The USOC's slow, steady progress

ACAPULCO -- The fifth IOC World Conference on Women and Sport will be held in Los Angeles in February,  2012. The next International Athletes' Forum will take place in Colorado Springs, Colo., in October, 2011.

If you looked really, really hard in the "transactions" section of your local sports section, buried there in the agate type, you might have seen the announcement here Tuesday from the International Olympic Committee about both events.

Or not. Neither is Super Bowl Media Day, for sure.

But both, in their way, are big -- not just because they matter in Olympic circles but because they underscore the dawn of what could and should be a new era in the U.S. Olympic Committee's complicated relationship with the IOC.

A year after Chicago got trounced in the 2016 bid contest, the USOC -- under the direction of chairman Larry Probst and chief executive Scott Blackmun -- is, appropriately and responsibly, surely and deliberately, doing what needs to be done to develop and nurture the relationships that in the Olympic movement make things happen.

The awarding of the two conferences offers evidence of just that.

"I think that there is no issue about the Chicago elimination any more," IOC president Jacques Rogge said here at a news conference that wrapped up week-long meetings of the Assn. of National Olympic Committees and then the IOC's policy-making executive board.

"There might have been an emotional issue for some time. I think our American friends were very gracious in accepting the [2016] decision," Rogge said, adding a moment later that the events in Los Angeles and in Colorado Springs, where the USOC is headquartered, will be "very well-organized" and allow the IOC "to come back to a continent we have not been to very much."

That would be a gentle understatement.

By "continent" Rogge really means in this instance the United States, since of course the 2010 Games were in Canada.

The IOC was in Salt Lake City for the 2002 Games and then not again, at least formally, until March, 2009, at a meeting in Denver -- and at that Denver meeting some senior IOC officials took the opportunity to berate the USOC over longstanding disputes that revolve around the USOC's singular shares of IOC marketing and broadcasting revenues.

So -- here came the attacks even as the IOC was being hosted by an American city. That's how unpleasant it had become.

"The USOC is in much better shape now," a senior IOC member said here in Acapulco, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We really want to get them back into the mainstream."

The USOC, to be sure, still has a long way to go.

There hasn't been an American on the IOC board for nearly five years, and that doesn't look like it's going to change any time soon.

Moreover, compare these numbers: The United States has three IOC members. Italy has four. Switzerland has five.

"There is quiet talk around the bar about increasing the numbers of the U.S. members," the senior IOC figure also said. "Plus, there needs to be one really active member - especially if there's a bid."

Neither of the two senior U.S. IOC members -- Anita DeFrantz and Jim Easton -- has the disposition of, say, Brazil's Carlos Nuzman, a whirlwind of enthusiasm who helped deliver Rio the 2016 Games. The third U.S. member, Angela Ruggiero, was just elected earlier this year.

At any rate, there isn't now an American bid for the Games. It's quite possible there won't be one for several more years.

Even so, the USOC is indeed in much better shape. It's simple why:

First, Probst committed himself fully after the 2016 debacle to the chairmanship.

Second, he hired Blackmun.

In concert, they have spent a good part of 2010 traveling the world. This is a part of the Olympic game that officials from other places have long mastered; it matters to be seen.

Finally, the USOC and IOC came to terms this year on the first piece of the financial puzzle, an $18-million deal involving an agreed-upon American share of the administrative costs of staging the Olympics.

That sets the stage for negotiations over the broadcast and marketing shares -- at some point, unclear when. The USOC gets 20 percent of top-tier marketing fees and 12.75 percent of the U.S. broadcast fee, figures that some have called too high.

That "Games costs" deal also helps set the table for the 2011 negotiation over U.S. broadcast rights for the 2014 and 2016 Games. NBC has served as U.S. broadcaster since 2000; a number of U.S. outlets are believed to be interested in the 2014 and 2016 rights contest.

"We have an appealing organization for these broadcasters and I believe it's going to be a very competitive discussion to see who the winner will be," Rogge said.

Probst spent a full week in Acapulco. Blackmun, sporting a black sling after shoulder surgery, spent five days here. They went to meetings. They went to banquets. They bought drinks in the open-air Fairmont Princess hotel bar.

A lot of IOC relationship-building -- that quiet talk -- gets done at the bar. Even by IOC standards, however, the bar scene at the Princess was truly a scene (conference organizers had deemed it unsafe to leave the Fairmont compound, citing the narco-violence in and around Acapulco, and so the hotel bar was the only option). Probst and Blackmun could readily be seen -- obviously glad to be there but nonetheless subdued, modest, wholly appropriate at all moments.

Probst was named to the ANOC executive council. He delivered a speech on marketing. The USOC signed a deal with the Brazilian Olympic Committee on athlete exchanges and training.

And then came the announcement on the L.A. and Colorado Springs events -- precisely the sort of thing the USOC ought to be going after, evidence that it's in the movement for all the right reasons.

Not -- and this is the No. 1 knock against the Americans -- just to make money.

"There has been a dramatic change," Probst told the Associated Press. "The whole relationship is just feeling much better than a year ago. That's good both for the U.S. and the Olympic movement."

The IOC's week along the beach

ACAPULCO -- For a week, the Olympic world moved itself to the Fairmont Princess hotel along this resort's palm-strewn beaches. The indelible image:

Vlade Divac, the former NBA star who is now president of the Serbian Olympic Committee, taking to the sand after the meetings were done for the day, the sun creeping lower and lower in the west, to play beach volleyball.

Funny how everyone wanted to be on Vlade's team.

Inside, with Vlade very much in attendance, the Assn. of National Olympic Committees met -- the largest gathering of Olympic figures outside the Games themselves, with officials from more than 200 nations on hand. Amid dozens of presentations, ANOC re-elected as its president Mario Vazquez Raña, the Mexican media mogul and senior International Olympic Committee figure.

Moreover, ANOC convened a first-ever joint session with government sports ministers; some 100 showed up. ANOC held a joint session with the IOC's policy-making executive board. And then, finally, the IOC board wrapped it all up with a three-day meeting of its own.

The highlights:

-- Each of the three 2018 bid cities appeared before the ANOC assembly; these marked their first public presentations. Munich, with two-time Olympic figure skating champion Katarina Witt and polished videos, unveiled its "festival of friendship" while Pyeongchang, seeking to bring the Winter Games to Korea for the first time, promoted "new horizons" with indisputable government and business support.

The presentations by those two seemed to most a cut above that of the third city in the race, Annecy, France. But it would be foolish, particularly at this early stage, to count Annecy out. The IOC in recent years has shown a distinct preference for bids with a single figure the members want to do business with; the head of the Annecy bid is the eminently genuine Edgar Grospiron, himself a gold-medalist in freestyle skiing.

The IOC will make its 2018 choice next July at an all-delegates session in Durban, South Africa.

-- The IOC said it is "looking favorably" at the inclusion of women's ski jumping and several other events, among them the extreme sports favorite slopestyle, for the Sochi 2014 Games. But it stopped short of saying yes -- for now.

Instead, the IOC gave president Jacque Rogge the authority to say yes (or no) after the world championships this coming winter. The women's ski jumpers have been fighting for inclusion for years. In slopestyle, the competitors go through "features" such as rails and bumps.

The full under-consideration list of new events: women's ski jumping; ski slopestyle (men's and women's); snowboard slopestyle (men's and women's); ski halfpipe (men's and women's); biathlon mixed-team relay; figure-skating team event; luge team relay.

"They said they were favorably looking at the sport," the 2009 women's world ski jump champion, American Lindsey Van, said in a telephone interview from Park City, Utah.

"I have to think positively. They didn't say no. So we're headed in the right direction."

-- Sri Lanka's Olympic committee proposed that technology or laser shows could replace fireworks at the opening and closing ceremonies of the Summer and Winter Games, citing environmental concerns.

Rogge said the IOC would review the issue. He also said it would be considered "seriously."

The likelihood of fireworks going away from the Olympic scene seems improbable. The gala banquet that Señor and Señora Vazquez Raña threw here for ANOC delegates, for instance, was preceded by a beach-side fireworks show.

Improbable, however, is not impossible. It used to be that live doves, symbolizing peace, were released as part of the opening ceremony. That was until a bunch of doves got cooked by the cauldron at the 1988 Seoul Games. Now the doves are featured symbolically -- and sometimes memorably indeed, as was the case with the stylization by acrobats at the Torino 2006 Winter Games.

-- Vazquez Raña was elected by acclaim to another four-year term as ANOC president. ANOC gets a representative on the IOC executive board. That's now Vazquez Raña. He turns 80 in two years. That creates a conflict with IOC age-limit rules that say that's when he has to step down as IOC member, and thus from the executive board.

The IOC adopted those age-limit rules as part of its response to the Salt Lake City corruption scandal some 10 years ago. The Vazquez Raña case thus promises to make for an intriguing test of the IOC's commitment to those reforms. Unclear is how, if at all, the FIFA bid scandal -- and the closer look at governance issues it surely will prompt in many Olympic and international sports offices -- may affect Vazquez Raña's status.

Rogge said the executive board will study the issue. A decision is likely in 2011.

-- At the news conference wrapping up the week, Rogge urged FIFA to follow the same sort of path the IOC did in the wake of the Salt Lake scandal.

Rogge said FIFA president Sepp Blatter "was so kind to call me" to discuss vote-buying allegations in the race for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, the IOC president adding he suggested that Blatter "do exactly what he has done and try to clean out as much as possible."

The IOC ended up ousting 10 members and enacting a 50-point reform plan amid allegations of offers of cash and other inducements linked to Salt Lake's winning 1995 bid for the 2002 Winter Games. Asked if he could be sure the IOC was not itself now in line for another major corruption case, Rogge responded, "Could it happen to the IOC? I hope not. I believe the rules we put into place protect us as much as possible. But you can never say never in life. Cheating is embedded in human nature."

Ultimately, the import of these Acapulco meetings may prove to be the joint session with government ministers. It was a coup for Vazquez Raña to get so many here and while little constructive came out of this first give-and-take -- despite the fact that the speech-making ran on for 11 hours -- little was expected.

A next logical step, much discussed in the open-air bar of the Fairmont:

The possibility of convening a working group to draft a code of conduct for both sides, government and sports officials. Sports officials want government to contribute resource, primarily financial. It's entirely reasonable for governments to know where those funds might be going and then spent. Unclear, however, is whether misconduct -- whatever that might be -- should or could lead to sanction.

For now, just getting together -- sports and government -- makes for an entry in the history books.

In its way -- like seeing Vlade patrol the net.

--

This column appeared first on the AIPS website. That site is full of useful and interesting stuff, including reports from around the world you can't find anywhere else. AIPS, founded in 1924, is the international sports press association.

The eternal Don Mario

ACAPULCO -- There is no question, and there can be no doubt, that Mexico's Mario Vazquez Raña is the most important and influential figure in the Olympic movement in the entire Western Hemisphere. No one in the United States, for instance, is even close.

No one anywhere on this side of the world is even close.

The proceedings here this week can only cement that fact. Vazquez Raña yet again presided over the assembly of the Assn. of National Olympic Committees; officials from roughly 200 countries were on hand. He was re-elected ANOC president. ANOC held a first-ever assembly with sports ministers from around the globe; some 100 government representatives showed up. ANOC held a joint meeting with the IOC's policy-making executive board.  And then Don Mario, as he is respectfully addressed by Spanish-speaking journalists in news conferences, took his place around the IOC executive board table for three days of closed-door meetings that started Sunday.

For all of that, Vazquez Raña's run is -- as is the case in all human endeavor -- nearing an end. And the issue framed here is both full of complexities but elegantly simple:

How does he go out?

Does Vazquez Raña get to choose? Or is that choice going to be made for him?

Vazquez Raña has been ANOC president for 31 years. He was re-elected here by acclaim. And not just acclaim. He got a standing ovation.

Asked at a news conference Friday if he thought election by acclaim fit with 21st-century versions of good governance and best practices, he said of course it did. No one ran against me, he said.

Unspoken was this reality: No one would dare run against Vazquez Raña.

No one could possibly remain atop an organization for so long, one that has seen such growth, without extraordinary political skill. Vazquez Raña is possessed of an incredibly keen understanding of the human condition.

He also has for years helped oversee the distribution of Olympic Solidarity funds to needy athletes around the world. All in, ANOC's budget now runs to nearly $8 million annually, according to a report available here.

Vazquez Raña is an extraordinary businessman. He runs an empire that extends to dozens of newspapers, television and radio outlets. Some of those newspapers reported his ANOC re-election with banner headlines of a sort that in the United States might have been reserved for the end of a world war.

Truthfully, such moments are rare. Vazquez Raña tends to operate with discretion. His contact list is vast. His connections -- in sports, business, politics, government -- are incredible. The contributions he has made to the Olympic movement are innumerable. No one will probably ever know, for instance, how many times he has sent a private jet to facilitate Olympic business of one sort or the other.

The challenge now is this:

An ANOC representative gets a seat at the IOC executive board. In returning Vazquez Raña to the presidency, delegates here took the additional step of formally passing a resolution that he continue his executive board service "during his mandate" -- that is, for all four years.

Vazquez Raña is now 78. His birthday is June 7, 1932.

As part of the reforms sparked by the late 1990s Salt Lake City corruption scandal, the IOC put in place age limits. One of the sub-parts to Rule 16 of the Olympic Charter now says you stop being an IOC member at the end of the calendar year in which you turn 70.

However, a Rule 16 bylaw grandfathers in -- so to speak -- those who became members before the close of the IOC's 110th all-members session, in December, 1999. For them the retirement rules play out this way:

A member "must retire" by the end of the calendar year in which he or she turns 80; retirement for one who is president, vice president or serving on the executive board takes effect "at the end of the next session" after turning 80.

Vazquez Raña became an IOC member in 1991. Pretty clearly, the rules would seem to suggest that his term on the executive board is going to come to an end in about two years, at the close of the London 2012 Olympics. That, though, is only halfway through his new four-year ANOC mandate.

Pretty clearly, too, he wants to stay on. He said Sunday at a news conference, "I feel like I [am] 60. As long as I can keep on working, I will keep on working, regardless of my chronological age."

The other IOC members re-elected Vazquez Raña to the executive board at the session in Beijing in 2008. Four years from that makes -- neatly, perhaps -- 2012.

There's a complication to the dynamic. If Vazquez Raña gets an exception at 80, what about those who became IOC members after December, 1999, and are now nearing 70?

Rio de Janeiro got the 2016 Games in large part because of the winning personality of Carlos Nuzman. He is IOC member, president of the Brazilian Olympic Committee and now head of the Rio 2016 organizing committee. Nuzman joined the IOC in 2000. He turns 70 on March 17, 2012. Should he get an exception, too?

IOC President Jacques Rogge on Sunday said the issue of Vazquez Raña's status on the executive board would be a matter for the board itself to study. Not here. Later.

Rules demand consistent application. Rogge himself said, albeit in a different context earlier Sunday, speaking to the ANOC delegates, "If we want to claim autonomy from the public authorities, we must be impeccable in terms of our governance."

Especially now. The FIFA bid scandal has rocked international sport. "Impeccable" is indeed the right word.

If an exception were to be carved out for Vazquez Raña, the IOC runs the risk of a major PR backlash. Those Salt Lake reforms were enacted for sound reason, and Rogge himself has consistently stressed the ongoing import of perhaps the key plank of the 50-point reform plan, the ban on member visits to cities bidding for the Games.

Samaranch stayed as president for 20 years. Rogge has given every indication that he plans to step aside when his term expires, in 2013 -- his two terms, 12 years in total, a further Salt Lake reform. Should the likes of Vazquez Raña get a break when the president himself is assuredly subject to term limits?

Finally, there's this:

It is a tenet of leadership school that you identify your successor. Who's next at ANOC? That's not clear. And that's not healthy, for ANOC, for the IOC or for Vazquez Raña's considerable legacy.

"I have always considered media in our movement as one of the strongholds, one of the pillars," Vazquez Raña said in closing Sunday's news conference. "Sometimes it's good to get your applause but it's also good to get your criticism. Criticism in sports is good as long as it's constructive and realistic."

In that spirit, Don Mario, and this English-speaking observer offers the honorific with the utmost respect, here it is:

Just because you might have to step away from the executive board and IOC membership does not mean the end. You now have two years to set yourself up for the next stage, to determine how to remain of service to the Olympic movement while further enhancing your legacy.

Who wouldn't want you to serve as, say, "special advisor"?

Make that transition on your terms. It's not realistic to stay longer. And it won't be constructive if someone else has to tell you it's time.

One down, nine to go, lots to talk about

ACAPULCO -- One presentation down. As many as nine more to go, concluding with the International Olympic Committee's vote next July for the 2018 Games. Munich unquestionably had the best videos here Thursday. It's why they were widely perceived to be the winners in Thursday's initial presentations, with Pyeongchang slightly behind and Annecy farther back.

One presentation hardly makes for an Olympic victory, however. As the bid teams regrouped here Friday, and as officials from the more than 200 national Olympic committees on hand dissected what they'd seen the day before, discussion turned to key issues that were not explored Thursday in detail but may yet prove pivotal.

Here are reports of what they were talking about:

Pyeongchang

Vancouver in 2010. Torino in 2006. Salt Lake City in 2002.

Those are big cities, not winter hamlets like Lillehammer, the Norwegian town that played host to the Winter Games in 1994. And so the IOC's Winter Games trend in recent years is clear, driven by the obvious: Seventeen days is a long time in a little place. In a big city there's more to do around the Olympic action.

Sochi, Russia, site of the 2014 Games, is not small, either. The city itself counts about 400,000 people.

Pyeongchang would mark a departure. The population of the town itself is somewhere about 75,000 people, the president of the Korean Olympic Committee, Yong Sung Park, said Friday at a breakfast for selected reporters, and that estimate may be generous.

That's why the construction of a high-speed rail line linking Seoul and Pyeongchang is so intriguing; it addresses what could be seen as a significant weakness in the Korean bid.

The project is being developed apart from the 2018 bid; construction is likely to begin in a few months, the line to Pyeongchang done by 2017.

Typically, such so-called "technical" matters are of interest only to the experts who study them. In this instance, though, the train could be a game-changer, because you could go from Seoul to Pyeongchang, about 120 miles, in 50 minutes, according to material supplied by the 2018 bid committee.

That's more or less how much time it took each day to commute from Darling Harbor in central Sydney out to the Olympic precinct for the 2000 Summer Games.

You could, for instance, stay in Pyeongchang and get to Seoul, which is as interesting as any city anywhere, in about half the time it took this past February to get from downtown Vancouver up to the alpine events in Whistler.

Or you could stay in Seoul and commute to the action in Pyeongchang.

Not everyone, of course, is going to want to ride the train.

Thus the additional suggestion at Thursday's presentation to, in effect, bring Seoul to Pyeongchang -- communications director Theresa Rah, speaking from the lectern, describing it as a "Best of Korea" experience, with "world-class restaurants boutiques, shopping malls and entertainment options."

She added a moment later, "Imagine the excitement of the Winter Games, the beauty of the Orient and the best of what Korea has to offer, all together in Pyeongchang."

Details are far from complete, bid chairman and chief executive Yang Ho Cho said at the day-after breakfast. Asked by one reporter to name chefs who might be on hand in 2018, Cho said with a smile that he had no idea. If Pyeongchang wins, he said, "We have a concept and an idea and to implement it we have lots of time."

Annecy

There's another Olympic bid trend that often gets overlooked but in recent ballots has proven central to the balloting.

The IOC repeatedly has voted for a particular individual that the members obviously like, respect and want to be partners with.

Examples are numerous: Athens won in 1997 for 2004, for instance, because of the personality of Gianna Angelopoulos.

The trend for the last four elections is clear: John Furlong for Vancouver 2010. Seb Coe for London 2012. Dmitry Chernyshenko (and Vladimir Putin!) for Sochi 2014. Carlos Nuzman for Rio 2016.

The strength of the Annecy bid is chief executive Edgar Grospiron.

The point of the Annecy presentation Thursday was to introduce Grospiron -- and to give him the endorsement (via video) of Jean-Claude Killy, the French ski legend and IOC Winter Games operations expert.

Next:

Grospiron, in interviews, indisputably has proven he gets the vision thing. Can he and the French turn it into a compelling narrative?

For instance, France has played host to the Winter Games in 1924, 1968 and 1992.  It would only be natural to position Annecy as the 21st century extension of that legacy, wouldn't it?

"It's a continuing story between France and Olympism," Grospiron said of the three prior Winter Games, in Chamonix, Grenoble and Albertville.

"What's interesting now is that Olympism doesn't need France to exist. But France needs Olympism to be able to develop its sporting activity, to reinforce that."

Another, perhaps related, possibility: Annecy could also position itself, he said, as a forward-thinking bid that aims to use the Games as a catalyst to take on such challenges as global warming -- that is, the effect of climate change on already-mature ski and snow resorts forced to deal with, say, diminishing snowfall.

"This land is what we have," he said, calling the region in and around Annecy and Chamonix "most beautiful and most precious."

He said, "Our responsibility is to modernize and at the same time to preserve our values -- or its values, its traditions, its authenticity, its environment.

"That's the vision that I have … to integrate harmoniously the Games between the eternal snows of Mont Blanc and the crystal-clear waters of Lake Annecy. That's our main issue."

Munich

The 1972 Summer Games will forever be remembered for the kidnappings and murders of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches.

There's no point tiptoeing around it. It happened. It's part of the story of the Olympics and Munich.

"We knew from the beginning that this could be our biggest problem," the mayor of Munich, Christian Ude, said in an interview, speaking in English.

"Therefore we had a lot of talks with members of other national Olympic committees. I spoke about this in Athens in 2004 with a lot of representatives of the Olympic family, especially with the members of the Israeli delegation. The surprising answer -- surprising for me personally -- was that '72 was the first attack of international terrorism on the Olympic family. This could happen in the United States, in Great Britain, in Spain, in Russia, everywhere. It's not the responsibility of the location where the international terrorists have made an attack.

"That," he continued, "was not only the opinion of one or two -- the president and general secretary of the NOC of Israel but also the opinion of other members and of other countries. I spoke with the NOC of Poland, the former Czechoslovakia, Russia. They all said the same. This was not the responsibility of the location where it happened. It was the responsibility of the international terrorists who attack also in other continents and other countries.

"Especially the Israeli delegation and the Jewish members in other countries said two important things that encouraged us. First, the security standard in Germany is very high now, especially in Bavaria and Munich. About Munich, I say it as a Social Democrat, and the Free State of Bavaria has a conservative government, so it's not self-promoting: I have to accept that the security standard in Bavaria is very high. Munich is the city -- of all cities in Europe with more than one million inhabitants -- with the lowest crime rate. Year to year we get new evidence that the security standard in Munich is the best in all cities of this size.

"The second thing is that in the time of my office," 17 years and counting, "we have a re-birth of Jewish people and the Jewish religion and Jewish life in Munich. Some years ago we opened the new synagogue in the middle of the city. The new Jewish school and the new Jewish center with a restaurant and so on -- it is the biggest new Jewish center in Europe. We have guests from Israel, from the States, from everywhere in the world -- they accept the rebirth of Jewish life and that Jewish people feel in Munich at home. You couldn't imagine it some decades before.

"Therefore we believe it's not only our opinion. We ask the Jewish community worldwide: is it," meaning 1972, "a problem? If it's a problem, we make no bid. They all say it is no problem and they say one sentence more: Munich should get a second chance."

Three-city field, two-city race?

ACAPULCO --  The vote for the 2018 Winter Games is still some nine months away.  But is the race already tilting toward a two-city race in a three-city field? In presentations Thursday to officials from all 205 national Olympic committees, Pyeongchang and Munich, the South Korean and German candidates, articulated distinct visions. Those two would seem to offer the International Olympic Committee a clear choice when it votes next July.

Munich wants to throw a "festival of friendship," a traditional alpine celebration with the bang of a big street party.

Pyeongchang, bidding for the third straight time, unveiled a theme it called "new horizons," a call to the IOC to fulfill the mandate of taking the Games to every corner of the world.

Pyeongchang's vision is perhaps more profound. It falls neatly in line with the IOC's recent moves to Beijing (2008), Sochi (2014) and Rio de Janeiro (2016).

Then again, Munich has Katarina Witt, the two-time Olympic figure skating champion. It's impossible to know whether it ultimately makes a difference but let it be said, and directly: Katarina Witt exudes sex appeal.

She knows it. Everyone around her knows it. To ignore that is to ignore a salient feature of the Munich bid.

Everyone in the room listening to her Thursday at the lectern, when she was talking about celebrating winter sport "very passionately," when she said Munich's goal is to "lift the Winter Games to a new level of global excitement" -- everyone gets that the project has allure because she so obviously does.

Katarina Witt wore a two-tone grey-on-grey sheath dress Thursday from the American designer Nicole Miller, and four-inch pumps from the premium Swiss shoe label Navyboot, and you can bet that after the presentations the TV camera crews had eyes only for Katarina.

As ever, she played it cool. All business. She said afterward that it was thrilling to finally be able to go public with the presentations, that it finally affords those interested "the pictures in your head about what they could expect."

At some point -- not here, not now, it's way too early in the game -- the Koreans will counter with Yu-Na Kim, the Vancouver 2010 figure skating gold medalist.

At that point, the race will sharpen further. Next year.

Oh, and then there's Annecy, France -- the third entrant in the 2018 race.

There are some features to the revamped Annecy plan that are truly intriguing -- a "square of nations," for instance, a celebratory Games-times plaza. And bid leader Edgar Grospiron is one of the most decent, genuine guys anywhere.

Even so, it is an enduring mystery why the French -- just as they did in the 2005 race for the 2012 Summer Games, won by London -- seem to keep having difficulty sounding the right tone in these Olympic bid contests.

For instance, every bid-city presentation includes videos. The Annecy presentation on Thursday began with a video that included shots of Grospiron getting dressed, putting on a white shirt, tugging up his pants.

This reminder from the creative department: there is a fine line between being artistic and having a great many people in the room go, what?!

Following that video, the French line-up of speakers Thursday included Pernilla Wiberg, the great alpine ski champion (three Olympic medals, two gold) and former IOC member.

She's not French. She's from Sweden.

What?

Then came another video, this one from Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the First Lady of France. Why not her husband, the president of the republic?

What?

The Munich presentation featured a video of German chancellor Angela Merkel. The recently elected governor of Gangwon province in Korea, Gwangjae Lee, appeared here Thursday in person, even speaking in English.

Was Carla Bruni-Sarkozy -- who spoke in French -- featured on Thursday's video because she is herself a former model? Or was it she and not her husband because he was the one who in early 2008 was the first European leader to raise the possibility of not attending the opening ceremonies that August in Beijing?

Within the IOC, they tend to remember those kinds of things. And the rough going the torch relay had in Paris in the spring of 2008 too.

Grospiron, asked after the presentation about Sarkozy, said, "You can be sure he is behind us," meaning fully supportive.

If Annecy has challenges, it's only fair to note that the other two surely do, too.

There's talk within Olympic circles of a push to take the Summer Games back to Europe in 2020 (say, Rome). The 2022 Winter Games, too (say, 2022, St. Moritz, Switzerland).

There are currently four Italian and five Swiss IOC members. The IOC votes through secret ballot, and so it's fruitless to try to divine whether any or all of those nine, for instance, might see the benefit in going to Asia in 2018 and then coming back to Europe thereafter.

Then again, it's not difficult to figure out that nine votes would give you an excellent head start on the 55 or so you might need to win.

The Munich effort must also contend with the presumed 2013 IOC presidential candidacy of Thomas Bach, the leader of the German Olympic Committee and an IOC vice president. Would the IOC give the Games to Munich in 2011 and then two years later turn right around and elect Bach, too?

"I hear different theories," the mayor of Munich, Christian Ude, said Thursday in an interview.

"It's a wonderful situation for Munich to have a representative of the bid who is so well-known and popular in the IOC. Of course, there is another opinion which says he wants to become president and he has a difficult situation …

"I only see that he is supporting the bid with all his power and influence, and we enjoy it."

As for Pyeongchang: Two times already it has come up short, losing 2010 to Vancouver and then 2014 to Vladimir Putin and Sochi. Can it finally get over the hump?

This 2018 bid would seem markedly different from before -- no references to politics or reunification on the Korean peninsula, for instance. This bid also features unquestionable governmental and heavyweight business support.

Will that be enough? If it's not, is it fair to ask what combination of elements and timing would ever be enough to make a Winter Games bid from Korea "enough"?

The only certainty in an Olympic bid contest, as ever, is uncertainty.

Well, and this -- in the next few moths, the so-called "Olympic family" will surely be seeing a lot of Katarina Witt.

LaShawn Merritt's fascinating legal drama

Beijing Games 400-meter track and field gold medalist LaShawn Merritt got 21 months for doping, a three-member arbitration panel ruled in a decision made public Monday. That's not, though, the news from one of the most fascinating Olympic-themed sports law cases in recent memory. As part of the case, a 7-Eleven clerk testified that she sold Merritt the male enhancement product ExtenZe on a number of occasions. The stuff that's in ExtenZe is what he tested positive for. Again, though, that's not the news. Merritt is, by all accounts, a first-rate young man. He didn't intend to cheat. He made a really bad choice. Enough said.

At issue in Merritt's case is a provocative, tough-on-doping rule the International Olympic Committee adopted two years ago.

The rule says that any athlete who gets hit with a doping-related suspension from competition of more than six months is banned from the next editions of the Winter and Summer Games.

Thus the bolt of news in Monday's ruling, the three-member Merritt panel saying in a unanimous ruling that the IOC rule is too strong. The panel called it an "additional penalty on an athlete over and above what is provided for in the [World Anti-Doping] Code for a doping infraction."

Like virtually all doping-related rulings, the Merritt matter is mired in citations and in criss-cross analysis that might well terrify even a first-year law student. It runs to 52 pages. Yet on the central point the ruling speaks with remarkably frank language.

"If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck," the opinion reads in emphasizing its assertion that the rule is an impermissible additional penalty. It adds a few sentences later, "Any argument to the contrary is mere skullduggery."

Well.

Bring on the appeal!

Off we go to the next and final tribunal, the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sports, and the sooner the better, because this is a point of sports law that must not any longer remain unsettled.

In the big picture, and just being honest about the way Americans are sometimes perceived in the quiet corridors of international sport, the fact that this ruling comes from an American case, with American arbitrators assigned through the American Arbitration Assn., may not ultimately prove all that helpful to American athletes such as Merritt, or the likes of the swimmer Jessica Hardy.

But this, too, must be said: At least someone, somewhere was willing to confront the issue squarely. If it had to be an American panel, so be it.

One way or the other, it must be settled. To let it linger perpetuates a situation that's not fair and not right, because -- as in nearly all rule-oriented areas of life -- it's essential that there's certainty about which way the rule cuts.

Merritt's case makes for an excellent test. It offers a vivid reminder of how world-class athletes lead different lives than the rest of us mere mortals even as it raises a string of compelling questions.

The well-established rule in sports doping is that if it's in your system, you're liable for it. That is, and remains, the starting point for any discussion.

By now, any elite athlete surely must know that you play with fire if you buy anything at an American vitamin store.

By extension, now you have to be on guard at the 7-Eleven, too. So the case of LaShawn Merritt makes for a cautionary tale. The lesson: a world-class Olympic-sports athlete has to be on guard about almost everything he or she ingests.

Is that fair?

Maybe not.

Is there any other way to do it? Almost surely not, because athletes and their lawyers have proven amazingly inventive in seeking to avoid culpability.

No question Merritt was negligent for not checking the ExtenZe label. No question it's his fault the stuff -- the substances DHEA and pregnenolone -- got into his system. That's why he got 21 months.

Then again, was he appropriately warned? Everyone in American society knows there are warning labels or signs about seemingly everything, everywhere. Should there be warnings about the potential adverse consequences to athletes on a "sexual functioning" product?

As the ruling Monday noted, the "privacy of an individual's sexuality requires the greatest degree of [legal] protection. As such, the issue of sexuality rarely comes up in the context of doping in sport. In this respect, this is a truly exceptional case."

Should issues of sexuality so matter? That would make for an exceptionally interesting debate.

Ultimately, though, that's not why this case is, indeed, truly exceptional.

The IOC's policy-making executive board, in June 2008, adopted the six-months-and-you're-banned-from-the-next-Games rule. In Olympic legal jargon, the policy has come to be called "The Unpublished Memo."

The standard suspension in a first doping offense is two years.

To cut through a lot of legal clutter, the issue with The Unpublished Memo is simple:

Is it only an eligibility rule? Or is it itself a second sanction on top of a significant suspension already issued in a particular case?

If it's the latter, doesn't that amount to double jeopardy?

As detailed Monday, Merritt's suspension is retroactive to last October and runs through next July. Merritt would be eligible for track's 2011 world championships, due to be held in August of next year in South Korea.

Should he also be barred from the 2012 Games? If he is barred, doesn't that have the real-world effect of extending his suspension from less than two years to nearly three? Is that fair?

Yes, he could perhaps run in, say, Diamond League events. But not the Games? As his lawyer, Howard Jacobs, put it in an interview, "To say it's anything other than a sanction is really to ignore how important the Olympics are."'

To frame the issue differently, consider the familiar saying -- you do the crime, you do the time. Emphasizing that in this context these sorts of sports doping cases are not criminal and considering merely that such a saying is so well-known: Once you do your time, then what? Do you have the right to -- using Merritt as the example -- run again freely?

Or is appearing in the Olympic Games not a "right"? Is it a "privilege"? And if it's a "privilege," do organizers have the authority to set whatever conditions they wish for entry?

Clearly, the IOC has an interest in blunting athlete use of performance-enhancing drugs. No one disputes that. The issue is how to go about doing so fairly.

The three-member American Arbitration Assn. panel invited the IOC to take part in its consideration of Merritt's case. The IOC declined, saying that if "any party intends to challenge any IOC decision, it may do so in front of the appropriate international jurisdiction, which is not the AAA."

No matter which way the appeal finally goes, it's worth remembering that any system of jurisprudence works best, and engenders the most respect, when it is grounded in common sense.

Thus the wish here is both that the appeal is rendered quickly, and that due attention is paid to these sentiments near the close of the ruling issued Monday (for ease of reading, broken here into two paragraphs instead of one) :

"… The principles of Olympism (i.e., respect for universal fundamental ethical principles such as fairness and human dignity) require a resolution of this issue sooner than later. Mr. Merritt should know where he stands in all aspects of his competitive career after the conclusion of this case, which would include appeals.

"His competitors in the United States should know. USATF and the USOC should know. Delaying the final determination of whether The Unpublished Memo conforms to mandatory provisions of the [World Anti-Doping] Code cheats athletes and sports organizations around the world."

Jon Horton and the quest for stone cold

Jon Horton looks at Paul Hamm and what he sees goes well beyond the men's gymnastics all-around gold medal that Hamm won at the 2004 Athens Summer Games. He sees a mental toughness that's best described simply: stone cold.

After four of the six rotations at those Games, the fourth producing what seemed like a disastrous fall in the vault, Hamm stood 12th in the all-around standings. After five he moved up to fourth. With his sixth, the high bar, he moved into first.

After that fourth rotation, it would have been easy to give up. No way. Not Paul Hamm.

The world gymnastics championships get underway Saturday in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Paul Hamm is coming back to competitive gymnastics but -- not yet. It's Jon Horton's time now. He's the leader of this 2010 U.S. team.

Click here to read the rest at TeamUSA.org.

Sochi at the halfway point and a 'New Russia'

SOCHI, Russia -- It should have taken maybe 15 minutes to make it Monday morning from our hotel near the central business district out to the airport. It took two hours. Of course, that was leaving the hotel on the 10 o'clock bus, which actually left way closer to 10:45 a.m., but why quibble over such details? Especially, as it was later related by other friends, when it took four hours to get to the airport on the 11 o'clock bus.

It's not as if there was some catastrophic accident that had blocked the roads, either. Just some rain and a whole bunch of cars going nowhere fast. Asking why it took two hours, or four -- there's no answer.

"It's normal in Russia," a Russian friend who was also on the 10 o'clock bus said of our two-hour crawl. She shrugged her shoulders.

Of all the things that get said and written about Sochi in the next few years, leading up to the 2014 Winter Olympics, there's this: See those 2014 Games as catalyst for a new normal in modern Russia.

There are lots of ways to define "legacy," a word much used in Olympic circles. The way the Russians are defining it -- particularly since the entire project in Sochi is a start-up -- makes for a compelling study.

Russia is not going to be changed overnight because of the Olympics.

But Russia assuredly is going to be changed. Some of those changes are already clearly visible now -- not quite three and a half years since Sochi won the right to stage the 2014 Game, about three and a half years to go until the opening ceremony. Some are more subtle and may take at least a generation to realize.

The visible change is easy: all the construction in and around Sochi, the seaside Olympic Park for the ice sports and the snow sports cluster in the mountains at what's called Krasna Polyana, about 35 miles away.

At the figure skating and short-track speed skating building, they've already screwed in 500 tons of bolts. The top row of beams is being hoisted up into place now.

A few steps away, at the larger of the two ice hockey buildings, they've poured nearly 110,000 cubic yards of concrete.

All in, estimates are that it will take $6 billion to build all the Olympic infrastructure -- and that's only about a quarter of the sum being poured into developing the region by 2014, as the official Russian news agency Tass reported Wednesday. If the Beijing 2008 experience is any example, such enormous figures will ultimately prove low-ball estimates.

Sochi is a Black Sea resort with hundreds of what the Russians call "sanitoriums" and Americans might call "spas." It's a well-established summer fun spot. The 2014 game plan is to make it a winter destination as well.

This isn't Greece in the run-up to the 2004 Summer Games in Athens or, for that matter, India in the lead-up to this month's Commonwealth Games in New Delhi. They're emphatic in Sochi that the buildings will get built on schedule -- everything in the Olympic Park in 2012 but for the central stadium, and that in 2013.

"I'm not afraid to show you anything," said Murat Akhmadiev, a supervising engineer for Olimpstroy, the government agency overseeing building at Olympic Park, said during a walk-around a few days ago.

Vladimir Putin himself made a little tour on Wednesday. Knowing that he was coming by to scrutinize your work -- that's what you might call motivation.

Clearly, there's a sense of urgency among the construction crews working 24/7 at Olympic Park. At the same time, there's an undeniable sense of confidence, too -- reflected in the six-month-old stray puppy that crews have adopted as the site mascot.

His name is Tzosik -- a Russian diminutive for "Tzentralnyi Stadion,"  Central Stadium.

In wrapping up its visit this week to Sochi, it was little surprise to hear the IOC's inspection team -- the so-called coordination commission -- prove upbeat, commission chair Jean-Claude Killy saying at a news conference Thursday, "Every time we meet with President [Dmitry] Medvedev or Prime Minister Putin, we have a complete sense that this project is Priority No. 1 nationally."

Will the traffic be way, way better by 2014? Undoubtedly.

Will there be other and unforeseeable challenges to come? Plainly.

Will mistakes be made? Yes. Nothing is perfect.

Is Sochi one of the more interesting experiments in Olympic history? Sure, in the manner of Beijing two years ago and Rio in 2016. Which is why the International Olympic Committee keeps going to such places.

The Olympic Games, though, are not fairy dust. They don't magically solve problems. As a catalyst for discrete change, though -- the trick is to think big but recognize that sometimes big change just takes time. That's a hugely sophisticated take on legacy. That's what's on display in Sochi.

In Russia, right now you can't recycle the plastic bottles that are seemingly everywhere. They're working now on that -- because of 2014.

For the first time, 2014 again the spark, they're trying to figure out how to identify -- and recruit -- as many as 30 million people nationwide for the sorts of volunteer projects that are common in the United States. That's one in five people.

"Can you imagine the scale of under-delivered services that could be provided?" asked Dmitry Chernyshenko, the chief of the Sochi 2014 organizing committee.

This is a country where an estimated 13 million people, just under 10 percent of the population, daily confronts physical disabilities.

All that concrete that has been poured at the ice hockey arena? Some of that went into ramps to get up and down.The ramps are the sort that evoke, say, Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego. Nothing out of the ordinary here in the United States. In Russia -- that's a shining example.

"Russia is a rather new democracy," Chernyshenko said in an interview. "It's just less than 19 years old." He laughed, then said, "It's like my older daughter," who is 19. "This," the father said, "is the best way to describe what the 'New Russia' means. When you are 19 years old, when you've got great potential but you've [also] got a great history -- it's very natural to become very active and be recognized as a member of world society.

"First of all," he said, "the New Russia should be an equal member of the world society. I know our state leaders are doing a lot for Russia to become that."

And, he said, "We will help them."

'You could feel the spirit'

SOCHI, Russia -- How many of you, asked Jim Beitia, know what this is? He held a metallic purple-colored softball bat. Better yet, he said a moment later, what are all the things could this be? A bat, someone said. Right, said Beitia, a longtime major-college softball coach back in the United States, a long way away from this part of the world, where softball is not well known. He asked, what else could it be? It could be a club, someone else said, a weapon. Right again. What else?

Silence. Well, Beitia said, it could be a tool -- an instrument for building peace. So, he said, let's go play.

The problem with world peace is not just that it's not realistic. The real problem is that if it's not realistic, no one tries.

Of course it's idealistic to try. But the entire thrust of the Olympic movement is to try, and the fundamental premise of an Amman, Jordan-based outreach project called Generations For Peace -- which on Sunday wrapped up its seventh wide-ranging workshop, its first not only in Europe but outside the Middle East -- is that sport genuinely can help, can promote one-on-one change.

For all those quick to dismiss a program such as Generations For Peace -- an initiative launched three years ago by Prince Feisal Al Hussein of Jordan, now an International Olympic Committee member, and his wife, Princess Sarah -- there's this: two of every three people in the world watch the opening ceremony of the Summer Games on television. At some level, in some fashion -- that's a lot of idealism out there.

The trick, as is obvious if no less difficult, is how to make it real.

There's no right way, and there's no only way. The Olympic scene is punctuated with ambassador programs and cultural exchanges and awards shows and more.

Generations For Peace has opted to do its work in a quiet fashion. Since the project's launch in 2007, it had staged -- before Sochi -- six workshops; those six trained some 460 community activists from 39 countries and territories; they have since passed on what they learned to 3,100 more coaches and community leaders; in all, Sarah said at the seminar, roughly 51,000 young people have been touched already in some way by the process.

The 57 who spent 10 days together in Sochi came from 11 European and Central Asian countries. They included survivors of the 1990s conflict in the Balkans and those who came of age in former Soviet republics now grappling with religious, political and economic tensions.

Over the 10 days they spent 80 hours in classroom sessions and 54 more on the sports fields and courts. The agenda ranged from sophisticated negotiation theory to how to hold a softball bat to common-sense advice: Connections and relationships matter. Talk with each other, not at each other. Small moments can be really big.

"On a football field, you can pass the ball to me and I can pass to you back,"  said one of the 57, Denis Kruzhkov, a 37-year-old Russian professor. "Even if we don't speak the same language, we can use signs and we can score a goal."

"Everybody is born with a purpose," said Emina Cerimovic, 26, a lawyer from Sarajevo, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. "Life is short. If we have to do something, then do it well. If you can make one child smile -- that's enough for me."

When Emina was just 8, her father was killed in the war that raged through the former Yugoslavia; he was just 33. She couldn't go to school for three years. Now, though, she has her law degree and is a finished thesis away from a master's degree.

A frequent community volunteer, this summer she voluntarily took part in the forensic identifications of some of the mass graves in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

There's no point, she said, in giving in to sadness, no matter how tempting. "My mom calls me idealistic," she said. "Many people do. But I still believe. And I really want to remain this way."

Such stories make for the soul of the program. They have received little or no publicity, however, because Generations For Peace has deliberately kept such a low profile.

Doing so has defused the inevitable suspicion that the initiative is but a vanity project for Middle Eastern royalty. Reality check: there's nothing vain about 57 people doing softball or volleyball drills in the rain, as they did here, most everyone in bright yellow slickers.

Moreover, operating out of the spotlight made it that much easier to tweak the program.

Among the faculty at the Sochi workshop:  Olivier Faure, a Sorbonne professor and expert on conflict resolution whose works have been published in 12 different languages.

"We want to promote reconciliation," he told the group in one of his lectures. "… It doesn't mean you need to fall in love the next morning with your enemy. Let's be realistic, let's be reasonable. We want decent co-0peration -- being able to live with each other, next to each other, without every day having the past in our minds."

Three years in, clearly something about Generations For Peace is clicking, the Sochi camp offering "more evidence of our global reach," Feisal said Sunday in a speech closing the seminar.

He said in an interview, "The energy, the enthusiasm, the passion you have from everybody involved -- it's very difficult to capture that in words and pictures," adding a moment later, "It's like you can describe what an orange tastes like but it's not until you taste an orange that you can say now, 'I know what it's like.' "

IOC President Jacques Rogge, visiting the Jordan Olympic Committee in Amman just a few days ago, said he was "very impressed" with what Feisal had done there, then -- unprompted -- called Generations For Peace a "great step forward in promoting peace through sport."

A major Generations For Peace sponsor announcement is forthcoming. The program's annual budget, figuring in three camps per year, now runs to about $1.5 million.

Last December, the IOC recognized Generations For Peace. That milestone  formally eased connections to the wider Olympic movement.

In the works now is the opening of research institute based in Amman, with ties to Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. , designed to measure which parts of the program work and over how long, and which need to be reviewed and changed.

It's expected that each of those attending here will, once back home, work with at least 200 children and train at least 20 other adults -- each year.

Of the 57 on hand in Sochi, 10 were from Bosnia and Herzegovina -- four Croat Catholics, two Orthodox Serbs, four Bosniak Muslims. On Day One of the workshop, amid introductions, standing as a bunch at the front of the room, six of the 10 put their arms around the next person over.

As the workshop closed, again at the front of the room, after a short presentation -- all 10 linked up. "You could feel the spirit," Emina Cerimovic said.

Donna de Varona, the Olympic swim gold medalist turned broadcast journalist, was among those taking in that scene.  "I interpreted that," she said later, "as hope for the future."

Baring it all, for art

It is so, so tempting to dismiss "The Body Issue" from ESPN The Magazine as either a lame attempt to compete with Sport's Illustrated's swimsuit issue, or just so much voyeurism, or both. The clock is already running on which librarian in which city declares the whole thing an abhorrent shock to the system, and orders it banned.

That would be foolish.

To look at the photos themselves in the magazine, which goes on sale Friday, is to be reminded once again that the human body comes in an astonishing variety of different sizes and forms and features, and to realize that humankind has celebrated the gift of our bodies since the dawn of time, and it's absurd to pretend that we don't, or we shouldn't.

Here are some of the best of the best among us, among them Olympic athletes past, current and future.

Click here to read the rest at TeamUSA.org.

And here for an ESPN photo gallery.