Swum and Sunk

One of the most galling things about the outcome of the 2024 presidential election - a topic I will return to with much more vigor and vitriol tomorrow - is that, given that the United States about to co-host the World Cup with Canada and Mexico, celebrate a quarter millennium of nationhood, and host the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, we could have had Kamala Harris, a woman of Jamaican and South Asian descent with a husband of Eastern European Jewish origin, presiding over all of this from the White House - a White House with an intact East Wing - and demonstrating that the United States had truly become an international nation.  Instead we put a xenophobic, provincial, undereducated real estate developer from Queens back in charge.  And Trump not only knows he has the World Cup, the semiquincentennial celebration, and the Olympics happening under his reign of error, he brags about it.

Instead of a Jamaican-American President, we got once again a President from Jamaica Estates.

Because he's in like Flynn - Michael Flynn - with FIFA, the World Cup games in These States will go on as planned, at least with the teams that don't lose any members to Immigration and Custom Enforcement custody.  The semiquincentennial, however, is likely to be a disaster, because I already see less promotion, interest, or hype around it than that which surrounded the bicentennial fifty years ago.  CBS - now being denigrated by the Ellison family and Bari Weiss - can't even be bothered to air "semiquincentennial minutes."  And then there is the unpleasant subject of the Olympics.

Back in early September, I wrote about how I sent a letter to newly installed International Olympic Committee president Kirsty Coventry (above) urging her to have the 2028 Olympics moved out of Los Angeles and out of the U.S. entirely.  At first I wasn't going to write Chief LA28 Athletic Officer Janet Evans make my case for the same because I had no postal address . . . until I found one.  And thus I went ahead and wrote both swimming legends, addressing them in their current capacities,  and subsequently waited for replies.

It's been nearly four months, and I haven't heard from either of them.

I'm not going to write them again.  I've had enough trying to convince the powers that be - and my Olympic heartthrob - of the need to stop the Los Angeles Olympics from happening under MAGA.  Even if Kirsty Coventry wanted to move the Games to another country - say, her own, Zimbabwe - she's need the support of the full committee membership and is unlikely to get it.  And Janet Evans?  She's just the athletic officer, she's not involved in location-related logistics.  These two women must get so much correspondence as it is, my letters probably never reached them . . . and even if they did, they probably had no time to read them themselves.  Besides, Janet Evans has a son who's a high school senior now, and she's probably helping him choose a college to attend (University of Southern California, no doubt), with no time to read a letter from little ol' me. 

It is what it is, and it ain't what it ain't.  All we can do right now is hope Trump and his entire administration are removed from power (consult Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution for more on that) before July 2028 (and hopefully before July 2026!).  I'm not going to get my knickers in a knot over Kirsty Coventry's failure to acknowledge my letter.  As for Janet Evans, I could never, ever be upset with the dear woman. 😊 

I am, however, upset with her 1996 Olympics swimming teammate Amy Van Dyken, who recently said she went back to church because she was inspired by what a wonderful guy Charlie Kirk was in the wake of his assassination.   

I don't want to talk about it . . ..

Anyway, the 2028 Olympics might not go on as planned.  Given Chinese saber-rattling against Taiwan, Iranian saber-rattling against everyone (but especially Israel), and the war between Russia and Ukraine grinding on, and given Trump's cavalier attitude toward all of this, we're likely to have a third world war anyway.

Olympics Letter Update

This is a tale of two swimmers.

Janet Evans (left), America's distance-swimming sweetheart of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and Kirsty Coventry, the Zimbabwean swimming champion who was born and raised there when the place was still called Rhodesia, are directly connected to the 2028 Olympiad and its fate.  Evans is the chief athletic officer of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, and Coventry is now the president of the International Olympic Committee.  And this past Labor Day weekend, I got around to writing both of them, as I wanted to, to share my thoughts about the 2028 Olympics.  (I finally found the postal address for the Los Angeles Olympics organizing committee.)  I told Evans that I wanted to see the Olympics moved to a city outside the United States because of Trump and his fascist regime, and I asked Coventry to make that happen.

In my latter to Janet Evans, I told her how much I revered her and asked her to bear that in mind as I said rather bluntly that I did not want to see the Los Angeles Games take place because of the militarization of Los Angeles earlier this year and how Trump wants to use his power to bring California to heel.  I also mentioned how he might rough up athletes and spectators from other countries at the Games.  At one point, I even deigned to address her by her first name, even though I don't know her from Eve (although I have fantasized about knowing her, and knowing her intimately, but I didn't tell her that!).  This was different from the open letters I wrote to her on this blog, which were mostly my own brand of punditry in the form of letters to a friend.  This was brutal, personal honesty.  No sugar coating whatsoever.  

As for my letter to IOC President Coventry, I repeated the same points I had made in my February 2025 letter to her predecessor, Thomas Bach, that Trump is a threat to world peace and security and a danger to multilateralism, and I also mentioned how a Bach spokesman blew me off in his reply.  But then I made the added points of how Trump has made things worse for America and the world since then.  I especially stressed the recent militarization of Los Angeles and how Trump's immigration policy violates human rights.  (Although I didn't mention it, this might spur Coventry's memories of living in Zimbabwe under the repressive regime of Robert Mugabe.)  

And yes, in both letters, I cited Adolf Hitler and the 1936 Berlin Olympics - like the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, awarded to the city before anyone knew who would be ruling the host city's country.  Coventry, of course, grew up in fascist-racist white-minority-rule Rhodesia, and Evans is a lifelong resident of Orange County, California, and I don't need to say any more about that.  Let's just say I expect both of them to Get It.      

I mailed both letters today.  It will be very interesting to see how both women reply.  Especially Evans, who, as anyone who has read this blog before might know, has always placed herself above politics but has inevitably gotten sucked into them. 

Swim and Sink

I was going to do it.

For some time now, I have written on this blog open letters to champion swimmer and my all-time Olympic heartthrob, Janet Evans, regarding my thoughts about the next Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.  Now, with Donald Trump's dictatorial powers ascendant and with the regime bearing down on American cities run by Democratic administrations with military force - including LA - I had planned to write her in her capacity as the 2028 Olympics' chief athletic officer expressing my fear that holding the Olympics under the circumstances Trump has put this country in would be a disaster.  I had planned to tell her how more than a few pundits I've read fear that Trump will extort conditions from Los Angeles and from the state of California to secure the Games, and how he plans to further consolidate his power over Los Angeles through use of federal prerogatives, military occupation like what just transpired in LA and what is now transpiring in Washington, and just plain brute force.  I was going to tell her that his use of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, his newly reorganized secret police, would complicate things further for guests in this country here to participate in or attend the Olympics.  And I was going to tell her in my letter that I wanted to see the Games canceled and possibly relocated to another city in another country as immediately as possible.

And on top of all that, I was going to end with a happy birthday wish to her.  (She turns 54 today.)

But I didn't write and send this letter to Janet Evans as planned.  See, in order to mail a letter to her, I had to look up the address of the Olympic Organizing Committee in Los Angeles and send it there.  That's just it; I couldn't find such an address.  I Googled for any postal address I could have mailed a letter to, but nothing came up.  Even worse, I went to the official Web site for the 2028 Olympics and did not find any contact information for anyone whatsoever.  All I found was a lousy sign-up field for newsletters.  If the organizing committee is working out of some nondescript office building, the address must be a state secret.

Janet Evans, in addition to being my only sports-celebrity crush ever, is a woman I obviously have great respect for, and so I felt that, as a fan and as someone who despises Donald Trump what a cold passion, I felt it was necessary to contact her, explain my lifelong fondness for her, and to be brutally honest as a fan of hers and as a U.S. citizen - that I felt the Games must not go on here.  That is obviously not an option at the moment and may not be an option at all.  Perhaps I've been saved from utter embarrassment by being unable to write such a letter, as Janet Evans would likely have sent me a scathing reply and told me that I must not bring politics into the Olympics.  Or, maybe she would have said she understands my position but respectfully disagrees with it.  But I guess I may never know.

I'll keep trying to look for an address in which to contact Janet Evans by postal or electronic mail.  By the time I find something, it may be too late to express my thoughts.  In the meantime, I have to ponder whether or not to write another Olympic swimming champion, Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe, the current president of the International Olympic Committee.  But considering the reaction that I got from a spokesman from her predecessor, Thomas Bach - that Trump was democratically elected and that the will of the voters must be respected - I don't think I'll have any luck with her either.

Yet Another Open Letter to Janet Evans About LA '28

Just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in.

*

Dear Janet:

Hi, it's me again.  I think you know why I'm writing you today, given everything that's gone down since your fellow California girl Kamala Harris had her joyful rear end handed to her in the last (at least I hope it's not the last) presidential election.  So I'll just come right out and say it - the 2028 Olympics, for which you are the organizing committee's chief athlete officer, cannot go on in Los Angeles.

Look, Janet, here's the deal.  The Olympic movement is an international one, meant to foster good relations between the countries of the world through sport.  And Donald Trump has managed to foster horrible relations between the United States and every other country on the planet in one short month.  Right after we were in the Paris Olympics, he pulled us out of the Paris climate accord.  He pulled us out of the World Health Organization.  If the United Nations headquarters building weren't in New York, he would have pulled us out of the UN in a heartbeat - and given the endless real-estate repurposing possibilities for the UN's East Midtown property, he might just still do that and send the UN packing and off to Geneva.  His hirsute Vice President was just in Munich admonishing European countries for refusing to acquiesce to the growing and increasingly dangerous rhetoric of right-wing populists and suggested that politicians who ignore the political concerns of the European far right are more of an enemy to American and European values than Russia or China.  The only people in the audience for James David Vance's speech who applauded him were his own staffers. 

Janet, how much more do you want to hear?  When Trump isn't eroding human rights in America with his anti-abortion measures and his persecution of non-heterosexuals, he's starting trade wars with his tariffs.  His erosion of public health standards - Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who's a health expert like I'm a jet pilot, just got confirmed as Health and Human Services Secretary - will make athletes who plan to compete in the Los Angeles Olympics much more hesitant to come here out of fear of catching something.   And all of the bureaucratic elements that make a country function smoothly have just been gutted by Elon Musk.  Need I say more?

Well, Janet, I will.  Los Angeles and a few of its immediate suburbs just suffered some of the most catastrophic fires in the state of California's history.  Even if former President Biden had been able to stay in the campaign and win re-election or if Kamala Harris had eked out a victory over Trump this past November, the fires still would have happened, and the loss of the entire Pacific Palisades section of LA merely underscores how sensitive southern California is to natural disasters - and in an era of climate change, that goes double.  Given the scope and breadth of the disaster, Los Angeles, I would argue, is in no condition to host a major sporting event of any sort.  And, given how the greater Los Angeles area can only sustain naturally a population of a couple hundred thousand, without all of those aqueducts, I don't see how Los Angeles County has the ability to host an Olympiad when it struggles for the necessary resources to sustain the 9.7 million people who call it home.

Look, Janet, I know it would have been cool to have a President Kamala Harris officiate at the opening of the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, especially since it's her and her New Jersey-bred husband's adopted hometown, and no one certainly expected Donald Trump to be President in 2028.  That's why LA got the 2028 Olympics and not the 2024 Olympics - I have no doubt that the members of the International Olympic Committee figured, when awarding the the Games of the XXXIV Olympiad to Los Angeles, that Trump would either serve two consecutive terms as President and be gone by 2028 or he would be lose his 2020 re-election bid and would be too politically wounded to win a second nonconsecutive term, especially since no former U.S. President had pulled that off since 1892.  And, since Trump won a plurality in 2024, and since he made significant gains among black men, white women, and Hispanics of both sexes, and since Harris won solidly Democratic states by smaller margins than Hillary Clinton in 2016 or Joe Biden in 2020, the inference is that the country is moving in the direction of Trump's extreme agenda and is quite happy with where Trump is taking the country, if recent polls are to be believed.  Here's something else we can infer, Janet - more Americans would rather have a racist, misogynistic, fascistic con man in the White House than a black woman with a Jewish husband.

Yes, yes, Janet, I know California is much more liberal than the rest of the country, and Kamala Harris may still officiate at the 2028 Olympics as governor of the state (though I think she's as politically dead as Albert Gore was in 2001), but holding an international sporting event in California and pretending that it's not part of the now-hated United States is like what holding international figure-skating or track and field championships in Minsk and pretending that Belorussia was not part of the hated Soviet Union would have been back in the Cold War era.  In fact, to the rest of world, California means Hollywood, and to rest of the world, Hollywood is America.  Clearly, under present circumstances and circumstances for the foreseeable future, holding an Olympiad in Los Angeles or in any other American city is a no-go.

Therefor, Janet, I am writing a letter to International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach - a real postal letter, not an open online letter like this one - and asking him to move the 2028 Games elsewhere while the IOC still can do so.  And, Janet, given that Trump could start a world war, the LA Olympics might have to be cancelled anyway.

Sincerely.

Steven Maginnis

P.S.  You know I still love you, right?  Just don't tell your husband.

An Open Letter To Janet Evans on Her Fiftieth Birthday

Dear Janet:

You're fifty years old today?  I don't know if you feel old - you're in such great shape, you probably don't - but I sure do.

Obviously, I remember you from the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, when you were just seventeen - you know what I mean (sorry, I couldn't resist a Beatles reference) - and you won three gold medals in the 400-meter and 800-meter freestyle swimming races and set a record in the 400-meter individual medley race even as you held the world records in the former two events after having set them the year before.  Alas, I only got to see one or two of those events on TV - I was canvassing for Michael Dukakis' ill-fated presidential campaign and spent a lot of time out of the house.  I read about you more than actually seeing you.  I had better luck with the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, when I caught your silver-medal swim in the 400-meter freestyle - I already talked about that on my blog a few years ago - but again, I missed your swim in the 800-meter freestyle race that got you your fourth gold medal.  I was in Nantucket - not making this up, Janet - and I went with my father, aunt and uncle to a restaurant, one of those places so exclusive they only served one or two parties at a time.  Ha ha,  I think I made the wrong decision as to whether to go or stay back at the rental house.  (And time spent in 1988 on a failed presidential campaign could have been spent watching more of you in Seoul.) 

You were certainly a spunky, bubbly girl then, Janet, but then you arrived in Atlanta for the 1996 Games as a woman.  Oh, my stars, I've had a crush on you ever since - but don't tell your husband!  😄  Oh, dear, what a series of highs and lows that must have been for you, from passing the Olympic torch to Muhammad Ali at the to witnessing Eric Rudolph's bomb going off in Centennial Olympic Park . . . and of course there were the swim races that didn't work out for you, especially the 400 free . . . what a mess.  But in spite of everything, I was still able to see and appreciate more of your competition this time - even the preliminaries.  I made sure that I wasn't going to miss your final race, though I was amazed how some people didn't consider it must-see TV.  That evening, my sister asked me if I was going to watch the Olympics that night.  "Oh, yes," I said, "I'm not going to miss the swimming coverage.  Janet Evans is swimming in her last race."

"Who?" my sister asked.  

And to think my sister - who's a year and a half older than you are - once thought about being an Olympic swimmer when she was a kid.  She could have been your teammate.

But how about that last race, huh Janet? Fifteen thousand people in the stands cheering and calling out your name.  And that's when the race was over.  How many people even remember that Brooke Bennett and Dagmar Hase - two of your most notorious rivals - finished first and second, respectively,  in that race?  You won by losing.  

So many years ago . . . and you're still my favorite distance swimmer.  Yes, Katie Ledecky is the greatest female distance swimmer of all time now, and I certainly didn't miss any of her big Olympic races, but you have something she doesn't.  That windmill stroke that propelled you across the pool.  I sometime wonder if you took swimming lessons from Pete Townshend. 

And yes, I know how much you love Katie Ledecky too.

I'm really happy that things have turned out so well for you, Janet.  A wonderful husband and two beautiful children, a gig as chief athlete officer for the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics, a nice house by the ocean, a swim complex and an annual swimming event bearing your name . . . you deserve all of it.  So go ahead and keep repeating your story about how you passed the Olympic torch to Ali on that night in July 1996 . . . I never get tired of hearing it.

On a more serious note, I'm sorry for the loss of your father to Lou Gehrig's disease.  (I have to apologize for some of what I said in my previous open letters on this blog.  I knew your father was originally from Pennsylvania, but I didn't know he came from the Philadelphia area, and here I've been telling all about what a great city it is when you already know that.  And I still would have liked to see Philly host the Olympics -  I guess that would have been your second choice after LA.)   And I'm sorry you couldn't make a comeback for the 2012 London Olympics . . . but you still gave it your best.

I suppose you've seen my comments on your Instagram page; I hope you appreciate them.  And I hope you appreciate the fact that I started a Facebook group page in your honor, which can be accessed here.  You'd be surprised, Janet, to learn how many people are as interested in you as I am.  And if you go to my YouTube channel, you'll find some of your old swimming races and interviews - some of which I saw for the first time before uploading them. But my biggest quest for videos of your historic swim races means unfulfilled.

I'm still trying to find clips of your victorious 800 free races in Seoul and Barcelona.

So have a happy birthday, Janet, and I hope you have many more.  I can't say much more, except to suggest that you bear this John Lennon lyric in mind going forward - "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

Sincerely and always a fan,

Steven Maginnis

When Janet Evans Lost It

It was twenty-five years ago today when noted right-wing nut Eric Rudolph planted a bomb that went off in Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 Atlanta Games, and no, I'm not going to tell the whole story all over again after having told it in July 2016.  Instead, I'm focusing on the moment a TV news crew from Germany's ARD network caught the explosion from a pavilion in the park while the ARD reporter was interviewing American swimmer Janet Evans.

I'm not going to recap the lousy week Evans had had during the swimming competition in the Atlanta Olympics' first week; you can go here for that.  I'm just showing the moment when she and the German reporter - whose name I never found out - saw and felt the bomb go off.  Up to this point, Evans had kept up her chipper, bubbly persona, which made her a favorite among Olympic fans in the first place.  At the pavilion of the timepiece company Swatch - which was throwing a retirement party for Evans - the reporter had talked to her about her retirement from competitive swimming and whether she was disappointed in how she swam in her last two races.  The topic then turned to Franziska van Almsick - who, at the time, was probably Germany's most famous female swimmer - whom Evans had just said hello to. She told the reporter that she wanted to speak to van Almsick at greater length but, with so many people crowding around van Almsick, she didn't want to be one more person bothering her.

"And no one's bothering you, right?" the ARD reporter said.

Evans had only gotten one word out in response when the bomb went off.  But what caught some people's attention was the one word she said after the bomb went off. 

Elizabeth Gleick, then writing for Time magazine, seemed to suggest at the time that Evans' cursing revealed her true nature, particularly with regard to the bad week she'd had, the bomb being the last straw . . . as if she was not the all-American girl next door she projected herself to be.   

Yeah, right - Evans should have been expected to be sweet and nice in a moment of domestic terrorism.  But in a situation like that, you couldn't expect her to just shrug it off and be so nonchalant about it.  As I wrote in August 2016, "Like, what was she supposed to do, say something like, 'It is terribly unfortunate that a bomb went off and could have killed me if it had been any closer?'"

No, when you're in a situation like that, you curse.  When someone explodes a backpack bomb near you, your first impulse is to drop a bomb of your own - an F-bomb.   

I had no problem with Janet Evans dropping the F-bomb at all.  Especially since I've been dropping it a lot since six months into the pandemic (before the pandemic, I never dropped it).  As far as I'm concerned, if there was any time appropriate for an all-American girl hailed as America's Olympic sweetheart to say , "F**k!", this was most certainly it.  She shouldn't have had to worry about her public image when she reacted the way she did. 

The video clip has troubled Evans for the past 25 years - not for her cursing, but for making her relive the moment.  "What happened," she later said, "was the German reporter literally took the tape, ran out of the building and ran to CNN. CNN had that video running in like ten minutes . . ..  I've seen it many times, and I hate watching it. It's not a happy memory."

I certainly hope Evans doesn't find this blog post by Googling herself.  But while it may be an unpleasant memory, it should not be an embarrassing memory for her just because she cursed.  It could have been any reporter interviewing any athlete in proximity to and in view of where the bomb went off, and anyone else would have been justified for cursing and being troubled by a clip of the moment being played over and over on TV news.

This only showed that Janet Evans is human.  There's no shame in being human.

And if she does find this blog post, I hope she appreciates what I just said.

*

Three days after the bombing, Evans joined then-current Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell, International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch, Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games president Bill Payne, and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis onstage in a ceremony reopening Centennial Olympic Park.  Former Atlanta Mayor and Atlanta Olympics co-chair Andrew Young spoke to the crowd that assembled.

"We're here to proclaim a victory, we're here not to wallow in tragedy but to celebrate a triumph, a triumph of the human spirit," Young said. "We're here to remember the lives of Alice Hawthorne and Melih Uzunyol, two wonderful citizens, one from America and one from Turkey, who sought to come here to celebrate with 197 nations of the world, the possibilities of this planet, living together into the 21st century with a new measure of peace and prosperity. And we're sure that the 21st century will remember the joy, the wonder, the celebration, the vitality of the people of the earth gathered in this park and that we will define the future, not hatred, not bitterness, not alienation but joy and happiness."

An Open Letter To Janet Evans About Her Web Site

And it's very quick.

*

Dear Janet:

It's been awhile since I wrote you an open letter on this blog, but, having noted your forty-ninth birthday last week, I couldn't help but notice . . . 

Your Web site has been flagged as "unsafe" by my virus detector.

Because you just celebrated a birthday, and because you're still my all-time favorite female Olympian, I was prompted to look at your site and see what you're up to these days, but I'm not going to do that if there's a problem with it.  Am I right in assuming that you haven't updated it because of that other virus - COVID-19 - which is now ravaging your home state of California as I type this?  And would I also be right in assuming you're busy protecting your lovely family from this nasty virus, which can do far more damage to the general population than any computer bug could do to your page or to anyone who may click on the link to it?

Anyway, I thought it would be a good idea to bring this to the attention of you and anyone else who still follows you.  And please take your time in fixing your site, Janet, because I know there are more important things to worry about, seeing as we're living in times crazier than when you saw that bomb in Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park go off before your eyes.  Take care.

Sincerely, 

Steven Maginnis

P.S.  Just as a matter of curiosity, Janet, did you, seeing as you have a personal connection to the story, see Clint Eastwood's movie Richard Jewell?   Because I understand that Donovan Bailey recommends it. :-) 

A Very Brief Open Letter To Janet Evans

Dear Janet:

Now that Los Angeles is going to host the 2028 Olympics, I just have one thing to say to you today . . .

Happy birthday!

Forty-six years old . . . and you're still cute. :-)

 Sincerely,

Steven Maginnis

P.S.  When you passed the Olympic torch to Muhammad Ali in 1996, I have to admit . . . I was very jealous.  He was prettier than I am! :-D 

Yet Another Open Letter to Janet Evans About the 2024 (and 2028) Olympics

The latest news about where the next two - yes, the next two - summer Olympiads are being held requires me to once again write an open letter to Olympic swimming champion Janet Evans, in her capacity as Vice Chair of the Athletes Commission for Los Angeles' bid for the 2024 Olympic Games, as I now have reason to assume that she is in line for a major role in an official 2028 Olympic organizing committee.

Dear Janet:

Okay, I was wrong.  No sense in trying to approach this evasively, but yes, I'm coming out and saying it - I was wrong; Los Angeles is getting the Olympics.  But in 2028, not 2024, as the decision has been made to award the Summer Games after Tokyo to Paris, and then the Olympiad after that to LA.  But I still say that you and your fellow southern Californians have to wait four years longer than you wanted to in large part because no one wanted to take the chance of Donald Trump somehow getting re-elected President in 2020 (which could still happen) and officiating at the Olympics in the last year of a second term.  I guess Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti's efforts to honor the Paris Agreement - the agreement about climate change, which Trump won't support, not the one about the Olympics, which lets Paris go first - got LA some brownie points after all.

So, congratulations.  But bear in mind, Janet, that the bid committee you have proudly served will have to re-adjust the costs for Los Angeles to host the Games, because, as the New York Times reported, the original cost estimates were based on a seven-year, not an eleven-year, forecast, and that the time difference will render the cost projections becoming exponentially higher even by conservative budgeting.  Also, Rick Burton, a former chief marketing officer for the United States Olympic Committee, admitted that some LA sports venues may need to be upgraded with new technology, and that new venues may be needed altogether if more events are added.  And I think he said something about the possibility of a severe natural disaster like an earthquake, which is always impossible to predict.

But then, New York bid for the Olympics once, and Hurricane Sandy proved that natural disasters could affect a hypothetical Olympiad in the Northeast.  And you, Janet, like most southern Californians, know how to deal with an earthquake.  We in the Northeast still haven't completely recovered from Sandy.  I just hope you don't get another drought a decade and change from now.

But you guys did get a sweetheart deal for the Games, didn't you, Janet? The International Olympic Committee has promised to grant $1.8 billion - billion, with a b - to the Los Angeles organizing committee and $180 million in advance payments for the extra four years to prepare for 2028 - and even some money for youth sports programs now instead of later!  How did you swing that?  I'll bet you yourself had something to do with the negotiations, huh, Janet?  Because you can charm anyone with that chipper Southern California accent of yours!  You could sell ice cubes to an Eskimo!  (Not that you would sell ice cubes to Eskimos . . . )

What surprises me, apart from this deal that leaves Paris and Los Angeles both big winners, is that this wasn't - and isn't - going to be official before the meeting of the International Committee (IOC) on September 13, and IOC president Thomas Bach just couldn't wait that long to announce it.  When he stood with Eric Garcetti and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo to make the announcement, he looked like he owned the earth.  Well, he does, at least the part of the earth where international sports are played.  And the Los Angeles City Council and the United States Olympic Committee still have to approve this, I understand, but, don't worry, Janet, I'm sure they will.

Having said all that, Janet, my criticisms about Los Angeles from my open letter to you in July 2016 still stand.  Los Angeles has already hosted the Games twice.  Also, it's more of a suburban-sprawl settlement than a city,  it doesn't have a vibrant cultural life, and it's too dependent on car travel (however, I award LA points for trying to expand its rapid transit service). It's nothing personal, it's just that I'm from the Northeast, and we roll differently out here.  Besides, as Will Smith once observed, you can't even get a decent Philly-style steak sandwich in LA.  And of course, I, like Will Smith, I'm sure, would have loved to see the Games in Philadelphia.  Oh, well, maybe Philly will get the Pan American Games one day.  And if the City of Brotherly Love ever does bid for the Pan Ams, I hope you will be supportive.  And I highly recommend that you visit Philadelphia one day if you haven't already.

I recommend Pat's Steaks for a good steak sandwich. Cheese is optional, but onions are de rigeur.  Just be careful with the grease - you hold that sandwich the wrong way and it will slide right out of your hands.  And if you get any grease on your sundress, well, I'm sorry, Janet, there's no detergent strong enough to get it out.  It might even eat a hole into the fabric.

Sincerely,

Steven Maginnis

P.S.  As always, you know I still love you, right?  I must, since I gave you fair warning about Philly steak sandwiches. :-D 

Another Open Letter to Janet Evans About the 2024 Olympics

Four months ago today, I wrote an open letter to Olympic swimming champion Janet Evans, in her capacity as Vice Chair of the Athletes Commission for Los Angeles' bid for the 2024 Olympic Games, explaining why I thought that such a bid was a spectacularly bad idea.  Now that we've had an election with an outcome  just as spectacularly bad, I now go back, Jack, and do it again.

Dear Janet:

Yes, it's me again.  You might remember that back in July I told you that getting the Olympic Games awarded to Los Angeles for 2024 was a lousy idea, right?  And you're probably still optimistic that you and your fellow denizens of metropolitan LA can bring the Games to the City of Angels.  Well, in light of the fact that Donald Trump has just been elected President of the United States . . . sorry, Janet, it's not going to happen.  No one on the International Olympic Committee, I'm certain, wants to award the Games to a city in a nation that just chose a racist, immigrant-bashing carnival barker as its leader.

Yes, Janet, I know there's no precedent for such a rejection of an Olympic bid.  I am aware that New York's unsuccessful bid for the 2012 Olympics had nothing to do with George Walker Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq,  and that it was over a revenue-sharing dispute with the United States Olympic Committee, and that Chicago lost its 2016 Olympics bid for that reason also.  But this is different, Janet.  Donald Trump is an arrogant xenophobe and a pig-ignorant B.S. artist.  You know how Democrats in Washington are wary of working with Trump because they don't want to "normalize" his Presidency?  Well, how many people in the Olympic movement would normalize him as a leader by letting an American city host the Games?  By September 2017, which  is when the 2024 Games will be awarded to a city, Trump may very well have started a war in the Middle East, rejected the Paris agreement on climate change, caused an international crisis over trade, and possibly destabilized the Baltic States.  Okay, he may not end up doing a deed as extreme as any of those, but he's going to do something to tick the world off.  He already has, in fact; he won the election.  Janet, don't you think that the International Olympic Committee would like to punish the United States for letting a Trump Presidency happen?  

Yes, Janet, I know Hillary Clinton carried your home state of California, and that she probably won Los Angeles itself by a wide margin.  I am aware also that she even carried Orange County, where you were born and raised and still reside, even though Orange County is known for its right-wing nut-jobs.  And yes, I know Hillary won the popular vote nationwide.  But none of that matters, because Donald Trump is still going to be President.  To the world, he is America now.  The Olympics are all about fostering peace and brotherhood in the world and rising above nationalism.  Trump is not about to do either of those things, and so awarding the Olympics to an American city in this negative shadow that Trump is casting would seem like kind of a crazy idea to the potentates who run the Olympic movement.

And yes, Janet, I know that the 2024 Olympiad is so far off that Trump may not be a factor, because it's likely that Trump will only be a one-term President and be gone by January 2021.  But we don't really know that, do we?  He could very well win a second term. Why would the International Olympic Committee want to take a chance of giving LA the Games with the possibility - nay, the specter - of Trump being around as President in 2024 to officially declare the Los Angeles Games open?  Oh, it will be a disaster if that happens.  He'll make vulgar comments about the synchronized swimmers.  He'll make sexist comments about the participants in women's track and field.  And do you think any foreign Olympic teams will feel welcome, or even safe, in an America run by Donald Trump - even if he's in his last year of office?  Though I'm sure he'd be very welcoming to the Russian team, despite their steroid-use history, when they're coming into Los Angeles.  (And he wouldn't let Mr. Customs Man touch their bags, either.)                

Oh yeah, one other thing: Trump just said something that may have doomed LA's Olympic bid.  He says he backs it. 

Well, Janet, I've made my case, but I'm not about to tell you to abandon what I feel is a quixotic exercise in bringing the Games back to the States for 2024.  All I'm saying is that you shouldn't expect LA to win the bid, and that you're going to be very disappointed.  In fact, I'm willing to bet that, after Trump won, you knew that LA's chances for the 2024 Olympics went down the tubes.  But I'm sure you'll take the loss like the champion you are.  Win a few, lose a few, they always say.

You know I still love you, right?

Sincerely,

Steven Maginnis

P.S.  I noted with some levity your comment that you hid a Wheaties box with your picture on it to keep your son from eating the cereal inside.  Given the recent discovery of remnants of glyphosate - a carcinogenic herbicide - in cereals like Wheaties, which contains 31.2 parts per billion of the stuff, that was a very wise decision.   

Flying Out of Rio

Well, another summer Olympiad has come and gone, and now it's time to bid adieu, goodbye, and all that other stuff, as we put Rio de Janeiro behind us.  And, as is my custom, I'd like to acknowledge everyone who got me interested enough in the Games to comment about it here.

I'd like to thank Allyson Felix, Clayton Murphy, Emma Coburn, and Jenny Simpson for their achievements in track and field, Simone Manuel for her breakthrough in the pool, Simone Biles for her gymnastic achievements, and Simone de Beauvoir for writing feminist literature that had to have inspired Title IX.

Special thanks also go to Nathan Adrian and Ryan Murphy for their feats in swimming, as well as to Maya Dirado and Lilly King for theirs, and all the U.S. swim relay teams, as well as thanks to all the other victorious athletes that I don't know from Adam or Eve who made these Games enjoyable.

No thanks to Ryan Lochte for his inexplicable and dubious achievement outside the pool.

(Oh, yeah, regarding my ladyfriend who was hot for Ryan Lochte . . . yeah, she got over him . . . before the bathroom incident. )

Gymnastics coach Martha Karloyi is following her husband Bela into retirement after having built the women's gymnastics program in These States from nothing into much more than something.  Thanks for the memories, guys, and thank you especially, Bela, for your unbridled enthusiasm for women's sports.  Shane Tusup can't hold a candle to you.

And thanks to Shane Tusup, Katinka Hosszú's husband, for his own wild enthusiasm.  I haven't seen anything like that in the Olympic bleachers since Michelle Kwan's dad! :-D And thank you, Katinka Hosszú, for being totally responsible for your swimming medals.

Special thanks to the Danish men's handball team for enlivening - and unexpectedly winning - the men's team-handball gold-medal game against France. You guys rock!

Thanks also to the commentators who covered these Olympics, especially Rebecca Lowe for that cool, British accent.  No thanks to Dan Hicks for demonstrating to me why media critics don't like him very much.

As always, I thank Mary Carillo and Tom Brokaw for their reports about Brazilian culture, especially Mary Carillo's report on the woman who inspired "The Girl From Ipanema." I also give credit, however begrudgingly, to figure skaters Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir for their own Brazilian travelogue segments.  Lipinski has never been a favorite athlete of mine, because she's so full of herself, but she did a good job.  So did Johnny Weir - but please, Johnny, please get yourself a fashion consultant!

Thanks also to models Gisele Bündchen, Adriana Lima and Alessandra Ambrosio for being a part of these Games, be it in the opening ceremony or through paling around with Ryan Seacrest, but how come no one invited those two other Brazilian beauties from the modeling world, Gisele Zelauy and my favorite Brazilian model, Dalma Collado, to join in? It's not because they're over forty, is it?

Paulo Pimenta is a Facebook friend of mine from Brazil, and I connected with him through the models I have befriended on social media.  He's been enjoying the Rio Games up close and personal. Thanks to my social-media connections, I have also connected on Facebook with . . . Gisele Zelauy. I dedicate my commentary on the Rio Games to them. :-)

There weren't that many memorable television commercials related to the Olympics, but there was one good one - a Reese's peanut butter cup ad showing winter Olympian Lindsey Vonn (a skier) trying her hand at non-winter sports with great difficulty. I'd like thank her for making such an entertaining commercial.  Lindsey, you are so adorable in that ad - and you totally got this! :-D

And thanks to the late Maya Angelou for reading her poetry in commercials for iPhone and the University of Phoenix.  Yes, that was sarcasm.  Whose stupid idea was it to play the recorded voice of a dead woman reading her own poetry in commercials, anyway, especially for an online diploma mill?  Not cool.

And a special thank you to Usain Bolt - I'm gonna miss you, man! - as well as very special thanks to Michael Phelps . . . 

 . . . for going out on top like no athlete ever has gone out or ever will.

And most of all, thanks to Katie Ledecky for her monumental accomplishments in the pool.  

 

This is Katie Ledecky with the great Janet Evans, who more or less passed her distance swimming crown to Katie.

Isn't she cute?

I don't mean Katie Ledecky. :-D

And speaking of Janet Evans . . . well, I saved my most important gratitude for last.  Although Evans has not competed in the Olympics since 1996, I found it impossible to comment on this summer Olympiad, or the previous one, without mentioning her at least once.  Which leads me to draw the obvious conclusion:  When it comes to writing about the Summer Olympics, she is, for better or for worse, my muse.  How could she not be?  Evans, as Hannah Storm told her in 1996, set the standard for what it means to be an Olympian in and out of competition, and her standard remains.  Why else would Evans appear on a Wheaties box only now, in 2016?  So, in addition to wishing her a happy birthday in advance (she turns 45 next Sunday), I'd like to thank her for the inspiration to blog about the Olympics, now and for all time.

Although she may find some of my comments a little too cynical . . .

And so we look with 2020 vision to the next Summer Olympics.  Gee, Mom, I want to go . . . straight back to Tokyo . . . :-D

Swimmers Behaving Badly

Okay, let me see if I have this fast-changing story straight . . .

Ryan Lochte and three other swimmers - Jimmy Feigen, Jack Conger and Gunnar Bentz - were riding in a taxi and were allegedly robbed at gunpoint by thieves pretending to be police officers, forcing them out of the car and demanding their wallets.  Lochte said he dared one of them to use his gun and then got down on the ground.

Then Lochte changed details in his story while his teammates said that he never pulled a Dirty Harry-type moment, and he doubled down on his insistence that they were robbed . . . when in fact they were stopping at a service station after having gotten drunk and vandalized a bathroom.  The fake police officer was actually a real security officer who gave them a hard time because they were . . . giving him a hard time. 

Then ol' Ryan bailed on his teammates and went home, leaving Feigen, Conger and Bentz to take the rap and tell authorities . . . the truth. Which was caught on a security camera.

I think the dye in Lochte's hair seeped into his brain.

Lochte's behavior - inexcusable for a man of his age and position - is going to go down as one of the most brazen display of immaturity by an American swimmer that I can remember.

Which brings me back to the subject of Janet Evans.  I sort of remember, twenty years ago in Atlanta, that Evans was dismissed for her immaturity.  She was ridiculed for what she did after she was eliminated from the final in the 400-meter freestyle by a fraction of a second.  She . . . cried.

What?  You mean an athlete on the verge of becoming the first American woman to win a fifth individual Olympic gold medal in swimming got unexpectedly eliminated from the final of the only one of two races she was competing in at Atlanta in which she was a favorite - and she actually got upset because she was eliminated by a microscopic margin?  After all the training she went through to make history, she was, upon failing to do so, actually . . .  tearful?  Oh, I'm shocked! 

And when that bomb in Centennial Olympic Park went off before her eyes, she was reportedly criticized for her reaction.  She . . . cursed.  No kidding!  Like, what was she supposed to do, say something like, "It is terribly unfortunate that a bomb went off and could have killed me if it had been any closer?" 

Evans wasn't being immature, she was being human.  Michael Phelps, incidentally, may have been immature when  he drank and did drugs, but he showed his humanity when he came clean and got clean.  Lochte was not only being immature, he was being . . . dumb.