François Carrard was a giant -- and other thoughts

François Carrard was a giant -- and other thoughts

François Carrard has died, and the world of international and Olympic sport has lost a giant. He was 83.

Carrard knew seemingly everyone and everything. Perhaps most important, he frequently knew how to find and reach consensus in a world too often marked by polarizing disagreement.

Beyond, he was a renaissance man, learned in letters and music, especially jazz. He was unafraid to speak his mind. And he could be wickedly funny.

A small note about which some but not many people knew. When he was young, Carrard spent a year as an exchange student in the States, in Pasadena, California. There he was not “François” but “Frank.”

The 2022 'boycott' -- d-u-m-b spells U-S-A

The 2022 'boycott' -- d-u-m-b spells U-S-A

We are so dumb here in the United States when it comes to the Olympics.

More precisely, perhaps, reactive instead of proactive.

And heavy-handed and myopic.

Or maybe, really, just dumb.

President Biden’s so-called “diplomatic boycott” of the Beijing 2022 Winter Games marks yet the latest example. In this instance, the president is focused on the approval of a domestic audience and certain Anglo allies. He has been egged on by the dual echo chambers of a political class and a pliant media, both based on the East Coast, that know next to nothing about the Olympics.

In all, he is playing it, in a word, dumb.

Not to mention: being hypocritical to the max.

Again with the pre-Games FUD? Everyone deserves better. Especially the Chinese

Again with the pre-Games FUD? Everyone deserves better. Especially the Chinese

Here we go with the déjà vû all over again, only this time it’s China.

Right on schedule, it’s time for Olympic-style FUD — fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Stories about how big, bad and awful it’s all going to be at the Beijing 2022 Winter Games — especially for the dogs and mongrels of the working press — are going to be the norm from here until the opening ceremony on February 4.

Didn’t we just go through this? In Tokyo and the Summer Olympics? Where the hue and cry was that the Games were going to infect the city (didn’t happen) and that the Japanese people were against the Games (they just re-elected, comfortably, the very same majority political party to office).

Now Beijing, and the Winter Games.

The closed loop! The bubble! A “level of control never before seen at the Games,” a New York Times headline decried in a late-September story in a deliberate attempt to set the tone for Beijing 2022 coverage.

Let’s be blunt: this narrative is absurd and more. It not only shapes perceptions but feeds malicious preconceptions. And that’s inappropriate.

Time for Shelby Houlihan to come clean

Time for Shelby Houlihan to come clean

Two things ought to happen now that the Court of Arbitration for Sport has issued a technically detailed but, in the end, common-sense ruling in the matter of Shelby Houlihan, the American distance runner, banning her for four years for nandrolone — through January 2025 — while thoroughly rejecting the ridiculous burrito defense.

One, Houlihan ought to come clean.

Two, all the journalistic sheep who wanted to believe, who maybe still want to believe despite the overwhelming evidence against Houlihan, that there was no way, just no way, a white American distance runner affiliated with the Bowerman Track Club could test positive — all these people, and the readers they misled, ought to take a crash course in Doping 101 and the things people will say and do, meaning anything and everything, to avoid getting busted.

Jacques Rogge, a figure of humanity and stability

Jacques Rogge, a figure of humanity and stability

Jacques Rogge, the eighth president of the International Olympic Committee, has died, the International Olympic Committee announced Sunday, and now closes a chapter in Olympic history.

He was 79.

The fullness of time, as it always does, will tell all.

For now, it is enough to say that Rogge was a bridge — a figure of humanity and stability — between arguably the most important of the IOC presidents, Juan Antonio Samaranch, and the ninth and current president, Thomas Bach, who against considerable currents is vigorously trying to institute a series of reforms aimed at pulling the original 19th century construct that is the IOC into the 21st century.

First, Elaine Thompson-Herah. Last, and a call for context, empathy: Sha'Carri Richardson

First, Elaine Thompson-Herah. Last, and a call for context, empathy: Sha'Carri Richardson

First and foremost, let us pay tribute to Elaine Thompson-Herah, winner Saturday of the women’s 100 at the Prefontaine Classic at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon. This summer, Thompson-Herah has cemented her status as one of the finest female sprinters of all time, if not the best.

In Tokyo, Thompson-Herah completed the two-time Olympic double-double, winning — again — the women’s 100 and 200, just as she did in Rio. Then, on Saturday in Eugene, she ran 10.54 to win the 100.

10.54.

This is the second-fastest 100 ever, behind only Florence Griffith-Joyner’s 10.49 in Indianapolis in 1988. It’s a bunch of other stuff, too — personal best (obviously); world lead (ditto); national, Diamond League and meet record (same) — but the important thing is that it’s only five-hundredths back of FloJo, and ETH, as she is known in track speak, is hot, and there are meets coming up, including in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Thursday, where she is already due to race, and it’s clear she wants 10.48 or lower.

That is one story. To be blunt, Elaine Thompson-Herah deserves far more credit than she is getting from the pack of journalistic sheep covering track and field. Way, way, way more.

Gunnar Bentz quietly gets to put Rio, and all that, behind him

Gunnar Bentz quietly gets to put Rio, and all that, behind him

TOKYO — If redemption is the most American of stories, then Gunnar Bentz — five years later — gets his chance here at the Tokyo 2020 Games.

It was nearly five years ago that Bentz and three other U.S. swimmers were involved in what came to be widely known as Lochtegate, the infamous episode at the gas station at the Rio 2016 Olympics.

None of the other three are on the Tokyo team.

The IOC's new way brings the done deal of Brisbane for 2032

The IOC's new way brings the done deal of Brisbane for 2032

TOKYO — The International Olympic Committee on Wednesday confirmed Brisbane, Australia, for the 2032 Summer Games. No surprise. This deal was done months ago.

In contrast to the prior city selection process, global spectacles that would match cities against each other, contests running into the hundreds of millions of dollars, this was the IOC’s — and president Thomas Bach’s — new way of getting the job done.

Quietly, efficiently, a meet-up of a qualified city and an interested franchisor.

Will Brisbane turn out to be great? Who knows? Will the Australians turn another bit of magic, like Sydney in 2000? Who knows? What we do know is that Brisbane and Australia are secure enough, now, for the IOC and Bach to say, OK, let’s do this.

And that’s the thing — security.

Team USA to Asia this summer and next winter -- and China, take note, is rising

Team USA to Asia this summer and next winter -- and China, take note, is rising

In 2015, the American sprinter Justin Gatlin had been on fire. He came into the track and field world championships that August at the Bird’s Nest in Beijing having run the 100-meter dash in 9.74 seconds in May and then 9.75 twice, once in June and again in July.

In the world semifinals, Gatlin ran 9.77. He was, as he had been all season, the heavy favorite for gold.

In the final, nearing the finish line, Gatlin’s form caught just enough to throw him off stride. Jamaica’s Usain Bolt won the race, in 9.79. Gatlin finished in 9.80.

That race would prove emblematic of the American performance at those 2015 championships. The U.S. team won just 18 medals, only six gold. Kenya and Jamaica won more gold, both seven. Now, with the Tokyo Olympics coming up, the question is whether that 2015 trip to Asia was an aberration for the American team or whether it’s a signal of what’s to come this summer.

And, for that matter, next February — at the Beijing 2022 Winter Games.

Context and empathy, please: Richardson very unlikely to run at all in Tokyo

Context and empathy, please: Richardson very unlikely to run at all in Tokyo

Sha’Carri Richardson is not going to run in the women’s 100 meters at the Tokyo Olympics. That race is at the start of the track and field competition at the Games.

For that matter, she is very unlikely to run in the women’s 4x100 meter relay. That relay is run near the end.

“We have not focused on the relay,” her agent, Renaldo Nehemiah, said Friday afternoon in a telephone interview. “I just felt that was not healthy for her to get excited about possibly being in Tokyo. I felt it would be a shock and a surprise. Her sights are going to be on the Prefontaine Classic,” on August 21 back at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon, a World Athletics Diamond League meet.

Richardson’s 30-day marijuana-related suspension does far more than seemingly take one of the brightest young U.S. stars out of the Tokyo Games, which begin July 23.

It also highlights the need for context and empathy — and a renewed appreciation for athlete mental health — when bright young talents, burnished on the star-making machinery of television as the next big thing, are revealed behind the scenes as human beings like the rest of us, in this instance, a 21-year-old young woman desperately grieving the loss of her mother.

In this context, it also highlights the way that USA Track & Field, under the leadership of chief executive Max Siegel and chief operating officer Renee Washington, have again, indeed relentlessly, stepped up to provide precisely such empathy and athlete support — in direct contrast to the way such matters might have been dealt with in the past.