IOC assembly as taxi confidential

IOC assembly as taxi confidential

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Pretty much every culture has a saying that goes something like this: what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. 

There’s a corollary that goes like this, courtesy of the late and very excellent American comedian George Carlin: let’s not have a double standard — one standard will do just fine.

So it was especially rich to listen to the International Olympic Committee, at its 132nd session, its annual congress, carry on at length Tuesday over the Russian doping saga, in particular the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport’s decision last week to clear 28 Russians of doping at the Sochi 2014 Games and free 11 other Russians of life bans. 

The outrage! The frustration! The rancor! The conflict! And it was all on television, or Twitter, or Periscope, for everyone. Such theater!

Frosty in PyeongChang

Frosty in PyeongChang

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Ryan Bailey is an American sprinter. 

He won a silver medal in the 4x100 relay at the London 2012 Summer Games. But he had to give it back because of teammate Tyson Gay’s doping conviction. Like many sprinters, Bailey then gave bobsled a go. Last January, Bailey tested positive himself for a stimulant in a case involving a dietary supplement called Weapon X. Based on a "light degree of fault,” a three-member American Arbitration Assn. panel gave him a mere six months off.

The United States Anti-Doping Agency appealed to the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport. In December, in a decision little noticed except in track and field and bobsled circles, in the arcane world of sports lawyering and of course in Ryan Bailey’s entourage, CAS slapped Bailey with two years — a signal to one and all not in the United States that anti-doping jurisprudence in the United States might well be considered, well, weak.

What in the world does this have to do with the CAS decision last Thursday to clear 28 Russians of doping at the Sochi 2014 Olympics? The prospect of an appeal from that decision to the Swiss Federal Tribunal? Tensions between the World Anti-Doping Agency, CAS and the International Olympic Committee? 

Pretty much nothing, and at the same time — it's a riff on everything.

 

Who wants to blame the USOC? Exactly -- why?

Who wants to blame the USOC? Exactly -- why?

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — The president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, opened a news conference here Sunday by reading a prepared statement that declared the IOC’s policy-making executive board was “deeply shocked and saddened” by the “abuse scandal” rocking USA Gymnastics and Michigan State.

The board also, Bach said, expressed its “moral support for the victims and applauded the courage of the victims who gave testimony.”

The IOC, Bach further said, “took note of the ongoing independent investigation,” the U.S. Olympic Committee announcing Friday it had selected New York law firm Ropes & Gray LLP to conduct the inquiry, and “hopes that this will also give clarity to the responsibilities of the different parties.”

USA Gymnastics clearly has a lot to answer for.Michigan State as well.

The FBI, too, as the New York Times made plain in a blockbuster account published over the weekend, the agency taking a year to pursue the case — the paper identifying at least 40 girls and young women who say Larry Nassar molested them between July 2015, when the matter was first reported to the FBI, and September 2016, when the Indianapolis Star published its first accounts.

For all that, an issue for many, including on Capitol Hill: what about the USOC? 

Everyone, it seems, is looking for someone to blame. It’s entirely unclear, however, that — without more — it should be the USOC.

 

 

 

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.