COPENHAGEN — My wife and three children love the reality TV show “Survivor.” Personally, I can’t stand it but — whatever. They love it, and so it’s on all the time in our house, which means I see a lot of “Survivor,” whether I want to or not.

And here’s what I’ve learned, if only from osmosis, from “Survivor,” a thesis about which my friend Karen Rosen, another reporter who is here with the Olympic newsletter Around the Rings reminded me: If you want to win, you need alliances.

In “Survivor” parlance: Chicago got voted off the island.

Heading into the International Olympic Committee’s vote last Friday for the 2016 Summer Games, the bid team from Rio de Janeiro knew they were going to win — knew with certainty that they were going to meet Madrid in the final round and would have more than 65 votes. Meanwhile, the bid team from Chicago believed they had 30 votes, maybe more, in the first round.

One team was right, almost dead-on right — Rio winning the final round over Madrid, 66-32. The other was so wrong the outcome may well have served to humiliate the president of the United States, Chicago tossed out in the first round with a mere 18 votes.

Now comes the aftermath of the 2016 balloting, with American authorities, Olympic and governmental, due to ask the obvious question — how did that happen?

That’s not the way the question — questions, actually — should be framed, though.

It starts with the query put forward by Mike Lee, the British strategist who helped direct the winning plan for London’s winning 2012 bid and now Rio’s winning play for 2016: “We knew where the votes were — how come they didn’t?”

The answer:

Because that takes relationships; relationships yield alliances. The Americans don’t have those alliances because, straight out, at the top of its organizational chart the two senior officials don’t have those relationships.

So how can that be?

Or, more precisely: How is it that the USOC put itself into position to essentially sabotage the bid while potentially exposing the president of the United States to embarrassment?

“My respect for President Obama knows no bounds,” Lee said, adding, “I’m a serious fan. I have been since he made that famous speech at the Democratic national convention.”

To that end, he said, “I don’t know what voting numbers were given to the White House. But I suspect they weren’t correct. Because for the president and indeed the First Lady to make the effort they made and to come in that way suggests that they were being told that Chicago was either winning or close to winning.

“And I never believed that was the case coming into Copenhagen.”

Mike Lee knew, because Carlos Nuzman, Carlos Osorio, Leonardo Gryner and the other senior officials on the Rio team, who have been around Olympic circles for years and years, knew.

Larry Probst and Stephanie Streeter didn’t. Because they haven’t been around. And because, in the short time they have been around, it’s far from clear that they have pursued the lines of engagement that are both relevant and material in Olympic bidding.

Both Probst, the USOC board chairman, and Streeter, the chief executive, came to their USOC posts in recent months after successful business careers.

Streeter has been vocal about preaching accountability. So here it is: In the business world, if you’re the chief executive, and a $50 million deal with the potential to mean at least $4.8 billion to a partner in one of your major markets just got bungled, who gets held accountable?

Probst was put into place in October, 2008, with virtually no experience in Olympic sports. Streeter came to the job — sliding in to the post from the USOC board — with limited background in Olympic bidding.

Two nights ago, Probst and his wife walked through the lobby of the Marriott, the IOC’s base here. In the center of the foyer stood Thomas Bach, the influential IOC member from Germany; a few feet behind Bach stood Frank Fredericks of Namibia, a rising IOC star; and so on. The Probsts walked through the foyer, turned right and headed to the elevator, and upstairs, without engaging Bach, Fredericks or, for that matter, anyone.

Now they may well have had good reason to do so. And it was but a moment in time. But was it as well an opportunity lost?

When Streeter replaced Jim Scherr, it was noted by her supporters that she had been a successful businesswoman who had played college basketball. A prior USOC chief executive, Lloyd Ward, had been a successful businessman who played college basketball, and look how that turned out six years ago. He resigned under fire.

Being a success in business — knowing how to streamline the purchase-order process, or whatever — is not what wins in Olympic circles. A history in college basketball counts for nothing.

It’s all about relationships and alliances.

If Streeter and Probst had been more attuned to such things, would the OK have been given in July to the launch of a USOC television network when the IOC expressly told the USOC not to do it?

Really?

If and when the USOC and IOC ever patch things up, and if the USOC opts one day to get back into the bid game, whoever is in charge of the USOC ought to call Lee. If the man’s rate by then is $1 million, pay it. It’s the best money the USOC could spend, because he knows what the USOC doesn’t — how to win in the bid game.

In the more immediate future, Lee could also serve. Unless Probst and Streeter have already decided it’s time to make a graceful exit, the situation may well call for an intervention — you know, when someone has a problem they’re reluctant to face and so that person’s friends or relatives gather round in a room and say, hey, we’re here to make you see the truth.

In this case the friends and relatives can stay home. We’re talking the likes of past USOC presidents, the executives of leading corporate sponsors, maybe even some government figures in the loop.

If there really were such an intervention, wouldn’t it make sense to have the advice and counsel of someone such as Lee, who obviously understands matters such as relationships and means of engagement and could help point the USOC in a direction where it might in due course seriously consider bidding again?

The Rio bid, Lee said here Monday, was run by “serious people doing serious things in a joined-up way,” meaning all three levels of the Brazilian government as well as the Brazilian Olympic Committee and the Rio 2016 bid team.”

Lee also said, “When we talk about what Rio achieved, I do think it was a very important connection between the COB,” the acronym for the Brazilian Olympic Committee, “and the bid team. They were basically one and the same, and then there was a very integrated relationship with the three levels of government.

“And we spent a lot of time, a lot of time, thinking about what we needed to do to win, everything from international relations strategies, fixing the technical problems and developing a compelling narrative. We always did that sitting together. The top table sitting together had all the people that needed to be there — the Olympic committee, the bid and the international consultants.”

He also said, “It’s also true to say the COB was very focused on winning. That, I think, is a key difference with Chicago.”

It was, and so now the overarching question, the only one that matters is simple: what is to be done about it?

Because, in the end, it’s really not so different from “Survivor”: The USOC needs to learn how to play the game.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 5th, 2009 at 1:20 pm and is filed under alanabrahamson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.