As the story goes, and this was shortly before the International Olympic Committee’s vote in Singapore in 2005 to award the 2012 Summer Games, Seb Coe, Daley Thompson, Jonathan Edwards and Kelly Holmes found themselves in a room with a little time.

Each was a gold medalist in track and field. Each had earned high rank in the British sporting scene. All had played significant roles in London’s 2012 campaign — Coe, of course, chairman of the 2012 bid committee.

The conversation in the room turned to this fascinating question: Would you swap that gold medal for winning the Games?

Unhesitatingly, the answer from each came back: yes.

“We’re on track. We’re on budget,” Coe said Thursday in a conference call with reporters in advance of Saturday’s 1,000-day countdown to the start of the 2012 Summer Games in London.

“The venues are taking shape … there is nothing that we should have done that we haven’t done,” Coe, chairman of the London 2012 organizing committee since that 2005 vote, added Thursday on the call. “We are absolutely where we want to be.”

Of course, there are bound to be stumbles along the way — that’s the lot of any organizing committee — but if the London 2012 crew is where it wants to be, and they are, there’s sound reason for that.

It’s leadership and values.

This is by no means intended to diminish the contributions of the government, the 23 domestic sponsors signed to date, the thousands of workers who are even now building Olympic Stadium and the signature aquatics venue that are re-shaping east London — the changes on the ground manifestly obvious from the air on the traditional glide path down and onto the runway at Heathrow.

Rather, this is a recognition of the common denominator among all those contributions and the buy-in that has elevated 2012 from a happening in London alone to a national undertaking.

It’s all about leadership and values.

Among all major sports enterprises, only the Olympic movement is premised on a series of values. It is not in business to make money. Indeed, that very phrasing illustrates the shortcomings of language. It’s not really in business.

There are, of course, numerous business aspects to the Olympic movement but the money is, in theory, a means to an end — to the promotion of values.

Coe is living proof of the import of such values.

Track and field, as he has said many times over, changed his life — from the time he first confronted those values in earnest, when he was what we in the United States would call middle school.

The London bid was, indeed the London organizing committee is, premised on the notion of precisely that — that sport not only could but can change the lives of young people.

Not make them perfect, or saints, or immune to mistake — not kids and not Coe, now or then.

Instead, the idea has simply been to offer to young people both a measure of hope and the vision of a better way in a world marked with an unprecedented array of choices and complexities.

Many senior figures within international sports could be speaking out now about such values might help light the path to that better way — particularly amid the economic crunch of these past few months, the business climate the world over exacerbated by a far different sense of individually oriented values.

Intriguingly, Coe is one of the very few speaking out.

To be clear, he has not been doing so from some moral soapbox. He has not been preachy. Nor has he been vainglorious or egotistical or driven by the pursuit of another office within international sport — though his name has naturally surfaced when talk turns to the IOC’s next presidential election, in 2013.

There’s a lot that would have to happen for Coe to challenge seriously for the presidency, much less win. For one, the 2012 Games have to be great. For another, he would have to become an IOC member, which he currently is not.

Even so, the reason his name keeps coming up in recent months, and with increasing frequency, is that because, in significant measure, Coe gets the values thing. And that’s why he’s speaking out. It’s the right thing to do.

At an international sportswriters’ convention this spring in Milan, he said the time had come to affirm the “ageless and timeless” values on which the Olympics rest, defining them as “fairness, respect, fair play, courage, determination and, of course, equality.”

On a return trip to Singapore this past July, he told Reuters that Olympic values “are the very antithesis of the things that have got us to this position now,” a reference to the global economic challenge, adding, “I don’t believe there has ever been a better moment for the Olympic movement to drive those values.”

In Copenhagen earlier this month, at the IOC congress, he said, “Throughout history, great political, technological or artistic movement has come out of periods of great adversity: the United Nations from World War II, satellite technology from the Cold War, great jazz from the Great Depression.

“We meet today in another time of adversity,” another reference to the financial collapse. “But in that adversity lies opportunity. The Olympic movement has a once-in-a-generation opportunity, I would say a responsibility, to better define and imbed its timeless values.”

On the phone Thursday, he said, “We rattle off values … do we ever get behind them?”

In Copenhagen and again on Thursday, he told the story of a schoolboy he encountered last month who was standing up to others who were bullying a classmate. That, Coe said, is courage.

That’s not some abstract talk about “values.” That’s living proof, and that’s why — again, for those tempted to dismiss talk of values as naive or abstract  — it’s why London 2012 was able to nail down its top tier of sponsors even before the Beijing Games last year, why it already has raised roughly $900 million in sponsorships, the target $1.1 billion eminently achievable with 1,002 days to go.

Of course businesses want in — because they want themselves to be identified with a proposition that, rooted in values, adds value.

“We have to understand,” Coe said Thursday, “what those values mean and how we can help them live and breathe within the Olympic movement. That is a really essential ingredient for an organizing committee to understand and enshrine in the way it delivers the Games.”

It is, indeed.

And it’s why London 2012 is on track.

–

Meanwhile:

The U.S. Olympic Committee on Thursday announced the make-up of the nine-member search committee charged with finding a new chief executive.

It includes representatives of various USOC constituencies. Predictably. This is the USOC way.
Nine people is way too many. A working group of three to five could get this done. Simply put, it’s unreasonable to expect consensus from nine people around anything – in this case a search, and more so this particular search, because it is, among other matters, so politically charged.

Some further observations:

The USOC is in a bind – of its own doing, let’s be clear. It has engaged a search firm because of the obvious – the braying from any number of stakeholders that would predictably follow what should happen here, the short-listing of the few truly qualified candidates and the picking of one of them.

Two, the search had better go quickly. Which, odds are, it won’t. There’s supposed to be a new CEO by the end of the year. It’s nine weeks from next Monday until 2010. And, of course, one of those weeks includes Thanksgiving and the other Christmas.

Three, and this isn’t in the press release, the USOC won’t pay the search firm, Spencer Stuart, until 18 months after the chief executive is in place. Even then, payment — not just the when but the amount — will be at the USOC’s discretion, USOC spokesman Patrick Sandusky said.

In the typical case, a search such as this one might well run to $200,000, perhaps even north of that. If you were, say, at U.S. Speedskating, suddenly facing the loss of $300,000 in sponsorship money because of a bank failure, wouldn’t you be keen to keep tabs on how much this search will end up costing?

–

According to an Associated Press report, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, speaking at the opening of a gym and cultural center in Rio de Janeiro, said Wednesday of his expectations for the performance of the nation’s athletes at the Rio 2016 Summer Games, “Brazil won’t host the Olympics [and allow] the gringos to come here and win our medals.”

Earlier this year, Lula had said of the global economic downturn, “It is a crisis caused and encouraged by the irrational behavior of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything, but are now showing that they know nothing.”

Please, sir, Mr. President: are these sorts of racially tinged comments truly in keeping with the aspirational ideals the Olympic movement seeks to advance?

Imagine, if you will, the outcry were President Obama to make such statements.

If there’s thus a double standard at issue here, one final question — is that really OK?

It’s Halloween this week. This space, for those handing out candy at the door, prefers Milk Duds.

In the meantime:

1. U.S. Olympic Committee chairman Larry Probst met Tuesday at Electronic Arts headquarters near San Francisco with a number of U.S. sports federation leaders, the meeting not exactly secret but not exactly publicized, either. Probst made it abundantly clear he intends to stay in the post.

He also spent a fair amount of the meeting, which started at 9 Tuesday morning and went for a little more than two hours, listening to those on hand relay their observations about what’s right and what’s not with the USOC.

The meeting produced a positive vibe — the sort of thing Probst probably should have done a year ago, when he took over the chairmanship from Peter Ueberroth, whose term expired.

Even so, the meeting Tuesday also raised a number of questions. Among them: the topic that perhaps emerged as the meeting’s primary focus, the new CEO — whoever he or she turns out to be. Stephanie Streeter, the acting chief executive, has announced her intent to depart.

Probst has detailed a list of qualifications for the CEO job. It includes a lot of travel on behalf of the USOC.

Whoever the next CEO is and however much he or she travels — that’s all well and good. But reality will remain that the chief executive will be seen in international circles as the “secretary general” of the USOC and thus of secondary importance to the “president.” Who is, given USOC nomenclature, the board chairman — who is of course now Probst.

Probst has declared that he’s now all in. Is he?

2. A retired Chinese sports minister says in a recently released memoir that Chinese officials promised to support Jacques Rogge’s 2001 bid to head the International Olympic Committee in exchange for European backing for Beijing’s bid for the 2008 Summer Games, also decided in 2001.

The IOC denies there was a deal.

An Associated Press account says Yuan Weimin wrote in the memoir that while there was no deal in writing, multiple meetings yielded a mutual understanding of support if Rogge won the election.

“The Beijing Olympic bid committee decided on a tactic of strategic alliance-making. We would link Chinese support for Rogge in exchange for European committee members’ support for Beijing,” Yuan said in his memoir, according to AP. “Of course, we also made some promises to link up with some of our friends in supporting Rogge. This tactic was our overall strategy.”

Reaction: Why this memoir, and why now?

It adds — what? It was undeniably Rogge’s time in 2001, just as it was Beijing’s. Both he and Beijing were clearly going to win, and both did, convincingly.

Also this: The bid city election came first, on July 13, 2001. The presidential election, at the same IOC assembly in Moscow, followed three days later, on July 16. Maybe something has been lost in translation — but just wondering if there isn’t a cart-before-the-horse issue? How could there have been a deal to swing support to Beijing upon the election of Rogge if the election of Rogge came after the vote for the 2008 city?

3. The upswing in violence in Rio de Janeiro since the city’s election to play host to the 2016 Summer Games, including the downing by drug gangsters of a police helicopter, has drawn front-page headlines.

In a column shortly before the IOC vote, I wrote at length about the security issue in Rio, citing a provocative story by Jon Lee Anderson in the New Yorker magazine.

Anderson has written a follow-up. It is worth reading.

4. It is melancholy, indeed, that Jack Poole, who helped lead Vancouver’s bid for the 2010 Games, has passed away just weeks before those Games open. Poole, 76, died last Friday from pancreatic cancer.

5. It is all the more melancholy that he died just hours after the Olympic flame was lit in ancient Olympia. The flame is due to arrive Friday on Canada’s West Coast. It will travel back across and through most of the rest of Canada before arrival Feb. 12 at the opening ceremony of the 2010 Winter Games.

6. The IOC was granted observer status last week at the United Nations. It’s a significant step. Yet it drew comparatively little press coverage. You wonder why.

USOC international relations efforts helped the IOC gain such status. Yet that, too, drew comparatively little press coverage. Again, you wonder why.

7. Also worth reading: Harvey Schiller’s latest blog entry about Chicago’s unsuccessful 2016 bid.

8. Chinese swim coach Zhou Ming, supposedly banned for life after doping-related scandals in the 1990s, was seen on deck at the recent Chinese national games, coaching swimmers, according to an account that could be found, for instance, on the Swimming World web site, photos included.

As the story points out — and as anti-doping officials presumably must now address — what, precisely, does it mean to be banned for life yet show up on deck?

9. Swim star Dara Torres on the mend from knee surgery, on Twitter: “Bored. My doc’s PA gave me 1st season of Gossip Girl…can’t believe I just admitted I”m going to watch this.”

10. Finally, this, too, from Twitter: “@London2012team: Oct 31 will be 1000 days until the London 2012 Games. What do you want to have achieved 1000 days from now?”

Presenting just some of what’s happening in the Olympic movement, bracketed beginning and end with an it’s-only-rock-and-roll tinge.

Because I like it:

1. Required reading: Doug Logan’s newest blog entry at the USA Track & Field website, a vivid first-person encapsulation of the point I have been making repeatedly, that American sports officials must learn to play international sports politics the way others play the game.

Thought: Doug Logan for USOC chief executive? Let’s see: He has experience in international sports (track and field as well as soccer). He’s fluent in Spanish. He has extensive business experience.

Hmm. Aren’t those precisely the requirements for the job as laid out by USOC board chairman Larry Probst?

Those who might suggest Logan’s age (66) works against him — let’s match your schedule against his. Probst says he wants someone who’s willing to travel; Logan is genuinely, as the saying goes, a road warrior.

Those who might persist in suggesting Logan’s age works against him — Logan is the same age as Mick Jagger.

2. The U.S. Olympic Committee ought to take the opportunity afforded by Chicago’s unceremonious first-round exit from the 2016 race to assess the realities and perceptions of itself being located in Colorado Springs, Colo., or as it might well say on the map, middle of nowhere.

Keep the training complex. There is real value in having a center for high-performance altitude training. Indeed, the USOC will play host this week to a high-altitude training symposium in the Springs at which, among others, Bob Bowman, Michael Phelps’ coach, is due to appear.

The issue, though, is whether the USOC’s executive office ought to be in Colorado Springs, arguably as insular a place geographically and in many cultural respects as one might find.

The answer: No.

Move to (take your pick) Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago or New York.

Any of the four would make for an appropriate and emphatic affirmation in a long-term USOC plan to redefine itself.

3. The world artistic gymnastics championships, just now finished up in London, produced five American medals on the women’s side, including a one-two by Bridget Sloan and Rebecca Bross in the all-around. At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Americans Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson went one-two in the all-around.

Can we all now acknowledge the obvious?

First, that USA Gymnastics’ women’s developmental system is a first-rate partnership. It relies on local clubs and coaches to identify and work day-to-day with talent, and then wraps in the national-level camps and high-level training at the Karolyi ranch in Texas.

Second, that if Martha Karolyi, the women’s team national coordinator, is demanding, and she is, it’s because she demands excellence. The athletes respond. Isn’t that the mark of a truly great coach?

4. Phelps will be among those on the U.S. team when it takes part Dec. 18-19 in the Mutual of Omaha-sponsored “Duel in the Pool,” in Manchester, England, featuring four teams: American, British, Italian and German.

It’s a “short-course” meet, meaning a 25-meter pool, and it ought to be intriguing to see Phelps swim at that distance.

The Olympic distance, which in swim jargon is called “long course,” means 50-meter laps.

The Manchester complex is the same one used at the 2002 Commonwealth Games, and it’s where Ian Thorpe went 3:40.08 in the 400-meter freestyle, the world record that Germany’s Paul Biedermann broke by one-hundredth of a second at the 2009 FINA championships in Rome.

Look for Phelps as well at meets in Stockholm Nov. 10-11 and in Berlin Nov. 14-15 — serving in essence as the U.S. national senior team rep at these meets, which are on the junior-team calendar. Those are both short-course meets as well.

Phelps has quietly asserted in recent months a desire to assume an entirely appropriate role — given that the 2008 Olympics were his third Games — as one of the senior leaders of the U.S. team. The European swing in November and December: evidence.

5. Alberto Castagnetti, the longtime head coach of the Italian swim team, recently passed away, most unexpectedly. I sat next to him for a good chunk of one session at the 2008 U.S. Trials one and now, not even a year and a half later, he’s gone. He was 66.

“He certainly was the face of the Italian national team for a long time and had done an outstanding job,” said Mark Schubert, the U.S. head coach. “It’s a great loss to the swimming community.”

Castagnetti will be long remembered for his description of the plastic-oriented bodysuits that helped contribute, some say significantly, to the rash of world records over the past two years in the pool. “Technological doping,” he said.

6. Perhaps Channel News Asia is not high on your daily reading.

It is a sure thing, however, that a story on its website in recent days was made available to each and every member of the International Olympic Committee, which daily distributes selected clippings from around the world.

And that story once again is sure to contribute, right or wrong, fair or not, to perceptions of the United States within the IOC — because it says that American swimmers will not be competing in the inaugural Youth Olympic Games next summer in Singapore.

The story also says that U.S. cyclists and shooters won’t be taking part in the event, designed for teen competitors. That’s interesting but not key. The key is the swimmers because the U.S. swim team, with Phelps in particular, has played a lead role at the 2004 and 2008 Summer Games and is likely to reprise that role in London in 2012.

The story is not new. The Washington Post, for instance, had it more than a month ago. It’s news again now because two senior IOC members, including Ser Miang Ng of Singapore, now an IOC vice president, were quoted as urging the Americans to show up.

It’s relevant but difficult indeed to explain overseas an entire range of perfectly legitimate set of domestic considerations — how, for instance, YOG falls at an awkward time in the U.S. swimming calendar, with the American effort already aiming in 2010 for London and 2012 and thus focused next summer on the national championships and on the leading international meet of the year, the Pan Pacific.

The calendar itself underscores such considerations. The nationals are due to be held Aug. 3-7; the Pan Pacs Aug. 18-22; YOG Aug. 14-26.

It’s also worth noting that it’s entirely unclear whether YOG is going to achieve the very thing its boosters assert, which is connecting young people to sport and the Olympic movement.

Again, that’s of interest but not key.

Here’s what matters to readers of the IOC’s daily digest: YOG is a, and perhaps the, priority of Jacques Rogge, the IOC president.

To close the circle:

When it comes to choosing the cities that get to stage the Olympic Games, the only voters who matter are the ones reading the IOC daily digest. And the primary way to impress such voters is to keep impressing them time and again, and particularly when you’re not asking or seeking anything — which is assuredly the position the United States is in now, at least in Olympic bid circles.

This matters, too, and it illustrates how certain figures within the U.S. Olympic scene get what the movement is all about — because when asked about the situation, Chuck Wielgus,the executive director of USA Swimming, said Monday in a telephone interview, “We’re happy to revisit it.”

7. There won’t be a U.S. bid for the 2018 Winter Games. That’s surely disappointing to would-be organizers in Denver and in the Reno/Lake Tahoe areas but let’s be blunt — no U.S. bid could win.

Only three cities are in the 2018 hunt, the IOC to decide in 2011: Pyeongchang, South Korea; Annecy, France; and Munich.

Munich would seem the early front-runner.

Then again, Thomas Bach of Germany is also believed to be a front-runner for the IOC presidency, to be decided in 2013.

If you are the Munich bid: what are the odds the IOC is going to give Germany the  Games in 2011 and then elect a German member its president just two years later?

8. Austria’s Hermann Maier announced his retirement from competitive skiing. Watching Maier ski was like watching New Zealand’s Jonah Lomu play rugby — here comes the hammer, and at full speed.

Here’s to the Herminator. No one ever had more courage.

9. Steve Lopez recently won his fifth world championship in taekwondo. Lopez also has three Olympic medals, two gold. Staggering. If Steve Lopez played in the NFL, he would be a star on the order of Brett Favre or Peyton Manning.

10. Headline: “Springsteen Rocks the Pessoa/USEF Hunt Seat Meal Final at the 64th Pennsylvania National Horse Show.”

That would be 17-year-old Jessica Springsteen, who defeated 237 other riders to win the nation’s top equitation prize.

Jessica’s famous father is the one and only Bruce. Jessica’s famous mother is Patti Scialfa, often seen with Dad onstage with the legendary E Street Band.

For those wondering, given the E Street concert schedule: Both Mom and Dad were on hand to cheer their daughter on, according to the U.S. Equestrian Federation release.

Of course. Because as Mick might have said, or maybe even Susan Boyle, wild horses couldn’t drag them away.

In mid-August, Larry Probst, the chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee, traveled to Berlin. He met there with International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge. The two agreed the USOC would put the proposed launch of its television network on hold.

A very few American journalists were in Berlin for the track and field championships. On extraordinarily short notice, Pat Sandusky, the Chicago 2016 bid spokesman, rounded us up for a brief news conference at which Probst asserted, “We want to work cooperatively with the IOC.”

From a communications and strategy standpoint, that was a high point – amid some very low moments over the summer and early fall – for the USOC.

And it stands now, given the announcement Wednesday that the USOC has retained Sandusky as its chief communications officer, as evidence of good sense – a quality that would not immediately appear to be robust in an assessment of USOC strategy, direction and performance throughout these past several months of 2009.

Sandusky is due to serve in the post through the Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic Games. It’s not clear whether he’ll stay on past that, given the realities – that is, whether he would want to and, as well, whether whoever is in charge of the USOC by next spring would want him.

Chicago’s 2016 bid ultimately got thrown out in the first round of IOC voting. Rio  de Janeiro won, in balloting that not only illustrated the IOC’s keen desire to take the Games for the first time to South America but underscored the depth of IOC disenchantment with the USOC over the botched TV launch and a variety of other disputes.

In the aftermath of the IOC’s Oct. 2 vote, the USOC’s acting chief executive, Stephanie Streeter, announced she would not seek the job on a permanent basis. A new CEO is now due on the job by the end of 2009, the USOC avowedly committed to a nationwide search for a candidate – a waste of time and money that could be better spent on the athletes it purports to serve.

The developments involving Streeter and the CEO position came as leaders of the governing bodies of U.S. Olympic sports issued a no-confidence vote in both Streeter and Probst.

Last Friday, however, the USOC board of directors voted by “overwhelming majority” – note it was not unanimous –  “in support of” both Streeter and Probst.

The board’s action was hardly unexpected.

Six years ago, when the USOC’s then-chief executive, Lloyd Ward, found himself under fire, the initial reaction was very much the same – declarations of support. Two months later, Ward was gone.

If the current board hoped that last Friday’s announcement of support would put to rest the unrest triggered by Chicago’s unceremonious first-round exit – the unrest remains considerable.

If the USOC were a public institution, for instance, susceptible to Freedom of Information Act requests, it would be fascinating to see Probst’s calendars and to document just how many hours per week he devoted to USOC affairs and, moreover, how many trips he took and with how many of the IOC members he held significant meetings over the last year in connection with the Chicago 2016 campaign. Would those numbers amount to less of the IOC membership, or more?

The USOC is not susceptible to such requests. Even so, it was chartered by Congress, and oversight of the USOC remains still with Congress. Perhaps Probst’s calendars might yet pique interest there.

“I’ve never met him,” one of the 15 members on the IOC’s policy-making executive board said late last week, speaking of Probst. If asked, how many others on the IOC board would today say the same?

Chicago, it’s clear in hindsight, faced probably insurmountable odds given the emotional pull of Rio’s pitch. But the USOC, Chicago’s “partner” in the campaign, made matters that much more challenging for the bid, and while in part that’s because of the leadership decisions that led to missteps such as the July television announcement, you can’t help but wonder if it’s also because for the stretch run of the campaign the USOC operated without a chief communications officer.

Reality check: What political campaign goes the final four months before a vote without a press secretary?

That’s what the USOC did. Darryl Seibel announced in May he was leaving in early June. The USOC’s chief communications job had since gone unfilled.

Maybe the USOC would have gone ahead in July with the TV announcement no matter what. But certainly Seibel, if he had been in the job then, would have pointed out in the inevitable internal discussions beforehand the obvious drawbacks to the announcement.

The USOC’s communications strategy is so stagnant that when you click on what’s called Press Box, the USOC site for news releases, this is what it says atop the page:  “pressbox, part of usolympicteam.com, official site of the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team.” Hello – 2008 is over. It’s almost 2010.

In late May, Sports Business Journal reported, the USOC had engaged Ari Fleischer, the former White House press secretary during the early years of George W. Bush’s first term, as a consultant. Putting aside for a moment the issue of whether it was a good idea for the USOC to ally itself with a figure so intimately connected to the former president, whose foreign policy remains a source of considerable controversy, Fleischer’s webpage offers this observation, “The way the press treats athletes and sports executives has become increasingly adversarial and conflict-driven.”

Which may be altogether true – but is simply not a starting premise for getting ahead in the relationship-driven Olympic community.

By contrast, Sandusky gets what works.

“I really believe in the power of the Olympic movement and I want to be involved in making the Olympic movement better at all times,” he said Wednesday, adding of the USOC gig, “This is a great opportunity.”

For the USOC, too. They hired him because he’s got insight. Would that those he’s advising actually listen.

COPENHAGEN — The marathon that was the International Olympic Committee’s 121st session and XIII congress ground Friday to a close, more than a week after it commenced. (The session is the IOC’s annual assembly, the congress a think tank that takes place perhaps every dozen years. Together in Copenhagen they made for one very long meeting. Why is the session formally referred to with one style of numbers, the congress another? Don’t ask).

Here are the winners and losers:

– Jacques Rogge

Big winner. The IOC president, elected in 2001 to an eight-year term succeeding Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain, was re-elected Friday to a second (and final) term of four years. Rogge was the only candidate Friday for the presidency. The vote: 88-1, with three abstentions.

Also Friday, the IOC voted rugby and golf into the 2016 Games, resolving a battle that had dragged on for virtually all of Rogge’s first term over the make-up of the sports on the Olympic program. Last Friday, of course, the IOC selected Rio de Janeiro for 2016, a move that fixes Rogge’s legacy as the president who presided over IOC expansion to China and then to South America. Plus, with Chicago’s defeat, attributable in large measure to dissatisfaction within the IOC with the U.S. Olympic Committee, Rogge now enjoys considerable leverage in dealing with the USOC in a longstanding dispute over broadcast and marketing revenues.

Rogge skillfully played a strong hand in Copenhagen, making it abundantly plain he is in firm control of the IOC. Even Samaranch said so, the former president declaring from the dais, “With your leadership, I think I can say the International Olympic Committee is stronger than ever. Congratulations, president.”

Italy’s Mario Pescante, speaking immediately after being elected an IOC vice president Friday, announced, “It seems to me to be somewhat superfluous to state here my loyalty to President Rogge and to the Olympic family. It’s my whole life …”

The IOC votes by secret ballot. Little birdies would love to know who had the temerity in the presidential balloting to vote no — and, moreover, why three members would travel however far it was to come to an IOC session, where the entire point is to vote, and then take a pass.

The Prince of Orange, a Dutch royal who said he had left the assembly early Thursday and didn’t get the memo that Friday’s start time had been moved up a half hour, to 8:30 a.m., missed the re-election vote entirely. The prince apologized from the floor and declared he assuredly would have voted for Rogge.

The presidential balloting Friday immediately triggered speculation about who might succeed Rogge in 2013. Possibilities, in no particular order: Thomas Bach of Germany, Richard Carrion of Puerto Rico, Jean-Claude Killy of France, Nawal el-Moutawakel of Morocco, Sergei Bubka of the Ukraine, Sebastian Coe of Great Britain, Ser Miang Ng of Singapore.

– USOC

Big, big loser. Chicago got booted in the first round, exposing the USOC’s fundamental weaknesses. The only certainty for the near future for the USOC is profound uncertainty.

Chicago got a mere 18 votes despite President Obama’s personal appeal here in Copenhagen, an appearance that came precisely one week before the president was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Which, in its way, is precisely what the IOC says it’s all about — yet, to reiterate, only 18 votes went Chicago’s way. Could anything underscore more the dismal regard within the IOC for the USOC?

– Rio de Janeiro

Winner. Big time. When you win 66-32 in an IOC bid-city election, that’s emphatic.

– Vancouver

Winner. It’s next up in the spotlight, the Winter Games beginning next February, and organizers came to Copenhagen to say their venues are ready and they believe their budget will be balanced despite the global economic downturn. Bring on the red Hudson’s Bay souvenir mittens, the Vancouver version of the Salt Lake City blue Roots beret.

– Rugby

Winner. The vote Friday admitting seven-a-side rugby to the 2016 and 2020 Games, the 2020 entry subject to review in 2017, capped one of the most skillful and sophisticated campaigns ever mounted within IOC circles. It would hardly be a surprise if sooner than later the International Rugby Board president, Bernard Lapasset, is himself made an IOC member.

The vote to include rugby: 81-8, with one abstention.

The rugby tournament at the Olympics will feature 12 men’s teams and 12 women’s teams, with 12 athletes on each team. “Rugby and Rio were made for each other,” Mike Miller, the IRB’s secretary general, said.

– Golf

Winner. It’s not so much about Ernie Els and Tiger Woods as it is other parts of the package, and in particular women’s golf. At the Summer Games, golf will feature 60 women and 60 men, both tourneys promising to offer medal opportunities to athletes from nations that traditionally are not high in the medals counts.

“With your support,” Michelle Wie told the IOC before the vote, speaking from the lectern and recounting how she had started playing golf at age 4, “I can dream about being an Olympian …

“I can dream of doing something that not even Tiger or even Ernie has ever done, and that is to make the final putt to win an Olympic gold medal. If this dream comes true, somewhere in the world there will be another 4-year old girl who will … perhaps start her own Olympic dream.”

Woods, speaking in a video taped this week at the Presidents Cup event in San Francisco, professed that “decency and fairness” were hallmarks of both golf and the Olympics and “respectfully” asked the IOC for favorable consideration.

The vote: 63-27, with two abstentions.

“We’re not concentrating on 27 votes,” Ty Votaw, executive director of the International Golf Federation, said afterward. “We’re just happy with the 60-plus,” he said. He flashed a smile of relief and gratitude and pronounced that majority “enlightened individuals” even as he vowed to keep working with any and all dissenters — the dissent perhaps a product more of the process by which golf was presented to the members rather than a reflection of the sport itself. Demographically speaking, after all, golf and the IOC were made for each other.

For golf’s leaders, the profound significance of the vote Friday goes well beyond the Games; it affords an unmatched opportunity to grow the game in China and in other developing nations. Olympic sports typically are eligible in many countries for government funding.

As with the case of rugby, golf was admitted for 2016 and 2020, the place on the 2020 program subject to review in 2017.

– Baseball and softball

Losers. Rugby and golf in, baseball and softball out for 2012 and 2016.

But wait. Don’t be surprised to see both baseball and softball on display in Rio in 2016. Not on the formal Olympic program but — just wait and see.

In a potentially related development, the backstage churn that makes the IOC a political scientist’s dream is already rich with possibilities for 2020. After the 2012 London Summer Games, the IOC program goes from 26 “core” sports to 25. Taekwondo would appear to be most at risk. Why? To begin, it is even now undergoing yet another internal leadership battle, and the sequence and style of those campaigns has not played well within Olympic circles. Also, there are other combat sports on the program, including boxing and judo. Moreover, taekwondo’s 2009 world championships take place next week, here in Copenhagen; there’s almost no hint anywhere in the city that the event is forthcoming. It’s now four years to a decision but the query can already be heard: Can taekwondo keep justifying its place on the Olympic program?

Let’s say a spot would open for 2020. A proposal: Baseball and softball take a lesson from golf, rugby, wrestling and boxing, and become one sport with men’s and women’s disciplines. Call that entry “diamond sports.” Softball, meanwhile, undergoes a related re-branding, and goes by “fast-pitch” (the name “softball” is, believe it or not, a drag on its standing). “Fast-pitch” stays in the public eye by staging a “World Classic” at Yankee Stadium featuring the United States, China, Australia and Japan. Who could resist?

Harvey Schiller, the U.S. president of the International Baseball Federation, wrote in a blog posted Thursday, in yet another expression of dissatisfaction this week with USOC leadership, “I’ve been asked many times if these leaders supported Baseball’s return to the 2016 games. The answer is NO!”

– Craig Reedie

Winner. The British IOC member was elected Friday to the IOC’s policy-making executive board for a four-year term, becoming the first Briton on the board since 1961, only the third Briton ever in IOC history — remarkable given the key British role in the development of modern sport. Reedie played a leading role in ensuring London’s 2012 Games win in 2005. Now he gets to serve on the IOC board for the years leading up to the London Games.

Along with Pescante, Ng was elected an IOC vice president. That figured, because Singapore will be staging the first Youth Olympic Games in 2010.

Also elected to the 15-member executive board: John Coates of Australia.

– Mike Lee

Winner. The resume of the British strategist now shows that he helped direct London’s winning 2012 bid, Rio’s winning 2016 bid and rugby’s winning campaign.

Again, for emphasis: 66 votes for Rio, 81 for rugby.

– Denmark

Winner. The nation’s crown prince, Frederik, was elected an IOC member on Friday; as of the close of the 2009 session, the IOC membership roll totals 112. Frederik’s approval was cause for such rejoicing within the Danish press corps that a huge shout of joy went out upon the announcement.

– Mohamed Mzali

Loser, and the staggering thing is that in the 21st century the IOC is still dealing with this kind of regressive thinking, even if infrequently, because the environment apparently remains susceptible to such sentiment being voiced out loud: “You may accuse me of [being] old-fashioned,” the 83-year-old Mzalli, an IOC member from Tunisia since 1965, the former prime minister of his country, said Friday from the floor as the IOC assembly wound to a close.

“I have difficulty imagining young women, good figures, who are going to be victims of punches and who will have black eyes, who will maybe bleed, who will receive maybe hard knocks on their breasts, which are meant to feed babies. I would hate to see women hurt and maybe faint in the ring. But I will vote in favor of the decision taken by the executive board,” he said, referring to the board’s previously announced move to add women’s boxing to the Olympic program beginning in 2012.

Anita DeFrantz, the senior IOC member to the United States and chair of the IOC’s “Women and Sport” commission, responded a few moments later from the floor, “Unfortunately, that approach to women’s desire to take part in sport … has been troublesome for so long.”

COPENHAGEN — There’s a saying about the worth of free advice. You get what you pay for and all that.

There’s also a saying about unsolicited advice, how it presumes that the recipient doesn’t know what to do or can’t do it on his own.

Here’s what I’m saying the day after the U.S. Olympic Committee announced that it was launching a search for a full-time chief executive and that acting CEO Stephanie Streeter was not going to be a candidate:

– Ditch the search. There’s no point.

USOC board chairman Larry Probst enumerated the qualifications in a teleconference Wednesday with reporters. Those qualifications narrow the list of candidates to a few, and the most obvious are easily divined: Chuck Wielgus, who runs USA Swimming, and Steve Penny, at USA Gymnastics.

This is not rocket science. Per Probst: Familiarity with the Olympic movement and international sport. Business experience. Language skills a plus.

Bring Wielgus and Penny in for interviews, along with maybe a couple others. (A prior column offers the start of a list.) Then exercise some common sense and judgment.

Searches are expensive, and the USOC hardly needs to spend the money, especially not after laying off 54 employees earlier this year. Plus, the USOC’s track record with searches is not encouraging, turning up the likes of Norm Blake and Lloyd Ward, business executives whose unfamiliarity with the nuance of the way the Olympic scene works led in both instances to short tenures and contributed to the perception of the USOC as a revolving door.

“The idea that they keep picking washing machine manufacturer or insurance company executives [at the USOC] is just silly,” Dick Ebersol, the chairman of NBC Universal Sports & Olympics, said Thursday in a telephone interview. “This could all be accomplished in six or seven weeks.”

[A note: I am an NBC employee. NBC is a joint-venture partner with Universal Sports. As I have underscored before in this space, Ebersol does not tell me what to write. To not reach out to him for purposes of this column, when he has played a very public role in the aftermath of the 2016 election, would be journalistically irresponsible.]

– Show Streeter the door now.

In that teleconference, Streeter indicated an intent to stay on through the Vancouver Games. And on Thursday, the USOC’s “athletes’ advisory council” released a statement saying it was “profoundly concerned with the direction” of the USOC but urging in the interest of stability because of Vancouver that she stay on the job until “after her permanent replacement is named,” whenever that might be.

For her to stay, however, holds abundant possibility to prove counter-productive in the extreme. For one, her authority is thoroughly undermined because everyone knows she already has announced the intent to leave. For another, the leaders of the U.S. sports federations on Wednesday expressed a vote of no-confidence in both Streeter and Probst.

It is entirely reasonable, too, to wonder whether leaving Streeter in the post only enhances the possibilities for retribution and vindictiveness. Once the break is made — make the break.

Moreover, keeping Streeter in the job through the Vancouver Olympics amounts to a huge waste of the opportunity — to move with purpose among the IOC — those 2010 Winter Games represents.

“Don’t blow this opportunity,” Ebersol cautioned. “There isn’t another big dance for 30 months after Vancouver,” meaning another Games until the Summer Olympics in London in 2012.

– Bring in someone just to keep the wheels running.

Call Harvey Schiller, for instance. He used to run the USOC once upon a time and is now the president of the international baseball federation.

Or Scott Blackmun, another former USOC chief executive. He’s exceedingly capable. He even lives in Colorado Springs.

– Just wondering why, by the way, if Streeter said she had made the decision not to go for the job six weeks ago she waited until Wednesday to make that announcement.

The timing seems peculiar.

If Streeter wanted to wait until after the International Olympic Committee’s vote in Copenhagen — which of course saw Chicago dumped in the first round, Rio winning the 2016 — that’s understandable. A pre-vote announcement of her departure wouldn’t have made any political sense. But after the vote was lost, why wait five days?

Why not first thing Monday?

It was as the workday was getting underway Wednesday in Colorado Springs that the USOC let it be known an announcement of some sort would be forthcoming in about an hour.

The timing enabled the USOC to put out the statement announcing Streeter’s departure just a couple hours before the governing bodies of U.S. sports released to the press their no-confidence vote.

That way it could look more like she walked out the door instead of being pushed, couldn’t it? Coincidence?

– Probst’s departure, meanwhile, is now inevitable. Wouldn’t it be better to avoid a drawn-out process? There’s a USOC board teleconference on Friday.

Probst said in the conference call Wednesday with reporters that he’s willing to be all-in. He hasn’t been. And that has been the problem with his chairmanship, which he assumed a year ago.

Probst has an extensive business background. He has been at video giant Electronic Arts since 1984, rising to become its president, now its chairman of the board. So let’s frame this in a business context: Let’s say EA spent $50 million in an effort to land a $4.8 billion project. The campaign bombed. Afterward, the chief salesperson on the campaign came into the boss’ office and said — you know what, now I get it, and I’ve decided that from now on I’m really gung-ho about working here!

Seriously?

The challenge going forward is both fit and credibility. Probst’s background is not in sports. The Olympics is a sports enterprise with business attributes; it’s not per se a business, and the IOC, to be clear, is a club.  Within the club, Probst will be seen for a very long time as the guy who was in charge of a U.S. effort that got 18 votes just a few short hours after the charismatic president of his country made an unprecedented personal appeal. In addition, Probst is the guy who didn’t show up at IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, this past June when almost everyone who’s anyone in the Olympics was there for a presentation by all four 2016 bids — Rio, Chicago, Madrid and Tokyo. (Streeter didn’t appear at that June event, either.)

It’s so telling that Probst is not in Copenhagen through the end of the IOC session. This IOC meeting is crazy long — most of the members arrived a week or more ago, and the assembly doesn’t conclude until Friday — and it’s understandable on the one hand why after the Chicago defeat the U.S. delegation would head home. Further, Probst is smart enough to know Chicago’s loss would ignite controversy, and perhaps he wanted to be home to better deal with it.

Then again, isn’t there merit in being visible all week in Copenhagen? Wouldn’t that be demonstrating humility after Chicago got whipped as well as showing solidarity with the others in IOC circles?

Compare: Carlos Nuzman is here. He’s the president of the Brazilian Olympic Committee who headed the Rio 2016 campaign. Yes, he went home for a whirlwind 36 hours after Rio’s win. But he came right back, and on Thursday night he held court at a corner table inside the bar at the Marriott, the IOC’s base here.

– For all the chatter about Streeter and her influence (or not) in the international arena, the real player in IOC circles ought to be the Probst figure, meaning the president of the Olympic committee or, in current USOC parlance, the board chair. That’s Nuzman’s role, for instance.

Here is the dilemma in the wake of the long-term plan that Probst on the Wednesday teleconference identified, the notion that it might take 10 or 20 years to turn matters around in the international sphere: USOC bylaws include term limits.

There’s a sound reason for that — the experience of those who vividly recall the power plays executed during some prior regimes.

What’s the solution? It’s not clear.

Here’s a thought: The IOC needs to add another member in the United States, someone whose membership is not dependent on ties to the USOC and who could stay around the scene long enough. Right now there are only two Americans on the IOC, Anita DeFrantz and Jim Easton, and in recent years their political utility has not proven vital.

Suggestions (again, just the start of a list): Michael Lenard, a former USOC vice president who now helps administer an international sports tribunal; Mike Plant, the 2010 Vancouver team leader now on the USOC board; Peter Vidmar, the Olympic champion who is now president of USA Gymnastics; Dan Doctoroff, who headed the 2012 New York bid who now heads media giant Bloomberg.

– Another suggestion, this one for the coming weeks: Authorize Lenard, Plant and Schiller, and send them to Lausanne as a U.S. negotiating team to try to resolve the marketing and broadcasting rift with the IOC that has so soured the view of the USOC for so many influential Olympic figures.

Why those three, and specifically those three? Because, bluntly, they have the respect and confidence of Hein Verbruggen. He’s the former international cycling federation president and former IOC member who served as the IOC’s chief liaison to the Beijing 2008 Games. He has been arguably the most vocal critic of the USOC’s singular marketing and broadcasting revenue shares.

Would they reach immediate agreement? No one can say. Would they ever reach agreement? No one can say. Does Verbruggen have a longstanding relationship with each? Yes. And what is it that gets things done within the IOC? Those sorts of relationships.

The USOC doesn’t have enough of the right kind of relationships. That’s why it’s in the fix it’s in today. And that leads to this final observation, another saying about advice, this one some 200 years old:

“He who can take advice is sometimes superior to him who can give it.”

U.S. National Governing Bodies statement regarding the leadership of the U.S. Olympic Committee

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., Oct. 7, 2009 – Based on the results of a 63-question survey of the 46 chief executives of the U.S. National Governing Bodies (NGBs), the Association of Chief Executives for Sport (ACES) has passed a no-confidence vote regarding the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Chairman of the Board and Acting Chief Executive Officer.

Statement of Skip Gilbert CEO of USA Triathlon and chairman of ACES:

“The NGBs have the daily responsibility of running the sports in and around the Olympic movement, from preparing athletes for world-class performance to directing the growth and expansion of sport. Not only do these organizations create and manage the athlete development pipeline in this country, but the NGBs also collectively represent more than 13 million members and sanction nearly 60,000 events annually. We are the 365-day-a-year arm of the U.S. Olympic Committee and need the USOC to provide the leadership that enables us to drive sport participation, development, and success at the domestic and international level.

“Events over the past six months have caused the NGBs to lose faith in the USOC’s leadership.  The U.S. Olympic family has tried faithfully to muffle its deep concerns about the decisions and strategies made by the U.S. Olympic Committee Board of Directors, but we can no longer stand by and watch.

“This is not a ‘vocal minority’ speaking out, but an overwhelming majority voice. The NGB CEOs lack confidence in the ability of the current USOC board and management to move the organization and the sports community in the right direction.  We believe the time for change is now and to that end, we respectfully request the immediate resignation of Larry Probst, Chairman of the Board, and Stephanie Streeter, acting CEO.”

About ACES - The mission of ACES is to support and enhance the business interests of non-profit member sport organizations, share best practices, promote professional development and formulate a collective voice on common issues.

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