Hanyu, Ledecká rise above it all in a year when world sport needed them - and other athletes - as salvation from scandal and cowardice

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Hanyu, Ledecká rise above it all in a year when world sport needed them - and other athletes - as salvation from scandal and cowardice

In international sports, 2018 was a year of courage and cowardice and common sense in seeing through a con.

And, as usual, it was a year of athletes of all colors, backgrounds, nations, shapes and sizes rising above the inanity, craven callousness and amorality of the old, white men who run global sports.

To which one can only say this:  Thanks, Yuzuru Hanyu and Simone Biles, thanks Ester Ledecká and Chloe Kim, thanks Eliud Kipchoge and Team Shuster. . .thanks to you and more for the achievements and goodwill that made us remember that sport, for all its ugly, scandalous warts, can show humankind at its most attractive.

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Damning report on USOC leadership in Nassar abuse scandal should lead nearly entire USOC board to resign

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Damning report on USOC leadership in Nassar abuse scandal should lead nearly entire USOC board to resign

All but one member of the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Board of Directors must resign.

A new board must separate the position of athlete ombudsman from the USOC paid staff, so athletes can feel their grievances, large and small, get an independent hearing.

USOC sponsors, not Congress, should lead the drive for those changes in the aftermath of a damning report about the way USOC leadership mishandled the horrific Larry Nassar sexual abuse scandal.

But the board could start the process of replacing itself at its meeting today in California.

Nassar was sentenced Jan. 24 to 40-to-175 years in prison for multiple sex crimes after some 200 of his victims courageously testified against him in court. But that testimony did not fill in all the blanks about the case.

In the months that have followed, there remained many critical and unanswered questions about how the USOC leadership had handled - and is handling - the worst and most gruesome events in the history of Olympic sports in the United States.

The answers, searingly critical of the USOC, came this week in the report issued by Ropes & Gray, the Boston-based international law firm whom the USOC Board of Directors hired to conduct an independent investigation.

The report’s evidence that USA Gymnastics and its former chief executive, Steve Penny, acted unconscionably already had been well documented.  Its evidence about the USOC’s utter failure to act was new – and even more awful than many suspected.

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In needed move to prevent federation figure skating heads from judging, ISU still needs to go further

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In needed move to prevent federation figure skating heads from judging, ISU still needs to go further

The International Skating Union’s biennial congress early next month will consider a proposal that might have been unnecessary if the top Canadian figure skating federation official had a more accurate ethical compass.

So you can call Urgent Proposal No. 6 the Leanna Caron Rule, since the proposal obviously was spurred largely by the actions of Skate Canada president Caron.

The proposal, submitted by the ISU Council, is a move in the right direction toward eliminating conflicts of interest that can undermine confidence in judging of this highly subjective sport.  Hopefully, it will pass.

But it doesn’t go quite far enough.

And the ISU needs to change another regulation so it can go further.

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Outgoing U.S. skating president says team's poor Olympic performance scared people

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Outgoing U.S. skating president says team's poor Olympic performance scared people

Samuel Auxier's four-year term as U.S. Figure Skating president ends Saturday with the election of his successor during the annual Governing Council meeting in Orlando.

Auxier, an international judge, will continue to serve the organization as past president and possibly as head of its International Committee.

With the exception of ice dance, in which U.S. couples have been consistent medal winners at junior and senior global championships for more than a decade, Auxier has presided over four years that have brought decidedly mixed results for U.S. skaters.

The 2018 Olympic Winter Games was a low point for U.S. ladies and pairs, bringing the lowest placement ever for the top U.S. woman (ninth; sixth was the previous low) and the lowest aggregate finish at any of the 16 Olympics in which the U.S. had three women entered; and the lowest placement ever for the top (and, in this case, only) U.S. pair (15th; previous low was 10th).

At 15 global championships since 2006, the U.S. has won just one singles medal at the Olympics (Evan Lysacek's 2010 gold) and four at worlds (golds by Lysacek in 2009 and Nathan Chen this year, bronze by Johnny Weir in 2008 and silver by Ashley Wagner in 2016). The U.S. has not won a ladies medal at the world junior championships since 2012 and has not had a woman at the Junior Grand Prix Final since 2013.

With all that in mind, icenetwork sat down last month with Auxier to get his thoughts on the state of the sport in the United States.

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Bouquets, brickbats (and some of both): a 2018 Olympic figure skating scorecard

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Bouquets, brickbats (and some of both): a 2018 Olympic figure skating scorecard

Lynn Rutherford and I checked in with our winners and losers from the figure skating competition at the recently completed 2018 Olympic Winter Games.

Some of my winners:

Eteri Tutberidze

Although early records are incomplete, the coach of Alina Zagitova and Evgenia Medvedeva is almost certainly the first person to be by the boards for both the gold and silver medalists in an Olympic singles event.

Skate Canada

The best possible realistic scenario for the Canadians was two gold and two bronze medals, and that is exactly what their skaters won -- and they were on the podium in four of the five events. No other country medaled in more than two.

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