This is a tale full of Kafkaesque twists about the efforts of the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) and its affiliated national sport governing bodies (NGBs) to make it look as if they're doing something about their sexual abuse problem. It's also a story that gets pretty deep in the weeds and one that bumps up against a basic reality: Although many millions of viewers watch the Summer and Winter Olympics and debate the internal or international drama hyped up by multibillion-dollar broadcast rights holder NBC, very few of them know or care anything about USOC's lords of the rings or their apparatchiks' day-to-day operations, far from the flag-waving captured on TV.
One effect of that is near-total public indifference toward the exploitation of local age-group clubs as faux community-based programs for youth athletes. This is especially true in swimming, where the main purpose of the clubs, from an Olympics perspective, is to serve as precincts for development of the next generation of gold medalists. It's a PR bonus that the accompanying after-school practices and weekend meets are staples of feel-good Americana.
