U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee needs to show it cares for athletes by speaking truth to IOC (petty) power

Canadian Olympic legend Hayley Wickenheiser (left) doing medical training. (Screenshot from TSN)

The United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee has deservedly faced withering criticism for its failure to act on knowledge that former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar had sexually abused hundreds of athletes under his care.

While that criticism has largely been directed at the USOPC’s former top leadership, the current regime also should not escape condemnation for its amoral legal posturing to avoid liability as part of a shameful settlement proposal with the Nassar survivors.

The overall picture is that of an organization thrilled by a California appellate court ruling last October that the USOPC did not have a legal responsibility to protect athletes rather than that of an organization that should live by a moral responsibility to do exactly that.

Now the USOPC has an opportunity to do something that won’t cleanse the horrible ethical stain of its actions and inactions in the Nassar situation but will show it actually cares about athletes. This is a defining moment for current USOPC chief executive Sarah Hirshland and board chair Susanne Lyons.

The USOPC must publicly tell the International Olympic Committee that it has failed both athletes and the world at large by continuing to take a full-steam-ahead approach to the 2020 Summer Olympics in the face of the global coronavirus pandemic. 

The USOPC board is having meetings by teleconference today.  It has a media teleconference scheduled for Friday.  The latter would be a perfect time for the USOPC to speak out from the bully pulpit it has as one of the most important members of the global Olympic movement.

This isn’t about shibboleths like “American exceptionalism” and “rugged individualism” or about having the USOPC set itself above the rest of the Olympic world.  This is about the USOPC using its position, however one classifies it, to speak on athletes’ behalf.  And to do it so the whole world can hear.

This is not the time to choose the solidarity of a common voice with the IOC’s Panglossian leadership over the need for the USOPC to choose common sense.  If the IOC gets angry, that will only serve as further evidence that its leaders are nothing more than petty panjandrums – with no clothes, to boot.

“I hope the USOPC pushes the IOC to be more transparent in its decision making process and more responsible in its messaging to athletes so that we do not put athletes and communities unduly at risk in these extraordinary times,“ Han Xiao, chair of the USOPC Athletes Advisory Council, said in a message to me Thursday morning.

One of the greatest Olympic athletes in history, Canada’s Hayley Wickenheiser, realized that when she tweeted Tuesday that the IOC is “insensitive and irresponsible given the state of humanity” for its bullheaded conviction that the Games will go on and that speaking of alternatives like cancellation or postponement would be “counter-productive.”  Wickenheiser is an IOC member, a six-time Olympian, four-time gold medalist and an emergency room doctor in training, on the front lines of the medical response to the coronavirus.

Another celebrated Olympian and former IOC member, four-time rowing gold medalist Matthew Pinsent of Great Britain, called the IOC’s approach “tone deaf” in its telling athletes to “continue to prepare for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 as best they can.”  That shows contemptuous disregard for athletes who are undoubtedly more concerned about loved ones than about training for a possible Olympics – if they are able to train at all, given the closings of facilities across the world in an effort to stop the spread of this deadly disease.

Han Xiao, USOC Athletes Council chair

"The IOC is letting more than athletes down, they are potentially letting the world down in a worst case scenario,” Xiao said.

Xiao was among the athletes left disappointed by what he heard – or more accurately, what he didn’t hear – during a Wednesday IOC conference call with 200 athletes from around the world.  After the meeting, IOC President Thomas Bach gave an utterly anodyne response in a video disseminated by the IOC, emphasizing again there are four months left until the scheduled July 24 opening of the 2020 Olympics.

This is what the USOPC should say publicly Friday:

1.  At the very least, it should ask the IOC to stop treating athletes as fools by refusing to talk about all the potential options being discussed for the 2020 Olympics. (Yes, the question could be put more delicately, but you get the idea.)

2.  Better yet, it should ask that the IOC say it will either postpone or, as a last resort, cancel the Olympics because its four-month wishful thinking is meaningless.  Yes, a postponement to either 2021 or 2022 would be a massive logistical undertaking - and, if it is not possible, so be it.  And the USOPC should ask the IOC to say exactly when it will announce its decision.

In an interview with the New York Times that went online Thursday night, Bach finally acknowledged the IOC is considering “various scenarios” and that “cancellation is not on the agenda.” He did not discuss any specifics, once again citing the amount of time left before the Olympics as a reason not to speculate or make any immediate decisions. Only Bach knows why he said in early March that the words cancellation and postponement had not come up at an IOC executive board meeting, a statement that either was a lie or an admission of irresponsibility.

If the curve is flattened by social distancing, as every sane person hopes, the effect will not be to end the spread of the virus but rather to prevent it from hitting populations in an all-at-once way that will overwhelm medical capabilities, as is already happening.  In so doing, the duration of the spread can be lengthened, but the ability to cope with it is increased.

Given that, how can the IOC reasonably expect that none of the 11,000 athletes, plus the coaches, officials or event staff who are to be at the Tokyo Olympics, won’t have asymptomatic coronavirus?  Could there be a better petri dish than an Olympic Village or the close contact of combat sports?  Will everyone be swabbed?  More than once?  (After all, the Olympics last nearly three weeks.)  Will oceans of disinfectant be poured over every inch of Japan several times a day?

The U.S. State Department’s latest advisory, issued today, advises U.S. citizens to avoid all international travel for an unspecified length of time.

Too much about the virus still is unknown for anyone to say with certainty, either now and likely even on July 24, that the risk of having the Olympics this summer will be worth whatever reward it brings.

That is why postponement now is the best option. Imagine how stupid the IOC will look if it says on May 31, for example, that the Games are a go, only to face a massive new outbreak in Japan or elsewhere June 1. Imagine how reckless it will be if such an outbreak occurs July 24. This isn’t the same as an unexpected catastrophe, like an earthquake or tsunami; this one is well underway.

Yes, cancellation would be a crushing emotional blow for once-in-four-years Olympic athletes. So to a degree would be postponement. Only a heartless person would not feel for them, just as we feel for the U.S. high school and college seniors whose final seasons have ended prematurely. Yet so much more is at stake.

The United States sends more athletes, more staff and more related personnel to the Olympics than any country in the world.  On behalf of all of them, on behalf of the world, the USOPC must speak out, no matter what the irrelevant consequences might be in the petty world of Olympic politics.

To stay silent would, as Hayley Wickenheiser said, be insensitive and irresponsible.  And, sadly, the USOPC already has shown it can be both.