Hail and farewell, Michelle, a wider world awaits

It was hardly a surprise when Michelle Kwan announced Friday today that she would not compete in 2009-10, which means, of course, that her competitive figure skating days are over.

Kwan, 29, will move on with her life by enrolling this fall at the renowned Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where she will seek a master's degree in international affairs.

That intellectual enhancement is fitting for a Chinese American from Southern California who competed on a global stage but whose vistas once were circumscribed by ice rinks and hotels in the many countries where she skated. Since she left competitive skating at the 2006 Turin Olympics, Kwan's world view has dramatically widened through her role as a public diplomacy envoy for the State Department and her studies at Denver University, where she received a bachelor's in international studies this May.

As Kwan seizes her future, the best way for me to assess her past is something I already wrote.

Given the uncertainty over her physical condition as she prepared for the 2006 Olympics, I had prepared a story summing up her career to appear either after the Winter Games skating ended or any time before that if circumstances dictated.

That is what happened, as pain in her groin forced Kwan to withdraw before the competition.

The story in question was published Feb. 13, 2006. I reread it after receiving Kwan's statement from U.S  Figure Skating and decided the old story would be the best valedictory for the sporting phase of her life.

You can read it after the jump:

Vande Velde on his 2009 Tour de France: My mental effort tenfold harder

Christian Vande Velde didn't say whether he called because he had read the last item of my Tuesday blog, referring to my missing the conversations we had during the Tour de France.

If not, he certainly had read my mind.

When we spoke late Wednesday, three days after he finished eighth in the Tour, Vande Velde was about to be on the move again. He will leave his European training base in northeastern Spain on Friday and travel west to the Basque country for Saturday's 141-mile Classic of San Sebastian, one of the premier one-day summer races in Europe.

The field is scheduled to include the one-two finishers from this year's Tour de France, Alberto Contador of Spain and Andy Schleck of Luxembourg.

DeScenza: No medal, world mark swept away in record flood

It didn't end well for Mary DeScenza.

In Thursday's 200-meter butterfly final at the World Championships in Rome, the swimmer from Naperville, Ill., not only lost the world record she had set about 32 hours earlier but also failed to win a medal.

DeScenza's fourth-place finish and the record-breaking performance by Australia's Jessicah Schipper further diminished the impact of DeScenza's record swim, which already had been rendered virtually meaningless by the role high-tech swimsuits are playing in the fast times.

There have been 29 world records set at this world meet, almost double the previous record for records at worlds.

In the final, both Schipper (2 minutes, 3.41 seconds) and Olympic champion Liu Zige of China (2:03.90) were wearing the soon-to-be-verboten suits as they went under the mark (2:04.14) that DeScenza had established in Wednesday's prelims. DeScenza's time in the final was 2:04.41.

DeScenza has been in five world meets without winning an individual medal. Her world mark was as ephemeral as a footprint in the sand, washed away by high tide in a sport with chronological credibility at an all-time low.

That has happened because its emperors -- the leaders of the international swimming federation -- have no clothes.

-- Philip Hersh

Photo: Jessicah Schipper of Australia salutes the crowd after setting a world record in the 200 butterfly in her soon-to-be-verboten suit. Credit: Al Bello / Getty Images

Does DeScenza gain or lose by her world record? Suit yourself

American Mary DeScenza is the latest (pick one) a) beneficiary or b) unwitting victim of the total incompetence that the leaders of the international swimming federation (FINA) have revealed in their handling of the high-tech swimsuit issue over the past two years.

DeScenza, of Naperville, Ill., whose elite swimming career had been excellent if unexceptional until Wednesday morning, suddenly did something that until last year would have been a great mark of distinction.

The sad thing is what should have been a career achievement for DeScenza -- setting a world record in the World Swimming Championships at Rome -- has become almost inconsequential because she did it in one of the soon-to-banned suits that have rendered world records meaningless.

When DeScenza lowered her personal best in the 200-meter butterfly by nearly three seconds with a time of 2 minutes, 4.14 seconds (four-one-hundredths better than the previous record), she made as clear a statement as anyone about the efficacy of these rubberized, polyurethane suits.

Doping, swimsuit farce and USOC network issues are back

(Clothes make the man: Germany's Paul Biedermann in the soon-to-be banned suit he said was a key factor in beating Michael Phelps at the World Swimming SHAMpionships. Photo: Martin Bureau / Getty Images)

Back from vacation and catching up on new and ongoing stories.  Here are some of them:

1. Watching Universal Sports' live stream of the World Swimming Championships, with picture quality that is clearer than ever, also makes it clearer than ever that the U.S. Olympic Committee should have thrown in with NBC-owned Universal rather than create its own U.S. Olympic Network (referred to hereafter as USON).  Not only did the USOC get on the wrong side of the International Olympic Committee on the network issue, it likely will spend at least $25 million a year -- with no return in the near future, if ever -- on the USON.  That could quickly wipe out the $100 million cash surplus with which the USOC began the 2009-2012 period and be even more telling after 2012, when USOC revenues are expected to be substantially lower than the current quadrennium.

 

2. I asked USON major domo Norm Bellingham, the USOC's chief operating officer, for comment about the financial risk involved (and five other questions), and he politely declined comment on any of them in an effort to "work quietly and effectively with our Olympic partners.''  That clearly referred to problems with the International Olympic Committee, which had blasted the USOC for going forward with the network announcement after being told to hold off.  "Since the announcement of our network, there have been several conversations and exchanges of information between the USOC and the IOC,'' Bellingham told me in an e-mail sent the day before I left on holiday. "Both sides have expressed a determination to reach a solution that is in the best interests of the Olympic movement in the United States and worldwide.''

Female ski jumpers to appeal court decision

A group of female ski jumpers will appeal a court decision that prevents them from competing at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia.

According to the group's lawyer, the appeal will argue that the organizers of the Winter Games must abide by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

"It cannot host events on Canadian soil that implement discrimination," Ross Clark said in a statement.

The British Columbia Supreme Court ruled last week the International Olympic Committee is discriminating against the ski jumpers by keeping them from the games. But the judge said the court did not have the power to order the sport be part of the the Olympics.

-- Debbie Goffa

Numbers game: IOC would be taxed without NBC revenues

Want to know why the International Olympic Committee is backing NBC in its dispute with the U.S. Olympic Committee over the U.S. Olympic Network?

 

It is pretty clear from the numbers in the IOC's 2008 tax filing.

 

Tripp Mickle of Sports Business Journal first posted information about the filing Tuesday. His story emphasized the IOC's $383.3 million profit on a record $2.4 billion revenue for the fiscal year that ended Dec. 31, 2008, noting it was 68% greater than the $228.6 million profit from the previous Summer Olympic year, 2004.

 

The revenue figure that struck me was $1.73 billion in global TV rights for the Beijing Olympics.

 

What the filing wasn't required to say is NBC paid $894 million of that -- a little more than half the total.

Women ski jumpers shut out of Vancouver Games

A bid by female ski jumpers to be included in the next Winter Olympics was rejected by a judge in the Canadian province of British Columbia.

Fifteen jumpers had sued the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) over their exclusion from the Games, saying that it violated Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Judge Lauri Ann Fenlon agreed that the plaintiffs "will be denied this opportunity for no reason other than their sex," but said the International Olympic Committee -- which determines which sports are included in the Olympic program -- is not bound by Canada's Charter.

"There will be little solace to the plaintiffs in my finding that they have been discriminated against [but] there is no remedy available to them in this Court," she wrote in a decision released today.

More later at www.latimes.com/sports

-- Helene Elliott

USOC words, actions, attitude do Chicago Olympic bid no favors

Since the April day in 2007 the U.S. Olympic Committee announced it had selected Chicago over Los Angeles as the U.S. candidate for the 2016 Summer Olympics, the USOC has done Chicago few favors.

In fact, USOC words and actions over the last year have possibly undermined Chicago's bid and made a mockery of the USOC mantra of an "unprecedented partnership" between the national Olympic committee and a bid city.

 

It began last October, when Peter Ueberroth, in his final public speech as USOC chairman, rebuked the arguments of International Olympic Committee members critical of the USOC's stance in a revenue sharing dispute with the IOC. Ueberroth also reminded everyone in no uncertain that the U.S. corporations still contribute more than 60%of IOC revenues.

 

Chicago 2016 had no advance warning of what Ueberroth would say, which was certain to offend some 2016 voters, no matter if  his points were valid.

The inside stuff: IOC letter to USOC on network dispute

The Chicago Tribune has obtained a copy of the letter sent by the International Olympic Committee to the U.S. Olympic Committee, in which the IOC advised the USOC to hold off on its announcement of a U.S. Olympic cable network.

The USOC chose to go ahead, which put the Chicago 2016 Olympic bid in an awkward position, as Kathy Bergen and I reported in Thursday's Tribune.

An image of the letter is located to the right (click on it to read). Below the jump is an official statement from the IOC, which echoes the strong criticism of the USOC leveled by IOC executive board member Richard Carrion of Puerto Rico and reported in the story.

Click on the thread for the official IOC statement.