Olympic scene: reform plans, fairy tales and more

Stuff happens. A lot isn't by itself enough to justify its own column. Here goes a collection of stuff:

— From the department of decoding news releases:

The International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, and the World Anti-Doping Agency president, Sir Craig Reedie, held a meeting Monday at IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, after which the IOC issued a statement that included remarks from both men. From Bach: “There was a very positive atmosphere in our meeting today, and I am very happy that any perceived misunderstandings could be clarified. We agreed to continue to work closely together to strengthen the fight against doping under the leadership of WADA.”

Translation: Consider this a real step forward because it looks like WADA has been asked to drive how doping reform gets delivered.

— News: IAAF enacts wide-ranging reform plan at Saturday vote in Monaco. The count: 182-10.

The IAAF reform vote may have looked like an election result from the Communist days, with 95 percent in favor, but reality is that what the vote does is give IAAF president Seb Coe time and some structure to begin what is sure to be a lengthy, arduous and contentious process of reform.

The IAAF amounts to a classic business-school case — better, a book waiting to be told — about how to rip up one structure, the president-as-unchallengeable-king model by which the federation was run for more than 30 years, and replace it with a 21st century model featuring a president, an empowered chief executive officer and more. Change is never easy, no matter the scene, and it won’t come easily to the IAAF.

— How do you know change is going to be a slog? Because of the finest part of the IAAF meeting: the moment when the delegates realized that, yes, their votes were going to be made public and they were going to be accountable for pushing the electronic vote-system button. Yikes!

Even better: Ukraine abstaining. Home of Sergei Bubka, whom Coe defeated in 2015 for the IAAF presidency. Senegal abstaining. Home of Lamine Diack, the former IAAF president, now under criminal investigation in France. Jamaica abstaining? Seriously? When anyone with an ounce of common sense knows that doping protocols in Jamaica have over the years been, at best, lackluster? If you were a Jamaican representative to some IAAF commission or another, please consider handing in a resignation letter, and pronto. Before you get, and appropriately, kicked off.

— For the history books:

Coe at one point before the vote made like Winston Churchill or something, declaring, “The greatest symbol of hope for our future is the civilized discourse we have had, its firmness of purpose and its sense of justice.”

— That 95 percent vote? That is in large part due to Coe’s political skills. He knows how to close a deal. He also knows how to delegate his proxies, chiefly among them the American delegate Stephanie Hightower. He, she and others were working it, and hard, at the IAAF gala Friday night before Saturday’s vote.

Looking ahead: the IAAF is now mandated to have female vice presidents: at least one by 2019, two by 2027. In this context, it is worth remembering the — use whatever descriptive you want — observation of the-then IAAF vice president Bob Hersh at a public USA Track & Field board meeting not so long ago that it was unlikely a woman could be elected an IAAF vice president. He also said, “We need a seat on the executive board and I have a better chance of getting that seat than Stephanie and by a large, large margin.” As ever, time reveals all things. At the IAAF elections in 2015, Hightower was elected to the council as the highest vote getter for one of six seats designated to be filled by women. She got 163; next best, Nawal el Moutawakel of Morocco, an IAAF council member for 20 years and IOC member since 1998, with 160.

— It’s also worth recalling all the senseless outrage that attended the USATF board decision to put forward Hightower, not Hersh. The time is now for Mr. Hersh, as well as all the complainers, and in particular those in the media who gave undue weight to those complaints, to apologize — to say to Stephanie Hightower, hey, sorry, we were dead-on wrong.

Let’s review:

"But I do know that at this meeting she was full of shit, so that’s not a good start. She completely disregarded the wishes of the people she is meant to represent. She did not lose honorably" -- Lauren Fleshman in a post on her blog about the December 2014 USATF annual meeting, referring to Hightower.

For emphasis, more from Ms. Fleshman:

https://twitter.com/laurenfleshman/status/541051730016743424

So over the weekend Ms. Fleshman was voted onto the USATF board, as an athlete advisory committee member. Congrats to her. Maybe while on the board she will find renewed purpose in collegiality and an understanding that perhaps things aren't always as black and white, and given to outrage on Twitter, as they might seem.

Then there was this, from the distance runner David Torrence, part of a lengthy message string he put out on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/David_Torrence/status/541045226408665088

This would be the same David Torrence who ran for Peru in the 5000 meters at the Rio Olympics rather than take his chances at the U.S. Olympic Trials. In Rio, Torrence finished 15th. Behind three Americans, among them silver medalist Paul Chelimo.

As this space has advocated on many occasions, the level of civility in and around USATF needs to be ratcheted way up and the volume on complaints turned way down. This episode — Hightower and Hersh — offers compelling evidence why, and on both counts, civility and volume.  It's just way better policy for everyone to talk to and with each other instead of resorting to insults or epithets. As Coe put it: "civilized discourse."

— Mr. IOC President, please institute an IAAF-style transparent vote system for the bid-city balloting, and do so in time for the 2024 Summer Games election next Sept. 13 in Lima, Peru.

Otherwise, despite your assertions that the IOC’s own reform package, Agenda 2020 (approved by the members in December 2014, also in Monaco), is indeed meaningful, reality suggests its impact is minimal, and particularly if it can't own up to the acid test. What good is purported "reform" if  the most important election in the IOC system is consistently underpinned by a culture and protocols in which everyone lies, cheerfully, to everyone else, knowing there’s zero accountability?

— The IOC president, meanwhile, is now on record as saying that without Agenda 2020 there would have been no, zero, bids for 2024. This is absurd. Los Angeles, Paris and Budapest would all still gladly be bidding.

A skeptic might say: five cities started the 2024 race and, amid Agenda 2020, only three remain.

Hamburg’s voters turned down a bid. Rome is now out, too.

Meanwhile, a Tokyo government panel has said costs for the 2020 Games may exceed $30 billion, roughly four times the bid projection, unless cuts are made. At a conference last week, the IOC declined to sign off on a $20 billion Tokyo 2020 budget, seeking a lower number.

— Both Etienne Thobois and Nick Varley were key players in Tokyo’s winning 2020 bid. Nick was the 2020 messaging guy. Etienne served on the IOC’s evaluation team for 2016 — a race in which Tokyo came up short — before switching to the bid side and being involved on behalf of the winning Tokyo 2020 project in many key elements, including the bid’s finances and budgets.

Both now serve in key roles for the Paris 2024 campaign. Varley is playing a significant role in seeking to craft a winning Paris 2024 message. Thobois is the bid’s chief executive officer.

Here is where things get awkward.

Tokyo’s bid was centered on a plan to keep most of the competition venues within five miles of the athletes’ village. Confronted with spiraling costs, the organizing committee has since done a massive re-think, and several venues may now well move outside the city.

Thobois, in a story reported a couple days ago by the Japan Times, said this:

“I think Tokyo tried to win the Games at a time when Agenda 2020 was more or less not there. So you were trying to build some kind of fairy tale.”

What?! Fairy tale?! Seriously?

He went on:

“That concept that everything was within eight kilometers was leaning into a lot of constructions, and venues that turned out not to be needed. In our case it’s very different. So the delivery model is definitely very different and I don’t think you can compare the two situations.”

Actually, yes you can. And it’s illogical not to do so. The two guys who played leading roles in selling a “fairy tale” three-plus years ago are now trying to sell — what?

“We are talking about $3 billion for the Games, infrastructure-wise,” Thobois also said about the Paris 2024 bid, according to the Japan Times, “which is very modest.” The Paris budget proposal: $3.4 billion for operations, $3.2 for infrastructure.

Who can believe those figures? If so, why?

—

There’s also this, from a lengthy November 2013 Q&A with both Varley and Thobois, Etienne observing about the winning 2020 vote:

“Tokyo were able to secure some really heavyweight, influential votes — to me that was the key. Once you secure those big leaders, those influential voters within the IOC, then things start going your way quite quickly. [Olympic Council of Asia president Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad] al-Sabah is obviously a very influential vote to get, but on the doping issue a guy like Lamine Diack, president of arguably the biggest federation [the IAAF], quite a senior, well-respected figure, and he was clearly supporting the Tokyo bid and that was a very strong asset. There were others like that, too.”

Uh-oh.

Again on Diack, that "senior, well-respected figure":

Diack is now the target of a French criminal investigation, and primarily because of “the doping issue.” The authorities allege that as IAAF president he ran a closely held conspiracy designed to, among other things, collect millions of dollars in illicit payments in exchange for making Russian doping cases go away.

—

Another thought on Paris 2024:

If you asked someone, hey, do you want to go to Paris for, say, the weekend, the answer would of course be yes. Who wouldn’t? Look, I had one of the most glorious summers of my life there, as a student in the 1980s. But in the bid context, that’s not the central question. It’s, do you want to go to Paris and turn over your life — oh, and by the way, the future of the Olympic franchise — to the French authorities for 17 days? Answer away. No fairy tales, please.

—

Last Friday, the LA2024 bid committee released a new budget plan. It’s $5.3 billion with no surplus and a $491.9 million contingency.

Easy math: $5.3 billion is roughly one-tenth the figure associated with the Sochi 2014 Games. It’s maybe a quarter of what may be on tap in Tokyo.

A first pass at the LA 2024 budget, prepared in the summer of 2015, called for a $161 million “surplus.” That is Olympic talk for “profit.”

Let’s be real. Even if the bid committee can't and won't say so, any Games in Los Angeles is going to make a boatload of money. The only thing that needs to be built is a canoe venue. Everything else already exists; this means infrastructure costs would be super-minimal. The 1984 Games made $232.5 million. The last Summer Games in the United States was 1996. Economics 101: there’s huge demand, especially from corporate sponsors, and the supply has been cut off for going on 20 years now.

Further, California is now the world’s sixth-largest economy, with a gross state product of $2.5 trillion in 2015 — up 4.1 percent, when adjusted for inflation, from 2014. In August, California added 63,000 new jobs — that represents a whopping 42 percent of new jobs added in the entire United States.

This new pass at the budget eliminates the $161 million surplus. It throws all of it into “contingency.”

Now some first-rate analysis from Rich Perelman. Rich’s background in Olympic stuff goes back a long way. In 1984, for instance, he ran press operations at the Los Angeles Olympics; he then served as editor of the Games’ official report. This summer, he launched a newsletter called the Sports Examiner. In Monday’s edition, he offered this take on the LA 2024 plan:

“This is incredibly smart for several reasons. First, it eliminates any plans by outside groups to spend that surplus in 2025 and beyond before it is earned. Second, a zero-surplus budget looks good to the State of California, which has guaranteed to pick up any deficit of up to $250 million at the end of the Games. Third, having no announced surplus allows a clever organizing committee leadership to leverage the need to keep expenses down and obtain maximum outside support from both the private and public sectors in the run-up to the Games.”

—

Flashback to the SportAccord convention in Sochi in 2015. Then then-president of the organization, the International Judo Federation president Marius Vizer, called the IOC system “expired, outdated, wrong, unfair and not at all transparent.”

Bach’s IOC proxies, led by Diack, mounted a furious response, and Vizer resigned from the SportAccord job about six weeks later.

Vizer, as many have since said quietly, was 100 percent right. And Diack now?

The anti-doping system currently allows athletes to use otherwise-banned products with a doctor’s note and official approval. That approval is called a TUE,  a therapeutic use exemption. The Fancy Bears hack suggests TUE use has been exploited if not manipulated.

Speaking to the British website Inside the Games amid the weekend Tokyo judo Grand Slam, Vizer suggested a novel approach to athlete TUE use — if you have one, you can’t compete.

“My opinion,” he said, “is that those athletes which are using different therapies should not be accepted into official competition during the effect of these products.”

Vizer’s comment is significant for any number of reasons. Here’s the most important collection: he’s almost always right, he isn’t afraid to speak out and, unlike many who just complain, he is consistently in search of and willing to suggest solutions.

—

News item: American and other athletes weigh boycott of 2017 world bobsled and skeleton championships set for Sochi.

Responses:

1. William Scherr, a key player in Chicago’s 2016 bid, said this the other day on Facebook, speaking generally about the Olympics, and it’s spot-on:

“The Olympics are the only time where the world gathers together, puts aside differences and celebrates those things that make us similar. We learn about people and cultures that we otherwise would never know, and we learn that despite being separated by distance, ethnicity and beliefs that we run, fight, swim and jump the same way.”

A boycott is just dumb. History has shown that the only people a boycott hurts are athletes. Those athletes weighing their 2017 worlds options might want to consider history.

2. No matter the context, neither sanctimonious righteousness nor rush to judgment rarely make for a winning play. If the Americans, for instance, think that doping is only going on in Russia — that’s funny. If the Americans, for instance, think that there is no link in many minds elsewhere between, on the one hand, Lance Armstrong, Marion Jones and many more and, on the other, U.S. sports success — that’s funny. That we in the United States might go, wait, the allegation is that in Russia it was state-supported — that’s a distinction that in a lot of places many would find curious. The fact is, we don’t have a state ministry of sport in the United States. So of course world-class cheating would be undertaken in the spirit of private enterprise.

3. The allegations involving the Russian system are extremely serious, and the report due out Friday from Canadian law professor Richard McLaren, with yet more accusation, is likely to be even more inflammatory. But accusation without a formal testing of the evidence is just that — accusation. All the Americans claiming the moral high ground right now — if you were accused of something, wouldn’t you want the matter to be tested in a formal setting, meaning in particular by cross-examination? Let’s just see, for instance, what comes out — whether Friday, before or after — about the credibility of Grigoriy Rodchenkov, the former Russian lab director now living in the United States.

Sport at the crossroads: Seb Coe wins IAAF presidency

BEIJING — With track and field at a historic crossroads, the IAAF membership on Wednesday elected Great Britain’s Seb Coe president.

Coe defeated Sergey Bubka of Ukraine, 115-92, two great champions of and advocates for the sport facing off in an election that reflected on track and field’s past but, more important, its future.

After the two men exchanged congratulations at the dais, an emotional Coe said, “I think for most of us in this room, we would conclude that the birth of our children are big moments in our lives, probably the biggest. But I have to say that being given the opportunity to work with all of you, to shape our sport, is probably the second-biggest momentous occasion in my life.”

Bubka, graceful, said, “I am a happy man and I am sitting in front of you because I love athletics,” what track and field is called everywhere in the world but the United States. “This is my life. Nothing has changed in my life. I will continue to serve athletics with dignity and deep passion, as I did before.”

A few minutes later, Bubka was elected vice president, along with representatives from Qatar (Dahlan Al Hamad, head of the Asian confederation), Cameroon (Hamad Kalkaba Malboum, chief of the African confederation), and Cuba (the legendary Alberto Juantorena, the 1976 Montreal 400 and 800 meters champ, now a key figure in his nation's sport hierarchy).

The 2019 world championships will be held in Doha, Qatar.

In another key development, USA Track & Field president Stephanie Hightower was easily elected to the IAAF’s ruling council. She secured the most votes, 163, for the six seats reserved for women on the board, more even than Olympic gold medalist Nawal el-Moutawakel, the IOC member and overseer of the 2016 Rio Games, who drew 160.

Hightower said she was "humbled and thrilled to have been selected to serve."

The 2021 world championships are due to be staged in Eugene, Oregon; the 2016 world indoors, next March in Portland.

“I congratulate Lord Coe on his election as IAAF president, and I am excited to continue to work with him on the important projects that our organization began with president Diack,” TrackTown USA president Vin Lananna said in a statement.

He added, “Together with our friends at the IAAF and USA Track & Field, I am confident that we will create a lasting legacy for the sport.”

Four more Americans won key posts Wednesday, too, signs of emerging USATF strength at the international level: Anne Phillips was elected chair of the federation’s women’s committee, Maryanne Daniel one of the two female members of the race-walking committee. Bill Roe was elected to the cross-country committee, David Katz re-elected to the IAAF technical committee.

In all, USATF went an unprecedented five-for-five -- an emphatic rebuttal to domestic naysayers who had been hugely critical of the nominees put forth last December in Los Angeles by the USATF board.

Hightower, Phillips and Daniel emerged as the top vote-getters in their categories.

“Putting these candidates forward was a strategic decision by our board to be a leader rather than a follower in the IAAF’s new era,” USATF board chair Steve Miller said.

"None of these outcomes was guaranteed. Our election success was the result of a lot of hard work by our candidates, our staff and by our closest colleagues in the IAAF congress. Today’s elections are simply the start of what will be many months and years of hard work at the IAAF level.”

Voting for the IAAF’s 27-member ruling council showed the emerging strength of the Middle East in world sports. In addition to Al Hamad, the IAAF elected representatives from the United Arab Emirates, Ahmad Al Kamali, and Saudi Arabia, Mohammed Bin Nawaf Al Saud.

Spain’s Jose Maria Odriozola, meanwhile, took over as treasurer from Russia’s Valentin Balakhnichev.

The presidential vote total, 34 years to the day after he set a then-world record for the mile in Zurich, 3:48.53, reflected Coe’s strength around the world: Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania and North America. South America, with its 13 votes, was always a Bubka redoubt.

Svein Arne Hansen of Norway, president of the European athletics federation, issued a statement that said, “I would like to congratulate my friend Sebastian on bering elected as president of the IAAF. I am looking forward to working closely with him over the coming years for the good of our sport.”

Coe formally takes office on August 31, at the end of the 2015 world championships.

The winning margin, 23 votes, also may prove significant as things go forward: comfortable enough for Coe to claim a commanding mandate but not so large as to, in any way, embarrass Bubka.

Outgoing president Lamine Diack, who served for 16 years, said, “For me, it’s a dream come true that I can pass on the baton to a new generation, to Sebastian, who has been prepared for the job. And I think we can say that our sport is in safe hands …

“The white-haired generation,” Diack said, “has done what it could. Now over to the black-haired generation.”

Track and field has, of course, long been the centerpiece of the Summer Games.

As Coe noted at a post-election news conference, “Track and field is the No. 1 sport. I am absolutely delighted to be president of the No. 1 sport. I will do everything within my human capabilities to make sure our sport maintains the values, maintains the strong legacy and the very firm foundations president Diack has left me.”

At the same time, track is increasingly being challenged by, among others, swimming and gymnastics; moreover, survey after survey suggests young people may increasingly be interested in sitting on the couch and playing video games.

And track seems chronically to be beset by doping scandals — headline after headline in recent weeks, for instance.

During the campaign, Coe aggressively defended the IAAF’s anti-doping efforts.

“As you have seen,” he said to delegates from the more than 200 federations just before ballots were cast, “I will always be in your corner.

“Your fight is my fight.”

This proved consistent with his all-along strategy, which emphasized not only who he was — relationships in Olympic sport can be everything — but, even more so, a plain-spoken program of rich content.

In contrast, Bubka — who also ran a spirited campaign — was more apt to turn to the relationship aspect.

Two days before the election, for instance, Bubka sent out an email blast that linked to a photo album from stops along the campaign trail.

There is no question — zero — that Bubka, the 1988 gold medalist in the pole vault who for 10 years has been head of the national Olympic committee of Ukraine, is both personable and eminently likable.

In the end, however, the IAAF decided it wanted, and needed, more.

Time and again, Coe would go back not just to his record of achievement — Olympic gold medalist in the 1500 meters in Moscow in 1980 and Los Angeles in 1984, chief of the enormously successful London 2012 Games — but to the manifesto he put forward several months ago.

Broadly, Coe’s vision sketched out for the IAAF a platform rooted in integrity and credibility; creativity and change; enhanced transparency; the imperative of bringing in more sponsors, and doing more with existing corporate partners; increased financial and administrative support to the members; deeper connection with governments; intensified engagement with track’s current and potential audience, notably young people; and a far more robust communication strategy, both within the federation and out.

“Everything you do in the sport is underpinned by trust,” Coe said at that post-election news conference.

He also said, “This has been a very, very long, hard, tough campaign,” asserting it had “given the sport a chance to pause for breath, to review itself, renew itself, think about what the next 30 or 40 years look like.”

That the time for change is now had become crystal clear.

Even Diack himself said so, in the congress: “Perhaps you shouldn’t have elected me in 2011. I had already decided to leave,” adding a moment later, “But we decided to continue working together, and to pursue the path that we followed.”

That path has been a slow walk, the last few years of Diack’s presidency seeing the sport launch the World Relays in the Bahamas but otherwise stagnate in significant ways; the presentation of a track meet, for instance, pales in comparison to that of a world-class swim meet.

At the same time, Diack leaves the IAAF with what Coe called “an extremely strong foundation.” In 2016, the federation’s revenue projects out to $81.9 million, including a $40 million payout due from the IOC. IAAF reserves at the end of 2014 totaled about $74 million, up $12 million from just four years ago.

That said, as a financial report made public Wednesday underscored, the IAAF is hugely dependent on television rights fees — $27 million of its roughly $59 million in income for 2014 — and needs to figure out how to grow that pie.

Indeed, that’s the apt metaphor for track and field itself: it’s strong but there is so much sleeping potential there.

That, in a nutshell, is the theme Coe tapped into.

As he said at the news conference, “Our product is athletics but our business is entertainment.”

During the campaign, Coe also had some influential help.

It was known in closely held circles that the IOC president, Thomas Bach, would not have minded — not one bit — a Coe presidency, even though Bubka has for several years been a member of the IOC’s policy-making executive board.

Same for another key personality in the Olympic and international sports scene, Kuwait’s Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah.

John Coates of Australia, an IOC vice president, issued a statement calling the vote a “great day for athletics and international sport,” adding, “Seb was clearly best qualified for the presidency as not only an Olympic champion, businessman and politician but as a person of the very highest integrity and character who has organized a most successful Olympic Games.”

The British government assuredly played a role in supporting Coe’s campaign. Hugh Robertson, the 2012 Olympics minister, served as a lead advisor.

The British prime minister, David Cameron, took to Twitter:

Delighted @sebcoe has been elected the new president of the IAAF - an outstanding athlete who delivered the brilliant London 2012 Olympics.

— David Cameron (@David_Cameron) August 19, 2015

Diack, at least publicly, remained studiously neutral during the race. But it was an open secret that he had been piqued two years ago when Bubka ran for the IOC presidency that Bach won; Bubka’s candidacy prevented Diack from publicly supporting Bach. Did any of that linger?

Coe logged over 700,000 kilometers in the air since Christmas, criss-crossing the world several times over to meet with track and field officials virtually everywhere.

On the flight to Beijing for this history-making 50th IAAF congress, three members of his team were asleep “before the wheels left the tarmac,” Coe said. A flight attendant said to Coe, wow, they sure seem relaxed. He said, “No, no, no — they’re absolutely knackered.”

He also said Wednesday about the marathon effort: “I would also like very briefly to thank my teams — because when I was asleep, they were still working hard into the night,” including the veteran strategist Mike Lee, who can now claim another victory.

Coe went on to note that credit was truly due his wife, saying she had "borne the brunt of most of this over the last year." He quipped, "I will be meeting her outside the main congress hall with a photograph of me, just to remind her what I look like.”

Coe gambled big-time Wednesday, standing only for president. Bubka put his name in for both the top spot and for vice-president.

Everyone thus understood at the core that if Coe lost, he was out of town on Thursday, and very likely out of the sport for good. Did track and field want to run the risk of losing his experience, expertise and more?

“Congress, friends,” Coe said in remarks before the balloting that would name just the sixth president in IAAF history, dating to 1912, “there is no task in my life for which I have ever been better prepared, no job I have ever wanted to do more and to do with greater commitment.

“With confidence and affection, my friends, I place myself in your hands today. If you place your trust in me, I will not let you down.”

Why by the Persian Gulf

KUWAIT CITY, Kuwait — Accounting for the sudden resignation a couple days ago of French ski legend Jean-Claude Killy, there are now 106 active members of the International Olympic Committee. As the IOC president, Thomas Bach, pointed out in a news conference Sunday morning, Arabic hospitality is known worldwide.

Maybe that is why a reported 41 IOC members gave up their weekend to come to Kuwait to attend the meeting of the 204-member Association of National Olympic Committees.

Or perhaps it is a signal of the considerable influence of Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah — who, among other roles, is the ANOC president — that some four of 10 IOC members came to Kuwait from around the world.

Here, among others: IOC vice president and Rio 2016 coordination chair Nawal El Moutawakel of Morocco. Executive board members Pat Hickey of Ireland and Gunilla Lindberg of Sweden.

IOC athletes’ commission chair Claudia Bokel of Germany, another executive board member.

Larry Probst, the U.S. Olympic Committee board chairman and new IOC member.

And many more influential personalities within the Olympic sphere — among them, SportAccord and International Judo Federation president Marius Vizer.

The Sochi Games closed just roughly five weeks ago.

The IOC executive board meeting, to be held in conjunction with the SportAccord conference in Turkey, goes down next week.

It’s not as if IOC members are — or were — lacking for opportunities to get together.

Yet here they were.

For ANOC, this was in fact something of a history-making occasion. On Saturday, it held a variety of commission meetings — that is, the first time its commissions were said to have had these kinds of meetings, all designed as a lead-up toward the ANOC general assembly this fall in Bangkok.

And then there was the pull of having Bach on hand as well.

“It’s a big honor to welcome the president of the International Olympic Committee here in Kuwait,” Sheikh Ahmad said at that same news conference.

Bach said, “We are having a broad discussion among all the stakeholders of the Olympic movement,” adding a moment later that the weekend involved “looking into the future and looking into the different roles of the stakeholders and ensuring the harmonious roles under the leadership of the IOC.”

Much of 2014, of course, is being devoted to what Bach has called “Olympic Agenda 2020,” a far-reaching review of what works — and what doesn’t — as the IOC and the broader movement, now past Sochi, regroups and looks toward Rio 2016, the 2022 Winter and 2024 Summer bid cycles and beyond.

Bach took a moment to note the “great success of the Sochi Games,” in contrast to the doom and gloom that preceded virtually all the talk beforehand.

Five bid cities are in the 2022 pipeline: Almaty, Kazakhstan; Beijing; Krakow, Poland; Lviv, Ukraine; and Oslo. Lviv must confront political upheaval; Krakow now looks set to deal with a referendum; Oslo is grappling with local challenges to long-held assumptions about who bears what responsibilities in the bid system.

How many of the five applicants will ultimately see it through to the 2015 IOC election in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, remains decidedly unclear.

A “candidature for the Games,” Bach said — reflecting on how the “great positive legacy” of Sochi is now “well understood by the respective cities and countries” — is a “great opportunity to transform a region and a society for the better.

“Therefore, I am not too worried.”

As for Olympic Agenda 2020, he laid out a timeline, apparently for the first time publicly, for getting to the IOC’s all-members extraordinary session in Monaco in December. There the issues will be debated and, presumably, decisions will be taken. Or, more likely, ratified:

— The special special email address set up to solicit suggestions from around the globe — OlympicAgenda2020@olympic.org — closes April 15.

— Working groups will convene, probably in June.

— July will see a summit of sorts, the presidents of the major stakeholders.

— In September, the results from the working groups and the “summit” will go to the IOC commissions. Bach is due to announce in the next few days the make-up of the 2014 commissions.

— In October, the commissions are due to make recommendations to the executive board.

— The board will prepare a document to be submitted to the extraordinary session, set for Dec. 6-7.

“This will give us a good opportunity, as the president has mentioned … to keep the values of the movement and the main ideals of the movement but also to develop the relationships,” Sheikh Ahmad said.

And if you want to know why more than 40 IOC members made their way this weekend to the Persian Gulf, there you have it.

Life is a relationship business. Especially in the IOC.

Who understands this principle?

Thomas Bach.

And the host for the weekend, Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah. You had better believe he understands this is how things get done.

A stealth Olympic summit

The International Olympic Committee held something of a stealth meeting of key power-brokers Sunday at its lakefront headquarters in  Lausanne, Switzerland, a move that illuminates the who's who and what's what behind the developing agenda of the recently elected president, Germany's Thomas Bach. Bach convened the meeting, not widely publicized beforehand and in an IOC release termed an "Olympic Summit," to address "the main topics of interest and concern" confronting the movement.

These the statement identified as the campaigns against doping and match-fixing, regulation of the sports calendar, autonomy of the sports movement and, finally, governance issues.

Here, then, is a catalogue of how the new president intends to operate, his key list of action items and, perhaps most fascinatingly, a collection of advisers -- a kitchen cabinet, if you will -- that the release identified as "the senior representatives of the Olympic Movement's key stakeholders."

Like any list, it's not just who is on it but who is not that makes for the tell.

Among those who were there:

The three IOC vice presidents: Craig Reedie of Great Britain; Nawal el Moutawakel of Morocco; John Coates of Australia.

Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah of Kuwait, of course. Marius Vizer, the International Judo Federation and Sport Accord president, naturally. Sepp Blatter, the FIFA president. C.K. Wu, the head of the international boxing federation.

In May, the aquatics and gymnastics federations were elevated to the top tier of Olympic revenues, joining the track and field federation, the IAAF. The IAAF president, Lamine Diack of Senegal, was there Sunday; so was Julio Maglione of Urugay, president of FINA, the aquatics federation. The gymnastics federation president, Italy's Bruno Grandi? No.

The entire winter sports scene was represented solely by René Fasel, president of both the ice hockey and winter sports federations.

More: the heads of the national Olympic committees of the United States, China and Russia were invited to the meeting. But -- not France. Hello, Paris 2024?

Beyond that, the important take-aways from the meeting are these:

Reasonable people can quibble with the notion of whether doping, match-fixing, the calendar, autonomy and governance make for the spectrum of pressing issues facing the movement.

The new president, for instance, is keenly aware that the Olympic Games are the IOC's franchise and that keeping the franchise relevant to young people has to be the IOC's No. 1 priority. Nowhere on that list, moreover, is an exploration of the values central to the Olympic movement and how they might, should or do play out in today's world.

The president "invited the participants to share their ideas on these subjects," and a wide range of others, "and to be part of the permanent dialogue and ongoing reflection that the IOC wishes to increase with its main stakeholders," according to the release.

Bach is super-smart. He understands concepts such as "relevance" and "values." For sure.

But the action-item catalogue clearly and unequivocally demonstrates -- as Bach suggested during the presidential campaign, which ended with his election Sept. 10 in Buenos Aires -- that his focus is in problem-solving.

That means: solving the problems, or at least trying to, that are there, directly and identifiably, in front of him and the IOC.

Look at what the release says:

-- The IOC will set up a task force to coordinate efforts against match-fixing and illegal betting.

-- The participants agreed to set up an "experts' network" that will focus on issues of autonomy and governance.

-- The IOC will set up a "consultative working group" to deal with the calendar.

This calendar group, and it should be highlighted that this panel will be "under the leadership of the IOC," obviously has two unspoken priorities:

One, for those thinking long-range, is the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, and whether -- as FIFA has been mulling, or not -- it can or should be moved to the winter. Such a move could well be problematic for a 2022 Winter Olympics. The IOC statement Sunday noted that the working group will discuss "the priority of current and future sports events within the global calendar."

Two, there's Vizer's suggestion, made when he was running last spring for SportAccord president, for a "Unified World Championships" that would feature 90-plus sports all going on at the same time. The group Sunday, Vizer included, the IOC statement said, agreed that "any new initiative has to respect the uniqueness of the Olympic Games."

Then there is the campaign against doping.

The release affirms the movement's "zero-tolerance" policy against drug cheats and backs the IOC's candidate for the presidency of the World Anti-Doping Agency, Reedie, who is expected to be affirmed at a meeting this month in South Africa. At the same time, it calls for WADA to become more of a "service organization," reflecting tensions with some international sports federations, who have suggested that the agency has been telling them what to do instead of serving their needs.

Whether this proves, in the long run, to actually be a good thing or not, and whether it actually gets played out, particularly with such real-world challenges such as the testing of Jamaican and Kenyan athletes now making headlines, remains to be seen.

Reedie, it should be noted, has consistently proven himself to be a shrewd player in sports politics across many constellations.

In the near term, meanwhile, all this shows conclusively that Bach is not only consolidating but demonstrating his own authority while simultaneously showing if not a bent, then at least a nod, toward collaboration.

It's of course absolutely a good thing that Bach seek the input of key constituent groups. In about a month, he will lead not only an executive board meeting in Lausanne but immediately afterward an EB retreat. Of course, how the EB and this new kitchen cabinet will mesh -- there is some overlap -- remains to be seen.

At the same time, as Jacques Rogge before him and Juan Antonio Samaranch before that proved, while the IOC is something of a democracy, the institution has traditionally functioned best when the president demonstrates a clear and decisive hand.

It took Rogge some time to figure this out. He made a show at the beginning of his first term of wanting the IOC to be far more democratic. The 2002 Mexico City session, which devolved into hours upon hours of democracy -- the members voicing all manner of opinion about baseball, softball and modern pentathlon, and their roles in the program, with nothing getting done -- put an end to that. After that, he started acting way more presidential.

Bach, it appears, gets from the start that he is the man. That's the way it should be.

One other thing that is notable is that the IOC, at the end of this one-day summit, had this multi-point action plan more or less ready to go. Anyone who has done committee work knows that committees don't do action work readily or easily. So this was already well in the works -- the deal points already hammered out, apparently via pre-meetings -- well before the new president summoned all "the senior representatives" to Lausanne for the face-to-face summit that produced the news release.

Note, by the way, the careful use of language. These were not "some senior representatives." The release pointedly makes use of the definite article, the word "the," before "senior representatives." The new president is by nature precise -- that's how that list of people got invited Sunday.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is called leadership.

Here's one way to be more relevant

All six International Olympic Committee presidential candidates have, to varying degrees, called on the organization to play a bigger role in the world. In a word, to be more -- relevant. Each has stressed the key Olympic values: friendship, excellence, respect.

Now comes Friday's episode in the San Francisco Bay Area, where a television station and the National Transportation Safety Board have had to apologize for their roles in the broadcast of fake, racially insensitive names of the pilots flying Asiana Flight 214. A third person died Friday in connection with crash and more than 180 were hurt when the Boeing 777 slammed last Saturday into a seawall and then skidded down the runway at San Francisco International Airport.

In a segment that aired at noon Friday, station KTVU identified the pilots as "Ho Lee Fuk," "Wi Tu Low," "Sum Ting Wong" and "Bang Ding Ow."

In a written explanation, the station later said it "never read the names out loud, phonetically sounding them out," and on air, KTVU anchor Frank Somerville added, "There's just no other way to say it -- we made a mistake … we offer our sincerest apology."  The NTSB, meanwhile, said a summer intern confirmed the "names" to KTVU when a station reporter called with an inquiry; it added its apology as well.

Asiana has identified the pilot and co-pilot as Lee Kang Kook and Lee Jung Min.

What does this have to do with the Olympics?

The smart candidate would immediately see the opportunity for an Olympic-themed dialogue on advancing cultural understanding and tolerance -- and the right person to foster it is already one of the key members of the so-called Olympic family, Korean Air chairman Yang Ho Cho, who as it happens is one of the world's foremost experts in one of the hardest things to both define and put into practice, the notion of enterprise culture.

Among the six presidential candidates, for instance, Singapore's Ser Miang Ng has repeatedly called for inclusive dialogue while stressing the notion of being a "universal, unifying" leader as the IOC faces "new realities and opportunities." Another, C.K. Wu of Chinese Taipei, the president of the international boxing federation, has highlighted the value of education in schools worldwide to showcase the Olympic values. Ukraine's Sergei Bubka, in his wide-ranging 28-page manifesto, says the time is now for the IOC to take the "lead role" in ensuring the movement becomes "even more relevant."

Almost without exception, reports last week about the crash of Asiana 214 -- apparently aiming to build in background -- sought to frame the crash as a wider indictment of South Korean aviation. Time and again, there were references to fatal crashes in the 1980s and to the crash of Korean Air flight 801 in Guam in 1997, which killed 228 passengers and crew.

As readers of Malcolm Gladwell's 2008 best-selling book "Outliers" know well, Cho effected a massive cultural change at Korean Air after the Guam crash. Junior pilots were encouraged to speak up to their seniors, to whom they previously might have shown considerable deference, even if the senior pilot might well be on course for disaster. All pilots had to learn to speak English, the language of the global control tower, better.

Cho tends to run on the quiet side. Even so, he is a first-rate thought leader.

For many years now, Korean Air's record has been spotless. Of course, every day is a new day. An accident can happen at any time.

Even so, again and for emphasis, Korean Air's record has not been accident-free, it has been an industry leader.

In 2006, for instance, as the Wall Street Journal noted recently, the International Air Transport Assn., a trade group for the world's major airlines, certified that Korean Air had achieved the "highest standards and best practices for safety."

At the same time, Korean Air has also become a major player in other areas of interest. The company recently announced plans to construct a 73-story, $1-billion tower in downtown Los Angeles, for example, that would be the tallest building west of the Mississippi River and, as the LA Times noted, a "symbol of South Korea's status as an up-and-coming economic powerhouse."

Just blocks from Staples Center, the home of the Los Angeles Lakers, Clippers and Kings, the building would further enhance the ongoing re-development of downtown LA. At 1,100 feet, the tower would be one of the tallest in the United States -- taller even than the Chrysler Building in New York.

Two years ago, Cho led Pyeongchang's bid for the 2018 Winter Games.

The 2018 bid followed narrow Korean losses for 2014 and 2010.

With Cho directing, the 2018 bid fashioned a hugely winning culture.

Of course, he did not do it alone. The prior bids were ever-so-close, led by the-then provincial governor, J.S. Kim. The Korean Olympic Committee's leadership, with Y.S. Park, proved considerable as well.

Backstage, perhaps, there might have been, well, let's say "discussions" among the various bid factions, which included the various levels of government, corporate supporters including Samsung and the KOC. When it came to showtime, however, Cho understood that there had to be one person indisputably in front, that everyone had to be all smiles, that there had to be way more women involved and that everyone had to speak English, a radical change from the 2014 and 2010 bids.

Behind probably the best Olympic bid tagline ever, "new horizons,"  Pyeongchang rolled to a massive victory over Munich and Annecy, with a whopping 63 votes, the highest total ever recorded for a first-round win.

Last week at the extraordinary session in Lausanne, Switzerland, the IOC reached out for nine new members. Only one was Asian, Mikaela Maria Antonia Cojuangco-Jaworski of the Philippines.

The new president -- whoever he is -- could do the institution a lot of good by looking anew at Cho's credentials.

In the meantime, in the aftermath of Pyeongchang's victory, they launched an initiative in Seoul called the International Sport Cooperation conference. Recent attendees have included Ng; Wu; Rio 2016 coordination commission chairwoman and the IOC member from Morocco, Nawal el-Moutawakel; and Wilfried Lemke, the United Nations' special advisor on sport for development and peace.

The ISC series is designed to be relevant and hugely topical. Here's a suggestion for the next conference: the importance in the real world of friendship, excellence, respect, tolerance, diversity and enterprise culture and the IOC's lead role in moving all of that forward.

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[Disclaimer: Korean Air advertises on this website. I have had no contact with anyone from the company in writing this column.]

DeFrantz tries anew for IOC board

This election year, at its history-making session in September in Buenos Aires, the International Olympic Committee will elect a new president. It will pick the site of the 2020 Summer Games. It will also decide what sport, if any, goes on to the 2020 program -- a decision that may or may not involve wrestling. Or, perhaps, squash, karate, baseball and softball, or others. Beyond all that, the IOC will also, as it always does at its sessions, elect members to its policy-making executive board. Anita DeFrantz of Los Angeles is in the running.

Within the past few days, DeFrantz sent a note to her IOC colleagues announcing her intent to stand for election. It says, in part, "I hope that you will be willing and able to vote for me when the time comes."

DeFrantz had similarly announced an intent to run for an EB seat at last year's session in London. But shortly before the balloting she withdrew her candidacy. She said Wednesday in an interview, "I didn't think I had done the groundwork to have a winning outcome."

This time, she said, "The stars are shining more brightly. It feels better. People know I have been serious about all my work. The work of women in sport has come to a very important point -- the point where we move forward."

As DeFrantz points out in the note to the other 100 IOC members, only nine others have now served longer than she has. She is only 60. Even so, she has been a member since 1986.

She is due to remain a member until 2033.

Her institutional memory -- both about the IOC and the U.S. Olympic Committee -- can be formidable.

Her dedication and commitment to the movement can hardly be unquestioned.

She is a True Believer, no apologies, and has been ever since the 1976 Montreal Games, when as a rower -- she would win a bronze medal -- she stayed in the Olympic Village, and saw with her own eyes how sport could be a force for changing lives by promoting the Olympic ideals. A dedication to those values has since driven her through service to the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Games, the LA 84 Foundation, the USOC, the international rowing federation (which goes by the acronym FISA) and the IOC.

"It really is important," she said, referring to the Olympic movement. "It is amazing that it exists in this world It is a great privilege to be a keeper of that trust. I believe it is a trust for the world."

For emphasis, she said, referring to life in the Village at the 1976 Games, "That was where my life changed.'

To look around that Village and know that there weren't enough medals to go around for everyone there -- and, still, there was everyone, not just together but all together, from wherever. "It's a powerful thing," she said, "to live in an Olympic Village."

DeFrantz has for years played a key role in urging the IOC to move toward equality on issues involving women's rights, both on the field of play and -- increasingly -- in the executive suite. Since 1995, she has chaired the IOC's Women and Sport commission; last year, she helped lead an IOC convention on the topic in Los Angeles.

During the years that Juan Antonio Samaranch was president, DeFrantz served on the IOC executive board, from 1992 through 2001, as a vice president from 1997 through 2001. She was the IOC's first female vice president.

In 2001, at the IOC session in Moscow, she ran for the IOC presidency itself. She received nine of 107 votes -- coming in last in the field. Of course, Jacques Rogge won. His term ends in September in Buenos Aires.

In 2007, at the session in Guatemala City, she ran for the executive board. She received six of 92 votes. Again, last.

In Guatemala, she said, "I am stunned. I hope this is not something to suggest women can never be elected to the executive board again. I will remain stunned for a while."

Three women currently serve on the 15-member board: Nawal El Moutawakel of Morocco, Gunilla Lindberg of Sweden and Claudia Bokel of Germany.

It remains uncertain how many candidates ultimately will be drawn to run in September for the IOC board.

It will of course prove tempting for some to view DeFrantz's candidacy as a test of where the USOC stands in the aftermath of the resolution last year of the longstanding revenue dispute -- over certain broadcast and marketing shares -- that had strained relations between the USOC and IOC.

It's more apt, however, to view her candidacy as what it really is -- a measure of DeFrantz's standing and political skill after years all these many years within the IOC.

When Samaranch was president, she could command dozens of votes. But his time is years ago.

The Rogge years are almost over, too -- all 12, nearly gone without DeFrantz spending even one on the IOC executive board.

And, now?

"I have a great deal to offer," she said. "I wish to take responsibility at the executive level of this organization. I wish to share that."

DeFrantz declares for IOC executive board

Anita DeFrantz has always been an ardent believer in the power of the Olympic movement to do good. The question now is whether the members of the International Olympic Committee, her peers, are believers in Anita DeFrantz.

DeFrantz, 59, of Los Angeles, has sent a letter to her IOC colleagues that she will be a candidate for the policy-making executive board at the IOC's forthcoming session in London next month.

She said in a telephone call last week from Lausanne, Switzerland, "It's important for the United States to be part of the movement. I just want to serve the Olympic movement, being a true believer and all. I have said it and I will continue to say it."

Some may cast the election as a test of the U.S. Olympic Committee's standing in the aftermath of the deal it struck with the IOC that resolved a longstanding dispute over marketing and broadcasting revenue shares.

It really, though, marks a test of where DeFrantz, who has been an IOC member since 1986, stands.

DeFrantz is going to be an IOC member, absent a health crisis or other catastrophe, until 2033, and though she previously has been an IOC vice president, that was -- viewed now -- a long time ago.

DeFrantz is an Olympic bronze medalist, in rowing, at the 1976 Montreal Games. In 1980, she was a leader of American athlete opposition to the U.S.-led boycott of the Moscow Summer Games.

She joined the staff of the Los Angeles Games organizing committee in 1981 and planned and operated an Olympic Village in 1984. Two years later, she was made an IOC member.

Even her work life has revolved around the Olympic scene. She joined the staff of what is now called the LA 84 Foundation and was elected its president in 1987. It has overseen the distribution of millions of dollars in grants to youth sports clients in Southern California.

Under the presidency of Juan Antonio Samaranch, DeFrantz seemed a rising star in IOC circles. She served on the executive board from 1992 through 2001 and as a vice president from 1997 through 2001. She was the IOC's first female vice president.

DeFrantz has for years played a leading role in urging the IOC to move toward equality on issues involving women's rights, both on the field of play and in the executive suite. She has chaired the Women and Sport commission since 1995. This past spring, she helped lead a IOC convention in Los Angeles on women's issues in the movement -- an event that was well-received and that assuredly helped convince her the time was right to run again for IOC office.

In 2001, at the IOC session in Moscow, she ran for the IOC presidency itself. She received but nine of 107 votes -- dead last.

In 2007, at the session in Guatemala City, she ran for the executive board. She received six of 92 votes. Again, dead last.

In Guatemala, she said, "I am stunned. I hope this is not something to suggest women can never be elected to the executive board again. I will remain stunned for a while."

Two women currently serve on the board: Nawal El Moutawakel of Morocco and Gunilla Lindberg of Sweden.

In Guatemala, the revenue issue was clearly burbling, just as it would play a key role in Chicago's first-round exit in 2009 for the Summer Games 2016 vote.

Now that's no longer on the table, and so the vote -- however it turns out -- will be a referendum on  DeFrantz herself.

Including DeFrantz, the early math suggests perhaps six candidates for three EB positions. One is likely to be Sergei Bubka of Ukraine. He usually runs strong. So then figure five for two. One other -- Willi Kaltschmitt of Guatemala -- is from the Americas.

The election is due to take place July 26, the final day of the IOC session. The opening ceremony of the Games takes place the next evening.

The 2011 IOC women and sport report

DURBAN, South Africa -- It was at the Summer Games in Los Angeles in 1984 that Joan Benoit ran away with the first women's Olympic marathon and smashed stereotypes. Now, 27 years later, only three of the more than 200 national Olympic committees taking part  in the opening ceremony of the Summer Games have not yet sent female competitors, the head of the International Olympic Committee's women and sport commission said Friday. The Middle Eastern states of Brunei, Saudi Arabia and Qatar remain the holdouts, a dramatic improvement from as recently as 1996 and Atlanta, when 26 nations sent no women, Anita DeFrantz told the IOC's session, its annual general assembly. "I do believe in the name and shame strategy," IOC president Jacques Rogge said, adding a moment later, "I think it's very effective."

With female boxers in the ring, every one of the 26 sports on the program at the 2012 London Games will see women competing, DeFrantz, the senior American representative to the IOC, also said.

That's the good news.

And a little bit more:

Just 23 percent of the athletes at the 1984 Los Angeles Games were women. In Beijing in 2008: 43 percent.

At the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games: 40 percent. At the 2010 Singapore Youth Olympic Games: 46 percent.

Now for the challenges off the field, which remain considerable:

The numbers of women on decision-making boards in some significant cases have not changed much, and for that reason DeFrantz and other commission leaders -- amid planning for a major conference on women-in-sport issues next February in Los Angeles -- remain "deeply concerned."

Such concerns extend to the IOC itself as well as to boards of both national Olympic committees and international sports federations, DeFrantz said.

The 15-member IOC executive board now lists only one woman: Nawal El Moutawakel of Morocco.  A vote Saturday will see the election of a second, Gunilla Lindberg of Sweden.

Only 16 percent of the more than 100 IOC members are female. The IOC management team includes no women, according to a report presented by DeFrantz's commission to the session.

National Olympic committees in Bermuda, Mozambique, Papua New Guinea and the United States report their boards include women at participation levels of 40 percent or more.

Such information, DeFrantz said, comes from a survey the commission sent out, adding that only 81 of the NOCs filled it out. That means roughly two-thirds of the committees in the world didn't even bother.

The Australian Olympic Committee issued a release that noted it sent a team to Vancouver made up of  20 male athletes and 20 female athletes but its executive committee includes only two women, AOC president John Coates calling that a "long way short of ideal" and urging his member governing bodies to propose electable female board members at the next AOC board vote, in 2013.

As for the international federations: soccer, boxing, weightlifting, canoe/kayak, handball, archery, shooting, rugby, cycling and bobsled have no women on their executive boards, DeFrantz said.

That's nine summer and one winter sport federations -- and soccer, of course, is  the sport that carries the farthest global reach.

In some cases, the reasons for no women at the board level may be fairly clear-cut.

In others, it may be more nuanced, as C.K. Wu, the head of the international boxing federation, which goes by the acronym AIBA, told the assembly.

Wu, who is an innovative and progressive Olympic administrator, said AIBA has been trying since 2007 to recruit qualified women to its board.

It all starts, he said, at the grass-roots. Women's referees and judges now officiate at bouts. Women are being appointed as technical delegates.

Even so, he cautioned, the issue ought not be reduced to simply a numbers game.

It's not enough, he said, to just put a woman on the board -- she must be qualified, and while any and all qualified candidates would be welcomed, they must be identified and nominated by their home country federations and the elections conducted appropriately.

"To build up [female] leadership takes time," Wu said. "It also takes a lot of effort."