A step in the right direction

USOC has to devote more time, money to its athletes

Give the United States Olympic Committee credit for trying. Last weekend, an international sports event called the Titan Games made its debut in San Jose, Calif. The idea was to contest several Olympic sports that would appeal to a similar audience under the same roof. Included were competitions in weightlifting, judo, shot put, boxing, wrestling, karate, taekwondo and fencing -- the very pastimes that apparently have been taking place at many USOC board meetings.

The committee has been slapped around pretty hard in public over the last few years. One CEO declared that about half the people he served weren't worth his time or his resources. Another president merely doctored her résumé by a degree or two. Then the new CEO (the one who attempted to steer contracts to his brother's company) and new president called for one another's resignations. Now some people feel it's time to bring George Steinbrenner back into the USOC fold in order to fix things. And you thought the Osbournes were a dysfunctional family.

For all the criticism the committee has received in the recent past, none is more valid than its lack of service to athletes -- who rouse themselves at hideous hours, postpone prospective careers and dedicate their lives to something that may never reward them with anything more tangible than the bumps on their noses and scrapes on their elbows. The life of the prototypical Olympian isn't Carl Lewis turning up his nose at an "insulting" $50,000 appearance fee or Dream Team basketball players squabbling over who gets the suite in the five-star hotel; it's a rower breaking the ice at dawn, losing his breakfast in the Charles River, carrying his boat back to the basin, then trying to figure out if he and his teammates have enough frequent-flier miles to get to the next training camp. And that doesn't include the majority of athletes, who never even make an Olympic team.

This is why Congress must take a hard look at where the committee's budget goes, and why the money spent on the Titan Games was well used.

From 1978 to 1995, the USOC held an event called the National Sports Festival (later the U.S. Olympic Festival) that featured U.S. athletes in most Olympic sports competing in one city over a week or 10 days. The event was well suited for a few cities such as Colorado Springs, the USOC's present home, and Indianapolis, which has many existing venues and has tried to position itself as the Olympic sports capital of the U.S. Other cities were not nearly as successful. The festival was a financial drain on St. Louis, Minneapolis and especially Los Angeles, which supported the Olympics but not its kid brother, running the festival at a $2 million loss.

Yet the festival was a loss leader of sorts, an investment in athletes who didn't receive much exposure. For young athletes in the bigger sports -- track and field, gymnastics and swimming -- this was their first chance to compete in the multi-sport environment they hoped to experience at a future Olympics or Pan-Am Games. Smaller sports such as badminton, table tennis and judo had a rare chance to showcase some of their best athletes before a mass audience. Fans often saw those sports for the first time. Many athletes made their first national television appearances. Sponsors could one-stop shop for athletes they could support on a less costly, more meaningful scale.

It was great for members of the media, too. Journalists who had neither the time, nor the budgets, to travel to a national championship or World Cup in every Olympic sport could pick and choose the best human-interest stories from every sport and give exposure to athletes we normally would not have an opportunity to write about before the Olympics. Save the financial risk, the event was a win-win-win for everyone.

But the proliferation of sports and their assorted expenses made Oly Fests too cumbersome to pull off every other year. So the USOC pretty much gave up. It dropped the Olympic Festival and didn't do nearly enough to help the athletes who benefited the most from it. In 1999, the committee created the U.S. Olympic Cup, an international meet in San Diego featuring competition in swimming, basketball, volleyball, softball and boxing. That was a one-time-only undertaking. If you called the USOC offices to ask about any event that didn't have the word Olympic in it, someone would tell you, "No idea. It's not our event." The committee has always asserted that the Olympics happen every day rather than every four years, but it must bear some of the blame when the sports it governs can't get on TV during the in-between years.

When Norm Blake took over as the committee's boss three years ago, he put more emphasis on larger medal- and revenue-producing sports at the expense of those in greatest need of funding and exposure. The chief of the USOC, the organization entrusted with supporting all the sports under its umbrella, labeled many as "low value-added programs." That was a shame. If there is any credence to the notion that the Olympics are about more than winning and losing, you couldn't have guessed so from listening to Blake, who resigned under fire less than a year later. Consider the story of taekwondo athlete Esther Kim, who gave up a sure victory at the 2000 Olympic trials so her injured teammate, Kay Poe, could take her spot on the Olympic team. Poe didn't win a medal in Sydney, but that doesn't make Kim's decision a "low value-added" gesture.

Organizers say the Titan Games, where Poe was among the winners, may lose about $125,000. That isn't good, but neither is it brutal in today's economy. adidas served as title sponsor. Other companies, such as Visa and Bank of America, were on board. The event will be televised on ESPN2 at the end of March. The competition was strong, too. A strong field of international wrestlers handed losses to Americans Rulon Gardner and Cael Sanderson. The simultaneous grappling and sparring was enough to sate the fans of combat sports who have had to make do with World's Strongest Man events where guys named Magnus can bend tire irons like nobody's business. If that can draw ratings, it's about time Olympic sports did the same.

No Titan Games II is on the schedule yet, but this brainchild of troubled committee boss Lloyd Ward, himself a karate black belt, is a good idea. The USOC would regain the trust of athletes, sponsors and the public at large if it promoted more multi-sport events, loosened its restrictions on the use of the word Olympic when these sports are starving for attention, and realized that the only way to get its own scandals out of the news is to better promote the struggles and achievements of its athletes. Shot-putter Adam Nelson said the Titan Games were "a fantastic idea. ... I don't really care what happens with the USOC as long as they provide me ample opportunities to compete."

Sports Illustrated staff writer Brian Cazeneuve covers Olympic sports for the magazine and is a regular contributor to SI.com.

 

Related information

Stories

Brian Cazeneuve's Insider Archive

Multimedia

Visit Video Plus for the latest audio and video