Reedie and Niggli.

With the file in hand, WADA on Thursday declined to lift its suspension of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency. 

At issue now is whether the Russians should take part — under the Russian flag, wearing the Russian colors, hearing the Russian anthem — in the 2018 Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea.

 

'The story is to make it -- step by step'

'The story is to make it -- step by step'

MARRAKECH, Morocco — A couple weeks ago, it made headlines worldwide when the Israeli judo team was singled out at an International Judo Federation Grand Slam stop in Abu Dhabi.

The United Arab Emirates banned Israeli athletes from wearing their nation’s symbols, the blue and white colors and the Star of David, on their uniforms; the Israeli flag was not displayed; the Israeli national anthem was not to be played.

What drew comparatively little attention, meanwhile, were the gestures and photos, published on the IJF website, that wrapped up the tournament: Israeli under-100 kilo bronze medalist Peter Paltchik with the UAE Judo Federation president, His Excellency Mohammad Bin Thaloub Al Darei, and Aref Al-Awani, general secretary of the Abu Dhabi Sports Council, the three of them arm in arm; and Israel Judo Association president Moshe Ponte, IJF president Marius Vizer, Al Darei and Naser Al-Tameemi, general secretary of the UAE Judo, Wrestling and Kickboxing Federation, all four hand-to-hand, as if they were breaking a huddle, U.S.-football style.

Along with the photos, there were also apologies — that a UAE athlete, after a loss, had not shaken hands with an Israeli on the tatami, as a judo mat is called.

And congratulations, too — to the Israelis for winning five medals.