Flat Hills Road

I should be working, but the IOC is monopolizing my head space right now. The 2016 Olympic host is supposed to be announced within the hour. The leading candidates, supposedly, are Chicago and Rio de Janeiro; Tokyo and Madrid are also in contention. I want to get these thoughts down before the host is actually announced.

I can’t figure out if I want Chicago to win or not, but I’ve seen a lot of silliness posted online recently about the Chicago bid. People are entitled to their opinions, but I think sometimes those opinions are based on incomplete or erroneous assumptions about the cities and the process.

The most common pattern I’ve seen is people thinking the vote is up or down on a given city. These people make the argument, “Chicago shouldn’t host the Olympics because…” and then go on to say something like, “They have better things to spend their money on” (possibly true and a strong argument, but one the proposal counters very well), or “Chicago isn’t safe.” The problem with this argument is, if it was accepted, it would mean the IOC would turn down one city (Chicago) because it wasn’t safe, and instead select… Rio? Is Rio safer than Chicago? Seriously? This isn’t a binary-choice situation; it’s choosing the best of the alternatives. (Conway Hill has an excellent exploration of the idea that Rio may have the best bid, and very strong arguments, because he focuses on positive reasons Rio is a better choice rather than negative reasons why “Chicago shouldn’t win.”)

There’s also the “Obama has better things to do than campaign for the Olympics.” This, also, may be true, but consider the alternative. Madrid’s PM, Brazil’s Lula, and I’m sure the Japanese PM, are all in Copenhagen for the decision. Conventional wisdom is that “personal diplomacy” from Russia’s Vladimir Putin is what won the 2014 winter Games for Russia. If Obama didn’t go to Copenhagen, it would be interpreted as a strong vote of “no confidence” in the Chicago bid, and would almost certainly mean Chicago would not win.

In other words, unlike the IOC’s decision, Obama’s situation was binary: positive support of the Chicago bid, or negative action against the bid. He did not have a neutral option. And whether or not I agree that Chicago is the best choice, I do think it’s appropriate that our President be a positive supporter of our bid. It certainly would be inappropriate for him to positively support another country’s bid in opposition to ours.

Selfishly, I’d love to see a Chicago win, because I bet I could get some good work out of it, and see another Olympics only a time zone away. (I’m assuming I’ll still be able to get a media credential, which is not a given, of course.) But really, if Rio or Madrid win, I won’t be terribly disappointed. (After Beijing 2008, I doubt Tokyo has a shot at bringing the Games back to Asia so soon. Madrid is too “safe” a choice in the face of Rio, I’m afraid. But can any of them afford the Games, really?)

(ETA: Chicago eliminated in the first round of voting. Tokyo goes out on the second round. The third round will decide.)

(ETA2: And it’s Rio. Good for the IOC for finally going to South America. I hope Brazil stages a competent games without going too deep into debt.)

Tommie Smith as a statue

After Eugene, I made a last-minute work trip to San Jose. I had a few spare hours between wrapping up at the client site and returning to the airport for the red-eye, so what’s there for a track fan to do in San Jose but pay a quick visit to Speed City?

Speed City was San Jose State University, and in 1968 its track team under Coach Bud Winter was loaded with sprinters. It seems beyond paradox to me that Speed City delivered two men known today principally for standing still, or that those men had to run as fast as they did to earn their moment of immobility, but 1968 was a year of irresistible forces meeting immovable objects. There’s a statue on the campus of San Jose State which is both.

If you’ve done even a little reading about Olympic History you probably already know the image of Tommie Smith and John Carlos which is commemorated in this statue. Smith on the top step and Carlos behind him created one of the most indelible images of the Mexico City Olympics when they raised their fists and bowed their heads on the medal stand as the U.S. national anthem played for the 200m medal ceremony. Smith and Carlos are shoeless (the statue shows two of their shoes on the stand) and Carlos wears a red, green and yellow necklace. Both are wearing pins for the Olympic Project for Human Rights. Forty-one years later, it’s still visibly clear that these men had a grievance.

That moment of stillness on the stand (the statue’s silver step is empty but bears the words, “Peter Norman stood here in solidarity”) was earned with twenty seconds of absolute velocity which lead modern observers to wonder how Smith and Carlos might have compared with the likes of Bolt, Johnson and Gay had they had the benefit of modern athletics technology. And it was followed by years of chaos which would’ve given the pair a grievance if they hadn’t already had one.

Smith and Carlos stood on the podium in their socks.

The statue is moving in an unexpected sense: I felt as though the larger-than-life Smith and Carlos were about to step down from their medal stand and interrogate me, or at least demand that I, too, “take a stand.” (It looks as though other people have stood where Norman stood, for pictures or for soapboxing.) It’s really the only image they could have used, of course, but I sort of wish there was a similarly moving statue, perhaps down by the track, that showed the speed in Speed City as well.

(There are a number of interesting books about Mexico City and the Olympic Project for Human Rights. In particular I’d highlight Smith’s Silent Gesture, which would have benefitted greatly from either a harsher editor or a more assertive ghostwriter or both, and Frank Murphy’s The Last Protest, about Lee Evans; I haven’t read Murphy’s book but on the basis of his previous two I know it has to be excellent.)

What we really want to do is tell you how to understand what you’re going to see tomorrow, whether you’re watching it on TV or out on the course. I’ve been tossing around a bunch of ideas over the last day or two; some of them I’ve been talked out of, others I’m hanging on to.

A marathon, for a spectator, is a lot like reading a very long novel. In particular, like reading a very long novel which doesn’t appear to be strong in the plot department. There are hundreds and hundreds of pages of apparently meaningless events and details which don’t seem to be approaching resolution, and then suddenly in fifty intense pages it’s all tied up neat in a bow. You’d think you could just tune in for the last 30 minutes of the race and get everything you need to enjoy it, but the fact is that those first two hours or so, before the fireworks start, are just as important. They’re building up all the characters and ideas and questions that will be resolved later. Just tuning in for the resolution means missing out to some degree.

Knowing the characters never hurts. One plot-line which has been suggested for this year’s men’s race goes like this: Robert Kipkoech Cheruiyot is the protagonist. He was selected for the Kenyan Olympic team but withdrew due to injury, since healed. He’s run only one race since last year’s Boston, but the races run by his training partners in recent weeks suggest that he’s in phenomenal condition. He knows this course like nobody else running. He’ll wait for the hills, then try to bash everyone else to pieces on the climbs and cruise in to the city as the victor.

The spoilers in this scenario are a trio. His training partner, Evans Cheruiyot, is every bit as strong and has a faster PR. Evans knows Robert will work harder and run faster if pushed, so he will wait, shadow, and if he’s still in touch after the hills, make his move then.

Deriba Merga, the Ethiopian, is a wild card. He has the restraint of a compulsive gambler and the speed of a thoroughbred. His aggressive tactics have lost him more than one victory in the past (including a medal in Beijing) but his manager promises that he’ll do nothing but wait this year. His manager also admits that Merga is sometimes beyond controlling.

Finally we come to Ryan Hall, the American, the man who would be king. Hall has a mindset which is unfazed by pressure and expectations (he sees them as validations that he’s doing the right thing) and not crushed by them. He can run downhill as well as anybody. Where does he fit in all this? Is he Fifth Business, as he was in his PR run in London? Is he even a character? Does he wait, wait, wait until Kenmore and then try to crush everyone on a wave of crowd support? Or does he get chipped off the pack in the hills and passed by Brian Sell somewhere in Brookline?

There’s been a paradigm shift since Beijing. You can’t be just a strength runner or a speed runner anymore; you have to be able to deploy strength tactics at a speed pace. Sammy Wanjiru has the speed of a Tergat and the strategy of a Tanui. That’s the new standard. What happens when that hits the Boston course, which historically rewards patience and ruins hubris?

Since posting my own analysis of USATF’s Project 30 report, I’ve had the chance to discuss the report with a few other people whose opinions I respect. Two of them independently raised a question I hadn’t considered. A significant amount of the report makes sense only after accepting the idea that winning Olympic medals is the ultimate raison d’etre for USATF. I noted this assumption and moved on, but not everyone accepted it so easily. Does this motivation come from the USOC and/or the USATF charter? (Probably.) Is it the right way to be approaching the sport? Good question. It leaves out questions of participation, public health, integrity (it’s tricky to balance an overriding imperative to win medals with an anti-doping message) and even sponsorship.

Refining that last question: assume that Project 30’s goal is to maintain USATF’s future. This requires sponsorship and broadcast rights agreements, both of USATF and USOC. What will bring more sponsors to both organizations? Do sponsors chase the prestige which is assumed to come from winning lots of medals? Or do they follow consumer attention, which may or may not be predicated on winning a lot of medals?

Or is this a national pride issue? I’m sure there’s been some academic research on this point.

The 2008 IAAF Yearbook, which I’ve mentioned before, has a section in which almost all the Olympic champions respond to a survey. Some of them are cute, some are silly, a few are even a little boring, but the one which really caught my eye, perhaps because of his recent heroics, was Steve Hooker.

One of the questions was, “What was the last thing you thought before your Olympic final?”

Hooker’s answer: “The Belgian 4×100m team looks pretty cute.”