It's spring, the birds are tweeting -- and so am I

Now I've done it.

I'm tweeting.  

Which is proof you can teach a very old dog new tricks.

But I have promised myself to keep the tweets 99%news-related, because of my strong feelings that social media websites (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace), despite their utility, have 1) sadly replaced real human interaction; 2) contain too much inane and mundane personal information that no one except one's very close friends really needs to know; and 3) can eat up far too much time I could be spending on writing, reporting, reading and having a real rather than virtual life.

So most of my Tweets will be links to my stories and blogs. (How I love tiny urls!) Others will report news. And, yes, I did post a couple updates today about the perils of road cycling in Chicago, which turn our flat terrain into Category 1 climbs, and I will offer similar observations about my personal experiences if I think they are more than navel gazing.

And I will let you see my happy face on Twitter as soon as it exterminates a current bug on picture posting. (Poor Twitter; this is the message I got when trying to upload a picture today: "Twitter is stressing out a bit right now, so this feature is temporarily disabled.'')

To make this long story (for Twitter, anyway) short:

You can follow me on Twitter at olyphil.

--  Philip Hersh

(The photo Twitter won't let you see: Me in front of the Athens Olympic Stadium during its final stages of roof construction.)

More on Beijing doping: cyclist, runner, walker join list

Five down, one to go.

The German cycling federation announced Stefan Schumacher was among those caught. No surprise, because he tested positive for CERA in samples taken during the Tour de France, when he won two time trial stages.

Croation 800-meter runner Vanja Persic also is on the list, a source confirmed. Persic did not advance past the first round in Beijing.

And Greek race walker Athania Tsoumeleka had admitted four months ago she was a CERA positive from Beijing, where she was ninth in the 20K race walk. Tsoumeleka had won that event in the 2004 Olympics. She already was banned by the international track federation after being caught in its retest program.

The International Olympic Committee said six athletes were caught in its Beijing testing. Gold medalist Rashid Ramzi of Bahrain (1,500 meters) and cycling silver medalist Davide Rebellin of Italy (road race) also are known to be among them. 

According to the Associated Press, Rebellin told Italian TV the result was "a mistake.''

-- Philip Hersh

Photo: Stefan Schumacher hangs his head after a 13th place in Beijing time trial. Schumacher is among those to test positive for EPO in the 2008 Olympics.  Credit: Axel Schmitt / Getty Images

The good news: Jamaican, U.S. track athletes not among new dopers

There is good news for track and field in the announcement of more doping positives from the Beijing Olympics, even if 1,500-meter gold medalist Rashid Ramzi of Bahrain was among those caught.

Actually, even because Ramzi -- one of the sport's mercenaries -- was among those caught. More on that.

The good news is that no Jamaican or U.S. athletes are among the three from track and field nabbed by retesting of samples for a new incarnation (known as MIRCERA or simply CERA) of the blood-booster EPO, according to sources familiar with the results. Although it is unlikely that a sprinter like Usain Bolt would have been using a drug favored by endurance athletes, track officials know their sport would officially be proclaimed dead if he had tested positive. And there might have been just as much damage from the guilt by association that would have accompanied another Jamaican positive.

Chicago 2016 can crow (sort of) over city rankings

Chicago isn't near the top of the list, but it did beat two of its 2016 Olympic rivals in the 2009 global city rankings issued Tuesday by Mercer, a global provider of consulting, outsourcing and investment services.

Tokyo, fourth finalist for the 2016 Summer Games, was well ahead of the 2016 competition in both quality of life and infrastructure.

Rio de Janeiro, which the International Olympic Committee's evaluation commission is visiting this week, was far down the list of the 215 cities ranked.

Tokyo was 35th in quality of life; Chicago tied for 44th, Madrid 48th, and Rio 117th.

And Tokyo was a runaway leader in infrastructure: 12th to 28th for Chicago, 43rd for Madrid and 100th for Rio.

The point differences in the quality of life index among Tokyo (102.2), Chicago (100.3) and Madrid (100.2) were negligible, but Rio (74.4) was clearly outclassed.

Mercer's city with the best quality of life?  Vienna.  Worst?  Baghdad.  Best infrastructure?  Singapore.  Worst?  Baghdad.

-- Philip Hersh

Photo: Chicago looked pretty for the IOC evaluation commission (see Olympic logo on building at left) but Tokyo's picture was better in city rankings. Credit: M. Spencer Green / Associated Press

By the numbers, swimming is becoming a joke

British journalist Craig Lord, the conscience of swimming, has had plenty to say on swimnews.com about the latest bunch of world records and the swimsuits in which they were set.

(So have I, to wit this Blog:  "IOC must stop swimming from sinking in its leaders' stupidity.'')

Lord's Tuesday entry included a list that put the absurdity in nice numerical terms.
This list (below, with some comments from Lord) shows current world record in parentheses; the world record (and world-record holder) as of Feb. 1, 2008, just after the country abbreviation; and, in bold,  the all-time performance ranking of the previous world record as of Tuesday.
For example: in the 50 free, the record of 21.64 Popov held on Feb. 1, 2008, now is 25th fastest time on a list topped by 20.94.

"And remember," Lord wrote, "this is the tip of an iceberg -- what lies below is often even more crushing.''

IOC must stop swimming from sinking in its leaders' stupidity

    How I love it when events conspire to underscore a point made here previously.
    Last week, I noted the absurd mess international swimming leaders have allowed high-tech swimsuits to create in their sport.
    And here is the latest evidence:
    Friday at the French Swimming Championships, Alain Bernard set a 100-meter world record (46.94, first under 50 seconds) in an Arena suit that apparently will no longer be legal in competition after Jan. 1, 2010.
    Saturday, Frederick Bousquet set a 50-meter world record (20.94, first under 21 seconds and a ridiculous .34 faster than the previous record, also set in high-tech apparel last year) in a Jaked suit that also will be illegal after Jan. 1.
   Both suits were covered in polyurethane panels.  The International Swimming Federation, (whose French acronym, FINA, obviously stands for Foolish Imbeciles and Nattering Asses), has ruled that suits can include no more than a 50% polyurethane covering after Jan. 1.
    And what about the world records set in them?  FINA has no answer yet for that, even though there should be no question about chucking Bernard's record, because his suit had not yet received the necessary FINA approval for competition.
    "It's totally out of control,'' Mark Schubert, USA Swimming's national team director, told me by telephone Monday.  "Now we're into speedboat driving.''
   You have to give the FINA pooh-bahs credit for achieving the impossible, though: They have managed to make the sport's current world records even more meaningless than all the track and field records that stand more than a decade after evidence surfaced to show they were set by doped Eastern Bloc athletes (and some Westerners who evidently were doping to keep up with the competition).
    The Italian coach who last year called the high-tech swimsuits "technological doping'' was 100% right.
    "It would be pretty unfair if a record was set in a suit that becomes illegal and was determined to give a decisive competitive advantage,'' Schubert said. "But the saddest thing is we no longer are able to compare generations.  Swimming should be about the swimmer, not the suit.''
     And while the suit may not account for all the differences in these two performances, it should be noted that Bernard swam more than a half-second slower in the final Saturday while wearing his old (and legal) suit than he had in Friday's semifinal.
    The most pathetic part of this aquatic farce is not only is it ruining the sport but it also is blowing up in the faces of athletes.
    Take backstroker Pierre Roger.  His Jaked suit cracked at the start of the French Championships final, when Roger finished fifth in a time five seconds slower than the national record he set in the semifinal.  That snafu cost him a place on France's team at the July World Championships.
    My only question now is this:  How long will the International Olympic Committee sit idly by while one of the premier sports on the Olympic program becomes a laughingstock?
    The IOC always hides behind the mantra that each federation makes its own rules.  But it was quick to intervene during the pairs skating affair in Salt Lake City, forcing the International Skating Union not only to award a second gold medal but to completely revise its judging process.
    The IOC needs to step in and stop an arms race that is making equipment manufacturers rich and the sport poorer.  FINA has let the manufacturers set the agenda (and wouldn't you love to know about the money being tossed around sub rosa?)
     Of course, maybe no one at the IOC gets the irony that swimming is drowning itself in suits that make it too easy for swimmers to float. 

                                                                            -- Philip Hersh

Clothes make the man: France's Frederick Bousquet points to the high-tech swimsuit that enabled him to make a farce of the previous world record in the 50-meter freestyle.  (Photo: Claude Paris / AP)

Women ski jumpers deserve chance to vault into Olympic legend

    I know the case will depend on a judge's interpretation of whether Canadian laws about gender discrimination apply to an Olympics in Canada rather than to the competitive merit of having women ski jumpers in the 2010 Winter Olympics.
   I also know that one of the International Olympic Committee's reasons to keep women jumpers out is totally specious and that the other is debatable.
   The IOC claims jumping does not meet its universality standards, which I pointed out was patently wrong in a Blog after Lindsey Van of Park City, Utah, won the gold medal when women's jumping made its world championship debut in February.
     But I also noted the dramatic drop in quality from first to 10th at those worlds, which would seem to support the IOC argument about the discipline not being developed enough to get into the Olympics.
   I have changed my mind about the quality issue after looking back at what happened when the women's pole vault made its Olympic debut in 2000.
   Go deep into the results of the 30 competitors in Sydney, and you will find that an 18-year-old Russian was among four women who failed three times to clear her first height, 13 feet, 1 1/2 inches, nearly two feet below the eventual winning height of U.S. vaulter Stacy Dragila.
   On the surface, one might think that showed that the field had to be padded with vaulters who didn't belong, even if the Russian in question performed below her past standard and even if good vaulters sometimes fail to clear a height.
   But when I think about those caveats, I realize they are no different from the response Van gave when I asked her about the quality at worlds: 
    "With any sport, there is a drop in the middle of the field,'' she said.  "There were really tough conditions, snowing off and on all day, with the wind blowing like a tornado at times, coming from all directions.
   "I don't think these results show the entire level of the sport. It is pretty obvious we are capable of having a sport worthy of the world championships and Olympics.''
   And I would back that by maintaining the 18-year-old Russian vaulter has done pretty well since 2000, when she was motivated by a failure that made her seem unqualified for the Summer Games. Her record? Two Olympic gold medals, five world titles, 26 world records and the 10 highest leaps in history, topping out at 16 feet, 6 3/4 inches.
   "Where you start,'' this vaulter has said, "isn't necessarily where you end up.''
    So I hope Judge Lauri Ann Fenlon sides with the women ski jumpers in a hearing that is to end today.  That would give jumping the start it needs to end up giving more young women a new outlet for their competitive urges, just as pole vaulting has done.
   But I would rather see the IOC preempt the outcome  — better late than never — by agreeing on its own to let the women jump. Doing the right thing before the judge rules would also allow the IOC to avoid a possibly precedent-setting decision that might affect its sovereignty over the operation of the Olympics.
   To the IOC, I offer exhibit No. 1:
   Yelena Isinbayeva.

                                 — Philip Hersh

  
   

 Photos: Vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva, top, has soared to Olympian heights. Ski jumper Lindsey Van, right, would like the same opportunity. Credit: Getty Images

Absurd is the word for skating, swimming

    Ten things I know, and you should:

    1.  Stats that say it all: Retired Russian swimmer Alexander Popov began 2008 as world record-holder in the 50-meter freestyle with a mark (21.64 seconds) that had stood since 2000.  As of Wednesday, that had become No. 21 on the all-time list.  Same is true of Holland's Pieter van den Hoogenband in the 100 -- his world record (47.84)  from 2000 through 2007 now ranks 22nd.  And it's only going to become statistically sillier unless swimming officials get their heads out of the water.  Why?  See Item 6.
    2.  Beverley Smith of the Toronto Globe & Mail, author of many scoops about the International Skating Union's shenanigans, did it again this week when she reported the ISU Council had decided covertly to reduce the size of Olympic figure-skating judging panels from 12 to nine (just as it had done for the world championships) for money-saving reasons.
     So much for another underpinning of the New Judging System designed to end potential corruption in the sport when it was implemented in the wake of the Salt Lake City pairs judging dust-up.
     When the ISU first reformed judging in June 2002, it included having 14 judges, with the scores of nine counting as randomly selected by a computer. Then it was dropped to 12 judges, with nine selected but high and low then dropped.  Now it is down to nine, with seven randomly selected and high and low dropped.  That means only five scores will count, which 1) makes it mathematically more likely that one anomalous score from a (bribed?) judge could determine the outcome or 2) the judges will be even more inclined to give component scores in a ridiculously narrow range rather than use the system as it was designed so that their scores won't look anomalous.
     The whole idea behind the new system was to have enough scores selected randomly that the chance for corruption or mathematical absurdity was minimized.  No more: The reductions have turned the whole exercise into a reductio ad absurdum or, if you like, the classic catch-22:  to save a system that costs too much, the pooh-bahs are killing the system by lowering costs.
    3.  Just how little influence the United States now has in the ISU is evident in both the judging change and the decision by ISU Grand Pooh-bah Ottavio Cinquanta to deny U.S. Figure Skating financial support for Skate America operations because U.S. television networks no longer want to buy broadcast rights for the Grand Prix series, in which Skate America is among the six events.  (Why would anyone pay for the mess the new judging system has made of the sport?)
     In his USFS president's report circulated before the organization's upcoming annual meeting, Ron Hershberger noted the financial issue and said USFS had "objected strenuously'' to the reduction in the number of judges.  The ISU council member from the United States, Phyllis Howard, has been characteristically silent.  Howard never has backed her own country by publicly challenging the ISU -- even when she was USFS president -- or having the spine to take any position that might jeopardize her council sinecure.
     Hershberger met with Cinquanta last weekend, and USFS still hopes the Skate America financial issue will be resolved.
    4.  If you told me the stuff in Items 2 and 3 was the equivalent of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, I wouldn't disagree.  Figure skating is on life support in North America.
    5. And they better have EMTs on call throughout South Korea during the Olympics, to judge by the hyperventilating e-mails I am getting from Korean fans convinced there is a Japanese-funded conspiracy to buy off judges so Japan's Mao Asada will beat Korean heroine Yu-na Kim, the new world champion, in the 2010 Winter Games.  As in: "Nowadays there seems like some referees are suspected of getting money from Japan.''  And, from a different e-mailer:  "I wonder if Japan buys all judges?  Or is there some judge who has (a) conscience?''
    6.  Speaking of absurdity, we have the latest high-tech swimsuit, from the Italian company, Jaked, which threatens to make the sport's world records even more ridiculous and meaningless than they became when 108 (!!!) were set last year in other companies' suits.  The Jaked suit's polyurethane layer makes it so buoyant the swimmer loses no speed from the effort to stay high in the water.   The international swimming federation continues to sit idly by while manufacturers put everything but inboard motors in the suits.  Is there any need to explain why it often is said that the only amateurs left in Olympic sports are the people running them?
   7.  Until recently, it had escaped my attention that international hockey officials had devalued the 2010 Olympic tournament by allowing Vancouver organizers to have the event on the NHL-sized rink at GM Place (85 feet wide by 200 feet long) rather than spend a lot of money to expand it to the Olympic size (100 by 200).   That obviously made financial sense (the decision came before the global economic downturn), but it spoils what for me was the beauty of Olympic hockey: having more room for these great players to maneuver and show off their incredible skating and stick-handling skills.
   8.  I don't know whether to feel sad or disgusted about cyclist Tyler Hamilton, who has retired from the sport after testing positive for a steroid in an herbal medicine Hamilton said he was taking for depression.  Hamilton admitted he knew the medicine contained the banned substance, DHEA -- which is more than he has admitted about his links to the Operation Puerto doping scandal and the irregularities in his blood samples that should have cost him the Olympic time trial gold medal in 2004 had the Greek lab not screwed up handling of the "B'' sample.  A similar irregularity in his sample at the Tour of Spain a month later led to a two-year suspension.  The recently divorced Hamilton continues to claim innocence in both those cases, but suffice it to say that cycling's dirty history does not encourage giving any of its practitioners the benefit of the doubt.  I just can't help thinking that it might help Hamilton get on with a clearly troubled life if he decided to open up about the past rather than keep dragging it behind him.
   9.  One 2008 Olympic star, swimmer Michael Phelps of the United States, is photographed sucking on a bong, and there is an uproar.  Another, sprinter Usain Bolt of Jamaica, admits to smoking marijuana as a child, and everyone shrugs.  (Phelps never has said what was in the bong, generally an implement for marijuana use.)  Is that because ganjaseems a part of Jamaican culture, even if marijuana use also is illegal there?  Or that Phelps' offense came after he had become a multimillionaire from his Olympic exploits, and that it followed his drunk driving conviction of four years earlier?  Or that, as Joe Marchilena wrote in the Nashua (N.H.) Telegraph, "We don't really care much about stuff that doesn't involve ... our citizens.  Maybe the next time he wants to light up, Phelps should plan a trip out of the country.''  Bolt, like Phelps, was obligated to apologize for his behavior.
   10.  Will Spain's opposition -- some might say intransigence -- toward doping rules and investigations hurt Madrid's Olympic bid?  Spain's government has approved a royal decree allowing Spanish athletes to refuse doping controls on Spanish soil from 11 p.m. to 8 a.m., which is a direct challenge to World Anti-Doping Agency rules.  And a Spanish judge recently ruled that Italy cannot take anti-doping action against Spanish cyclist Alejandro Valverde based on DNA evidence from blood samples seized in the Operation Puerto investigation.

 -- Philip Hersh

Photos, from top: Six members of a figure-skating judging panel at the 2006 European Championships.  Only the scores of five will count at the 2010 Olympics. Credit: Franck Fife / Getty Images. Federica Pellegrini of Italy wore the controversial new Jaked suit to set a 200-meter freestyle world record at a minor meet March 8. Credit: Giorgio Scala / Associated Press

New USOC boss gets less edgy about going public

 

By Philip Hersh

    We sat on the edge below a balustrade in the Empire Room at the Palmer House Hilton last Thursday.  It wasn't the most comfortable perch, but Stephanie Streeter is getting used to being in such positions.
    It was my first face-to-face meeting with the acting CEO of the U.S. Olympic Committee, who moved into that position in what seemed like a palace coup to oust Jim Scherr.  We had talked once by telephone, three days after the March 5 leadership change.
    That interview had no introductory banter.  I simply fired one hard question after another at her, and — no matter what I felt about her answers — she impressed me by not ducking a single one.
     This time, we exchanged a few niceties before I heated up Streeter's seat.
     She had just taken part in the news conference announcing the start of voting for the U.S. Olympic Committee Hall of Fame class of 2009 and then done some interviews with local TV and print outlets. 
    This is the part of the job that Streeter has felt the least comfortable with. In her career as a corporate executive and CEO, the only people to whom she had to answer were corporate boards.
    (Coincidentally — ironically? — the new USOC chairman, Larry Probst, also is adjusting to the idea of media visibility and public scrutiny after a life spent in the corporate world.)
   Despite nearly five years on the USOC board, enough time for her to see how visible Scherr was in the media, Streeter did not understand the public scrutiny she would face as CEO of an organization that answers to America. That was clear when I asked her last week what had been most unexpected about the USOC job so far.
    "It's the public nature of the position,'' Streeter said. "I thought I had appreciated it, but not to the extent I experienced it when you guys beat the hell out of me in the first two weeks. I didn't expect it. It wasn't pretty.''
    Among the things I had hammered Streeter abiout was her apparent hesitation about resigning from the USOC board of directors, an unconscionable conflict of interest since that board would review her performance as CEO. Streeter told me Thursday that the issue would soon be resolved, and a day later the USOC announced her resignation from the board.
     Truth be told, the board allowed Streeter to be criticized longer than necessary over the issue, because she resigned from two board committees after only two days on the job and offered her general resignation from the board barely a week after that. It should not have taken another month for that to be finalized and announced.
    While Streeter told me Thursday that she had not yet made up her mind about whether to become a candidate for the permanent CEO job, she clearly is leaning that way with her decision to relocate from Neenah, Wis., to Colorado Springs, Colo., where the USOC is headquartered.  The idea of having a commuter CEO, even an acting one, plainly was ridiculous.
  The search for a new CEO will begin late this year, but Streeter will remain the boss at least through the 2010 Winter Olympics.
   Which made it surprising that she was not part of the Chicago 2016 news conference following the International Olympic Committee's evaluation commission visit, especially since both the USOC and Chicago 2016 seize every opportunity to trumpet the "unprecedented partnership'' they have established between a U.S. bid city and its Olympic committee.  (Probst had to leave because of a family issue.)
    Streeter was aware her absence had been noticed but made no apologies for it.
   "I had supported it [the bid team] throughout the visit,'' she said. "The people involved and the face of the bid were at the press conference, and I did not need to be there.
   "That's what a good partner does. You are there when you need to be, and you are not when it is more important for someone else to be there.''
    I'm not going to beat you up on this one, Ms. Streeter, but I don't agree. After years of leadership turmoil that had made the USOC into an international joke until Scherr's respected five-year tenure, you needed to show your face, despite its being one that shies from the spotlight — or even photographers' flashes.
    It is, as you put it, the public nature of the position.

Photo: Olympic Hall of Fame swimmer John Naber, from left, Chicago 2016 chairman Patrick Ryan, Allstate chairman Tom Wilson and U.S. Olympic Committee acting chairman Stephanie Streeter after casting the first votes in the election for the 2009 Hall of Fame class. Credit: David Banks  / Associated Press for Allstate

Tokyo 2016 can only wish its governor would go away

 

The governor problem.

It could have haunted Chicago's bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics had Rod Blagojevich not been impeached after his arrest on political corruption charges last December.

It is haunting Tokyo's bid because the governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, once again stirred up enmity with his words at a Thursday news conference, which took place during the International Olympic Committee evaluation commission's visit to the Japanese capital.

No wonder, as my colleague Ed Hula reported in Around the Rings (aroundtherings.com), Tokyo bid officials tried to prevent Ishihara from answering a question about Korean feelings that the IOC should reject Tokyo because of comments the governor previously had made about Japan's 35-year subjugation of Korea and other historically sensitive subjects.

I pointed out those feelings in a blog this week.  A Western journalist raised them in the opening question
of the Thursday news conference.

Hula, on the scene in Tokyo, sent me this transcription, from the official translation, of what Ishihara answered:

             I never said that governing Korea was all correct.  I never said that.  But it's a matter of comparison.  European developed counties had some colonies in Asia.  And compared to the governance of those colonies, in comparison to what they did, Japanese governance was gentle and fair and equitable.  And I heard this comment directly from (Korean) President Park, so I commented on this once.
           
I will leave it to Koreans to decide whether the Japanese rule was "gentle and fair and equitable.''  And there is no doubt European countries oppressed and abused (and worse) many of their colonial populations.

But history records brutal Japanese repression of Korean liberation movements; confiscation of Korean land; and forced conscription of Korean men for Japan's army and of Koreans as laborers in Japan.
   
There is an Olympic component to that history as well.

A Korean, Sohn Kee-chung, was forced to take a Japanese name, Son Kitei, and run in Japan's colors when he won the 1936 Olympic marathon in Berlin.  (In 1948, Sohn carried the newly independent Korea's flag in the opening ceremony of the London Olympics; in 1988, he was among the final torch bearers in the opening ceremony of the Seoul Olympics.)

Gov. Ishihara long has been known as an ultranationalist.  In his 1989 book,  "The Japan that Can't Say No,'' Ishihira called the 1937 Rape of Nanking (China) a fabrication, even though evidence shows Japanese troops killed tens of thousands of Chinese in what has been called "The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II.''

The New York Times reported that in a 2000 speech, Ishihara referred to immigrants as sangokujin,  a derogatory term used in Japan after World War II to tell Korean and Japanese residents to leave. Ishihara said such residents were likely to riot after a major earthquake and that, according to the story, "atrocious crimes have been committed again and again by sangokujin and other foreigners.''

Such comments don't exactly jibe with the ideals espoused by the Olympic movement.  They also refuel longstanding enmity toward Japan in Asian countries, like South Korea and China, that remain upset by  Japan's incomplete acceptance of responsibility for its actions in World War II (and, in North and South Korea's case, after imperialist Japan annexed the Korea peninsula in 1910). 

A recent revival of nationalism in Japan -- as exemplified by statements like Ishihara's -- has exacerbated the animosity.  No wonder the Tokyo bid worries about getting little support from IOC members in other Asian countries.

Yet Tokyo 2016 officials committee trumpet the role Ishihara is playing in their bid, sending out a news release this week emphasizing the "major role'' the governor was to have during the evaluation commission visit.

Even if the IOC visitors were not immediately aware that the governor had done something major Thursday -- a big misstep -- there is no doubt his words would quickly resonate around the world.

So the bid committee was left scrambling to minimize the impact of Ishihara's latest gaffe.  It issued a statement saying, "Governor Ishihara is deeply committed to the long-term benefits of the Olympic Games. This includes the principles of peace, harmony and friendship through the region.''

But, as Hula noted in a Thursday dispatch from Tokyo, the statement did not address what Ishihara said abut Korea.

Nor, may I add, did it address his swipe at Europe, which has nearly half the IOC members who will vote Oct. 2 for the 2016 host.

-- Philip Hersh

Photo: Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara welcoming media covering the IOC evaluation commission visit Wednesday.  At a news conference a day later, his words weren't as welcoming to the world.  Credit: Tokyo 2016