Here is an array of IOC members, at their pre-Olympics meeting, preceding what was to be a ceremonial vote on Salt Lake City’s candidacy — running against the 2002 hosts for the right (burden?) to host another Games was precisely no one — with a slew of warnings to U.S. and Utah honchos that they must respect the “supreme authority” of the World Anti-Doping Agency when it comes to keeping the Olympics clean. Kiss the rings, please. All five of them.
Who are they talking about? They may as well have said “rhymes with Cravis Kygart,” they came so close to naming Travis Tygart — the head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and frequently a forceful critic of WADA.
And then here is Tygart, placed squarely in the crosshairs by the IOC’s higher-ups, firing back with a statement that essentially said: “I’m the problem? No, you’re the problem.”
In his actual words, Tygart said, “It is disappointing to see WADA stoop to threats and scare tactics when confronted with a blatant violation of the rules governing anti-doping.” He piled on by accusing WADA of “egregious errors” and mocking that a “potent drug ‘magically appeared’ in a kitchen and led to 23 positive tests of elite Chinese swimmers.”
Oh, right, the Chinese swimmers. Because their inclusion at these Summer Games is so clearly tied to whether Salt Lake City should land a Winter Olympics a decade from now. Could there have been incentive for WADA — and, by extension, the IOC — to accept the explanation of Chinese officials that the mass positives were due to contamination in a hotel kitchen because Beijing was set to host the 2022 Winter Games? (Raises eyebrows.)
Back to the present. Eleven of the athletes who produced those positive tests in the run-up to the 2021 Tokyo Games are back for more. A few are serious threats to win medals. Shouldn’t that be the major concern here?
“I hope everyone here is going to be competing clean this week,” said none other than seven-time gold medalist Katie Ledecky, who begins her swimming competition Saturday. “But what really matters also is: Were they training clean?”
Man, the Olympics really bring the world together, don’t they?
So before the Paris Games begin, the gold medal for absurdity already has been hung around the neck of the IOC. Cue its anthem.
Let’s be clear: It’s not crazy to think American federal oversight of international sports is an overreach. Looking to Congress to provide moral guidance on anything would seem to be a flawed approach. And it’s not as if American athletes haven’t cheated. Fraudulence doesn’t fly a specific flag or speak only one language.
But the IOC is no better equipped to serve as a compass. The reality is that the Olympics governing body is having so much trouble finding sites for future Games, particularly in the winter, that it’s having to bend its own rules just to pull it off. Also Wednesday, the pooh-bahs gave the 2030 Winter Games to the French Alps — provisionally. The contract contains language that France must prove it is capable of staging such a spectacle in smaller resort towns — or lose those Olympics. Which are all of — checks watch — 5½ years off.
That threat is a peck on the cheek compared with the doozies that showed up later Wednesday. The vote to approve Salt Lake City was supposed to be a rubber stamp. At 83-6, it effectively was. But it was preceded by two unforeseen developments that, even for a perpetually doublespeaking Olympic “movement,” were dizzying.
First, the thinly veiled shaming of Tygart by IOC members, with only the Salt Lake City bid organizers on hand to take the brunt of it. The organization that runs — and profits from — the Games wants WADA to be the final word on doping matters. At this point, that’s folly. First, WADA can’t be considered an independent arbiter: Its 42-member board features 11 IOC members. These are not separate legislative and judicial bodies so much as conjoined twins.
But while the IOC is clearly tired of Tygart’s rhetoric — he has slammed WADA after the New York Times initially reported news of the positive Chinese tests — it also is wary of efforts by the American government to involve itself in the policing of sports. The IOC and WADA — again in lockstep because they share a brain — fought against the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act, the law that brazenly allows the FBI, among others, to investigate doping.
“Regretfully, this is another example of the politicization of sport,” Belgian IOC member Ingmar De Vos said. “… But we really need to understand what is going to happen in the future and where is this going to end?”
Turns out: not before the IOC dropped the day’s biggest bomb. Bach said the IOC, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and the Salt Lake City bid officials had agreed to amend the host city contract. Bach did not physically stand up on the dais and turn screws in the back of bid president Fraser Bullock, but he might as well have. The upshot: Get your people in order as it pertains to WADA or you could lose the Games.
These are strongman tactics, and they were immediately called out as such. Not just by Tygart, who majors in bluster. The chair and ranking member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which heard testimony from Tygart and Olympic legend Michael Phelps on WADA’s shortcomings, fired off a statement, saying, “It speaks volumes that the IOC would demand a one-sided contract condition to protect WADA rather than work together to ensure it is fulfilling its mission to protect clean sport.”
Makes the head spin. But there’s more: In his scathing remarks, De Vos not only referred to the strength of the Salt Lake City bid but commended Gene Sykes, the president of the USOPC board, for listening to the IOC’s concerns. Bach referred to Sykes as a “friend.”
You know what happened later in the day? You guessed it. Sykes was approved as an IOC member. It’s an incestuous world. They’re just living in it.
With the Paris Games about to begin, it’s both predictable and regrettable that a fiasco involving starched shirts detracts from the athletes who produce the product that allows the IOC members to buy those starched shirts.
“I think everyone’s heard what the athletes think,” she said. “They want transparency. They want further answers to the questions that still remain. At this point, we’re here to race. We’re going to race whoever’s in the lanes next to us.
“We’re not the ones paid to do the testing. So we hope that the people that are follow their own rules, and that applies now and into the future. And we want to see some change for the future so that you don’t have to ask us that question.”
Who’s going to force such transparency from WADA? The IOC? The Olympics and the body that determines whether its competitions are clean are one and the same. Separating them would require ceding control and allowing independent evaluation. Wednesday showed the IOC prefers backroom deals and arm-twisting to get what it wants.