Michael Phelps is right. USA Swimming’s failure runs deeper than medals | Swimming
IN three years, the Los Angeles Olympic Games Swimming program will take place over nine days and nights on the biggest scene that sport has ever known. A swimming pool specially designed inside the Sofi stadium in Inglewood will be the centerpiece of an outdoor outdoor natorium of 38,000, transforming the $ 5 billion house in RAMS and NFL loaders into the largest swimming place in modern history. For the United States, the rare summer games on soil at home should be a coronation, a chance to highlight the depth of its talent in the most spectacular arena in the country. However, Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all, fears that the American swimming program will be in good shape to grasp the moment.
Phelps launched a scouring attack on USA Swimming leadership, accusing it of “weak” stewardship, “bad operational controls” and the presidency over the years of organizational drift. The 23 -time Olympic gold medalist said he would think twice before letting his own sons join the system in its current state. His concerns, he says, date back to his own competitive career, when the voices of athletes were too often excluded in the name of peace and the presentation of a united front. “It’s not on athletes,” he wrote in a long Instagram statement. “It is in the direction of swimming in the United States.”
The decline he sees is cultural and structural as much as competitive. In 2016, Phelps was part of an American swimming team in Rio which, according to its measure, was “undoubtedly the most successful in the history of sport”, winning 57% of the medals available in the swimming pool. Eight years later in Paris, this share fell to 44% – the lowest for the American team since the 1988 Olympic Games – a decrease which he cites as proof that the cracks in the system have expanded. An open letter he sent earlier this year to swimming from the United States, co-signed by other medalists, world record holders, coaches and staff, he said, said, ignored. Its prescription is swept: an independent examination of the board of directors, improved athlete services and a renewed basic investment to reverse the robbery of membership.
Others largely share its alarm. The 12-time Olympic medalist, Ryan Lochte, recently published a meme, also shared by Phelps, compare the United States swimming with a buried corpse, while the triple Olympic champion and NBC Rowdy Gaines analyst has become public with his concerns in a magazine in the swimming world. Gaines calls for the annual absence of the organization of a CEO a “leadership vacuum” at the worst possible moment. It warns that even the nine gold medals at the top of the table won the world championships this summer in Singapore – despite the serious gastroenteritis epidemic which seriously compromised the American team – should not hide “deeper structural problems below the surface”. The two men see 2028 as a deadline: the last chance to repair the system before the lights go up to Inglewood.
In particular, Broadside of Phelps does not directly deal with the most damaging area in the recent history of swimming in the United States: its management of sexual abuse, harassment and safeguarding of athletes. Earlier this year, the new CEO, Chrissi Rawak, resigned after only nine days when the organization learned an uncompromising complaint from Safesport against her since her coach days. The American Center for Safesport itself, which manages such allegations, was in a state of permanent agitation: its own director general was rejected in the midst of hiring practices, including an investigator who has himself been accused of several sexual crimes, including rape, sexual traffic and solicitation of prostitution. The survivors reported a retraumatization by defective surveys, and their confidence in the process of verification of Safesport and USA Swimming remains at best fragile, if not fractured beyond the repair.
These controversies form the tacit backdrop of the governance concerns of phelps and sheaths. Their objective is to focus on performance, leadership and resources, but the weaknesses they describe – poor surveillance, slow action, a lack of responsibility – are the same faults as criticisms have long identified in the treatment of cases of abuse by the organization. If the United States cannot solve the problems in a convincing manner in any of the problems, sport is likely to arrive on the single platform of a home match with not only a competitive deficit, but a credibility deficit.
A home of the Olympic Games is an exceptional and decisive moment for any sport. For American swimming, the 2028 offers the possibility of inspiring a new generation, stimulating basic participation and cementing the place of sport in a crowded American sports landscape. It is also, as the Gaines notes, a unique opportunity: Miss IT and the momentum can be lost for decades. This is why the absence of a clear vision, including a permanent leader, concerns those who understand both the issues and the clock. The Sofi stadium can promise the biggest scene in Olympic history, but if American swimming will be ready for it remains an open question.
