My Olympic Takeaways

The best part of the Olympics -- Getting people together

Four years ago I spent 9 days in the London Olympic Stadium with my brother Denis as well as Tim and Peter Callahan. We were spectators and it was awesome. I also got to participate in the London Olympic Coaches House and meet a number of coaching legends from around the world. This time for Rio, I watched from home on TV and sometimes my phone while trying to balance work. That was pretty tough, and if I owe you something, don't worry, its coming now the Olympics are over.

Two Passionate Coaches -- me and Vern Gambetta in London

In Ancient Greece, the Olympics were supposed to mark a pause in conflicts between peoples and a celebration of athletic grace and beauty. Its gotten a little more complicated than that. But here are my takeaways from Rio.

1) Regardless of all the turmoil that seems to surround them, to me the Olympics are awesome! I may say a few critical things at times about various Olympic officials or how Chicago was cheated out of hosting the Olympics or about the influence of drugs on results. But the world is better because the Olympics exist. For two weeks, my family generally sat together and watched events together and often then talked about them afterwards. A bunch of nights we had people over to watch and talk about the events. I had almost daily phone calls, notes, and tweets from friends around the world who were following events in Rio -- a few were lucky to be in Rio. There are clearly lots of things that could make the Olympics better, but it does one thing well. It brings people together to celebrate human athletic performance.

2) I am torn on the best moment of the Olympics, and I may mention a few great ones below. But right now I am going with Mara Abbott's bike ride as the best. It was in the first days of the games and to me Abbott represents what an Olympian is supposed to be -- a tremendous athlete chasing what even she admits was probably an impossible dream...winning a gold medal. When she had her chance to win it, she made her move boldly. As we all know now, Abbott finished 4th being caught in the last 100m of the race. But that did not make her efforts any less inspiring. Aren't we all supposed to dream the impossible at some point in our life? Maybe too few of us are bold enough to make that move when our opportunity arises? If you have not read her thoughts in the WSJ about the race...you have to. It is linked here and be forewarned, it might make you cry. Mara Abbott: My Ride in Rio

3) After lots of suspicion about performances at this Olympics -- and a number of accusations -- I now believe drug cheats start with the coaches. I posted last week that I agree with the stand that we need to move towards lifetime bans for athletes who test positive for banned performance enhancers. However, I also think in many cases the athletes who are doping are victims too. They are victims of coaches who manipulate them into thinking they need some extra support or that taking a banned substance is not really that bad. On Sunday -- the last day of the Olympics -- it was revealed that 44% of medals in track and field in events from 800m to the marathon went to athletes whose coaches are currently being formally investigated for cheating. So although I think we should have lifetime bans for athletes, I also think coaches should be banned for life too and maybe imprisoned. If you are encouraging banned performance enhancers you have abused the athletes in your trust and you should be banned. Maybe an even greater issue, though, is the gray area some elite coaches navigate through the encouragement of Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUE's). TUE's are legal but seem to be abused by some elite groups who have been able to manipulate the system. When one training group produces the 1500m champ, the 5k and 10k champ and a marathon bronze medalist and their group is known for the promotion of TUE's something is not right. So my take away from this mess is not only do we need to increase punishment, we also need to have a global discussion on sport ethics and ban the drug coaches.

4) When it comes to reform in the Olympic Movement, it seems women are speaking out more this summer than men. Starting with the saga of Yuliya Stepanova -- the Russian whistleblower now in hiding -- to Lilly King and Jenny Simpson speaking out about drug cheats, to Oiselle founder Sally Bergeson and reform of Rule 40, women seem to be taking the lead in reform. We need more athletes speaking out that they want a fair system. We need men and women. If we are ever going to have truly clean sport, the IOC needs to embrace whistleblowers.

5) NBC needs to take a hard look at announcing and reporting. My hero in the announcing booth this Olympics was Rowdy Gaines. Gaines was an Olympian himself. He gave a positive, enthusiastic yet also at times critical view point of swimming. He made swimming more interesting. The track and field officials were terrible. There were a few exceptions. Tim Hutchings helped the broadcast at times. But no one was willing to be critical of the sport and deal with the issues that confront track and field. There lack of openness makes them appear compromised to commercial interests. The lowest moment may have been Lewis Johnson telling athletes -- not yet officially informed -- on live TV that they had been disqualified and how did they feel about that. Can we please hire someone like Ryan Fenton of Flotrack -- whose energy is tremendous, who is respectful to athletes, who is amazingly informed and loves the sport!?! Away from the venues, NBC may also be complicit in the Lochte affair -- encouraging the story instead of looking critically at it. Viewership is down by 17% from London. My one kudo to NBC was the app was fantastic. The track was often so much better without announcers, and it was great to watch key races without commercials.

7) I have stopped watching a lot of team sports in the Olympics but somehow US Women's Field Hockey drew me in. This team seemed like a team of destiny and even though lowly seeded, they took eventual gold medalist Great Britain down to the last minutes before losing 1-2. They performed much much better than the US team that went to London and I have to say its nice to watch an underdog.

8) IOC President Thomas Bach must go -- one reform that has to happen is some of the people at the top of the IOC and likely other national bodies need to go. The final straw for me was Bach's clueless response to a question about Yuliya Stepanova and the fact that her WADA account was likely hacked to discover where she is located. Thomas Bach said her safety was not the IOC's concern. These leaders are too out of touch with the Olympic movement it's time for some new leadership. I know there are plenty of folks in the Olympic movement who see the principles of the movement as more important than as way to enrich themselves.

9) Lets get rid of the medal count --  Being proud to be an American means we ought to be a little humble too. We are the greatest and richest country in history. We ought to win a medal count every Olympics. But how does the medal count influence behavior? Our medal count is clearly padded by athletes whose performances are suspicious. Lets get rid of the medal count and return to the principles of the Olympic creed.

10) Lets be careful who we make our heroes. We may find out that some of our heroes from these games are not exactly the heroes we think they are. That is in part why I picked Mara Abbott. Her performance I believe will stand up as historic and heroic even though not on the podium. Here is what she said about it afterwards: "creating a performance that was truly your best. In which you were tactically exactly where you needed to be at every juncture. Where you overcame your errors of the past and superseded the weaknesses others ascribed to you. Where you took the layer upon imperceptible layer of learning acquired over decade of wins and losses and embodied all the lessons. Those sorts of race days might be even rarer than pure victories."

Peter Callahan '09 starting to think Tokyo 2020 

Besides watching some pretty cool races this weekend, I got to help one former Raider start his preparation for Tokyo 2020. He was in town after taking a break from his pursuit of getting to Rio. He came within a second of competing for Belgium there. But its time to put that behind him and think about the future. Tokyo 2020 is only four years away which seems a long way off but is really right around the corner. The time to start preparation is now. For many it will start with taking inventory of what happened in preparation for this Olympics and tweeking the plan to improve performance where you can for the future. The journey to the Olympics over the next four years will be filled with ups and downs. But its still a journey worth taking.