Tough task: USOC tamped down discord to help LA get Games

LIMA, PERU » These were the jobs nobody wanted.

Sure, becoming leader of the U.S. Olympic Committee meant you immediately became the person pulling the strings behind the world’s most successful Olympic team.

It also came with a massive task: Build a strong enough relationship with the rest of the world to bring the Olympics back to the United States after decades of mistrust and miscommunication .

It took eight years, a nice-sized dose of humble pie and more than a few setbacks, but Scott Blackmun and Larry Probst succeeded. The International Olympic Committee will award Los Angeles the 2028 Games at a ceremony on Wednesday. It will be the first Summer Olympics awarded to the U.S. in 27 years, when the IOC gave the 1996 Games to Atlanta. It will end a string of embarrassing losses: New York for 2012, and Chicago for 2016.

As much as the significant financial compromises the USOC made since Blackmun became CEO and Probst became chairman, Blackmun said the biggest game-changer was “the investment of time.”

He estimates he and Probst spend 150 days a year on the road, most of them at meetings with leaders in the Olympic movement. Often, they head to the meetings with no agenda or wish list, per se, but only to be present, and to let it be known that the USOC doesn’t have to get something out of every transaction it has with its counterparts.

“They did a great job of bridging a financial divide and a feeling that America was not partnering with the IOC and others,” said Mike Plant, president of U.S. Speedskating, who served on the USOC board when Blackmun was hired. “There was a feeling we weren’t givers, and that we were takers, and they’ve done a real good job of reaching out and strengthening the relationships and saying, ‘We want to work with you.”’

That’s not always the way things were, and the template for “U.S. exceptionalism” — read: U.S. comes in with its money and cleans up the IOC’s mess — was set the last time the Olympics visited Los Angeles, back in 1984.

Back then, the IOC was coming off a terrorist attack (Munich), a mountain of red ink (Montreal) and a boycott (Moscow). Heading into the bidding process for 1984, only Tehran showed any interest at first.