US anti-doping campaign and LA

US antidoping chief Travis Tygart came to Congress this week with a no-nonsense message: push for a clampdown on the cheats who take podium moments away from genuine athletes and sully the Olympic movement.

“This is not just about elite Olympic athletes,” Tygart told a house energy and commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations. “This is about every kid on a playground who has an Olympic dream and asks, ‘What do I have to do to make my dreams come true?’”

There’s really no one in the American Olympic movement who would disagree with that message, including the US Olympic Committee (USOC). It’s just that, as The New York Times reports, the USOC would like Tygart to tone it down a notch.

Why would the USOC want Tygart and the rest of the US Anti-Doping Agency to soften their approach? Because it has a concurrent lobbying mission: convincing the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to give the 2024 Summer Games to Los Angeles instead of Paris. And USOC officials are worried that IOC members are being put off by Tygart’s tough talk.

This is, after all, the same IOC that let Russia off the hook when it was shown that Moscow had for years engineered a state-sponsored doping programme to help more than 1,000 of its athletes cheat in 30 sports from 2011 to 2015. The IOC is the ultimate arbiter of venues for future Olympiads. Getting the Games could be a big-bucks coup for LA and the US — organisers say hosting the Games would mean an $11.2bn boost and 74,000 new full-time jobs for the local economy.

But the USOC shouldn’t conflate Tygart’s clean-sports crusade with its desire to snatch the 2024 Games for LA. A venue is important, but never more important than the sense of fair play that has to undergird every competition. Otherwise, why take part? Why watch? Chicago, March 1.