The Olympics Have an Integrity Problem. Here's How to Fix It.

I’m a huge fan of the Olympics. As a kid, I had three options for what I wanted to be when I grew up: an astronaut, a baseball player, or Carl Lewis. I ran track in college, and later, as a Sports Illustrated writer, had the dream assignment of covering three Olympics. From skateboarding to skeleton, I can get fired up about any Olympic competition.

That’s why I’ve been concerned that I haven’t heard much about the Winter Games that started last week. You have to scroll down ESPN.com to find any mention, and much of the Olympics news I read last week was about anticipated low viewership.

Furthermore, in recent years, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has increasingly had trouble enticing potential host cities. In public referendums, citizens of prospective host cities have tended to vote against having the Olympics. The number of cities that bid, in turn, has decreased.

Eleven cities bid for the 2004 Summer Games; 10 bid for the 2008 Games; 9 for the 2012 Games; 7 for the 2016 Games; and 6 for the 2020 Games. Only two cities — L.A. and Paris — ended up bidding for the 2024 Games, and they both won. Paris got 2024; L.A. got a $180 million advance from the International Olympic Committee as an inducement to take the 2028 Games, which the city hadn’t even bid on. Suddenly, it seemed like the IOC had to recruit host cities rather than the reverse. For the 2032 Games, there wasn’t even a typical bidding process; the IOC just chose Brisbane, Australia.

So as Beijing’s Winter Games kicked off, I decided to call one of the few people I know who is an even bigger Olympics enthusiast than I am: Steve Mesler. Steve is a three-time U.S. Olympian, and in 2010 was part of the four-man bobsled team that won the first U.S. gold in 62 years. He’s also currently a board member of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC), the organization that fields the U.S. Olympic team and oversees any U.S. bid to host the Games.

Steve has lived and breathed the Olympic spirit and ideals as much as anyone I’ve ever met. After he retired from bobsled, he co-founded Classroom Champions, an international nonprofit that connects Olympians and Paralympians to classrooms for virtual mentoring.

When we chatted, I learned that Steve — whose USOPC board tenure started in 2015 and will end later this year — is even more concerned about the future of the Olympics than I am. That’s a little scary coming from a gold medalist and USOPC board member. Below is an edited version of our conversation, in which Steve talks about the troubling trajectory of the Olympic brand, and what might be done about it.

David: You live in Calgary, site of the hugely successful 1988 Winter Games. Calgary has deep Olympics roots, and was looking to host again in 2026. But then in a 2018 referendum, 56% of votes were against hosting. In some of the news coverage, there were pretty strong comments about corruption and cost overruns. Your neighbors have a dim view of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), it seems.

Steve: Well, the Olympics are a brand that has to live on its principles. You can tell from the commercials; they’re an indication of what’s being sold. In the NFL, they’re selling huge stadiums and big hits and cheerleaders and so on. In the Olympics, they’re selling the values. You know, a child who wanted to be an Olympian, and the mom that supported them, and things like that. And it’s a problem if you see a difference between what the brand is supposed to be about, and what you actually see happening in the world.

Take the challenge with Russia and anti-doping, for example. In 2019, Russia was banned from the Olympics for four years [over a state-sponsored doping program]. But Russia is really powerful in the Olympic movement. It’s now been documented that they were bribing some sport officials with prostitutes and bags of cash. And because they’re powerful you have more than 200 Russian athletes in Beijing, just competing as the “Russian Olympic Committee” instead of Russia. That’s the ban.

And Vladimir Putin is supposed to be part of that ban, but there he is at the Opening Ceremonies in Beijing, because the IOC made a carve out that says, well, whoever a head of state invites is allowed to attend.

David: That’s a good example of a disconnect between brand and reality. And then in 2014, there was that leak of documents from Norway’s Olympic bid that showed outrageous IOC demands. Visiting IOC members wanted to have a cocktail party paid for by the king, and have their own lane of traffic, and a special hotel bar. It reminded me of Kanye West’s concert rider, which reportedly said that all hotel room vases must be cylindrical. But I feel like that’s on brand for him, whereas opulent demands aren’t a great look for the Olympic Movement. Especially when most athletes are scraping to make ends meet and pursue their dreams.

Steve: All of this stuff registers. It’s death by a thousand paper cuts. And then, just on Friday, you had a Uyghur athlete lighting the flame at Opening Ceremonies. I love that they had a currently competing athlete light the flame. But to have a Uyghur athlete lighting the flame, and showing that she’s happy and her family is proud — that’s trying to send a message, and I understand why people are upset.

David: I think what you’re saying is that China is trying to send the message: “Hey, look, Uyghurs are respected, everything is great.” Meanwhile, loads of reports have been documenting the internment and abuse of Uyghurs in China. That gets to another point of disconnect between the Olympic ideal and reality: the Olympics are supposed to be apolitical. That was never exactly true, but you had Tommie Smith and John Carlos getting sent home in 1968 for raising their fists because it was deemed political. But then last week Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are posing for photo ops together before Opening Ceremonies. Seems like the rules only apply sometimes, and to some people.

This may sound weird, but these issues we’re discussing remind me of a bit of famous research on marriages. It found that, for a marriage to be happy, it has to have five positive interactions for every negative interaction. The Olympics only has a few weeks every few years for the positives, so what happens if those negative paper cuts keep coming?

Steve: I think we’re seeing what happens. Cities stop bidding. And maybe you get to a point where a city won’t even take the Olympics anymore.

David: Does the IOC recognize the danger here?

Steve: I think the IOC is definitely worried. I think part of awarding the 2032 Olympics without a competitive bidding process is that they don’t want the embarrassment of no one bidding, or of more public votes where people don’t want it. And I think the IOC’s “Agenda 2020” [a plan with goals ranging from lowering the cost of the Olympics to rooting out corruption] is a sign that they’re worried. It’s about trying to mitigate this stuff.

David: While they’re at it, how about cleaning up some of the conflicts of interest in international sport?

Steve: Right, that’s important. So, to give an example, in the U.S., because of past problems, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee is totally separate from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. So governance and policing are totally separate. When you look globally, it’s not the same. Half of the seats on the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) board are occupied by IOC members. The IOC are the promoters of sport, and WADA are the police, and there’s overlap. That is a fundamental flaw in the current system. In a values-driven movement, you can’t have promotion and policing so intertwined. It puts a lot of people in a position where they’re tempted to put politics over principles.

David: When I was at ProPublica, WADA’s former chief investigator told me in great detail how that exact conflict nearly scuttled the Russia doping investigation.

Steve: I’ll give you another clear example of where there are perceived conflicts of interest: John Coates, the President of the Australian Olympic Committee, has been an IOC Member since 2001; he’s also the current Vice President of the IOC, and he’s also the president of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

CAS is like the judicial branch for international sport; it’s the most powerful court in sports, and the final arbiter of any WADA decision that is appealed by athletes or sports bodies. And also, by the way, Coates was one of the leaders of the Brisbane bid, where the 2032 Olympics were awarded, and nobody is really sure why. Even if nothing nefarious is going on, it’s bad optics.

David: Ok, sorry, that’s ridiculous. So the conflict-of-interest org chart here is basically an ouroboros — the snake eating its own tail.

Steve: Well, look, I think the IOC really believes WADA can’t do its job without their help, and they’re in the position of protecting sport. On the Court of Arbitration for Sport side of things, I can’t even try to understand that one.

But I think, eventually, to avoid death by a thousand paper cuts you have to exfoliate. Without personal attacks or a defensive posture, we have to step back and transparently reset the international sporting system, and do it in a way that doesn’t leave open so many opportunities for impropriety or conflicts of interest, and that doesn’t undermine trust from athletes or the public.

David: Ok, I’m ready for the exfoliation! On that note, what do you think the USOPC has gotten right, and where do you think the USOPC has stumbled?

Steve: Look, I’ll say this first and foremost: I’m definitely not a spokesperson for the USOPC, nor our board. With that said, I think the organization has become a lot more inclusive — even things like changing the name from U.S. Olympic Committee to U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, and that was [USOPC CEO] Sarah Hirshland coming in a few years ago and just seeing something that obviously needed to change. And we’ve gotten a lot more involved in athlete safety, and I’ve never seen athlete representation mattering more. But the USOPC could have and should have been more responsive earlier to allegations of wrongdoing.

I think domestically the biggest cut has been the Larry Nassar abuse scandal. And I think the USOPC should have been quicker to be a part of the responsibility and the solution. We had a USOPC lawyer saying, basically, “Look, the USOPC doesn’t have athletes.” And so that was a technical distinction between the USOPC and a sport federation at the time and how leadership used to view it. But that was the wrong approach. Because the USOPC was slow to say this is our problem too, it dragged it out longer; it put the women through more pain and suffering than was necessary, and ultimately it cost more than it needed to if the organization earlier would’ve been better. But now the settlement is done, and we’ve spun up SafeSport — and there’s a lot of work to do there.

David: One last question: the pandemic has obviously had an impact on Olympics enthusiasm. People can’t go to the Olympics! So maybe there will be some natural bounceback. Overall, do you think it’s salvageable?

Steve: It’s salvageable. The moment it’s not salvageable is when people watching aren’t inspired. That’s when it’s no longer salvageable. But right now people still watch and get excited and inspired and cheer for sports they couldn’t have cared less about for the previous four years.

The NFL is very entertaining, but the Olympics has a fundamentally different value proposition that I think people are craving now more than ever. When you watch a 25-year-old who still lives with their parents compete in China and raise the American flag over their head, it’s not just entertaining, it’s inspiring.

Right now, people from China, the U.S., and Russia are performing together and following the same rules. And the only place that’s happening right now is at the Olympic Games. And that’s beautiful. We’re all agreeing to these arbitrary rules that everybody follows and respects. Whether it’s for bids, or bans, the Olympic world has to find the will to create rules outside of the actual sport competition, and then uphold them as much as they do with an individual athlete when an athlete does something wrong.

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David