Abbott wins, skating loses, Chicago keeps word (and seven other things I know)
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Ten things I know, and you should:
1. Chicago’s approval of the on-and-off-and-on Michael Reese Hospital land deal as part of the proposed 2016 Olympic village is significant for more reasons than just giving bid officials the site they wanted. It also allows Chicago 2016 backers to emphasize to International Olympic Committee officials that the city can do what it said it would.
2. Lose-lose proposition: As of last week, IOC reserves had dropped about 14% in 2008, to $400 million, according to IOC Finance Commission Chairman Richard Carrion of Puerto Rico. The stock market decline was an obvious reason for the drop, but another loss shows just how hard it is to hedge bets. The IOC’s investments in currencies other than dollars also dropped because the dollar strengthened -- until the Federal Reserve cut interest rates to nothing this week.
3. Jeremy Abbott, 23, of Colorado Springs has a shot at replacing two-time national champion Evan Lysacek and three-time national champion Johnny Weir as the leading U.S. men’s figure skater heading into the 2010 Olympics. Abbott, fourth in last year’s U.S. championships, won December’s Grand Prix final and November’s Cup of China. His score at the Grand Prix final is highest ever by a U.S. man. That is even more significant given this season’s judging crackdown on even minor errors.
4. They keep falling like flies: Skating’s latest injury withdrawals are from this week’s French championships. Brian Joubert, 2007 world champion and 2008 world silver medalist, pulled out today with the recurrence of a back problem. Reigning world champion ice dancers Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder pulled out Wednesday because of her shoulder injury. Last week, Olympic silver medal dancers Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto said no mas before the free skate at the Grand Prix final because Agosto has a back injury.
5. Only International Skating Union President Ottavio Cinquanta and his ISU council flunkies seem unconcerned that the new judging system has overtaxed skaters’ bodies to the point that they either retire prematurely, like Switzerland’s Stephane Lambiel and Canada’s Jeffrey Buttle, or miss competitions with one injury after another.
6. Olympic officials still love dictators. How else can one explain the European Olympic Committee’s recent decision to congratulate Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko for an ‘outstanding contribution to the Olympic movement,’’ a recognition Lukashenko trumpets on his website. What you won’t find on the website is that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Lukashenko’s government ‘the last dictatorship in Europe’’ or that the European Union had imposed a nine-year travel ban on him. Or that Belarus’ recent contributions to the Olympics include the doped hammer throwers who were stripped of their silver and bronze medals last week by the IOC.
7. No one loved dictators as much as former IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch (no surprise there, given his service to the government of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco.) In 1985, Samaranch gave the IOC’s highest honor, the Olympic Order in Gold, to East German President Erich Honecker and his sports henchman, Manfred Ewald, who created the state-sponsored doping system that made their country an Olympic power and ruined the health of hundreds of athletes; as well as Romanian president Nicolae Ceaucescu, a madman whose lone Olympic contribution was to defy the Soviet Bloc boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Games.
8. Don’t expect redistribution any time soon of the Sydney Olympic medals Marion Jones, left, forfeited after her doping confession. A year already has passed since the IOC officially stripped Jones’ medals, and it is in no hurry to move anyone up in the results, lest further revelations force the embarrassment of having to reorder the results a second time.
9. A senior IOC official told me Tim Montgomery’s admission to HBO that he used banned drugs before the Sydney Olympics might not be enough for the IOC to wipe out his results or those of the gold medal 400-meter relay (he ran a preliminary leg) because Montgomery did not test positive and has not, so far, admitted to taking drugs during the Olympics, when the IOC has jurisdiction.
10. The problem with buying U.S. TV rights for the 2016 Summer Games with the site as yet undecided, is it also includes buying rights for the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. No U.S. network wants the hassles of broadcasting from Sochi -- bad time zone (eight hours later than New York), security concerns in the Caucasus, the wild west scene in a Russia where money often means mafia.
-- Philip Hersh
Top photo: In April 2007, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama stood with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, left, and Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley at a rally celebrating the USOC’s decision to pick Chicago as the candidate city to vie for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. Credit: Tannen Maury / EPA
