A meeting by the Bay
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?”