Olympic champions call for Congressional overhaul of U.S. Olympic Committee
Olympic diving champion Greg Louganis and nearly 50 other former Olympians are calling on Congress to overhaul the U.S. Olympic Committee, insisting a major reorganization of the USOC is needed to ensure athlete safety.
The Committee to Restore Integrity to the USOC on Friday demanded the near-complete resignation of the USOC’s senior administration and board of directors, in addition to asking Congress to rewrite the 1978 Amateur Sports Act and create a more athlete-centric governing body for American Olympic sports.
Referring to itself as Team Integrity, the committee said the USOC has continued to prioritize corporate interests and public-relations concerns ahead of athlete safety and has been slow to react to issues raised by recently released reports from Ropes & Gray, a Boston-based law firm, and a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee.
“Because the USOC cannot rehabilitate itself, Team Integrity calls on Congressional action to rewrite the Sports Act,” the committee said in a statement. “It is shameful that athletes are still struggling to get the protections and representation Congress intended to give them when the Sports Act was first passed in 1978.”
USOC leadership, the committee said in a statement, has not moved “to reconsider dangerous USOC policies that the Ropes & Gray and Congressional Reports highlighted; policies that continue to leave athletes vulnerable to abuse and retaliation. Instead, USOC leadership kept repeating that it was Congress’ fault; that the Sports Act prevented them from helping athletes, even though that was never true.”
The committee in particular took issue with the recent appointment of Rich Bender and re-appointment of Steve Mesler to four-year terms on the USOC board of directors, saying it “represents a willful blindness to the cultural and structural changes necessary.”
The committee’s statement Friday comes less than a month after Ropes & Gray released a 233-page report after a 10-month investigation commissioned by the USOC and prompted by mounting Congressional and public pressure in the wake of the Larry Nassar sexual abuse scandal.
The report was a devastating rebuke of the USOC, USA Gymnastics, Michigan State and law enforcement and outlined the missteps, negligence and indifference within USA Gymnastics, the USOC and Michigan State that led to Nassar’s predatory behavior, and the extent to which USA Gymnastics and USOC officials, at times in concert with FBI and Indianapolis police, went to keep Nassar’s misconduct from the public.
The committee is led by Ed Williams, an attorney and former Olympic biathlon competitor who was one of the architects of the 1978 Amateur Sports Act, and Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a three-time Olympic swimming champion and founder and CEO of Champion Women, a girls and women in sports advocacy group.
“It is disappointing that the USOC still fails to look inward, even after independent reports demonstrate their culpability in failing to help athletes,” Hogshead-Makar said. “Their two recent appointments to the Board, without athlete involvement, further demonstrate why they should not be leading America’s Olympic movement. The problem remains; we must strengthen athletes’ rights against bureaucrats acting with a five-ring-fueled sense of self-importance.”
The roster for Team Integrity includes athletes from more than a dozen sports who combined to win 44 Olympic medals, 27 of them gold. Tennis icon Martina Navratilova, Olympic skiing gold medalist Debbie Armstrong, Olympic swimming champions Brian Goodell and Tiffany Cohen, Kathy Johnson Clarke and Julianne McNamara, members of the groundbreaking 1984 Olympic gymnastics team, and Marcia Frederick, the first American woman to win a World championship in gymnastics, are members of the group.
Team Integrity also includes Bill Stapleton, a member of the 1988 U.S.Olympic swim team and Lance Armstrong’s longtime agent. Stapleton, an executive with the company behind the U.S. Postal Service cycling team, and Barton Knaggs, an Armstrong friend, were named in a federal fraud lawsuit filed by former cyclist Floyd Landis on behalf of the U.S. government. Landis alleged in the suit that U.S. Postal committed fraud under the False Claims Act with its doping program.
Stapleton and Knaggs settled the lawsuit in 2017, agreeing to pay the federal government $68,000 and Landis’ attorney $90,000.
Team Integrity’s statement follows accusations by two leading U.S. senators that former USOC chief executive officer Scott Blackmun lied to a senate subcommittee. Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) referred the case to the Justice Department and FBI last month.
Blackmun resigned under pressure in February. The Ropes & Gray investigation found Blackmun and Alan Ashley, then the USOC chief of sport performance, were first notified by then-USA Gymnastics CEO Steve Penny of allegations against Nassar in July 2015. Yet neither Blackmun, who was paid $1.3 million by the USOC in 2017, nor Ashley took action or reported it to USOC board members, the report said. During the 15 months between when Blackmun and Ashley first became aware of the Nassar allegations and the abuse became public, Nassar continued to sexually abuse dozens of young athletes. Ashley was fired last month.
“While much of the media surrounding the release of the Ropes & Gray report focused on former CEO Scott Blackmun’s bold lies to the investigators, (Blackmun did not lift a finger to help either USA Gymnastics or the athletes), Blackmun’s actions without his lies to Ropes & Gray investigators is actually worse; Blackmun’s inaction was standard USOC board policy. Athlete-complaints were to be handled by those inflicting harm on the athlete, their NGB, and, as matter of board policy, athletes were to be ignored by the USOC,” the committee said in its statement.
Bender was appointed to the USOC board of directors earlier this month as the national governing bodies council representative. Bender has been the executive director of USA Wrestling since 2001.
Mesler was re-appointed to the board this month. He is a three-time bobsled Olympian and member of the 2010 team that won the first U.S. four-man gold medal in 62 years. He is also CEO of Classroom Champions, an organization that links Olympic and professional athlete mentors with more than 25,000 students in the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean.
Bender has been viewed as a longtime ally of Blackmun. Bender, Team Integrity alleges, has also used Blackmun’s “problematic strategy of ignoring athletes that has led to disastrous results. Similarly imitating Blackmun’s modus operandi, Bender intimidated and insulted athlete-leaders that spoke out against the USOC’s current culture – and in support of athletes’ rights – during a joint session of the Athletes’ Advisory Council (AAC) and to the National Governing Body Council (NGBC). Bender’s retaliatory conduct is precisely the problematic institutional response that Ropes & Gray and the Congressional report highlighted as dangerous.”
Team Integrity accused Mesler of hiding “behind a fiduciary responsibility to the organization, one that all Board members have, but members do not consider it a limitation to their work. While in theory there should be no conflict between athlete and corporate interests, in reality their interests frequently conflict. Mostly alarming, Mesler frequently defends the USOC’s cultural status quo.”
Bender and Meslier did not respond to requests for comment. The USOC declined to comment.
The Team Integrity statement does not mention Brad Snyder, who, like Bender, was appointed to the USOC board this month. Snyder is the athletes’ advisory council representative on the board. Snyder is a U.S. Naval Academy graduate who was left permanently blind by an improvised explosive device during his second tour of duty in Afghanistan. Snyder went on to win seven Paralympic Games medals in swimming, five of them gold.
The statement also does not mention Beth Brooke-Marciniak, who was named as independent USOC board member this month. Brooke-Marciniak is a former Purdue basketball player who is currently the global vice chair of public policy for Ernst and Young. She is also a leading advocate for the LGBTQ community. Brooke-Marciniak is married to former Tennessee All-American Michelle Brooke-Marciniak.