That's very interesting.Quote:
Originally Posted by lizbud
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That's very interesting.Quote:
Originally Posted by lizbud
Hahahaha,
MO told the IOC that she sat on her dad's lap cheering on Carl Lewis.
She would have been about 20 years old to have pulled that off.
Where is Shaq O'Neal to get the story straight?
Those danged first ladies are full of poop and tall tales.:D
Was she in Oslo when she said that?:D:DQuote:
Originally Posted by RICHARD
Read this side-note to the Olympic bid.
Acting head of US Olympic Committee to step down
Published - Oct 07 2009 05:12PM EDT
By EDDIE PELLS - AP National Writer
FILE -- This is a July 15, 2009, file photo showing U.S. Olympic Committee acting CEO Stephanie Streeter posing at the Olympic training center in Colorado Springs, Colo. Streeter will leave her post within the next five months. Streeter, who took the job when Jim Scherr was forced to resign in March, announced the decision Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2009, saying she wanted to get back into the corporate world.
Six months of shaky decisions and turmoil came to a head for the U.S. Olympic Committee on Wednesday when its acting CEO said she would step down, bringing more chaos to an organization that was humiliated when Chicago's bid to host the 2016 Games fell flat.
Stephanie Streeter said that she would not seek the USOC's CEO job on a permanent basis, and that she would leave in the next five months.
The decision came just five days after Chicago's humbling, first-round exit in a vote by International Olympic Committee members, who ultimately picked Rio de Janeiro. It also happened on the same day leaders of America's Olympic sports organizations said "No" in a 40-0 vote to this question on a survey they conducted: "Do you believe the acting CEO has the ability to be an effective leader of the Olympic movement?"
The United States contributes more money to the Olympics than any other nation, yet the USOC is rife with infighting and turnover, perceived internationally as arrogant, and populated with leaders who are having trouble turning things around.
"I'm incredibly saddened by the developments, which I lay largely at the feet of the USOC, which has clearly lost its way," said NBC Universal Sports and Olympics chairman Dick Ebersol. "It's a combination of people who don't have a full-time commitment to it, too many people who really don't have an understanding of international sports and relationships. I don't believe there will be another Olympics in the U.S. until the USOC really gets its act together."
USOC Chairman Larry Probst conceded that turning around the group's international reputation is not a one- or two-year project. "I'm talking 10, 15, 20 years," he said.
Chicago's elimination in the first round was universally viewed as an embarrassment, and one of the biggest surprises ever handed down by IOC voters. One IOC member, Denis Oswald of Switzerland, went so far as to call it "a defeat for the USOC, not for Chicago."
The USOC will hire a national recruiting firm by the end of the month to search for Streeter's replacement. The next CEO will be the third to sit in that chair in the span of about a year. The latest upheaval began in March when Jim Scherr was forced out after six years of relative stability and success.
Ebersol said good candidates would be people with connections to major Olympic sports _ such as swimming, gymnastics, skiing _ with experience in marketing, international relations and the sports world.
Probst, who said he has no plans to step down as chairman, acknowledged some of the USOC's problems.
"We have plenty of good relationships, but the reality is, we don't have the political capital, the leverage, a spot on the IOC executive team," he said. "We need to do work over the long haul to have more of a presence."
In several conversations with The Associated Press in the past few weeks, Streeter made it clear she didn't want to stay on and would announce that after the IOC awarded the 2016 Games. She said she wants to return to the corporate world _ she is a former CEO at Banta Corp. _ though she realizes many people will view her decision as a direct result of the Chicago vote and the increasing calls for change in the USOC leadership.
"I had made this decision prior to the bid and clearly it makes sense to announce it as soon after as possible," she told the AP. "It makes sense to announce it at this time so the USOC has a clean slate when it goes into the search process."
Depending on how the CEO search goes, Streeter could be with the USOC through March 21, which is when the Paralympics end in Vancouver. The Vancouver Olympics are set for Feb. 12-28.
Whether her departure satisfies her critics will almost certainly depend on who the board chooses to replace her. The board also has been criticized as being out of touch with what the majority of the Olympic movement wants.
"This is just a first step," said Steve Penny, president of USA Gymnastics and a key member of the leaders of national governing bodies who answered the questionnaire on Streeter.
Ebersol, whose efforts have helped bankroll the Olympic movement to the tune of billions of dollars over the years, predicted Chicago losing out on the games will diminish the value of American TV rights by at least 15 to 20 percent, "just because it won't be the same level of advertising" a network could get from an American games.
He expects NBC will still bid, though that wouldn't be an indicator that all is well at the USOC.
"It won't just change from Stephanie Streeter not standing for re-election," he said. "The board has to be seriously re-examined for the fact that it lacks real leadership in all these key sports fields."
Streeter was under intense scrutiny immediately after moving into the job from the board of directors. The switch came as a surprise to many in the Olympic movement, in part because the USOC had been functioning relatively smoothly with Scherr at the helm.
She and Probst claimed the USOC needed a different, more businesslike approach to running things, especially considering the bad economy and the reluctance of some sponsors to re-sign with the USOC after the Beijing Olympics.
There were some successes _ a handful of sponsors did come on board, and the USOC was able to increase funding for Winter Games athletes by one-fifth, partly by exceeding projected budget revenues.
Those successes, however, were barely a blip _ overshadowed by the perceived missteps and criticism.
Her arrival never was accepted by key leaders of the country's national sports governing bodies, who felt blindsided and wondered about the transparency of a move that elevated a volunteer board member into a paid position.
They found more to complain about when the board approved a pay package with a base of $560,000 _ about 30 percent more than what Scherr earned. That only grew louder when the USOC botched the introduction of its TV network and drew criticism from the IOC.
"I think we miscalculated on the network," Streeter said when asked if she had any regrets from her seven months on the job. "We miscalculated the reaction from the IOC and our TV partners at NBC. I still think it's a good idea. In retrospect, I would've altered timing on the announcement."
There was also the complicated IOC-USOC revenue-sharing issue that Streeter and Probst managed to table _ but not solve _ about six months before the 2016 vote. Despite efforts on both sides, the lack of a resolution colors almost everything about how international Olympic leaders relate to the United States. Internationally, the Americans are perceived as taking too much of the money generated by the Olympics.
IOC member Willi Kaltschmitt of Guatemala said the USOC needs to "rethink, reorganize and regroup."
"There are a lot of wounds there," Kaltschmitt said. "It's an accumulation of things. We say 'dead corpses in the road.'"
In typical Chicago style, we are not moving forward from this but still discussing and splitting hairs over why we didn't get it (Because Mayor Daley went! Because Pres. Obama went! Because Pres. Obama said he wasn't going to go, and then he did! Because Pres. Obama arrived late! - I don't get that one, uhhhmm, he was THERE and I thought he did a great job as the last speaker for the panel - Because the Chicago presentation was flakey! Because of the U.S. Olympic Committee!). I don't think we will ever really know. Meanwhile, a 2-year-old was killed in a fire in a house without a working smoke detector -- low-income families can get them free from the CFD or their alderman's office, all they have to do is ask. And a father was charged with drowning his 19-month-old son to death. Get over it, people; we have bigger problems to solve!
You will notice that Oslo is quite a distance from Copenhagen.
Thanks......Quote:
Originally Posted by Randi
Wait, so you mean Finland has nothing to do with fish?
So what about Cucamonga, Timbuktu and Lake Titicaca?:D;):eek:
From Sports Illustrated -
Quote:
October 12, 2009
It's Not You, It's Them
Chicago's Olympic bid was brought down by an anti-USOC vibe
Brian Cazeneuve
Chicagoans upset by the city's failure to land the 2016 Olympics may find solace in this: They shouldn't take the IOC's decision personally. Chicago's bid was by all accounts one of the strongest ever by a U.S. city. It was bolstered by an 11th-hour appearance by President Barack Obama before the IOC vote in Copenhagen last Friday, a stirring speech to IOC members by his wife and a star-studded (Oprah!) cast of supporters.
Still, the 2016 Games will be in Rio de Janeiro, and Chicago received just 18 of 94 votes. The shockingly poor showing was more a reflection of how strained IOC-USOC relations are than a knock against the Windy City. International impatience with the USOC has been mounting since March, when the USOC board pushed out CEO Jim Scherr, a well-respected figure in the Olympic community. (Neither his replacement, acting CEO Stephanie Streeter, nor chairman Larry Probst, who took over his post one year ago, proved capable of navigating the IOC's insular political mazes.) This year the USOC and IOC got into a still-unresolved spat over the high percentage of revenues the USOC receives from IOC television contracts and marketing agreements.
In July the USOC angered IOC members further by announcing the formation of a 24-hour Olympic network—even though the IOC had asked the USOC to hold off. Says Denis Oswald, an IOC member from Switzerland, "You can't behave the way [the USOC has] and not foresee some sort of resentment."
A USOC housecleaning is probable. Streeter and Probst are the most likely targets, and some USOC staffers fear that the Chicago debacle may drive the federal government to demand greater oversight of the committee. The failure will also make other U.S. cities think twice about lobbying for the Games in the near future. Bid preparation cost Chicago organizers nearly $50 million. "Why would a city want to become involved," says Jack Kelly, a veteran consultant for U.S. candidate cities, "if it can only get 18 votes?"