So you're telling me there's a chance?

So you're telling me there's a chance?

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Do you escalate a fight if by so doing you run the very real risk of losing a much-bigger battle?

Metaphorically speaking, this is the dilemma confronting the International Olympic Committee in the wake of a Court of Arbitration for Sport ruling earlier this week that cleared 28 Russians of doping allegations at the Sochi 2014 Games and released 11 others from life bans. The 28 are eligible for PyeongChang; the other 11, no.

That ruling immediately presented the IOC with two separate but related decision trees. A dazzling number of complexities are at issue. Let’s cut through the clutter:

1. Is the IOC under any obligation to invite the 28 to the 2018 Winter Games?

2. Should the IOC appeal the CAS ruling to the Swiss Federal Tribunal?

It's not a thing to be guilty just because you're Russian

It's not a thing to be guilty just because you're Russian

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — So predictable. Almost inevitable, really.

That checks-and-balances thing? The way a tribunal is supposed to rein in the political impulse — to find appropriate calm amid even the most heated discourse?

If you are reasonable, Thursday’s layered decision from the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport rebuffing the International Olympic Committee’s overreaching position on the Russians can be described, and elegantly, in a single word.

Justice.

Every single person in the world is entitled to have his or her case decided on the basis of the facts levied against him or her. It’s that simple. That profound, too.

Guilt by association is wrong. Judged by the company you keep — no. It’s not a thing to be guilty just because you’re Russian. 

Triumphant win for survivors? Or — opportunity lost?

Triumphant win for survivors? Or — opportunity lost?

Everyone knows the saying about talk being cheap but action, real action, is when you put your money where your mouth is.

The United States Congress, presented this week with an extraordinary opportunity to take meaningful action amid the Larry Nassar crisis enveloping USA Gymnastics and Michigan State, made it seem like it did, indeed, take that action

Indeed, after passage of a measure Tuesday, lawmakers and advocates said Congress had done exactly that. 

Is that so? Really?

Or can — indeed, should — the painful argument be made that, yet once more, the grown-ups, given the duty of looking after the children and young adults in their care, failed?

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.