It is Not Just Every Four Years. It is an Ongoing Olympic Movement.
As the Torino Olympics came to a close the other night it is important to understand that the Olympic Movement is not just a occurence every two years in an Olympic Games. The movement is a process that takes time, money, and power that presents itself to the public on a stage unlike no other in the Olympic Games. It is a grind that includes bidding and selecting cities to host the Games, and, more importantly, athletes training extremely hard to make it to this event - an event some call the pinnacle of sport.
While this is old news, this process is ongoing and the fact that during the winter games a vote was cast for the emilination of two sports, softball and baseball - which was hard to bear for American athletes. At this same time, the United States’ clout in the Olympic movement slipped even further Friday when Jim Easton failed to retain a seat on the IOC executive board.
“I let down the U.S. by not being able to keep a place on there,” said Easton, who had served as an IOC vice president for four years.
The loss of U.S. influence comes down to several factors, including anti-American sentiment, growing European control of the IOC and the fallout from political turmoil and leadership changes at the U.S. Olympic Committee in recent years.
“The seeds of what happened here were sown in the last five and 10 years,” U.S. member Robert Ctvrtlik said. “We knew that coming in.”
The signs were clear last July when New York finished fourth out of five candidates in the vote for the 2012 Olympic host city. At that same meeting, the IOC voted to scrap baseball and softball - two traditional American sports - for the 2012 London Games.
Europe is by far the biggest bloc in the 115-member IOC. After Friday’s elections, Europe holds nine of the 15 seats on the policy-making executive board, along with three Asians, two Hispanics and one African.“It’s cyclical,” said Canadian member Dick Pound, a former IOC vice president. “Europe is really exercising its full control. It makes it pretty hard to stand up and say the executive board reflects the composition of the session.”
The last time the United States had no member on the board was a seven-month transition period between the end of DeFrantz’s term as vice president in July 2001 and Easton’s election in February 2002. Otherwise, there had been a continuous U.S. presence since 1989.
“We’re very disappointed not to have representation on the top body,” Ctvrtlik said. “It’s important for our sponsors, important for this movement to have a good working cooperation with the United States. We’ll work hard in the future to see if we can regain some of the things that were lost.”
The next chance for a U.S. member to get elected to the board will be at the 2007 IOC session in Guatemala. DeFrantz said she will definitely run again.
IOC president Jacques Rogge dismissed suggestions that the United States was no longer a major Olympic player.”In my humble opinion, I believe that is not the case,” he said. “In the last 20 years the United States of America have organized three Olympic Games. This is a feat no other country has done.”
The United States staged the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles in 1984 and Atlanta in 1996 and the Winter Games in Salt Lake City 2002. The USOC is weighing a possible bid for 2016.
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