The IOC gets it -- thanks to our ethics lesson

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Sometimes it takes a little nudge to make some folks in the Olympic movement get the picture on ethics.

In a blog entry last week, I suggested it was ethically murky at best and a quid pro quo at worst for Els van Breda Vriesman’s campaign website (pushing her reelection as president of the International Field Hockey Federation) to include an endorsement from Mercedes Coghen, chief executive of the Madrid 2016 bid team.

The problem, you see, is that International Olympic Committee member Van Breda Vriesman also is a member of the IOC commission that will evaluate the 2016 candidate cities.

When I asked the IOC about this on Friday, a spokesperson told me it was about to be resolved.

Sometime over the weekend, it was.

The quote from Coghen is no longer on the campaign website. Now this may seem like a little thing.

But in a bid city race sure to provoke cries of foul play, whether justified or not, in an IOC that has made transparency one of its watchwords, it is better to have even little things cleared up.

-- Philip Hersh