AUDIO& TRANSCRIPT: DECEMBER 2024 USOPC LEADERSHIP PRESS BRIEFING

TRANSCRIPT

Operator:

Good day everyone and welcome to today's USOPC Board briefing. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Later you will have the opportunity to ask questions during the question and answer session. You may register to ask a question at any time by pressing the star and one on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw yourself from the queue by pressing star two. This call is being recorded and I will be standing by if you should need any assistance. It's now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Kate Hartman.

Kate Hartman:

Thanks Shelby and hello everyone and thank you for joining us today, especially noting that for so many this is officially your last work week of what has been a pretty monumental year. Today is our final press briefing of this year and I'd like to take a minute just to thank each of you for being such an important part of telling the story of Team USA in 2024. I think we can all agree it's been a journey and it's one that we certainly couldn't do without you. I'm joined today by our President and USOPC board chair Gene Sykes and our CEO Sarah Hirshland. I'll turn this call over to them in just a few moments, but first, a couple of housekeeping items. After Gene and Sarah's remarks, we will open the line for Q and A and I ask that you please hold to one question per turn and we'll go back to additional questions if time allows. Thanks again for being here and now I turn things over to Gene Sykes. Gene.

Gene Sykes:

Thank you Kate and good morning everyone. It was an informative and very productive board meeting held virtually this week and my thanks go to all the board members for their commitment and expertise. We're wrapping up an extraordinary year for Team USA and that feeling was prominent during our board meeting as we received updates and shared our own unique perspectives and continue to set the course for 2025 and beyond. I'll start things off today by providing you with an overview of what we discussed in the board meeting and then ask Sarah to give an update as well. As always, we very much appreciate you taking the time to join us this morning. We have some changes moving forward, I want to share those today. As I mentioned on our last call, this was the last meeting for our great and very talented friend Dr. Cheri Blauwet. Cheri completed her full eight year term on the board and never wavered from her advocacy for athletes, with a focus on their health and their opportunities.

She did all this with a keen focus on Paralympic sport, where she's indeed a tremendous champion and it's safe to say her impact has been felt across our organization and across the global sport community. Many thanks to Cheri and our best to her. We will no doubt be working with her again hopefully soon and often. To that end, we've been working diligently to fill the open or soon to be open board seats. We have one to share with you and another two we expect to confirm in short order and we'll be ready to share early next year. The process is an important one, identifying new members with a passion for the work with great varied experience to offer, all in an effort to make our organization stronger and to best enable the organization to meet the great obligation of supporting Team USA athletes and advancing the Olympic and Paralympic movements today, tomorrow and well into the future.

I'm pleased to share that we will welcome Mung Chiang to our boards starting in 2025. Mung currently serves as the President of Purdue University, a position he has held since January of 2023. Mung's background is one of leading edge science and technology and he's credited with not only being a visionary but a strong teacher, leader, collaborator and advisor across the fields of technology, engineering, business, higher education and government. We will be putting out a formal announcement later today and we greatly look forward to welcoming Mung to our board in 2025. As I mentioned, more new members to be announced early next year.

Let me talk a bit about Salt Lake City 2034. We didn't have a formal update from Utah Salt Lake City 2034, but we continue to work closely on two important milestones. The first is the resolution and really the end of the bid committee because it's a natural progression in a games award cycle and in this case a cause for great celebration. They're holding their final meeting this week as the bid committee and they'll celebrate all they've accomplished in bringing the games back to the United States and embracing the motivated and excited winter sports community in Utah. Next up will be the announcement of their organizing committee, the body which will be responsible for organizing the 2034 games. In simple terms, moving forward from winning the games, to hosting the games. Per the host city contract with the IOC, this work is intended to be completed before the end of the year and we're close to on target with that effort. I expect an announcement early in 2025. This is a highly collaborative effort between the USOPC, the host National Olympic Committee, the IOC, the leaders in Utah are helping to guide the work. Our goal is to have a great mix of representatives engaged in the OCOG. The Utah bid was a great model of community support. It's very important that the broad Utah community is represented here. We see that as a mix of elected officials, community leaders, sports experts, and of course individuals with previous games organizing experience. We look forward to the announcement. In the meantime, we really thank the tremendous efforts on the part of the bid team and all of the community and political leaders in Utah. They put on a tremendous effort, their staff and volunteers gave up themselves to share a very powerful story of the winter sports legacy and their community in the world. The selection of Utah as host for 2034 was a true highlight of a great year.

Let me speak briefly about LA 28. Two weeks ago, LA 28 hosted the IOC for their fifth coordination commission meeting, which was actually quite an elaborate meeting that took three and a half days in Los Angeles with a team of over 50 members and staff from the IOC and all of the members of the staff and team of LA 28 for a very thorough comprehensive update, which included a visit to many of the venues in a much deeper understanding on the part of the IOC of the great progress that the team has made. So we continue to support Casey and Reynold and their team as they operationalize their staff and plans and they are in good shape and making great progress. As you can imagine, in addition to offering some final personal reflections on Paris, we spent a good amount of time in our meeting this past week analyzing and evaluating the performance of the organization this year. I'm happy to report that the staff led by Sarah performed admirably. The organizational effort in supporting two very large and very successful delegations, being lazer focused on athlete performance, health and wellness and working collaboratively with the NGBs, the organizing committee, the IOC and the IPC was a success by any measure and certainly deserves our appreciation and thanks.

With that, I want to wish everyone a very happy holiday and all the best in the new year. We'll see you on the road to Milano-Cortina. I'm happy to now hand the call over to Sarah for further updates and to answer any questions when we open the line later in the call.

Sarah Hirshland:

Terrific. Thank you Gene and good day everyone. Let me add my thanks to all of you for taking the time to join us today. As you heard Gene mentioned this was the last board meeting of the year and it served as an opportunity for the board to reflect on a remarkable 2024 for Team USA. I say that all of course recognizing we have not lost focus on the 416 days we have until the Winter Games in Milan Cortina and the reality that we now shift to this incredible decade of sport that will culminate with the Winter Games returning to Utah in 2034. Let me start today with an update on the collegiate landscape. A big topic of discussion across the sport community and one that's very relevant to our organization. As many of you know, for several years now, our organization and the collegiate community have been actively in dialogue, in partnership and in collaboration.

In fact, starting our collegiate advisory council back in 2017 was really the starting point of this work. It continued to be a point of conversation with our board in our most recent meeting and our collegiate advisory council also met last week. It is no secret to anyone how critical the collegiate pipeline is to Team USA and also to the International Olympic and Paralympic athletes that train in our U.S. collegiate programs. A significant number of athletes outside of Team USA that have incredible experience garned here in the U.S. collegiate system. We are continuing to engage with our colleagues across the landscape of collegiate sport, at the NCAA, at conferences and at individual institutions to really understand the potential impact of the landscape as schools are responding to the pending house settlement and to the evolving NIL environment and certainly the potential for congressional intervention. I will tell you we are however heartened by what we've heard from many athletic directors who are facing these new revenue obligations.

The commitment to Olympic sport is a priority on campuses across the country and we continue to hear that and we're excited by it. We are willing and we'll continue to work with all who seek a solution that protects Olympic and Paralympic sport opportunity for student athletes. We know it will require all of us, the USOPC, the NCAA, our NGB partners, institutions, collegiate conferences, all to be collaborative and to be creative. It is certainly no mistake that we now sit with the USOPC board having representation from an institution in Bubba Cunningham who is the athletic director to UNC Chapel Hill and now with the addition of Mung Chiang who is the president of Purdue University and also sits in a very interesting position as the President of a Big 10 University, who has been himself a huge champion for Olympians and Paralympians coming out of their own program.

So we're excited about what's to come. We're excited about the dialogue and the collaboration and we're conscious of the significant year that 2025 may present for all of us. But before we move on I have to say on that same topic, you may have seen that last week we honored our collegiate partners at the IAF for their support of Team USA through remarkable performances by athletes in Paris. This is a window into the commitment of these institutions to the broad based sport on their campuses. The Olympic Gold Award going to Stanford University with 23 U.S. medalists, the Silver Award to Penn State with 12 U.S. medalists and the bronze to the University of Texas and the University of Kentucky with nine medalists each. And on the Paralympic side, the gold award to the University of Illinois with 20 U.S. medalists as a school. So many other institutions, large and small support Olympic and Paralympic sport, and they do it for the athletes and their communities. All of them deserve our enormous gratitude.

Shifting gears a bit, turning our attention forward, I mentioned the opening of the 2026 Winter Games is coming very quickly and we will start to hit several important qualification and planning milestones related to these games early in 2025. Operationally, the planning is well underway. Many of our teams have been on the ground quite frequently and we know these will be operationally a very complex games with significant geographic distribution and I have huge confidence in our USOPC and NGB staff that we'll be very well prepared to execute against those challenges. Among the winter athletes who are now in season, many will compete in Italy this winter at the very same venues where the games will be held in 2026. This is exciting for them, hopeful for the organizers, and certainly fun for the fans in Italy, helping to build anticipation for what's to come in 2026.

There are some Team USA athlete updates of athletes competing in training now, summer and winter alike that I just want to highlight, including a really special moment from last week. Figure skater, Amber Glenn capped an incredible year by winning the Grand Prix final, the biggest title for a U.S. women's single skater since 2010, it was a stunning performance. And a shout out to her teammates, Ilia Malinin, Madison Chock and Evan Bates for repeating as Grand Prix Final Champions. U.S. athletes won three of the four Grand Prix Final Titles for the first time. Our congratulations to U.S. Figure Skating and they're tremendously talented athletes. And we can't ignore Lindsey Vonn, a great champion and member of our Hall of Fame, back on the snow after a six year break. It's not only amazing to follow her performance, but great to follow her personal journey on the road to 2026. And finally, we can't ignore the incredible success that we've seen from the U.S. Swimming athletes recently in Budapest, who are setting extraordinary amounts of world records. I believe Gretchen Walsh with 11, breaking any previous records by Michael Phelps himself. So we are incredibly optimistic about what's to come for some of these young swimmers as we look ahead to 2028.

Before we move on to questions, I do want to take a moment to also thank you for joining these calls and more importantly for covering Olympic and Paralympic sport both in and out of competition. These Team USA athletes truly represent the very best of us. It's been a fun and a very busy year for Team USA and I hope that you will have a moment to relax this holiday season and enjoy a very happy and healthy 2025.

Thank you.

Kate Hartman:

Thank you Sarah. And with that Shelby, we can open the line for questions

Operator:

At this time if you would like to ask a question, please press the star and one on your telephone keypad. You may remove yourself from the queue at any time by pressing star two, once again, that is star and one to ask a question. We'll pause for a moment to allow questions to queue, and we'll take our first question from Lisa Roche with Deseret News. Your line is open.

Lisa Roche:

Thank you. Gene and Sarah. Thank you both and thank you for doing so many of these news conferences this year. They're very helpful. I'm wondering if either of you could speak to why Salt Lake City Utah 2034 won't make the December 24th deadline for forming and announcing an organizing committee. And if you could also talk a little bit about specifically the USOPC's role in organizing a future games. Thank you both.

Sarah Hirshland:

Lisa, this is Sarah. Thanks. We are on track with the preparation of the OCOG. I think an announcement will come early in the year where an active conversations among, as you know, our role as well as with the Utah community and the IOC. The IOC does have a number of documents to review and we're all in the process of awaiting their review of many of those. And as we said in the remarks, I believe we do expect an announcement in early January, so we're very much on track. As it relates to the USOPC role, we're a partner and a party in many of these agreements as you know, and we will play an active role within the governing structure of the organizing committee as mandated and encouraged by the IOC and the IPC.

Operator:

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Henry Bushnell with Yahoo Sports. Your line is open.

Henry Bushnell:

Thank you. And hi Sarah and Gene, I appreciate your time. I believe this is a question for Sarah, in Paris after the IOC forced that clause and the Salt Lake host contract related to WADA and anti-doping. You talked about wanting to bring USADA and WADA and others together to try to get everybody working together and collaborating rather than ripping each other regularly. Has any of that happened yet? And I mean from the outside it certainly seems like the relationship between USADA and WADA has not improved, but I don't know, would you agree with that? Has anything changed there? Has there been any progress?

Gene Sykes:

Henry, thanks for the question. It's Gene, I'll take that one since I've been front and center and in the middle of that myself, and I would actually say that the situation has improved to the degree that WADA and USADA are talking with each other as opposed to addressing each other through press releases and so forth. It's not an easy relationship because they have some fundamental issues which are unresolved issues, but they are very much engaged in an effort to see how can they make an agreement between the two of them to move forward. Now it is one which we hope will get resolved relatively soon, but they were both together in Riyadh last week or a week before last actually. And so the level of engagement is both more respectful and it's encouraged by us and others so that everyone realizes it's very important that WADA is respected while at the same time WADA performs the very important role that the sports community expects WADA to perform and USADA and others have had questions, they've had the outside investigator do their report and that's provided some opportunity for some improvements and adjustments, which I think will be constructive in reaching a conclusion here.

Operator:

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Julie Jag with the Salt Lake Tribune. Your line is open.

Julie Jag:

Hi Sarah and Gene, thanks for having these. Always appreciate them. I also have a question about the formation of the organizing committee and would like to have one of you, I guess I'm not sure which one, delve into a little bit more what strengths you think that this group needs to add in order to move from the move the bid committee to an organizing committee. And then also what benefit would it be to have someone like Senator Romney who has that experience on the board?

Sarah Hirshland:

I'll take this Julie and Gene can certainly add if he wants to add. As you look toward the formation of an organizing committee, obviously there's in this case a long 10 year runway and you want to be very thoughtful about engaging all the parties that really need to contribute to the ultimate execution of delivering against the games. So it will be very important to have USOPC leadership and representatives as we work obviously on behalf of the movement in the United States, leadership from Utah at every level at the state level and the local city and county levels as the execution will have massive overlap across communities, and certainly at the state level. You want to have individuals who have experience with these games and I think we have the benefit of ensuring that given the recency of the 2002 games and how many individuals in Salt Lake were and did participate in that process.

So I think we're really, really nicely positioned. And actually before I move on, I want to say, and you want to ensure that you have really strong athlete involvement and athlete voice. And we are, as I said earlier, very much in the process of identifying the structures, not only the governing structures but also the working structures that you want to put in place at a point where you're 10 years out. We have a long runway here. So this is an initial look and we can should expect this to evolve over the course of the next 10 years as the organizing committee goes through various stages of the preparation for the games.

Gene Sykes:

Right. And the only thing I would add to that is we also look forward to having people with deep sports experience, especially in the winter sports play a role in the board. That lends a certain perspective and the experience is incredibly valuable. The Utah addition, if you will, is one of many, but people who've seen winter sports operate in multiple different places around the world understand what can be brought from other events that other people have hosted and make the experience in Utah even better would be welcome as well.

Operator:

Thank you. And once again, to ask a question, please press star one. We'll take our next question from Rich Perelman with the Sports Examiner. Your line is open.

Rich Perelman:

Yes. Thank you so much. I'm guessing this one is for Sarah. Can you provide an update if there is an update to be provided on the Jordan Chiles situation?

Sarah Hirshland:

Yeah, Rich, I don't have a significant update, obviously we've filed. We're committed to resolution and working very closely with Jordan, USA Gymnastics and her team. We're collaborating on the process and the steps required in that process and we're very focused on Jordan receiving her bronze medal and our efforts are all focused on that, but I don't have any more specific update than that.

Operator:

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Rachel Axon with Sports Business Journal. Your line is open.

Rachel Axon:

Thank you both for taking the call. This question I believe would be for Gene. You had touched on with regards to LA 28, the shift they're making to a more operational focus now that we're in their quad. I'm wondering how you would assess where they are commercially since that work certainly is not done and how they have or maybe even have not been able to capitalize on Paris this year?

Gene Sykes:

Thanks very much, Rachel. It's a good question. And they are capitalizing on Paris. There's been quite a strong indication number of indications of interest that have evolved into real discussions and they are making good progress. As you saw, they just appointed John Slusher longtime Nike marketing executive as the head of the USOPP, the joint venture between the USOPC and LA 28, which is responsible for all marketing activities. And I think that's a very constructive step as well. So I think they're generating very, very good commercial interest and I expect they're going to do very well in 2025 in particular because the excitement coming out of Paris is exceptionally high. And so the visibility of these next games in the entire Olympic movement is stronger than it's been in some time.

Operator:

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Jill Jaracz with Keep the Flame Alive. Your line is open.

Jill Jaracz:

I think this question will be for Sarah. I wanted to touch on Milano Cortino a little bit and the operational complexity. Obviously they're spread far apart the country, but how much more complex is that compared to other Winter Games and can you share some examples of the complexities that Team USA is facing in providing support to the athletes?

Sarah Hirshland:

Sure. Well, I think you defined it well, right? The complexity comes from the geographic distribution of the venues and the need for us as true with all of our peer NOCs and NPCs, you've got to build the infrastructure to be able to support Team USA athletes and create great experiences for them across a dispersed geography. And actually what we're seeing is better collaboration and communication across country boundaries where we have lots of places where we're talking to partner, National Olympic Committees in particular, thinking about how we can share resources and where we can work together and collaborate to ensure we have, I'll call it the best coverage across all the different geographic areas to ensure the experience is great and more importantly that we're prepared in the event of things like injuries or other difficulties, that we are really there to ensure that we can all manage and mitigate any of those circumstances effectively. It's complex and it will require logistical planning, but that's the gist of it. Italy is going to be a great host. The venues and the towns and the cities are extraordinary. And as you know, winter sport is a bit smaller footprint across in terms of sport organizations for us, fewer sport organizations, and that actually reduces complexity from what we see in the Summer Games. So it's trade offs, but the geographic distribution is where the complexity is derived.

Operator:

Thank you. We'll take our last question for Matt Traub with Sports Travel Magazine. Your line is open.

Matt Traub:

Thank you. And Sarah, speaking of geographic complexity for 2026, obviously the news that Lake Placid is the backup for sliding venue and they're in targeted dialogue with Milano Cortina right now. When you guys heard that that was the backup bid, what was your reaction to that and what type of communication have you had with the stakeholders at ORDA and anybody from the Milano Cortina Organizing Committee? Thanks.

Sarah Hirshland:

Well, let me start by saying Milano Cortina is certainly incredibly focused on creating a sliding center that will be part of their games in Italy, and we are excited about that and actually hold promise that that will happen. You may know there is a plan focused on the initial homologation of that venue in March. We will keep our fingers crossed, that's what's best for Milan Cortina and what's best for athletes Team USA and others. However, as you also know, we have an incredible venue in Lake Placid and early on when there was question about the viability of a sliding center in Italy, we raised our hand and said, if you need support or you need assistance, we're here to help. So we are in dialogue with the organizing committee to ensure that if they have obstacles that they can't overcome in their own sliding center, that we're here to be able to help support and ensure that sliding athletes have a great experience around the games. So we're excited about that. It's certainly not the ideal first choice or first plan, but if it's required our country and the state of New York and Lake Placid and the organizers up in Lake Placid who host so many events on an annual basis, we're ready and we'll be happy to help support.

Operator:

Thank you. And the question and answer session has concluded. I will now turn the program back over to Kate Hartman for any additional or closing remarks.

Kate Hartman:

Thank you, Shelby. And before we close, we just have three quick updates. Thank you all for your overwhelming interest in accreditation for covering the 2026 games. We're currently processing all of those requests against the application and allotment that we have, and we'll be in touch in early 2025 with final decisions. And while we don't have the exact date to share, we are planning the 2026 Team USA Media Summit to be held in New York in October of 2025. We will share more details as they come in the new year. And finally, as always, the recording and transcript of this call will be available at www.usopc.org/media as we receive it. Please don't hesitate to reach out to me or Jon Mason if we can ever be of any help, and thanks for joining. Enjoy your week and happy holidays to all of you. Bye-bye.