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

In fact, USOC words and actions over the past year both 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 revenue sharing dispute with the IOC.  Ueberroth also reminded everyone in no uncertain that the U.S. corporations still contribute more than 60 percent 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.

Nor did Chicago 2016 have any clue the USOC was going to announce Wednesday the launch of its new television network, in partnership with Comcast, despite having received an IOC warning Tuesday not to move forward until a number of rights and marketing issues were resolved.

(See the IOC letter in my earlier Blog today).

USOC chief operating officer Norm Bellingham, his organization's point man on the TV network, told me in a Wednesday telephone interview that Chicago 2016 was not involved in discussions about the U.S. Olympic Network, set to launch in 2010.

In the press release announcing the network deal between Comcast and the USOC, which carried the logos of both partners, there is a line that makes cryptic expression of what I have learned was Comcast's concern over going public without IOC approval:  "The transaction is subject to closing conditions.''

It also was telling that no Comcast executive took part in the media conference call announcing the deal.

A Comcast spokesperson declined comment.

One of the IOC's most powerful members, Richard Carrion of Puerto Rico, blasted the USOC, telling me in a Wednesday phone interview, "They (the USOC) just do what they want to do, and the Olympic movement be damned.''

A lot of other IOC members undoubtedly feel the same way, and, as Carrion said when asked if the latest USOC-IOC brouhaha could hurt the Chicago bid:  "I don't see how it can help.''

Bellingham's insistence that the deal had to be announced before word leaked out during what he expected to be weeks of discussions with the IOC seems disingenuous.

It seems instead that he and Ueberroth, another champion of the network, cared more about announcing it finally was close to reality than they did about the impact on the Chicago bid of defying the IOC.

"Couldn't be farther from the truth,'' Bellingham said in an email.  "We have been devoting as much, if not more, resources and energy towards a successful Chicago bid.  They have been separate efforts, but it is important for me to stress that we view both the bid and the network as powerful vehicles for us to contribute to the advancement of the Olympic movement.''

The USOC resources and energy do not include having new chairman Larry Probst or acting chief executive Stephanie Streeter travel to any of the big recent meetings where Chicago has made important presentations.  Those include this week's annual meeting of the African Olympic Committees and last month's unprecedented meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, where each of the four bid cities addressed 94 of the 110 IOC members who can vote for the 2016 host Oct. 2.

Each of Chicago's rivals, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo, had its national Olympic committee leader at those meetings.

I asked Streeter about this issue after neither she nor Probst took part in the Chicago press conference after the IOC evaluation commission visit in April.  Her reply:  "I had supported it throughout (the visit), and the people who were involved at the press conference were the face of the bid.  I didn't need to be there.''

I asked her about it again in an email after the widely read Olympic newsletter, Around the Rings, noted the absence of USOC leadership in Africa.  Her response was a statement from a USOC spokesperson saying, "Stephanie and Larry have been and continue to be in frequent, regular contact with Chicago 2016 to fully support the bid.''

The abrupt USOC leadership change in March that put Streeter in charge after Jim Scherr was forced to resign may not have hurt Chicago, but it did the bid no good.  It intimated the USOC was back on its upper management merry-go-round after five years of stability under Scherr.

Since Streeter apparently wants to be considered as permanent CEO, it would have benefitted both Chicago and the USOC if she had taken the time to meet other Olympic leaders at the recent meetings.

Chicago can only hope the deep commitment of President Obama to the bid -- he took the time to make a new video that was shown in Africa -- will trump all the problems the USOC has created.

It goes without saying that Chicago 2016 has built a relationship with the President on its own.

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 Network scheduled to launch in 2010 as a cable TV channel.

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 follows.

Below the letter 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.

        Here is the official IOC statement:

"The International Olympic Committee has always endeavoured to work in close partnership with the USOC. We share a commitment to provide the best Olympic Games experience possible to spectators and athletes alike.  We also believe, as they do, that we should work together to constantly spread the values of the Olympic Family, not just in the United States but around the world.

"The IOC's cooperation with USOC includes working together on Olympic sponsorship and broadcasting agreements within the United States.  We were aware that the USOC had been considering a new 'Olympic broadcast network', but we have never been presented with a plan, and we had assumed that we would have an opportunity to discuss unresolved questions together before the project moved forward. It is for this reason that the IOC is disappointed that USOC acted unilaterally and, in our view, in haste by announcing their plans before we had had a chance to consider together the ramifications. The proposed channel raises complex legal and contractual issues and could have a negative impact our relationships with other Olympic broadcasters and sponsors, including our US TV partner, NBC.
 
"The IOC is seeking additional information on USOC's plans and remain hopeful that we can work through the issues and reach a solution that works for all the many partners involved and for the American public in particular." 

Hein Verbruggen, who headed the IOC evaluation commission for the Beijing Olympics, and Chinese state councilor Chen Zhili, unveil the 2008 Olympic torch and torch relay route.

By Philip Hersh

Skating scholars: Top -- Michelle Kwan receives her undergraduate diploma June 6 from University of Denver chancellor Robert Coombe (University of Denver photo); Below -- Sarah Hughes holds her undergrad diploma after Yale commencement exercises May 24. (Photo courtesy Hughes family)

By Philip Hersh

Ten things I know, and you should:

1. Angela Bizzarri will take a shot at running fast enough to qualify for the August World Championships at a July 15 meet in Liege, Belgium. The rising senior at the University of Illinois, surprise third place finisher in the 5,000 at the U.S. Championships last month, needs to top her personal best (15 minutes, 33.02 seconds) by 8.02 seconds to make the team.

2. Algonquin's Evan Jager, in a similar position to Bizzarri after his surprise third at the same distance, is waiting for his Oregon Track Club coach, Jerry Schumacher, to pick a meet where he and OTC teammate Matt Tegenkampcan shoot for the time they need to assure participation at worlds in Berlin. Schumacher told me by email, "We are still working out the details.'' Both Jager (13:22.18) and Tegenkamp (13:20.57) barely missed the qualifying standard (13:20) in the 5,000 final at nationals.

3. Good to see Michelle Kwan plans to return to skating for an audience after three years, even if it is only for a show in August with South Korea's Kim Yuna, the reigning world champion, in Seoul. Both Kwan and Sarah Hughes, the 2002 Olympic champion, got their undergrad degrees this spring: Kwan from the University of Denver, Hughes from Yale. In an email Monday, Hughes said she has "no plans at this moment'' to skate in shows.

4. I have yet to comment on what happened when the music stopped (for now?) in the California skate coach musical chairs game: Caroline Zhang joining coach Charlene Wong, whose previous star, Mirai Nagasu, left to work with Frank Carroll, who coached Kwan through most of her brilliant career. My first thought: good for Wong, who has -- like Carroll -- always been refreshingly honest in her interaction with the media. In two years, Wong helped Nagasu improve from a skater who could not get beyond the first level of qualifying for novice nationals to senior national champion. Wong deserves another shot at having a skater in the 2010 Olympics, and Zhang definitely gives her that.

5. Although I do not think the ice show will lead Kwan, who turned 29 Tuesday, to take another shot at the Olympics, it would be great if it did. The sport needs all the attention it can get, and what would attract more than an Olympic trials (I know the U.S. Championships aren't designated as such, but they should be) with Nagasu, Zhang, Kwan, Sasha Cohen, Rachael Flatt, Alissa Czisny, Ashley Wagner and Kimmie Meissner shooting for the two U.S. women's places at the 2010 Olympics? Should Kwan try and fall short, it would do nothing to diminish her past achievements.

6. New Wimbledon champion Serena Williams wants to have the opportunity to play in a 2016 Olympics in Chicago, even if "by then I will be on one leg and going for it.'' Said Williams, as quoted by Reuters, after winning her third Wimbledon title Saturday: "I am praying that they (Chicago) get the Olympics because I think it would be really special to play there.'' Serena and sister Venus won Olympic doubles gold medals in 2000 and 2008.

7. Now that Mayor Richard Daley has said -- in an exclusive interview with me two weeks ago -- he would sign the host city contract "as is,'' thereby pledging the city would be the ultimate financial backstop for a Chicago Olympics, it has become fashionable to cite the London Olympic cost overruns as a cautionary tale for what could happen if Chicago wins its 2016 Summer Games bid. But the comparison is far from exact. Most of London's huge increase from the originally projected numbers (from $4 billion to something upward of $13 billion) owes to costs related to the massive urban renewal project in east London that is a critical part of its 2012 Olympic plans -- site of the Olympic Stadium, aquatics center, basketball arena, two other venues and the Olympic Village. The Chicago Olympic plan includes no such project. But that does not mean the Chicago City Council and the citizens should simply accept the guarantees of no risk being offered by Chicago 2016 and the mayor. Some of the financial issues haunting London -- tight credit, loss of pledged sponsorship money -- could also undermine Chicago's plans if the global economy does not recover dramatically by 2013. Both proponents and opponents of a Chicago Olympics should demand full public accountability -- not just private meetings between Chicago 2016 and the aldermen -- and projections of what happens in worst-case scenarios before the mayor is to sign the host city contract the eve of the Oct. 2 vote on the 2016 host. (Maybe some of those answers will come in the series of public meetings Chicago 2016 announced Tuesday it will hold around the city.) After all, London got away with badly underestimating the costs of the urban renewal, and someone -- likely taxpayers -- will have to foot the bill.

8. News of the complicated doping case against German speedskater Claudia Pechstein did not attract much attention on this side of the pond when it was announced July 3, but it should have: Pechstein is both the first speedskating superstar and one of the most decorated athletes ever busted. Beginning with two bronzes in 1992, Pechstein won five gold, two silver and the two bronzes in five Olympics and is the greatest distance speedskater in Olympic history. Her two-year suspension, based not on a positive test but abnormal blood values, has stirred allegations of a cover-up, with a German speedskating official saying the International Skating Union offered to bury the case if Pechstein, 37, retired. ISU President Ottavio Cinquanta, in an interview published Tuesday in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine, denied any such deal was made. Pechstein, who posted a letter on her German web site headlined, "I have not doped,'' is appealing her suspension to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

9. USA Track & Field's new boss, Doug Logan, deserves kudos for his willingness to innovate, a critical attitude for a sport struggling to retain -- and regain -- spectator interest. But Logan's idea to have the 2012 Olympic trials in Eugene, Ore., on successive weekends, with four "dead'' days in between, makes no sense for a number of reasons. First, someone will have to pay room and meals for the athletes who want to compete in events that will take place on the separate weekends. Second, it is hard to image that the large number of out-of-town spectators/family/media who spent 10 to 12 days in Eugene for the 2008 trials (and spent money in Eugene and Oregon during the meet's two "rest'' days) would be attracted by a schedule with four "dark'' days. A sport desperately in need of media coverage (I was the only full-time newspaper reporter from outside Oregon covering the recent U.S. Championships) should avoid anything that makes it easier for print and digital media to say the expense isn't worth it. Yes, I know television will be delighted by the two-weekend competition schedule, which is why U.S. Figure Skating has adopted a similar schedule for its 2010 championships. Many major non-broadcast media already likely will cover just one weekend of the skating, another sport battling a decline in spectator interest.

10. Props to sprinter Colin Hepburn, a rising senior at Glenbrook South, for making the U.S. team that will compete in the World Youth Track and Field Championships, which begin Wednesday in Bressanone, Italy. Hepburn, who won the state Class 3A title in the 100, will be running that event in Italy after finishing second with a time of 10.59 seconds to Prezel Hardy of Texas (10.48) in the U.S. trials for the world meet.

Photo above: Could that be a goodbye wave from Claudia Pechstein, winner of five Olympic golds, now suspended for doping? (Associated Press / Peter Dejong)

Nicole Bobek after a fall at the 1998 Olympics. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

By Philip Hersh

Chicagoan Nicole Bobek was one of the most gifted -- and troubled -- U.S. figure skaters of the past 20 years.

Her spiral was so eye-catchingly exquisite that Michelle Kwan emulated it, then refined it into her signature move.

But Bobek's life rarely was refined and often seemed to be spiraling downward with behavior that made her a poor man's Tonya Harding.

Now, at age 31, she may have hit bottom.

Monday, a New Jersey prosecutor said Bobek had played a "significant role'' in a drug ring that was allegedly involved in the distribution of methamphetamine. According to nj.com, the web site of the Jersey Journal newspaper, prosecutor Edward DeFazio said Bobek "was actively involved in the upper echelon in this thing.''

Until Monday, Bobek's name had not been publicly linked to the case, for which 19 arrests were announced June 20, because she had not been taken into custody, according to the prosecutor. She was arrested in Florida, where she lists a residence.

Bobek appeared on closed-circuit television from the Hudson County jail in Kearny, N.J., when she was arraigned Monday in a Jersey City court. She faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

When she won her only U.S. figure skating title in 1995, Bobek was on a two-year probation for a felony charge under terms of a Michigan program for young adult offenders. A judge later dismissed the probation because he felt information leaks had subverted confidentiality terms of the program.

She had been arrested in November, 1994 and charged with first-degree home invasion of the residence of another skater in the suburban Detroit club where Bobek was training. She entered a conditional plea of guilty on the charge, which was to have been expunged if the probation were completed successfully.

That followed by less than a year the Harding - Nancy Kerrigan affair, in which Harding would be stripped of her 1994 U.S. title for her role in the attack on Kerrigan.

A few hours after Bobek won the 1995 championship, Frank Carroll, then Kwan's coach, noted the link.

"I was just thinking,'' Carroll said, "that we've gone from Tonya Harding to Nicole Bobek. Oh, my God!''

By 1995, Carroll had been one of Bobek's seven ex-coaches. Her teenage rebelliousness and indifference to training (like Harding, she smoked cigarettes) drove most of the coaches crazy, but all of them were as crazed by her talent. Bobek's mother, Jana, and her mother's friend, Joyce, bounced around the country looking for the coach who could harness it, which Richard Callaghan did for one season.

Renee Roca, a U.S. ice dance champion who had choreographed some of Bobek's programs, gave a chillingly accurate analysis in 1995 of the skater's future.

"It is hard to say what will become of Nicole,'' Roca said.

Bobek went on to win a world championships bronze medal in 1995. Two years later, when she made her last of three appearances at the worlds, Bobek's coach, the legendary Carlo Fassi, died of a heart attack at the competition in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Bobek, whose father deserted the family when she was an infant, had been coached by Fassi and his wife, Christa, at two stages of her career.

"He was always here for me,'' Bobek said the day Fassi died. "He always cared. He took the place of a father for me.''

Bobek organized a Fassi tribute at the California rink where they trained. Christa Fassi coached Bobek to the 1998 Olympic team, but she flopped all over the ice at the Nagano Olympics and finished 17th.

One season later, after switching coaches for the 11th time, she was out of competitive skating.

The last time I talked with her, in April, 2001, Bobek told me she had begun training pairs with an utterly unremarkable Spanish singles skater. Nothing came of it.

I had heard virtually nothing about her since.

The first I heard of her was in 1990, when Bobek, at age 12, stood the skating world on its head at the U.S. Olympic Festival. She attracted so much general attention George Steinbrenner began paying some of her training expenses.

Now she needs somebody to post a $200,000 bond.

EUGENE, Ore. -- It is hardly a surprise that the boss of any U.S. federation governing an Olympic sport would be "actively advocating'' for Chicago to become host of the 2016 Summer Olympics, as USA Track & Field chief executive Doug Logan said Friday he was doing.

After all, an Olympics in the United States always generates higher sponsorship and TV rights revenue for the U.S. Olympic Committee, and the individual federations see some of that increase in their grant allotments from the USOC.

And the sports also find it easier to attract their own sponsorships if the Games are in the United States, which Logan made clear when he also said that USATF's new deal with Nike would include a "significant increase'' if Chicago gets the Games.

The new Nike-USATF deal goes only through 2013, but includes an option to renew through 2017.

The Associated Press, citing sources familiar with the contract, said it is worth more than $10 million a year. And the AP story suggested the idea of an increase based on a Chicago win could rub the International Olympic Committee the same -- and wrong -- way as the comments made by a McDonald's executive who said the company would be more likely to continue its global IOC sponsorship if Chicago is chosen.

The situations are not the same.

IOC ethics rules forbid its global sponsors from trying to influence host city elections, as McDonald's made clear in a statement disassociating the company from what one of its senior vice-presidents had said.

And Nike is not a global IOC sponsor. It sponsors national teams in several countries, including Brazil's soccer team, the Japanese junior track teams and USA Track & Field.

The Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo bids proudly trumpet their corporate sponsors -- including sporting goods companies. (Chicago 2016 has chosen not to publicize its corporate sponsors for reasons it never has made entirely clear, saying that it is up to the donor corporations to identify themselves as such).

Is anyone naive enough to think those bid sponsors won't be inclined to increase their support for a domestic Olympics?

That is how the refreshingly candid Logan sees the Nike bump for a Chicago victory.

"The partnership simply recognizes added value in the event of a domestic (Olympic) competition,'' Logan told me in a text message. "You cannot avoid reality. We are certainly not going to attempt to unduly influence anyone.''

Nike spokesman Derek Kent declined to comment on issues related to an increase based on Chicago winning.

"We have a longstanding deep relationship with (USA Track & Field),'' Kent said in an email. "As today's announcement indicates, the partnership continues to be very strong now and in the future.

"No matter where the 2016 games are held, we will have a stong presence on the track with footwear and apparel on the world's best athletes.''

One IOC member who undoubtedly is thrilled that U.S. track will get continued Nike support is international track federation president Lamine Diack of Senegal. Diack understands what a strong U.S. track team is worth to Olympic competition.

If Team USA gets stronger, that is value added.

To Nike, USA track and field and whoever is the 2016 Olympic host.

(Photo: Doug Logan. Courtesy USA Track & Field.)

When I arrived in Berlin in June, 1988 for the start of what turned into the Particularly Bad Shoes and Brown Gravy Tour (more on the name later), I knew Michael Jackson also was making a tour stop there.

Jackson, at the height of his fame, was in the middle of his 16-month Bad World Tour, which at the time became the largest grossing and most attended tour in history.

I was embarking on a dog-and-pony show tour staged for the benefit of western media by sports authorities in East Germany, which then was at the height of its athletic fame (or infamy).

Our tour got its (unofficial) name after we were served brown gravy on everything -- including sliced pineapple in Leipzig -- and my colleague, Jere Longman of the New York Times, accurately observed there were two kinds of shoes in East Germany: bad shoes, and particularly bad shoes.

Anyway, no sooner had I checked into my hotel in what then was West Berlin than I realized Jackson also was a guest in the hotel, because there were hundreds of fans on the street chanting his name.

But I didn't think anything more of my relative proximity to the pop superstar until I was walking from my room to the elevators so I could join some friends for dinner.

In a hallway stood two very large men, who tensed as I approached. They were outside the open door of a room I was passing. When I reached the open door, I looked inside the room, and there, unmistakeably, was Jackson, looking right in my direction.

I said, "Hello.'' He smiled and returned the greeting. The bodyguards, expecting me to ask for an autograph or something else that would bother their charge, seemed taken aback when I simply kept walking, satisfied with the exchange of pleasantries.

As it turned out, Jackson would be inadvertently involved in some communist chest-thumping not unlike what I would see in East Germany.

The Washington Post reported that Jackson and East German figure skating icon Katarina Witt "squared off on opposite sides of the Berlin Wall this evening in an East-West battle of the bands that delighted the city's music fans and gave headaches to East Germany's Communist authorities. Witt hosted a concert in East Berlin -- featuring Canadian singer Bryan Adams and the British group Big Country -- that clearly was designed to placate fans barred from traveling crosstown to hear Jackson performing in the western side of this divided city.''

The Post said East German authorities counted 120,000 fans at their open-air concert, exactly double the total given for Jackson's open-air performance.

Three months later, East Germany, a country of 16 million, would win more gold medals at the 1988 Olympics than the United States, nearly 20 times more populous.

That was East Germany's final Olympics as an independent nation. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and the Germanies re-unfied in 1990.

In 2002, Jackson ignited a firestorm of criticism when he dangled his infant third child over the fourth floor balcony of his Berlin hotel room.

It was not the same hotel where I saw him in 1988.

Michael Jackson in 1988 was in a different place in every sense of that phrase.

Then as now, his smile and "hello'' are indelible to me. They are my lasting memories of a 5-second encounter that was better than any autograph.

(Poster: Michael Jackson's 1988 concert in Berlin.)

Bryan Clay celebrates his victory in 2008 Olympic decathlon. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

By Philip Hersh

EUGENE, Ore. -- You learned first that this waspossiblefrom my Twitter feed yesterday, and 2008 Olympic decathlon championBryan Clay in fact has pulledoutof the U.S. Track & Field Championships with a hamstring problem.

According to Clay's agent, Paul Doyle, Clay tried a variety of treatments, including acupuncture and time in a hyperbaric chamber, before making his decision about an hour before the decathlon was to begin with the 100 meters Thursday morning. He had first felt tightness in the hamstring Tuesday.

Clay's withdrawal means he also is out of the August World Championships, for which nationals is the qualifying meet.

"Unfortunately, we need a few more days,'' Doyle said. "He did a few knee lifts this morning and felt immediately he couldn't compete without putting the hamstring in jeopardy.''

Doyle said Clay might try to find another decathlon competition in the next few weeks but intends to end his season by the end of July.

"Bryan was pretty exhausted from the whole Olympic experience, not only physically but mentally,'' Doyle said. "Our plan had been to take it relatively easy this year and then next year begin the three-year build for Bryan to try to win decathlon medals in three straight Olympics (he won silver in 2004). He wants to compete in the indoor worlds and try to break indoor and outdoor world records in 2010.''

The abbreviated season will give Clay more time to work for Chicago's 2016 Olympic bid. He has won universal praise for his speeches on behalf of the bid. Mayor Richard M. Daley called one of Clay's presentations,given when he was Principal for a Day at the Williams Preparatory School of Medicine at the Chicago's DuSable Campus, "one of the best speeches I ever have heard.''

Clay was the lead narrator on the venues video Chicago 2016 showed last week to the International Olympic Committee.

"I really believe in this bid,'' Clay said. "They are putting the athletes first.''

Chicago 2016 and the U.S. Olympic Committee have moved one of the key operatives for the city's Olympic bid closer to the action, my sources say.

Robert Fasulo, the USOC chief of international relations, will be spending the summer in Europe after establishing a base near International Olympic Committee headquarters -- and several international sports headquarters -- in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The relocation makes sense, since Fasulo long worked in Europe as an aide to the late international track federation president Primo Nebiolo and director of the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations.  He speaks English, Italian, Spanish and French.

And, since about half the IOC members who will vote for the 2016 host are from Europe, being close enough to schmooze them regularly can only be helpful.  Fasulo is doing just that at this week's Meditteranean Games in Pescara, Italy, where some 20 IOC members are expected to attend.

There also are major world championships (track and swimming) in Europe this summer, and the bid cities will have a presence at them.

Fasulo and his family intend to return to Southern California in the fall.

(Robert Fasulo discusses the bid city process.  AP photo)

(Sasha Cohen tumbling during her free skate at the 2006 Olympics.  Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

By Philip Hersh

LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- After I had finished talking with International Olympic Committee member Ottavio Cinquanta last week about his opinion on Chicago's 2016 Olympic bid, I asked Cinquanta to put on his other hat for a different question:
As president of the International Skating Union, what did he think of U.S. skater Sasha Cohen's decision to return to competitive figure skating after a three-year hiatus?
``It is a good decision for the ISU and for her,'' Cinquanta said.  ``I think she wasted a year, because she could have come back earlier, but one year is not the end of the world.''
Cinquanta hopes Cohen will be a diffferent skater from the one whose free skate failures cost her the 2006 Olympic and world titles.  She was first going into the free skate both times but wound up second in the Olympics and third at worlds.
``The Sasha I saw in Calgary (worlds) and in Torino (Olympics) was not Sasha Cohen but Santa Claus,'' Cinquanta said, feeling that Cohen had given away those gold medals.  ``Maybe she will come back with a different attitude.  She was terrified.
``I believe the era of Sasha Cohen as loser when (she was) the favorite is over.  Now we can have the Sasha Cohen era as a strong skater with more experience.  If she wanted experience as a loser, she has enough.''
Cohen's first scheduled competition in her comeback is the French Grand Prix event Oct. 15-18.  She also plans to compete at Skate America in Lake Placid, N.Y., Nov. 12-15 and at the U.S. Championships in January, when the 2010 Olympic team will be selected.  Only two women's spots are available.
*More Olympic figure skating?  The success of a team event (World Team Trophy) held this spring in Tokyo has led Cinquanta to consider such a competition in the Olympics.
He said a team event would come before the individual competitions in singles, pairs and dance.
``The (national) federations could use the same skaters (in individual events) or not,'' he said.
It is possible the ISU would test such an event at worlds before asking to have it included on an Olympic program.  It could not happen before the 2014 Sochi Winter Games.

LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- Ottavio Cinquanta of Italy is unsparing in his praise of U.S. contributions to sport.

That is among the reasons why Cinquanta, an International Olympic Committee member and president of the International Skating Union, likes the Chicago bid for the 2016 Summer Games.

``To me, Chicago is the favorite,''  Cinquanta said Thursday.  ``Why?  The dossier is excellent and, for me, yet again, it is a matter of the U.S. contribution to sport.  The U.S. has given (the world) athletes, organization, television and innovation in competition.

``The candidatures are from cities, but the cities are in countries, and what Chicago's country has done for sport in general over the years is very important.''

Cinquanta said his IOC colleagues have been impressed by a change in U.S. attitudes toward the world.

``My colleagues much prefer the American approach of today to the one of seven-eight months ago,'' Cinquanta said.  ``It is the friendly American.  And now their attitude is not `the world needs Chicago but that Chicago needs the world.'''

Cinquanta also said he was impressed that the U.S. presented another candidate after New York was next-to-last of five in the 2012 bid race.

``This is an expresssion of dignity and being a sportsman,'' Cinquanta said.

European Olympic Committees president Pat Hickey of Ireland, who sat with Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley during a Wednesday lunch at the Olympic Museum, said he is solidly behind Madrid after the EOC gave it a strong vote of support.

IOC member Richard Pound of Canada said Madrid may be ``handicapped because it has to split the votes of the Hispanic world.''  He figures some will go to Madrid, others to Rio de Janeiro, a Portuguese-speaking country surrounded by the Hispanic nations of South America, which never has had an Olympics.

Pound said Chicago can ``only gain from the exposure it gained'' in three days of close contact with IOC members, both before and after Wednesday's presentations.

``Competing with world capitals, Chicago was starting a meter back,'' Pound said.  ``Not many IOC members know Chicago and how good it is.''

IOC member Kevan Gosper of Australia also is impressed with Chicago.

``Each candidate brings its own strengths, but the Chicago presentation of venues on the waterfront of a great city has to be taken seriously,'' Gosper said.

LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- Without making comparisons that would violate bid rules about criticizing the other 2016 Summer Games candidates, Tokyo's bid committee delivered the message that it is a far safer city than its rivals.

In Tokyo's Wednesday presentation to the International Olympic Committee members, the city's deputy mayor Hidetoshi Maki, couched the issue this way:

``Taking security first.

``1.8

``Can you guess what this number represents?

``It is the reported average number of robberies that took place in Tokyo per day last year.  In the largest city in the world there are less than two robberies a day.

``Now, the number four.

``Again, what does this number represent?

``The number of shooting incidents in Tokyo last year.  Yes, just four.

``What is our secret to securing the safety of our people and guests?  The Japanese mentality and philosophy is based on mutual respect.  We also have a network of 1,200 police (booths), called koban.  They are operated by one network, run by one organization, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department.''

Tokyo also emphasized the financial security of its bid, backed by the metropolitan government's commitment for the $4.3 billion needed for facilities and a guarantee of $4 billion against Games costs that already is in the bank.

``Let me stress: Tokyo has the largest city budget in the world. . .an annual budget of $130 billion,'' said Tokyo 2016 bid chairman Ichiro Kono.  ``Therefore, Tokyo offers the most secure financial foundation for the Games.''