Do ya think?
Selena Roberts, writing for Sports on Earth, contends that Lolo Jones’ appeal, rather than ability, was the likely reason why she made the U.S. Women’s bobsled team going to Sochi.
It isn’t that NBC was involved in the decision. Rather, the selectors knews that Lolo would generate much more publicity for the women’s bobsled team than a more qualified candidate.
Noting that Lolo has 374,000 twitter followers, Roberts writes:
In close calls in Olympic sports, where some teams leave wiggle room in the rules on judgment day, U.S. Olympic officials tend to rely on Q scores. In figure skating, the close call went to Ashley Wagner over Mirai Nagasu despite the results at U.S. Nationals. This is what’s best for the team, skating officials said, a theme repeated by bobsled leaders, all echoing the same phony jargon that the Karolyi clan uses when choosing the last gymnast for U.S. teams.
The Karolyi Method of subjective selection — honed by Bela and Martha as the relentless pushers of pixies — has always been designed with NBC in mind. It was U.S. gymnastics leaders who lured the Karolyi duo back into the fold after their 1996 Atlanta Games miracle team began slipping from relevance without them just three years later. As I reported for The New York Times in 2000, U.S. gymnastic officials acknowledged, in private, feeling the pressure to deliver for the peacock network, which hoped that the preening Bela would carry its coverage in Sydney in 2000. The team disintegrated, but the wreckage was a ratings hit.
NBC plays an unspoken role in the team politics of the Games. In 2002, as the marketed bobsled duo of Jean Racine and Jen Davidson — supposedly best friends forever — was scoring endorsement deals with Got Milk? ads and landing cereal sponsors, they jarred the media by splitting up just weeks before the Salt Lake Games. Mean Jean, as she became known, dumped Jen from the sled. At the time, Brian Shimer, a bobsled team fixture before he became the current U.S. men’s coach, told a reporter of the breakup, “I saw it coming. I just sat back and knew this was going to get good.”
Yep, get ready for another round of Lolo stories from Sochi.
It bothered me that Roberts’s article didn’t provide any evidence that Jones was picked unfairly, or that the longtime team member going as an alternate deserved to go instead of her. She might have been a bobsledding star at one time, but have her skills eroded? Was the team doing better with Jones? She had stuff she wanted to say about sex appeal and how little the actual sports might mean to NBC, but she didn’t do anything to prove her lead example.