The 2032 Summer Games, already? Australia? Why the rush?

The 2032 Summer Games, already? Australia? Why the rush?

The International Olympic Committee’s policy-making Executive Board announced Wednesday it would enter into “targeted dialogue” with Brisbane for the 2032 Summer Games, seemingly all but ensuring the Olympics will return to Australia 32 years after Sydney in 2000.

The announcement marks the first turn of the IOC’s new way — formally introduced in 2019 — of selecting Games hosts. No more fancy, expensive bid-city contests.

Among Olympic insiders, the Brisbane announcement had been expected for months. John Coates, head of the Australian Olympic Committee, is also the senior IOC member overseeing preparations for the Tokyo 2020/1 Games and, moreover, one of IOC president Thomas Bach’s trusted allies.

All the same, this Australia development misses the why-did-this-happen news.

That would be Doha, and the Middle East. Once again, Doha got the shaft. And the IOC missed an opportunity to at the very least inquire about an opportunity. If not worse.

83-year-old guy out, 84-year-old in: very definition of missed opportunity

83-year-old guy out, 84-year-old in: very definition of missed opportunity

One of my favorite memories of Gianna Angelopoulos, the dynamic businesswoman who rescued the Athens 2004 Summer Olympics, came the year before, at an International Olympic Committee session in Prague.

Holding court in the mezzanine area of the Prague Hilton, smoking a cigar (for real), she explained that running an Olympic organizing committee is, in fact, all about crisis management. In Athens, there were untold numbers of crises. Her job was bringing those crises to heel. Which she was doing — and, ultimately, did.

“The moment you understand that you actually do crisis management,” she was saying, “then it’s good.

“Then you feel control things. You can always expect the unexpected.”

The crisis right now in Tokyo, where the 2020/1 Games are due to open in five short months, is that the longstanding president of the organizing committee, 83-year-old Yoshiro Mori, will resign Friday over a sexist remark he made at a Feb. 3 meeting. He said that women talk too much.

What's your history? What's on your Insta page? Should it be?

What's your history? What's on your Insta page? Should it be?

Roughly twice a month, the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee sends out a fundraising appeal. Each appeal features a different Team USA athlete. So, in all, these appeals feature roughly 25 athletes a year, each of whom gets what is described as a modest fee for appearing in the USOPC advertisement.

Fundraising is big business for the USOPC. Over what is called the 2017-2020 quadrennium, it exceeded its $125 million overall goal; the final numbers are still being calculated, according to Paul Florence, senior vice president for strategy and operations. The twice-per-month appeals — which go out via direct mail and electronically — accounted for $3.54 million in 2020, up ever-so-slightly from $3.50 in 2019, Florence said.

This is the story of one such recent appeal — a tale that underscores two basic tenets.

First, athletes are entitled to their personal lives, which they assuredly can express on their social media pages. But when the USOPC opts to feature an American athlete in its fundraising materials, it should — must — perform adequate due diligence in reviewing what’s on those pages to ensure it does not undermine or contradict the Olympic values and the USOPC mission.

Second, though this story centers around track and field, it is well beyond that. To effect change going forward, it is key to understand how things not just are changing but have changed, and dramatically. Social media is increasingly central as a means for athletes to tell their own stories without using the press, which traditionally served as a filtering — and thus, in its way, a vetting — medium. The upshot: these issues can affect any and every sport. There are literally dozens in the USOC landscape. All the same, the USOPC must do such due diligence for any and every athlete it chooses to promote. Track and field is not unique. Not hardly.

How to put sport at the service of humankind

How to put sport at the service of humankind

The key purpose of the Olympic movement is not to make money. It is “to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind.”

Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, has many times said the Tokyo Olympics can — should — serve as a “beacon of hope to the world during these troubled times.”

This week, the IOC is due to reveal what it is calling the Playbook, the layers of protocols and policies it has for months been developing in a bid to pull off the Tokyo Games, Olympic and Paralympic, amid the global coronavirus pandemic. The Olympics are due to open July 23. The Paralympics are scheduled to open Aug. 24.

The Playbook, the IOC has made clear, is about trying to create safe bubbles in Tokyo. It will be revised — and revised again — as July 23 draws near.

The Playbook is essential. But there needs to be more.

Bach's legacy is upon him: the world needs not just leadership but his humanity

Bach's legacy is upon him: the world needs not just leadership but his humanity

The International Olympic Committee is due this week to hold its policy-making executive board meeting. it comes more or less with six months to go until July 23, when the Tokyo Olympics are due to commence. To make those six months feel all the more real: that’s 26 Fridays.

In March, the IOC president, Thomas Bach, is going to be re-elected to a four-year term. He has served eight already, once again more or less. These last four will be his last in the office.

Starting with this board meeting, Bach has a unique opportunity. These first eight years have been marked by a succession of crises, some unforeseeable — the Russian doping scandal, the organizational disaster that was Rio 2016, the almost-didn’t-happen PyeongChang 2018 Winter Games.

This space has many times been critical of Bach. His Agenda 2020, for instance? Not much there there. All the same, throughout these first eight years, and this is difficult indeed for Bach’s many critics — some voluble indeed — to comprehend, he has shown genuine leadership. Now he must do more. His legacy is at stake. He has the chance, starting now, to define that legacy rather than let others define it for him.

'Pray for our world': the disaster of the Trump presidency and, now, the Capitol insurrection

'Pray for our world': the disaster of the Trump presidency and, now, the Capitol insurrection

In June 2017, Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee president, held a meeting —tumultuous and all but disastrous — at the White House with Donald Trump, 45th president of the United States.

Details of the meeting, held as the IOC was working its way toward what would be an unprecedented double allocation that September of the Summer Games, Paris for 2024 and Los Angeles for 2028, have remained tightly held. Neither the IOC nor Trump have ever issued a formal statement on the matter. Trump, who posted thousands of times to Twitter before the service banned him permanently on Friday, said nary a word on the site about this particular meeting.

After the meeting broke up that June afternoon, it can be revealed, Bach turned to his mobile phone. Multiple sources confirm he said these words: “Pray for our world.”

This is Congress-driven USOPC 'reform'? A 73-year-old gets one 'athlete' board spot, a 64-year-old another

This is Congress-driven USOPC 'reform'? A 73-year-old gets one 'athlete' board spot, a 64-year-old another

Once again, we turn to maybe the very best thing Mark Twain said, a turn of phrase I noted in a column a few years back and repeat for emphasis, because when it comes to Congress and the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee, you know:

“Suppose you were an idiot,” Twain said. “And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”

In this context, we turn to the purported “reform” of the USOPC, its new members of the board of directors formally announced Monday.

After years of investigations and Congressionally mandated governance fixes purportedly designed to fix everything, this — this — is it?

Does anyone at the USOPC realize there's a world out there beyond the 50 states?

Does anyone at the USOPC realize there's a world out there beyond the 50 states?

Does anyone at the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee really think through some of the things they announce? Do they understand there is a world out there beyond the 50 states?

Do they care? Do they understand this is why the rest of the world often — and for good reason — thinks the Americans are self-righteous, self-centered and deserving of approbation and scorn?

The rest of the world hates it when we imperiously and sanctimoniously climb up and seize what we believe is the moral high ground and tell all the little people — indeed, lecture them — about what to do.

When are we ever going to stop? Ever?

Breakdancing is not the answer. What is? Wholesale change

Breakdancing is not the answer. What is? Wholesale change

The International Olympic Committee on Monday approved breakdancing — or breaking, as the IOC would have you call it — for the 2024 Summer Games in Paris, and for those who remember the spring and summer of 1983, when all the girls had leg warmers and knee warmers, yes, even in the midst of summer, and massive hair and huge shoulder pads and all of us were frosted and perfect, let’s all sing together now to Irene Cara and Flashdance. Don’t be shy. You know the words:

What a feeling

Bein's believin'

I can have it all

Now I'm dancing for my life

Take your passion

And make it happen

Pictures come alive

You can dance right through your life