Larry Buendorf, who for decades kept the U.S. Olympic Committee safe in a turbulent world, died Sunday in Colorado Springs. He was 87.

Buendorf, a former U.S. Secret Service agent well known for breaking up an assassination attempt on President Gerald Ford in 1975, served as the USOC’s director of security from the early 1990s through his retirement in 2018 — seeing the athletes, team and leadership through the 1996 Atlanta Games bombing, the fraught years after 9/11 and so much more. 

His passing marks the end of an era. He was a link to a bygone time at the USOC — now, for that matter, the USOPC. 

Boonie, as he was known by almost everyone, was — unequivocally, irrefutably, no question about it — one of the good guys. 

The IOC is inherently a conservative enterprise given to lip-service when it comes to change. The IOC needs real change.

Like the pictures from Paris this past summer, the veneer suggests that all is well in the Olympic landscape.

But no. The issues and fissures are real.

Most everyone knows there are nine movies in the core Star Wars canon. Then there is the 2016 prequel Rogue One, arguably the best in the anthology. It’s about a band at the outskirts of the galaxy in confrontation with the Empire. 

This brings us to the situation involving the World Olympians Association and the International Olympic Committee. 

Nominally, this situation would appear to be about money. There is a compelling argument, however, that it marks a set piece about the state of the IOC under the presidency of Thomas Bach even as it points to urgent consideration of a different direction the IOC might well consider under a new president — he or she will be elected in March.

The story of Imane Khelif, the Algerian athlete who won gold in the women’s boxing competition at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, is filled with layers of complication. 

The question confronting all of us now, with the story in the spotlight again Monday, is not just whether the Imane Khelif matter will ultimately prove a decisive turn in the history of female sport but, too, whether it can serve as a poignant reminder of what we all can desperately need, all the more so in our fragile and beleaguered world, to be reminded of:

Our common humanity. 

The International Olympic Committee under president Thomas Bach has sought to work closely with the United Nations. Particularly when it comes to the rights and roles of women and girls. 

So it was all the more noteworthy that the UN’s “Special Rapporteur” for, among other matters, women in sports took a plain shot Tuesday at the IOC for the controversy that erupted at the Paris Games in women’s boxing.