The insidethegames.biz Magazine Autumn Edition 2016

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Autumn Edition 2016

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Contents

Published: October 2016 by Dunsar Media Company Limited Editor: Duncan Mackay Deputy Editor Magazine: Daniel Palmer

Introduction

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Who will win the 2024 bid race?

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Duncan Mackay David Owen

The doping crisis

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Business Development: Natalie Wallace

Coe reliving history

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Design: Elliot Willis Willis Design Associates

What did the Olympics ever do for Brazil?

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Lost in translation

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The Olympic Channel

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Managing Director: Sarah Bowron

Pictures: Getty Images Staff headshots: Karen Kodish Print: www.csfprint.com Dunsar Media Company Limited C222 MK:TWO Business Centres 1-9 Barton Road Bletchley Milton Keynes MK2 3HU Great Britain +44 1908 821239 contact@insidethegames.biz www.insidethegames.biz

Michele Verroken Mike Rowbottom Nick Butler

Nick Butler

Liam Morgan

A backwards look 34 Mike Rowbottom

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Data is published in good faith and is the best information possessed by Dunsar Media Company Limited at the stated date of publication. The publisher cannot accept any liability for errors or omissions, however caused. Errors brought to the attention of the publisher and verified to the satisfaction of the publisher will be corrected in future editions, if any. Š and Database Right 2016 Dunsar Media Company Limited All rights reserved.

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hat a traumatic few months this has been for world sport, a period unprecedented in the Olympic Movement, when everything we thought we understood seemed to get turned upside down.

These are difficult times for the International Olympic Committee and its President Thomas Bach. Less than halfway through his first term and the German is already battling to save his reputation, in Western Europe and North America at least, where his handling of the Russian doping crisis before Rio 2016 has been severely criticised.

Bach’s perceived closeness to Russian President Vladimir Putin added to the cynicism many in the media and the public currently feel about the IOC. I have been covering the Olympics since 1989 and believe the disconnect between how the IOC see themselves and how the public see them has never been wider. Some fear it may already be too late for Bach to convince his critics that he is serious about the problem of doping.

I think the situation is worse than even the Salt Lake City 2002 bribery scandal nearly 20 years ago. We are currently standing at a crossroads for sport and mega-events.

Unless the IOC can regain the trust of the

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public and media and convince them they are serious about tackling the problems of doping and demonstrate that cities can host costeffective and sustainable Games, then the future looks bleak.

Bach’s Agenda 2020 was supposed to herald a bright new future for the Olympic Movement but is increasingly becoming ridiculed as a useless document that has promised much but delivered little.

The decision by Rome’s new Mayor Virginia Raggi not to support the Italian capital’s bid for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games was accompanied by a statement that must have felt like a punch in the stomach to Bach. “We want to escape the big events that bring money and debts,” Raggi said when announcing officially the city would not support the campaign.

The withdrawal of the Mayor’s support for Rome has effectively left a race that started out with five cities a year ago with only three left bidding with less than 12 months to go until the IOC is due to make its decision at its Session in Lima on September 13 in 2017.

This, though, could be just the beginning and insidethegames’ chief columnist David Owen examines how much more difficult it will be for the IOC in future to convince cities that bidding for the Olympics is a good idea.

Of course, everyone feared Rio 2016 was going to be a problem. Anyone who was in Brazil for those 17 days will know what a challenge these Olympic Games were, whether you were an athlete, official, journalist or spectator. Rio just about pulled it off but there were a few casualties along the way - most notably IOC Executive Board

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member Patrick Hickey, arrested by Brazilian police for allegedly being involved in illegally selling tickets.

Nick Butler, insidethegames’ senior reporter, was in Brazil for the duration of the Olympics and thinks that by the end everyone – from the IOC to the Cariocas – were relieved when it was over. Butler also reports that, although Tokyo 2020 was supposed to be different, it has already suffered its fair share of problems that show perhaps it is not going to be the smooth ride everyone was expecting with the Japanese.

Of course, doping remains the biggest scourge of the Olympic Movement. We have turned to Michele Verroken, one of the world’s best known experts on drugs in sport, for her thoughts. She has written a searingly honest piece on the current landscape. What Verroken writes will not make you feel very optimistic about the future.

Earlier, I criticised Agenda 2020. One good thing, however, that has come out of it is the Olympic Channel. Launched on the day of the Closing Ceremony of Rio 2016, it has made an encouraging start. There have, naturally, been a few early teething problems but the early signs are good.

The Olympic Movement desperately needs something positive to hang on to at the moment following a year which has tested the faith of everyone connected with it.

Duncan Mackay Editor

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’s time for it r, fo y la p to l al d an o g to With less than a year e way to a better future for sport 2024 bidders to point th The bid race for the 2024 Olympics was launched amid much optimism but following the withdrawals of Hamburg and Rome that has evaporated and once again left question marks over whether a city can justify the huge costs of staging the Games. David Owen investigates

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n September 13 in 2017 the International Olympic Committee will decide the host city of the 2024 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games.

With less than a year remaining in the race, what can sensibly be said about the present state of play?

The most striking thing for me is that, for the first time in probably 35 years in a Summer Games contest, the IOC has as much reason to be on tenterhooks at this stage in the competition as the bidders.

A strong if unspectacular five-horse field would have been fine.

We had already lost Hamburg before Rome also fell by the wayside, largely because the city’s recently-elected Mayor, Virginia Raggi, represents a political party, the Five Star Movement, staunchly opposed to staging the Games in the Italian capital, at least in the required time-frame.

Italian National Olympic Committee President Giovanni Malagò has since “suspended” Rome’s bid, with only very faint hopes that it could be ressurected.

Question-marks of various dimensions continue to hover over each of

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the remaining trio.

The notion that Budapest/Hungary could eventually be obliged to hold a referendum on its bid refuses to die, even if this might be thought less and less likely the deeper we move into the bidding process. It was a referendum that did for Hamburg’s chances.

Los Angeles may have cause to be concerned if Donald Trump, seen by many as reckless and unpredictable, wins the United States Presidency in November. The West Coast city might try to dissociate itself from events in distant Washington D.C, but it is hard to think this would wash with worldly-wise IOC members.

Paris too might face a political problem, at least for a couple of weeks in April and May, since it seems well within the bounds of possibility that far-right Front National candidate Marine Le Pen may secure the highest score in the first round of the French Presidential election.

It seems unlikely, though, that Le Pen could also win the decisive second round, involving the two leading candidates.

The French capital’s bigger problem appears to be terrorism, and whether the IOC could conceivably risk basing its flagship event there if

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attacks on French soil continue.

If one or more of the remaining contestants drops out, the IOC risks enduring a second consecutive low-octane bidding contest, after the Almaty-versus-Beijing showdown for the 2022 Winter Games.

And with the future in mind, I cannot believe that the twin spectres of doping and slapdash/ opaque governance rearing over the sports movement at present are doing anything to arouse public or municipal interest in taking an active part in post-2024 Olympic bid competitions.

I’m not sure the travails of the Rio 2016 Organising Committee can be stoking especially ardent desires to follow in their footsteps either.

Indeed, if hosting the Summer Olympics does not start to show signs of becoming, once again, one of the supreme aims of many of the world’s great cities - as it was in the 1990s and 2000s - a priority for the IOC in this 2024 race may have to be endeavouring to ensure that those who lose out are minded to come back and try again in 2028 and beyond.

Apart from anything else, I’d have thought the Lausanne-based body would want a maximum of viable alternatives in case Russia - probably the most assiduous, and successful, bidder to stage big international sports events in recent times - decided to try to rehabilitate itself by throwing its hat into the ring.

The IOC, remember, responded to the McLaren Report by stating in July that it would not “organise or give patronage to any sports event or meeting in Russia”.

Raggi’s opposition to the idea of the Italian capital bidding for the Olympics would not have encouraged many other leading European cities to look favourably upon the idea.

She cited an Oxford University study to justify officially withdrawing the city’s support from the Rome bid.

Given that I have since seen this described as a “crossroads moment”, with yet another city in the Olympic Movement’s traditional West European heartland turning its back on one of the IOC’s flagship events, I thought I had better take a closer look at this study.

The 28-page document turns out to be less negative than might have been expected.

However, it trains the most blazing of spotlights on a long-time flaw in the host-city selection process that the IOC, frankly, has got away with for too long and that must be corrected if the bidding concept is to survive in anything like its present - admittedly revamped - format. www.facebook.com/insidethegames

First things first: the study does not actually advise cities not to bid, but it does conclude that “for a city and nation to decide to stage the Olympic Games is to decide to take on one of the most costly and financially most risky type of megaproject that exists”.

It acknowledges that the Olympic Games knowledge management programme - the Movement’s attempt to transfer expertise from host city to host city so as to avoid continual reinvention of the Olympic wheel - “appears to be successful in reducing cost risk for the Games”.

And it suggests that the Rio 2016 Games “appear to be on track to reverse the high expenditures of London 2012 and Sochi 2014”.

However - and here’s the rub - having sought to analyse Summer and Winter Games since 1960, the study concludes that “at 156 per cent in real terms, the Olympics have the highest average cost overrun of any type of megaproject.

“Moreover, cost overrun is found in all Games, without exception.”

Think about that for a second: these academics from the world’s number oneranked university have been unable to identify a single Olympic project in more than half-acentury that came in on, let alone under, budget.

That is unacceptable, plain and simple. It was the basis for Raggi’s claim that the Olympics are “a blank cheque signed by host cities”.

As the study puts it: “In practice, the bid budget is really more of a down payment than it is a budget, with further instalments to be paid later.”

Or as one of the study’s authors, Alexander Budzier, told me: “There is something wrong in

Athens has struggled to find a use for facilities built for the 2004 Olympics. Photo: Getty Images

terms of how the governance around this is set up.”

Happily, there is a solution that readily presents itself, although I cannot see the Movement accepting it unless evaporation of the once plentifully-supplied pool of aspiring Olympic hosts reaches Aral Sea-like proportions.

The way I see it, there are two reasons for the scale of the cost overruns identified by the Oxford study.

And let’s be clear at this point, the scope of the document includes only sports-related costs, not general infrastructure.

One is the unmissable, immovable deadline that comes with an Olympic project; fall behind and you have no choice but to work out ways of catching up - which are usually expensive.

This deadline, though, is also a positive thing, since it can result in much-needed urban infrastructure - that might have been postponed again and again by local politicians obsessed by a four or five-year electoral cycle actually getting built.

Provided Olympic blueprints are well thought-through, requiring the construction only of facilities that will genuinely be of use to the city in question for a generation or more, I would argue that is a price worth paying -

CONI President Giovanni Malagò kisses the hand of Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi at an event in September. CONI has now suspended the 2024 Olympic bid.. Photo: Getty Images

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particularly when the huge marketing value of staging the Games is taken into account.

The other reason lies in the dynamic of the bidding process; namely, there is no incentive that I can think of to include anything other than the most optimistic of cost estimates in your bid book.

And, since host cities and Governments are generally required to guarantee that they will cover any overruns from these initial budgets, there is little incentive for the IOC to scrutinise them carefully enough at that stage to ascertain if they are realistic, although the altered bidding process applying to the 2024 race might lead to the numbers being pored over with more care.

The Oxford study takes London 2012 to task over the handling of a cost overrun it calculates in real terms at 76 per cent.

“Unfortunately, Olympic officials and hosts often misinform about the costs and cost overruns of the Games,” the document alleges.

“For instance, in 2005 London secured the bid for the 2012 Summer Games with a cost estimate that two years later proved inadequate and was revised upwards with around 100 per cent.

“Then, when it turned out that the final outturn costs were slightly below the revised budget, the organisers falsely, but very publicly, claimed that the London Games had come in under budget...

“Such deliberate misinformation of the public about cost and cost overrun treads a fine line between spin and outright lying. It is unethical, no doubt, but very common.”

Of course, hosting the Olympics can still be a good thing for a city, even if the ultimate cost is

The outcome of the US Presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump could be a major factor in Los Angeles’ bid for the 2024 Olympics. Photo: Getty Images

far over budget.

Of recent Summer Games, I would say it is possible to argue plausibly that Sydney, Beijing and London on balance derived more positives than negatives from acting as Olympic host cities.

With Athens, the legacy is mixed, although the Games helped to reshape the city extensively and for the benefit of many inhabitants, in spite of the white elephants and the deep-seated economic problems subsequently visited on the Greek population.

As for Rio de Janeiro, it is too soon to say, although with the benefit of hindsight, I tend to think that the Games went there too early.

It remains the case though that cost overruns of the scale and inevitability identified by the Oxford study ought not to be

allowed to continue.

I think you would find it would make a significant impact if, instead of lumping 100 per cent responsibility on the host city/country for cost overruns, the hosting contract allotted, say, five per cent of the risk to the IOC itself.

I am talking here only - like the study itself - about sports-related costs, not transport projects, or hotel upgrades or security.

The Lausanne body’s accountants and money men would no doubt scream in protest, since such a move would give rise, every two years, to a potential liability of unquantifiable size.

But it would provide a very real incentive for the IOC to scrutinise competing plans with utmost care at the bidding stage and, hence, contribute to a better and earlier understanding among all concerned of exactly what was

The problems associated with Rio 2016 may mean some cities have second thoughts about hosting the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Photo: Getty Images

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being signed up for.

Rome’s withdrawal will deal a heavy blow to the IOC, perhaps heavier than they currently appreciate.

With so much doom and gloom around, the Movement badly needs heavyweight advocates to speak up for the significance of sport in the broader scheme of things.

For all this, I still think we are likely to pitch up in Lima, host city of the 2017 IOC Session, next September with at least three candidates for the 2024 Games still in the running.

And, bearing in mind that the 2020 contest did not turn decisively in Tokyo’s favour until very late in the day, I still think at the moment that any of the three could win.

Bookmakers quoting odds on this rather specialised market have Paris as favourite, at between 10/11 and 11/8, followed by Los Angeles at around 3/1, and finally Budapest at between 9/2 and 10/1.

If you view Hillary Clinton as favourite to win the White House, then I would say that these odds on the US city look generous.

I have the impression that some in the IOC leadership feel that after a couple of decades of rather difficult relations, post-Atlanta 1996, the time has come for the Movement’s flagship product to return to the home of

some of its most valuable commercial partners. Slowly but surely, meanwhile, the current crop of US Olympic leaders is becoming more attuned to the complex code in which Olympic messages need to be couched for optimal effectiveness.

After three failed bids in a generation, Paris, where the The bookmakers have made Paris the favourites to host the 2024 Olympics. Photo: Getty Images modern Olympic other three countries involved in the race, a Movement was founded, appears more than factor that won’t necessarily, but certainly ever determined to break its losing streak; it could, help to instil momentum in a wellhas both the plan and the expertise to do so. crafted campaign.

Terrorism remains the imponderable, So far though, this 2024 contest has been frustratingly for the bid team, since it is largely fought out largely under the radar, and under outside their sphere of influence. close supervision by IOC technocrats - except Budapest may be the outsider, but it too has plenty going for it, from its imaginative bid when some new difficulty has surfaced.

The problem-plagued world sporting concept to Hungary’s deep Olympic and other movement could now do with it sparking sporting traditions. It is also probably fair to quickly, spectacularly - and inspirationally say that Hungary has changed more into life. profoundly in the last generation than the

London 2012 was a great success but still cost more than originally budgeted. Photo: Getty Images

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doping crisis

The

and

the sense

Having spent much of her life in a variety of antidoping roles, Michele Verroken’s verdict on the current landscape makes for grim reading.

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H

déjà vu of

aving worked in anti-doping for more than three decades, I am hugely disappointed and frustrated with the present state of antidoping. So much has been invested in the current anti-doping system, it’s almost unbelievable that this sophisticated system is failing to deliver unequivocally. Perhaps our expectations are unrealistic? I wonder what we are aiming for in the current anti-doping

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system and if it is achievable? After more than 13 years of the World Anti-Doping Code, why have we failed to stop institutionalised doping, creative performance enhancement or even simple inadvertent, non-intentional doping? Where is the confidence, rather than cynicism, in sport that doping free athletes deserve? It’s not a matter of clean or dirty athletes, it’s about playing by the rules.

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A saying I am reminded of, from philosopher George Santayana, illustrates our present situation: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.

To me this sums up the current crisis in the anti-doping world. There is a real sense of “déjà vu”; we have not learned from past experiences and continue to get it so wrong again.

How long has it taken to reveal systematic, state controlled doping in Russia which actually was so simple and previously evident in past doping scandals? The current anti-doping system can be played, so is it the right system?

How confident are we that national elite sports programmes are not simply performance enhancement which might be doping by another name? Why would we be surprised that sports organisations or athletes might try damage limitation, denial or cover up when a doping issue arises?

This was all known in 1999 when the International Olympic Committee organised summit in Lausanne brokered an uneasy agreement, based on the obvious impasse where no trust existed between the IOC, International Sports Federations and Governments over leadership of anti-doping standards. What I do recall was that athletes pointed out the shortcomings in all those factions laying claim to leadership. Those same claims exist today!

There is no doubt that pre-WADA (the World Anti-Doping Agency which emerged from the Lausanne impasse), doping was unregulated, evident but largely ignored.

Anti-doping activities struggled to get the support needed to enforce what rules there were. Organised doping regimes existed in certain countries and in some sports.

Athletes, sometimes the victims of doping systems, were also instigators, cheating with performance enhancing drugs, but some played by the rules. Suspicions about certain countries, like a form of “doping racism”, existed, with behind the hand comments that regulations and minimal testing did little to alter.

We can’t beat them so perhaps we can join them, but within the rules of science and medicine. Sports organisations ran their own testing programmes, some good, and some bad. Those that upheld a life ban know how different the landscape became since the WADA Code introduced lower sanctions and perceived plea bargaining for cheating. www.facebook.com/insidethegames

Post Code, sport should be in a better place. Over the years, anti-doping efforts costing millions of pounds, dollars and yen should have made a difference to our confidence levels in sports performances and our view of athletes.

There is little evidence this has happened.

Instead we have new suspicions, this testing programme is better than that, anti-doping organisations and/or laboratories operate at different standards, thus suspicions still exist.

Is there enough testing of the right type, at the right time?

Dopers must be better than the science available, so now we will need 10 years to catch up, and 24 hour surveillance to deter and detect. National anti-doping organisations lay claim to being world leading as if this is a new sports competition, yet getting the basics right would be reassuring.

Re-awarding medals and amending results is certainly the right thing to do but is hardly helping to define sports competitions or determine sporting outcomes. What will it take to build confidence and trust in sport and engage current stakeholders? There is no doubt that something must be done and more of the same is unlikely to achieve anything else but more of the same.

As a starting point we need to fix some of

The dopers are still often ahead of the testing system.

Photo: Getty Images

those elements that were so obvious in 1999 (well to me at least).

Partnership – if we are all in this together, then equal partnership must as a minimum include athletes, not a hand-picked group of individuals but proper representation including player unions and commissions across the sporting spectrum. WADA, they are your only stakeholder that matters!

Everyone else is part of the anti-doping industry or sports business. Each stakeholder needs to be included, not just the most opinionated, or best funded, or those you most like speaking to. Secret, closed meetings are not good governance. Stop

There remains a lack of confidence about the anti-doping system. Photo: Getty Images

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The anti-doping laboratory for the Olympics and Paralympics at Sochi 2014 has been accused of ensuring that Russian athletes did not test positive.

Photo: Getty Images

agreeing with yourselves and start thinking who really matters, and who could challenge your thinking to help anti-doping systems move forward.

Clarity – of anti-doping rules and procedures. Why has this all become so complicated? And why are the rules written in double negatives? Prohibited Lists have been published as lists of pharmacological classes for years.

These have grown, with some tinkering around the margins, into the current Prohibited List published under the World Anti-Doping Code, divided into substances and methods prohibited at all times and those only prohibited in competition.

Athletes don’t relate to the

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Prohibited List easily. They look at the List with little or no understanding of how this impacts their daily lives, or their use of medicines or supplements, without some help.

Some recognise the opportunity to exploit the in/out of competition divide, using prohibited substances such as stimulants and glucocorticoids to aid training because it seems this is OK, well at least not against the rules.

No surprise that something prohibited becomes attractive in the sporting world obsessed with marginal gains! Prohibited substances and methods as well as amendments or changes need to be evidence based and

internationally peer reviewed.

Credibility of the anti-doping rules demands that clarity.

Or go one stage further, ban all substances except those that can be medically and/or scientifically justified for individual athletes.

After all every stakeholder should be concerned about the health of the athlete.

Compliance – once we have agreement through partnership and clarity, it should be in everyone’s interest to work on compliance with standards. Not through the one size fits all school of measurement but by external and independent validation of operations and measurable outcomes.

When I introduced the first ISO certified anti-doping system in the UK before the advent of the World Anti-Doping Code, the strong selling point to sports administrators and politicians was their commitment to agreed standards; failure to follow through to delivery was the weakness. Yet an effective anti-doping system has to be affordable.

I have been aghast at the waste and excessive costs I see in anti-doping programmes. Calls for more funding may be appropriate, if we have better accountability for existing costs and externally inspected value for money audits.

How can we know how much testing is enough, if the risk assessment is carried out by organisations with a financial

There is not accountability in the anti-doping programme, Michele Verroken believes.

Photo: Getty Images

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The World Anti-Doping Agency, led by Britain’s Sir Craig Reedie, may need fundamental changes if it is to continue to lead the fight against drugs in sport. Photo: Getty Images

interest in the outcome? Alongside compliance must be independence, independence of decision making as well as delivery. Conflicts of interest have been allowed to interfere with the simple objective of achieving confidence in sport performances without violating anti-doping rules.

The next stage in respect of compliance must be how to deal with non-compliance. So much of that depends on who has authority to enforce sanctions. We have already witnessed major power plays over Russia and the Rio Olympics because of perceived differences in what constitutes a breach of anti-doping standards.

That uneasy partnership established back in 1999 between sport and Governments betrayed greater unease between sport and anti-doping.

If we cannot agree that rules are rules and standards are standards, then what is the point of having either? Ultimately you comply because you want to get it right, anything else becomes lip service. As I said before, athletes, www.facebook.com/insidethegames

be they from your country or your sport, deserve better or you have lost the real purpose of sport.

Responsibility – Unless there is collective responsibility for the health of athletes and for the consequences of pushing performance to the limit, the outcomes may become unpalatable. There is lot of rhetoric about inspiring the younger generation into sport and physical activity. The current doping debate cannot inspire confidence that there is a zero tolerance or the collective will to improve anti-doping.

But it’s a circular discussion, as we do not appear to be clear about what, why and how, there is just a focus on athletes we target for testing, for medical data and for sanctions.

There are other ways to engage with athletes to qualify them as fit to compete under clear anti-doping rules, haven’t we chased them for long enough? With some radical thinking, the biological passport could @insidethegames

be supplemented with useful, independently audited, individual health screening using a plethora of testing methods of benefit to the athlete.

So much more could be achieved, but it would take the kind of transnational collaboration, commitment and willingness from sports federations and organisations, national Governments and intergovernmental groups to move from entrenchment to enterprise. I hoped this was intended from the outset. Should and could WADA be part of a new era for anti-doping?

Not without some fundamental changes to governance, which must come from within. I am not convinced that the debate that started in 1999 has finally reached the point where sweeping progress is possible. At this moment in time, too many vested interests exist, with too much power and too little respect for sport or athletes to do the right thing. I hope I am proven wrong.

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Coe reliving history as he leads

IAAF out of the dark into the

light

Sebastian Coe’s athletics career was defined by his response to his shock defeat in the 800 metres at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. Now, as President of the IAAF, the Briton is proving he is a man you should never write off.

Mike Rowbottom looks back at a dramatic year leading the sport

S

ebastian Coe accomplished many things as an athlete, but his defining moment came at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow when his expected victory in the 800 metres turned into one of the worst experiences of his sporting life. He responded by winning the 1500m that was supposed to have been the property of Steve Ovett.

It is 36 years since that fateful concatenation of circumstances, and one year into Coe’s Presidency of the International Association of Athletics Federations. A case can be made for saying

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that he is experiencing a similar turn of events.

When Coe ran for the Presidency last year in competition with his sporting contemporary and fellow IAAF vice-president Sergey Bubka, he declared: “There is no task I have been better prepared for. There is no job I have ever wanted to do more and to do with greater commitment.”

Once installed, he found he was living the Moscow 800m experience all over again - but this time, instead of lasting 1min 45.9sec, it has been months and months.

Judging by his relaxed - if weary -

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Thomas Bach and Sebastian Coe have taken different approaches to Russia. Photo: Getty Images

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Sebastian Coe endured a difficult start to his reign as IAAF President but has slowly regained trust with his tough approach towards Russia. Photo: Getty Images

appearance at a press conference on the last night of athletics action in the Olympic Stadium at Rio 2016, it seemed as if Coe now feels he is in a position to re-build rather than merely salvage the IAAF ship of which he took command in August 2015.

One response to a series of rather weary questions from a press corps already just a tad demob-happy at the end of the Rio 2016 Games was particularly telling in the use of his phrase - “back in the dark days”.

There may be trouble ahead…there almost certainly will be trouble ahead. But sitting next to his sleek and newly-installed chief executive Olivier Gers, Coe looked like someone who believes he has a handle on a situation that clearly pushed him to his formidable limits when he came under savage criticism from all sides almost as soon as he had taken over the role he had slogged to achieve in a year of travelling and campaigning.

The phrase “careful what you wish for” came to mind very forcibly as the man with the golden touch - both as an athlete and an administrator - turned briefly into an unfamiliar, bearded, hunted figure.

On his first day at the IAAF office in Monaco there was a visit from the French police - and it wasn’t a courtesy call. Like a www.facebook.com/insidethegames

bucket of water balanced on the door of Coe’s new Presidential office, trouble tipped all over him - trouble that had been coming ever since the previous year’s airing of an ARD documentary on German television revealing that Russian athletes and coaches were complicit in a state-wide doping system.

The revelations, triggered in part by the whistleblowing of Russian 800m runner Yuliya Stepanova and her husband Vitaly Stepanov, led to a two-part investigation by the World Anti-Doping Agency, the first details of which, released on November 9 last year, corroborated many of the allegations.

In the meantime, the French police had launched their own investigation into allegations of malpractice and corruption which centred upon the outgoing IAAF President Lamine Diack.

By the time the initial WADA report came out, Diack and several other top IAAF officials had been arrested in France. The ex-President now faces charges that he took payments of around €1 million from the Russian Federation for deferring sanctions against some of their drugs cheats.

On January 14 this year the crisis deepened with the publication of the second part of the @insidethegames

report by WADA’s Independent Commission, which was chaired by International Olympic Committee member Richard Pound.

It reported that Diack had installed one of his sons as an employee of the IAAF, contracted another son as a consultant and put in place a friend as Presidential legal adviser. It also said he had thereby created a group which functioned “as an informal illegitimate governance structure outside the formal IAAF governance structure”.

The report continued: “Lamine Diack was responsible for organising and enabling the conspiracy and corruption that took place in the IAAF. He sanctioned and appears to have had personal knowledge of the fraud and the extortion of athletes carried out by the actions of the informal illegitimate governance structure he put in place.”

Coe was reported to have “turned white with shock” when he learned of the depth and scope of the allegations against the man whom, on the day of his election as the new IAAF President, he had described as “our spiritual President” - a soundbite that has well and truly come back to bite him.

In countless different forms since then, Coe - who became an IAAF vice-president in 2007 - has been asked the question that was brutally put to him last November by Channel 4 News anchorman Jon Snow - was he “asleep on the job? Or corrupt?”

Coe’s response has been: neither. He has said that while he was aware of gossip about the Russian doping crisis during his time as a vice-president, he had no idea of the depths of corruption that were later revealed.

On the eve of the IAAF’s decision over whether Russian track and field athletes should be allowed to compete in international competition given the widespread doping regime which had been uncovered, a BBC Panorama documentary alleged he had received an email with information about the Russian doping scandal four months before the first of the ARD documentaries came out.

Coe insisted he had sent the email straight on, without opening the attachments, to the IAAF’s Independent Ethics Commission which, with his active assistance and support, had been established in 2014 for just such a purpose. As such, the email wasn’t his pigeon.

Asked if he would have done anything differently in retrospect, Coe told The Guardian: “I’ve sat in my quieter moments thinking about it. If you look at the immediate issues, it’s difficult to see how,

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Sebastian Coe’s career was defined when he recovered from his shock defeat in the 800m at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow to win the 1500m. Photo: Getty Images

once the Ethics Commission was up and running and Pound’s commission was up and running, during that period we could have inserted ourselves into a process that was already underway.”

The second WADA report concluded that the IAAF Council “could not have been unaware” of the problem within Russian athletics.

But Pound was insistent that the problem was an organisational one, and that President Diack “was responsible for organising and enabling the conspiracy and corruption”.

He maintained, to the dismay of many of Coe’s more vociferous media critics, that the man who had played a major role in securing and then organising the London 2012 Olympics was best placed to take the IAAF forwards.

“This is a fabulous opportunity for the IAAF to seize this opportunity and under strong leadership move forward from this, but there is an enormous amount of work to do,” said Pound.

“I can’t think of anyone better than Lord Coe to lead that.”

Four days after the initial WADA report had been published, the IAAF Council had voted - 22 votes to one, with the Russian member ineligible to take part - to provisionally suspend the All-Russia Athletic Federation from competition.

Coe commented at the time: “This has been a shameful wake-up call and we are clear that cheating at any level will not be tolerated.”

On June 17, Coe chaired the IAAF Council meeting in Vienna that would rule on whether to maintain that suspension or not in the wake of a report by an independent IAAF Task Force - chaired by Rune Andersen - which had assessed the situation and visited Russia to inspect new arrangements in the anti-doping set-up.

The Council endorsed the view of Andersen and his Task Force that www.facebook.com/insidethegames

Russia was not ready to come back.

This was arguably where the 800m experience began to be replaced by something else for Coe, and in retrospect it has grown in stature as a statement of intent in the context of the IOC’s decision, clearly chiming in with the wishes of its President, Thomas Bach, not to enforce a similar ban on Russian competitors across the board.

At some point, Coe must have weighed his IOC ambitions in the balance and decided he had to stay in his heartland.

“It’s non-negotiable - I want our organisation in two years’ time to be seen as a leader,” he said. “And it will. It’ll be better than anything the IOC has got on the books. It will be better than anything FIFA will agree to in principle. This stuff will be through in December of this year.”

During Rio 2016 Coe was able to announce that the IAAF Council had approved the series of profound changes to their governance which he insisted would make “a massive difference” to the sport.

The new structures, which cover areas such as integrity, antidoping and disciplinary measures, will be put before the membership at an Extraordinary General Meeting in Monte Carlo on December 3.

The IAAF Council will become a body of 26 elected members, dealing primarily with sporting issues, distinct from an Executive Board which will have more to do with business, sponsorship contracts and planning.

An independent integrity unit will look after anti-doping, and the anti-doping budget will double to $8 million a year, also doubling the international testing pool of athletes to 1,000.

There will also be an independent unit for disciplinary matters.

Coe took the opportunity to defend the IAAF decision over

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Richard Pound believes Sebastian Coe remains the right man to lead the IAAF. Photo: Getty Images

Russia’s athletes, maintaining that there had been a “cataclysmic failure” by Russia to “protect and oversee its athletes”, adding: “We are working to reinstate Russia, but we have to ensure we have a level playing field.”

Asked to comment on the IOC stance, he replied enigmatically: “The IOC made a judgement that was endorsed by the IOC members and I’m not sure I can add much more to that.”

Coe has received a significant - if measured - vote of confidence from the German TV journalist behind the ARD documentaries, Hajo Seppelt.

“A year ago he was calling our coverage ‘a declaration of war,’” Seppelt told insidethegames. “But it is obvious that his approach after this weird comment has more and more changed within the last year.

“The way IAAF is dealing with the doping issue is - at least currently - far more

convincing than in the other big International Federations.

“It is obvious that they act different now.

Maybe they have learned their lesson. For sure it’s also good PR for them.

“So let’s wait and see if they will continue this way. But it is remarkable. I wonder if the friendship between the old buddies Bach and Coe is the same as before.”

Another factor which has played well for Coe is the IAAF’s attitude to the Russian whistleblower Stepanova who, despite having served a doping ban, was praised for what she and her husband had done for the sport, and offered a chance to compete under a neutral flag.

European Athletics President Svein Arne Hansen, very much of the same mind, followed through with all that as Stepanova competed at the European Athletics Championships in Amsterdam.

The IOC, though, appeared to go out of its way to bar her from taking part.

This was, they claimed, due to her “long implication in a doping system” and that she “does not satisfy the ethical requirements for an athlete to enter the Olympic Games”.

The couple were instead invited to Rio to watch the Games, something they have dismissed as an “attempted bribe”.

Anyone reading this, or observing the presence of a myriad of athletes who have served doping bans who have been free to

Sebastian Coe’s praise of his predecessor as IAAF President Lamine Diack came back to haunt him. Photo: Getty Images

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compete in Rio, can only conclude that there is a bit of an agenda going on here. And it appears to work against one of the principles that has always most genuinely animated Coe - that of putting athletes at the centre of the Games.

Sebastian Coe has supported Russian whistleblower Yuliya Stepanova. Photo: Getty Images

Hansen has been a steadfast supporter of the new IAAF President. The two men go back a long way, as Hansen’s long tenure as promoter of the Bislett Games in Oslo included several stellar performances by Coe, including two of the three world records he broke in the space of 41 days in 1979 - over 800m and the mile.

“I have known Seb for many years,” Hansen told insidethegames. “I have known him as an athlete, breaking four world records at the Bislett meeting, so I know all about his guts and his toughness.

“It’s been a really strange year. But Seb is a tough guy…he has been the right man on the job, even in this extremely difficult time he has been a leader.”

Hansen further believes that Coe, overlooked for IOC membership this year, should renew his case sooner rather than later.

“I would recommend that Seb should join the IOC because we need to have a strong voice there for athletics,” Hansen said.

“For me it is very important that we are the real number one sport in the Olympics.

“If he doesn’t want to be there he must make sure that those who are there for the IAAF speak with a strong voice on behalf of the sport.”

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What did the Olympics ever do for Brazil…

IOC President Thomas Bach was jubilant about the success of Rio 2016 at the end of the Olympics but even he must have known that for most of the time it teetered on the edge of disaster. Nick Butler thinks the Olympic Movement will be pleased it is over

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istory will look kindly on me, because I intend to write it myself,” claimed former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach is no doubt aware of this old proverb. “These Games in Rio were very successful and were iconic,” he announced at the end of the XXXI Olympiad, before outlining in laborious detail how they had thrived against the odds against a surging tide of unfounded and ignorant criticism from the media.

“The Brazilians were great hosts and really united behind these Olympic Games. They will talk about the Rio de Janeiro before the Olympic Games and the much better city after the Olympic Games.”

This is like candy to a baby for sporting administrators. “The way Bach has handled

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problems is amazing,” responded a delegate from Pakistan at the Olympic Council of Asia General Assembly. “It is strong leadership.

All of our positive projects are undermined by misleading media representation.”

The following evening, we found ourselves in a restaurant in downtown Danang during the Asian Beach Games, chewing the fat with a group of ex-pats who accounted for a lack of experience in sports politics with confidence and authority gleaned over a long session in the bar. “Fact is,” said one, slurring his words while striving desperately to recall recent Olympic hosts, “the Games in Sydney, Beijing, London and even Athens all gave something back to the people. Rio? Nah, I just can’t see where they did that.”

Eloquent it was not, but maybe closer to the mark than Bach’s “iconic” Games.

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Rio 2016 provided memory after memory of stunning sport. Returning heroes like Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt summoned up their resources for one last golden hurrah, while Simone Biles and Wayde van Niekerk were among new stars to emerge.

Brazil, after an uneasy start, also enjoyed a superb Games crowned by historic redemption for Neymar, whose winning penalty in a shootout against Germany gave them their first-ever Olympic gold medal in football.

Organisationally, however, it was chaotic and regularly flirted on the precipice of disaster. Its legacy for Brazil in the mire of unprecedented political and economic problems is uncertain, while its long term impact on the Olympic Movement could be equally damaging.

“We got through it,” one official said afterwards. “We might have lost one of our

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IOC Executive Board member Patrick Hickey was arrested by Brazilian police. Photo: Getty Images

Executive Board members along the way, but we got through it.”

Many of Brazil’s problems could not have been predicted when they were awarded the Games at the IOC Session in Copenhagen in 2009. Brazil was a flourishing member of the BRICS group of rising powers and rousing speeches from President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Henrique Meirelles, head of the Brazilian Central Bank, showcased a thriving market.

Sport sought to capitalise, and yet, while the Brazilian economy continued to grow before eventually nose-diving into the worst recession for 100 years, the writing was already on the wall. It did not take a genius to predict that any rise and fall in global oil prices could badly effect a dependent economy. The IOC did not foresee this. They also did not learn lessons from the equally chaotic and last-minute preparations for the 2007 Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro.

The Olympic Movement, losing pace under tired leadership from Jacques Rogge, was perhaps lulled into a false sense of security by the success of London 2012 before being diverted by elections for a new President.

It took another six months after Bach’s election in 2013 before Ireland’s Patrick Hickey - of all people - stood up in an Association of National Olympic Committees Executive Committee meeting and announced they had serious concerns. A few weeks later, officials made their criticism public at the 2014 SportAccord Convention in Belek, before IOC vice-president John Coates claimed preparations were the “worst he had experienced” in his long association with the Olympics.

This gave Rio 2016 a much-needed kick-upthe-backside, although Organising Committee President Carlos Nuzman has apparently still barely forgiven the critical voices. Former IOC executive director Gilbert Felli was dispatched across the Atlantic to play a more hands-on role and, with a year to go, they appeared to be making steady progress.

Brazilian officials were happy for press focus to linger on water pollution concerns at the expense of other issues. Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes was also receiving huge credit for improvements.

Pressure returned, however, in 2016 as a fresh flurry of impeachment and corruptionrelated worries in Brazil prompted budget cuts, coinciding with the rise of Zika virus and

escalating security fears. Oh, and then the Russian doping crisis exploded into life in the month before the Games.

This partly served to deflect attention away from Rio 2016 and we still expected sport to dominate once competition began.

After an Opening Ceremony which was okay, but a pale, budget-constrained shadow of the brilliance at Beijing 2008 and London 2012, setbacks dogged the first two days. A stray bullet was found at the equestrian media centre, while bomb threats, cycling crashes and empty seats also took column inches over gold medals. Gradually, however, sport took over, and even by Olympic standards, the action was magnificent.

Other highlights included a first medal of any colour for Fiji in rugby sevens and a first gold for Ivory Coast thanks to a final-second spinning head-kick from taekwondo player Cheick Sallah Cissé. Golf, culminating in a thrilling duel between Britain’s Justin Rose and Sweden’s Henrik Stenson, was a surprising success, while beach volleyball at Copacabana was a more predictable one.

Water in the diving pool unexpectedly turned green.

Photo: Getty Images

Zika was a complete non-issue and anticipated problems at the velodrome and other venues did not materialise.

Challenges did linger elsewhere, however.

Water turning green? Check. Partying swimmers going on a rampage and getting in trouble? Check. A media bus hit by a bullet? Check. Running out of money for the Paralympics? Check. A Coordination Commission meeting also took place each day between the IOC and organisers. These are usually abandoned a few days into a Games as early teething problems are addressed, but continued until the end this time around.

We were told that tensions remained hostile whenever criticism was lodged.

Organisers were getting more confident in public, criticising journalists for writing anything other than gushing praise, while desperately counting-down the clock towards the end

Michael Phelps was again one of the outstanding stars of the Games. Photo: Getty Images

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IOC President Thomas Bach claimed Rio de Janeiro was changed by the city hosting the Olympic Games. Photo: Getty Images

behind closed doors. Brazil’s police force was the first to crack, responding to the histrionics of Ryan Lochte and other US swimmers by inviting television cameras along to their dawn arrest of Hickey who, whatever ticketing misdemeanours he allegedly did, surely did not deserve to be locked up in a highsecurity prison.

There was also conflict between the Brazilian authorities and the Olympic Broadcasting Services and other IOC officials. Bach himself has pointedly not returned to Brazil since his Closing Ceremony speech, allegedly because of fears he would be questioned by police about the Hickey allegations.

The Olympic Closing Ceremony summed up the entire Games. A power-cut shortly beforehand threatened chaos, but an emergency generator saved the day and disaster was averted at the expense only of a blackout in the local community.

Bach spoke enthusiastically about how Rio 2016 had changed the city and that it had been achieved without the use of public money. The latter claim was rubbish - they were dependent on a Government bailout and sponsorship from state-owned companies - and the former was highly questionable.

Yes, the subway line appears to have worked well so far, although it is still not fully open to the public, but development in Barra has mainly benefited those who were already www.facebook.com/insidethegames

financially well-off and some promised projects, like the Guanabara Bay clean-up, simply did not materialise. Brazilians did get behind the Games, but only belatedly and the attitude of the police typified a wider resentment at the Olympic circus.

It was remarkable the subsequent Paralympics could be hailed as a success considering their build-up was even more chaotic. Arguably more by luck than judgement, the International Paralympic Committee played a public relations blinder, publicly admitting problems in order to reduce expectations before courting success once the Games began.

A lot of this was more propaganda. It was disingenuous to claim athletics sessions were a sell-out, for instance, because they had reduced the capacity by 50 per cent, while the statistic claiming the main Park in Barra was fuller than at any point during the Olympics was partly due to the higher number of events taking place.

But, aside from the tragic death of Iranian cyclist Bahman Golbarnezhad, the Paralympics also avoided disaster.

So what can we learn from Rio 2016?

It is too early to assess any impact on future bidders, though the IOC will surely think long and hard before awarding another Olympic Games to the developing world.

It is also imperative they foresee problems earlier and do not wait until just two years out to raise concerns. Hiring external consultants @insidethegames

The favelas seemed largely unaffected by Rio 2016.

Photo: Getty Images

to undertake more detailed risk management reviews could also help, while the hands-on approach of Felli since 2014 should also be repeated.

Rio 2016, overall, was a success, although of a damage limitation kind rather than a wholehearted triumph. The IOC would do well to admit this rather than blame the media and claim the Games have genuinely “changed” Brazil.

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Lost In translation ロスト•イン•トランスレーション Tokyo 2020 was supposed to be the perfect antidote for the Olympic Movement after the problems of Rio 2016. Instead, its preparations are proving to be as chaotic as anything that happened in Brazil. Nick Butler reports

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apanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe’s shock Olympic Closing Ceremony appearance, rising out of a green pipe in homage to Super Mario, provoked purrs of delight around the Maracanã.

Worldwide coverage roared in approval at a sketch epitomising a “new Japan”. Back home, Nintendo’s stock rose more than three per cent in morning trading.

Sports administrators lounging in their VIP

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booths will also have breathed a mighty sigh of relief. After all the trials and tribulations of Rio 2016, here was a country renowned for good organisation and one capable of pulling-off those special moments vital for converting an Olympic Games from good to great.

“I tell you what,” said Olympic and Paralympic officials as pressure mounted in Rio, “yes, these Games have not been perfect,

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but just wait for Tokyo 2020. We are already delighted with all of our plans there. It will be perfect.”

Japan is considered not only a reliable and experienced major event host, but Tokyo was the first Games to benefit from the International Olympic Committee’s muchheralded Agenda 2020 reform process. This justified sweeping changes to the bid as it was presented at the 2013 IOC Session in Buenos

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Tokyo were awarded the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics in 2013. Photo: Getty Images

Aires, supposedly allowing savings of $1 billion to be made, while at the same time increasing quality and efficiency.

“It was a real pity Pyeongchang have not been able to use Agenda 2020 to reflect their Games,” others have told us with regard to the next Winter Olympic host. “It has helped Tokyo so much.”

And yet…the last three years have hardly been smooth and, in September, a new report was published which has cast into doubt the entire effectiveness of these changes and how much money they have actually saved.

First, we had the National Stadium dispute.

Initial plans designed by the late Zaha Hadid were abandoned in 2015 after cost projections had spiralled to ¥252 billion. Abe announced the U-turn himself in July last year, and work on a ¥149 billion replacement is now set to begin in December.

Then we had “emblem gate”, as a plagiarism complaint from a Belgian theatre designer led to the plans for the initial logo being scrapped. A laborious process began to find a replacement. Tokyo 2020 seemed determined to wrestle the media back onto their side though the sheer number of press releases they put out, trumpeting take two of a process they should have got right first time www.facebook.com/insidethegames

around.

Corruption allegations surrounding the successful bid are more worrying and remain unsolved. A “consultancy fee” of $2 million was paid to Black Tidings, the Singaporebased holding company with mysterious links to former world athletics boss - and, at the time, influential voting IOC member Lamine Diack.

A Japanese Olympic Committee investigation cleared Tokyo 2020 over the controversial payments but has left more questions than answers. At some stage we are expecting more details to emerge via a French police investigation into the affairs of Diack.

Then we had the findings of a report commissioned by new Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike. If “drastic changes” are not made, authors wrote, the cost of the Games could exceed ¥3 trillion, a 400 per cent increase on the initial figure presented to the IOC in 2013.

As a result of the report, another series of venue changes were then proposed affecting at least four sports. The most significant of these involved a potential move to an alternative rowing and canoe sprint venue 400 kilometres out of the host city in Tome in Miyagi Prefecture.

Agenda 2020 justified the shifting of taekwondo, basketball and track cycling venues out of Tokyo last year in order to save money and this has already caused tensions.

Cycling, which will now house its velodrome 145km to the southwest in Izu, were particularly upset after being located in the Olympic Park at both London 2012 and Rio 2016.

To relocate a sport 400km away would make a mockery of the bid plan and usher in a nationwide Olympics which should really be called “Japan 2020”. “They’ll have to add aeroplanes into their transport plan,” a colleague wryly observed.

“Compactness”, remember, was a central theme of the Tokyo 2020 bid.

Anyone who watched a Tokyo 2020 bid video or presentation still recalls those statistics promising how 85 per cent of the venues will be within eight kilometres of the Olympic Village. The IOC’s Evaluation Commission report even pointed out how: “Athletes would enjoy short travel times as the majority of venues would be within 20 minutes of the Olympic Village.”

At time of writing, the latest proposal has not yet been formalised and there has thus been no detailed public comment from either Tokyo 2020, the IOC or International Federations.

Behind the scenes, however, we hear that officials have been taken by surprise and completely wrong-footed by the proposal.

They are likely to object, and object strongly, if the plans are not aborted.

Koike, remember, is a former President of the Japanese Weightlifting Federation and a figure well versed in the intricacies of sporting diplomacy. She impressed when attending Rio 2016 to participate in two flag handover ceremonies and is widely liked within the Olympic Movement.

But, first and foremost, she is responsible for fiscal security in her city and will, therefore, oppose any project which

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzō Abe played a starring role at the Rio 2016 Closing Ceremony when he appeared as Super Mario.

Photo: Olympic Museum

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Congratulations to our competitors and friends from around the world on a great Rio Games.

Rio 2016 Fair Play Award recipients Abbey D’Agostino (USA) and Nikki Hamblin (NZL).

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Tokyo 2020 President Yoshirō Mori has been under pressure following a series of problems. Photo: Getty Images

would drain city resources.

This was the key point raised by the inquiry.

For all the cost cutting adopted as a result of Agenda 2020 - the IOC had screamed from the rooftops how $1 billion had been saved from the costs - they have still seemingly managed to over budget by such an extent.

Details remain hazy and it is possible, if unlikely, that the report was based on misconceptions about what comes out of the Games-time budget and what should have been reserved for the wider infrastructural one.

If not, a huge mistake has been made somewhere.

Two points occurred to me when thinking about why this was.

The first concerns the former Japanese Prime Minister and now Tokyo 2020 President Yoshirō Mori. When we first came across him soon after his appointment in 2014, he responded to a question on whether he would be handicapped by his lack of foreign languages by claiming he had not learnt English because it was “considered the enemy’s language”.

Then he added: “Can you come to Japan and speak Japanese?”

In June, when I interviewed him along with four other journalists, we were told that all the problems of Tokyo 2020 were the fault of the Japanese media. Mori, it turned out, would have “had to be God” to have predicted them. “[The] media must have thought I would have almighty power to determine everything,” he said, as his communications man standing next to him shifted nervously. “I www.facebook.com/insidethegames

am not the kind of person to have that sort of power - maybe they thought so due to my political power. Everyone has a different way of deciphering a person called Mori.”

As both Sebastian Coe and Carlos Nuzman showed in different ways at London 2012 and Rio 2016, having a good Organising Committee is vital to the success of the Games. I may have got the wrong impression, but the Mori I saw left me wondering if he is the right representative for a “new Japan”. I certainly cannot imagine him doing a “Super Mario” act…

A second point concerns the IOC. We cannot find any evidence of them raising concerns about the Tokyo 2020 venue plan during the bidding process before it was essentially ripped up and abandoned afterwards.

Why? Surely it is vital that they anticipate problems and budget rises beforehand? It is now imperative that they address this for the 2024 race, rather than just offering bland praise in their Evaluation Commission reports.

The IOC have also strongly pushed for a new urban cluster in central Tokyo to host skateboarding and sport climbing, two of the new sports now officially added to the Olympics, along with baseball and softball, karate and surfing.

Adding new sports when the budget is already four times over its limit is problematic.

Skateboarding - dependent as it is on a fragile collaboration between the International Roller Sports Federation and the International Skateboarding Federation, headed by an American, Gary Ream, is currently at the centre of a lawsuit into who runs the sport at the Olympics - and could be a disaster waiting to happen. A surfing competition, meanwhile, held an hour outside Tokyo at Shida Shita Point further reduces compactness.

Baseball will surely be a huge hit. An urban cluster featuring youth-friendly sports could also revolutionise the Olympics, particularly if BMX freestyle and basketball 3x3 events are also incorporated as new disciplines on the programme next June.

Tokyo, then, is at a crossroads.

It is undoubtedly a Games of huge potential which could and should steady the Olympic ship after a fateful South American voyage.

But Japanese organisers need to get their act together and work with city authorities to address budgetary and venue problems.

If they do not, we could have more stormy waters ahead.

Work on Japan’s new National Stadium being built for Tokyo 2020 is finally due to begin in December. Photo: Getty Images

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OLYMPIC CHANNEL MADE A STRONG START BUT STILL NEEDS WORK The Olympic Channel is a good idea but it needs to do more to appeal to the youth market, its target audience, if it is to be a success and really make a difference, writes Liam Morgan

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ecommendation 19 of Olympic Agenda 2020 seemed to be fairly simple: “Launch an Olympic Channel”.

But the process to actually establish the Channel proved to be anything but in the months that followed since the passing of the reform package, billed by the International

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Olympic Committee as the strategic roadmap for the future of the Olympic Movement, at the Extraordinary Session in Monte Carlo nearly two years ago.

Questions were persistent. What would the Channel include? Would it be more than just a propaganda machine for the IOC at a time where public relations is king? And when would it actually launch?

The main contentious issue surrounded whether it would be made available before or after the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. Those behind the Channel, including general manager of Olympic Channel Services Mark Parkman, had kept their cards close to their chests for the best part of 24 months.

“We will do it when we are ready,” was the

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party line. Put bluntly, they flat-out refused to tell the world when the project, designed to lure more youngsters into the world of Olympism, would finally hit our internet screens and compatible mobile devices.

In the end, they went with the post-Rio 2016 option and the Olympic Channel was born on August 21 - the day of the Closing Ceremony at the Maracanã.

As a colleague of mine wrote in an article confirming the news: “The timing of the launch is explained partly by the fact that the Channel will not broadcast live coverage of Olympic events, so as not to put it in head-to-head competition with the broadcast partners which provide a big chunk of the Movement’s revenues.”

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LIAM MORGAN REPORTER, INSIDETHEGAMES million for its first seven years, it is still difficult to know what we can expect from the Channel’s programming. Its position in the global media landscape, which generates more cash flow year on year, is also still to be fully set in stone.

With the Channel in its infancy, it is hard to judge the exact avenue it will take and early on, there are both encouraging and worrying signs.

Over 300 hours of live coverage, as well as highlight programmes, were shown from September’s Paralympic Games in the Brazilian city. As well as the sport itself, Channel bosses also hoped they would “capture the behind the scenes footage and conduct athlete interviews to develop complimentary content in support of the Paralympic Movement”, which they did with a number of quirky features and story-telling.

A good start, it must be said, though you cannot go wrong with broadcasting an event that, in the end, captured the imagination of people in homes all across the world. It would have been negligent to miss out on covering the Paralympics, which were thrust into the limelight off the back of an Olympic Games which, for all their trials and tribulations, provided thrilling moments of sport amid a backdrop that television executives must have dreamt about.

The Channel had already been given a boost just over a week prior to the Paralympics getting underway as a deal was struck with International Federations, which allowed them to broadcast 35 live

IOC President Thomas Bach visited the Olympic Channel’s headquarters in Madrid. Photo: Getty Images

events up until the end of the current calendar year.

This, for me, was the best news the project has had since the IOC vowed to launch the Channel in Monaco in December 2014. A genuine fear when the concept was first coined was that it would be little more than a rolling history television station which would instantly put off its main target audience - the youth.

After all, how exactly do you fill the airtime outside of the Games period? Thankfully for the likes of Parkman and his other staff based at their Madrid headquarters, the agreement with the vast degree of sports which make up the Olympic

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programme put paid to many of those negative theories.

Broadcasting events such as an ice hockey Olympic qualifying tournament, coupled with World Cups in canoe slalom and shooting, makes sense. A common view is that sports that have been Olympic mainstays for years do not get the deserved exposure away from the Games window, and the Channel provides the perfect platform for that to change.

Showing more youth-orientated sports, such as surfing’s Junior World Championships and a 3x3 basketball tournament, a discipline which has ambitions of becoming part of the Olympics one day, not only fits in with the Channel’s objectives but also adds another string to its bow.

With that in mind, it comes as little surprise that the big sports, such as football, athletics and cycling, have yet to sign partnerships with the Channel.

They seem indifferent to the idea of diluting their own mammoth broadcasting deals for their major events, which often dominate the sporting arena, both on television

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and in terms of spectator numbers.

In essence, they do not really need the Channel but the same can be applied when flipped on its head; if its mission is mainly to give exposure to Olympism on a daily basis throughout the year, they would be better to broadcast sports which are in desperate need of the coverage.

Having watched some of the live events, such as the ice hockey and also a Badminton World Federation competition in South Korea, I have to say it has been impressive thus far.

An obvious issue early on, however, is what they show when sport is not on. Yes, they have come up with a number of clever ideas, such as a series of “Before they were Superstars” clips, which detail the early lives of sporting legends including Serena and Venus Williams, Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt, but they can’t rely on history and highlights all day, every day. If they do, it will be all too easy to switch off.

During an hour-long period, the other day, the only material on offer was a haphazard selection

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The No.1 Olympic news website in the world

LIAM MORGAN REPORTER, INSIDETHEGAMES

Badminton is among the sports the Olympic Channel has covered already. Photo: Getty Images

of highlights from Rio 2016, beginning with synchronised swimming and ending with a host of boxing finals, entitled “Rio Replay”, before their “Strangest Moments” programme - telling stories like when Czechoslovakian athlete Olga Fikotová fell in love with American hammer thrower Hal Connolly, despite the Cold War tensions of the time, during Melbourne 1956 - came on screen.

Already, I had identified a chink in the Channel’s armour. Aside from a brief reminder before the following show was due to be broadcast, there was no discernible evidence as to what was next. No schedule, no TV guide like you find in the glossy freebie magazines which accompany the weekend’s newspapers. At the time of writing, the website listing for the Channel was simply “Olympic Channel, where the Games never stop” all the way through until 1am the next morning, with only the BWF Victor Korea Open breaking the run.

For engagement reasons alone, this has to change. People are not going to wait around in the hope that their favourite Olympic moment might be recalled in a show looking back on previous Games and they are not likely to watch for long if they are unsure of what they might be viewing.

The Channel has come up with several original ideas, including an “Against All Odds” documentary series, comprising of 27-minute episodes detailing particularly heart-warming stories from in and around the Olympic Movement, and “Flag and Family”, which looks at athletes who have been forced to switch www.facebook.com/insidethegames

allegiances. But these need to be marketed more effectively and people need to be told precisely when they can tune in.

As Olympic Broadcasting Services chief executive Yiannos Exarchos put it: “The Olympic Channel is about encouraging and inspiring young people to bring them to sport.”

They need to work more on the inspirational side of things as highlights of past Games, sprinkled with the odd original feature programme, is not likely to be enough to get people coming back. The young generation often

looks to the future rather than the past.

Yet for all the challenges that remain, the Channel, arguably Agenda 2020’s greatest success story to date, has the platform, the remit and the funding - $11 million was spent on it in 2015 alone - to become a real hit.

It is attracting those who may not be entirely familiar with the Channel and the Olympics themselves - the exact audience which is being targeted - who need to be the focus moving forward. This task, however, may prove to be far from simple.

The Olympic Channel broadcast the Paralympic Games from Rio. Photo: Getty Images

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MIKE ROWBOTTOM CHIEF FEATURE WRITER, INSIDETHEGAMES

Hello Tokyo,

remember at all times

Knowledge is Power If Japan wants to learn how to put on a successful Olympic Games at Tokyo 2020 then Mike Rowbottom has some advice

T

he Olympic Games Knowledge Management Programme has been happily passing on tips and wrinkles from one Organising Committee to another since it was set up before Sydney 2000 and Tokyo 2020 can look forward to receiving the latest upgraded information following Rio 2016.

Of course, official channels can take time to negotiate. So I would like, right now, to offer the Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee my own Knowledge Transfer from Rio 2016.

Listen up, Tokyo! Here it is! In no particular order.

If you find your stadiums are half full or less than half full, persuade your spokespeople not to try and pretend they are packed to overflowing while insisting that 82 per cent - no!

88 per cent! - of tickets have been sold.

If your director of communications needs some phrase to try and take the edge off things, it will be useful to avoid the one used by Rio 2016 spokesman Mario Andrada: “We understand that it is a big stadium and we understand that more seats should be filled.”

Nobody cares whether you understand or not. They just want to know why no-one has turned up.

This compilation quote put together by Olympic Games Knowledge Management Programme operatives may be of more use to you, so feel free to use some or all of it whenever the question of ticketing and empty seats comes up. (NB You don’t need to vary this. Just keep repeating it): “Sponsors make up seven per cent of the tickets and some of them simply haven’t turned up, while long sessions mean some fans arrive late, leave early or wander about during events, and of course people have to leave their seats sometimes to go to the toilet or get some food

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and drink and that could explain American swimmer Ryan Lochte provided Rio 2016 with some unexpected problems. many long absences but Photo: AFP/Getty Images essentially it is all down to the “outstanding”, “extraordinary” or, to use the recession and general economic word chosen for Rio 2016, “marvellous” - all of uncertainty and naturally stories about disease these may be employed without giving offence and crime didn’t help. Having said that, the fact or meaning anything. that half the kids we gave free tickets to never NB - Work needs to be done too on lower turned up didn’t help either, even though on grade Presidential comments uttered while reflection we didn’t make any arrangements for being conducted on cultural tours by proud them to get to any of the venues, not forgetting Organising Committees. Variants for “very nice” that some people may have bought tickets just are urgently required. Ends memo… to access the Olympic Park rather than any Don’t listen to Ryan Lochte. Or his mum. specific venue and, back to the kids, some may If by chance US swimmer Lochte is still have been on holiday…” competing in four years’ time, and he makes a Seriously consider bullet-proofing some of suggestion along the lines that he has been your press tents, particularly at the equestrian venue. As was demonstrated not once but twice robbed at gunpoint while at the Olympics by men posing as policemen, even if that’s what he in Rio, you can’t be too careful.

Internal IOC memo. Start work now on a pool has told his mum, Do Not Believe Him. He means no harm, but he’s talking nonsense. of likely words or phrases for the IOC President Minor catering note for press venues - strive Thomas Bach to use about Tokyo 2020 at the Closing Ceremony. Obviously the old Samaranch to have hot water, tea bags, coffee, sugar and milk available at the same time, rather than on a Hyperbole Model 1 needs to be in the mix rotational basis. Or just make sure there is water.

“These are the greatest Games ever” - and This will have a disproportionately beneficial President Bach must be ready to use it. effect on press coverage.

(On reflection, the judgement that “these are In and around the Olympic venues, rather the greatest Games there ever have been, ever than employing signage to confirm arrival, it will be, or ever could be” is a hyperbole too far, might be worth using it elsewhere to tell people looks correct. However, should Los Angeles win which way they should go. the right to host the 2024 Games, that Watch out for unmanned hot air balloons. judgement may need to be revisited. It may also They could land on the roof of one of your be prudent to start investigating whether some venues and cause it to catch fire. kind of an Olympics Oscar could be fashioned Watch out for your President being found for such an occasion). guilty of budget fraud on the day before your In the event of a Games which does not go Opening Ceremony. perfectly, the President will need a selection of Watch out for a sudden calamitous fall in the phrases that will not cause the hosts economy caused by the worst recession in living disappointment, dismay and deep anger, as memory. “exceptional Games” did when his predecessor Basically, just Watch Out. Juan-Antonio Samaranch used it at the close of That apart, Enjoy the Games! the Atlanta 1996 Olympics. “Wonderful”,

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