COPENHAGEN — Stephanie Streeter, the U.S. Olympic Committee’s acting chief executive officer, said she decided “a month and a half ago” that she wasn’t going to make herself a candidate to stay permanently in the job she has held since March.

Some will say Streeter had no chance from the start, from the day in March she took over from Jim Scherr in what was widely seen as a coup. Others will say she didn’t give herself the best chance she could have — to cite just one instance, not reaching out to beat reporters to make allies and maybe even learn a nugget or two about what she had taken on, the kind of basic people skills a baseball manager learns when he’s just starting out in Class A-ball.

“As you know, I have been very supportive of her,” Anita DeFrantz, the senior International Olympic Committee member to the United States, said here late Wednesday. “I felt she was in a horrible position given the venom which was sent her way. It made it impossible for her to learn about the Olympic movement. She is very good at what she does. Unfortunately, this environment was not willing to accept her skills.”

In a teleconference with reporters that followed the USOC’s announcement earlier Wednesday that she was on the way out, Streeter also volunteered, “I think it has been an interesting ride.”

That, of course, depends on your definition of “interesting,” her announcement coming a mere five days after Chicago was bounced out of the race for 2016 with a mere 18 votes in the first round of International Olympic Committee voting, Rio carrying the day, and now with Streeter heading for the exit, the logical next question is — what about Larry Probst, the USOC board chairman?

Probst was asked in that same teleconference about his plans.

He said, and this was not exactly a rousing rally call, “If the question is, am I going to resign — the answer is, I don’t have any plans to do that. Having said that, I serve at the discretion of the USOC board. It’s clear to me that going forward, in order to be as effective as possible, it needs be done on a full-time basis and I’m prepared to make that commitment. That’s where I stand at this point in time. That decision is ultimately up to the USOC board.”

It may be that the decision — while formally up to the USOC board — may be made for Probst, and the USOC, by others. Or at least strongly suggested in the way some suggestions ought not to be ignored. Why? Because it’s not a stretch to suggest the 18-vote first-round fiasco may well have embarrassed Barack and Michelle Obama. Or to observe that the mayor of Chicago, who knows a thing or two about political leverage, can not be happy. Nor can a slew of major corporate executives.

Other constituencies, too.

Probst’s challenge is that his background is entirely in business — not in sports. Yet the search for a new USOC chief executive, as he detailed Wednesday at length, is to find someone with a background in Olympic or international sports who has business skills and who’s willing to travel a lot and for a long time to cultivate relationships. Language skills would be a plus.

How many of those categories does Probst himself fill?

To his credit, Probst understands it needs to be a far less interesting ride — the USOC convulsing through round after round of management and leadership change since 2000. He is its sixth chair (or president - just a difference in title) in that time; the new chief executive will be the sixth senior paid staff officer in those years as well.

Moreover, Probst articulated elegantly the challenge facing the USOC — even as his comments underscored the uncertainty that would shadow any U.S. bid for a future Games unless and until the relationships that drive the bid process can be cultivated and nurtured so that come a vote they can be relied upon:

“I think,” he said, “that we need to have a very long-term strategy about engaging with the international community and the International Olympic Committee. I don’t mean one year or two years or five years. I’m talking 10 or 15 or 20 years. We need to be willing to step up and make that commitment. We have plenty of good relationships but the reality is we don’t have political capital, we don’t have leverage, we don’t have representation on the executive committee of the IOC, we don’t have any [international sports federation] presidencies.”

All of that is so right on even as it highlights just how far Probst and the U.S. Olympic Committee have to go.

It’s not the “executive committee” of the IOC. It’s the “executive board,” and the difference is not pedantic. It illustrates the difference between an understanding of the IOC culture, and not.So with Probst: stay tuned.

And as far as the CEO job goes, if the search committee or the recruiting firm wanted to make like that Class-A baseball manager, here — if I were asked — would be a pretty fair list of candidates, in no particular order:

Chuck Wielgus, USA Swimming

Bill Marolt, USA Skiing

Steve Penny, USA Gymnastics

Dave Ogrean, USA Hockey

Doug Arnot, Chicago 2016

Mark Lewis, former NBC Sports executive now at Olympic-travel oriented Jet Set Sports

Max Cobb, USA Biathlon

Michael Lynch, Visa

Doug Logan, USA Track & Field

Herman Frazier, former USOC vice president who served as U.S. team leader at the 2004 Athens Games, now an associate athletic director at Temple University

Edwin Moses, the 1976 and 1984 Games 400-meter hurdles champion, now chairman of the Laureus World Sports Academy

Some on that list might not be so interested or might not be a good fit for one reason or another.

Doubtlessly, the interest of others might be very keen, indeed.

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