Jessie Diggins (USA) has been the beneficiary of consistent support from US Ski and Snowboard and the Stifel US Ski Team; it’s a distinction she has earned many times over. . The question is, are those organizations really involved in the support of skiers who are at different levels of development (as the Ted StevensOlympic and Amateur Sports Act obligates them to be)? (Photo: Vanzetta/NordicFocus)
The Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act, passed in 1978 and amended several times (most notably in 1998 and 2020), is the statute that created the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) and granted National Governing Bodies (NGBs) exclusive, monopolistic, authority over Olympic sports in the United States. The Sports Act Is Supposed to Govern Olympic Sport in the U.S. The question is whether or not it does . . .
At its core, the Sports Act is a trade. NGBs are given control over their sport in exchange for specific obligations: athlete development, growing participation and interest, transparency and accountability, and, after 2020, a SafeSport environment for youth athletes.
That’s the theory!
In practice, the 1998 revisions shifted the focus of NGB responsibility toward Olympic and international performance. The emphasis became the “high-performance pipeline,” with increased USOPC oversight and funding focused primarily on elite outcomes. What followed was a quiet but consequential de-emphasis of sport growth and athlete development, the very foundation the Act originally envisioned. Today, under the current Sports Act—and with no real congressional or USOPC oversight—there is little meaningful accountability for NGBs to fulfill their mandate. The Act requires athlete development, but it never defines what that means, never specifies standards, and never requires commitment of resources or personnel. Judging from the published USOPC NGB audits the role in development is not assessed.
So, development has effectively been outsourced. Some will argue that the development system under US Ski and Snowboard is working because we have a couple of men and women performing well on the World Cup. Not to minimize the work of those successful athletes or the programs they came through, but we can see from the national championship results that level of performance drops quickly and is far off international race speeds. In my view, we need a much more robust development process.
In U.S. Ski & Snowboard, virtually all athlete development now is in the hands of clubs, families, and private systems. The resurgence of U.S. cross-country skiing since the mid-1990s is a useful example. That progress did not come from centralized NGB investment in development, even though the US Ski Team tried at times to run a centralized program. It came from committed individuals establishing clubs, regional programs, the establishment of the National Nordic Foundation, and the involvement of families. Many athletes who qualified for World Cup starts—without being named to the national team—came from that community-based system, not from NGB-led development.
The revisions to the Sports Act never eliminated the NGB’s responsibility for development. They simply allowed elite performance to be prioritized without accountability for the development of the base that makes elite performance possible. Over time, many NGBs shifted the cost and risk of development onto clubs and private foundations, while dedicating their own resources almost exclusively to national teams, while retaining regulatory and selection authority without owning development outcomes.
That contradiction matters.
If an NGB claims authority over competition rules, rankings, and selection, then development, coach education, and long-term sport health must be part of that same authority. The Sports Act never transferred those responsibilities to the USOPC, private clubs, or other local entities.
What we’re living with now isn’t legal clarity, it’s a governance gap. NGBs retain authority. Clubs bear the cost. Families carry financial risks. Athletes absorb the consequences. That outcome wasn’t envisioned in the Sports Act. It’s what’s been allowed by weak, nonexistent enforcement. As long as USOPC and the NGBs can tout a reasonable medal outcome, everyone is happy. But that doesn’t solve the development gap.
A Proposed Direction for Reform
What follows is not a call for more money. It’s a call for better structure.
Development already works best at the club and regional levels. This has been demonstrated for the last 30 years or more. Any reform has to be financially neutral and focused on outcomes. The solution is simple: development outcomes are driven less by spending levels and more by how responsibility, authority, incentives, and accountability are structured.
Today, clubs and families do most of the developmental work, while the NGB controls calendars, rankings, and selection. Any effective proposal will realign responsibility with authority using levers the NGB already controls: regionalization, calendar design, coach education delivery, development benchmarks, incentive structures, and selection timing.
The Problem We’re Actually Solving
Despite good intentions and dedicated people, the current system reliably produces the same results:
Early specialization pressure driven by rankings, selections, and historical event calendars.
Declining participation at the U-16 and U-18 ager groups in USSS races and programs.
Ever increasing costs carried almost entirely by families
Available program quality dictated by geography and family resources
Clubs carrying the developmental load for 30+ years without proportional authority
This isn’t about bad actors or insufficient funding. It’s about misaligned incentives and lack of local control over early pathways.
Guiding Principles
Participation, program quality, and retention come before selection
National development standards with regional input, locally delivered
Later, flexible, and reversible selection
Governance reform
Measurable accountability for system health, not just performance outcomes
Proposed Structural Reforms
Regionalization With Real Authority
Current state: Regions exist administratively but have little control over development- pathways, with primary focus on the Junior Nationals selection and management.
Proposal:
Establish consistent regional governance with defined leadership representation
Regions sole authority over U12–U18 competition formats
Delegate early-stage calendars and race design to regions
Require annual regional development plans focused on participation, retention, and building coach capacity
Mandate inclusion of high school, college, and masters’ athletes in regional development efforts
Incentivize regions to address actual development in the region.
Outcome: Decisions and decision makers move closer to athletes while standards remain national.
Calendar Design Is Development Policy
Current state: Dense, result-driven calendars create artificial urgency and unnecessary travel and expense
Proposal:
Cap nationally scored races by age group
Limit Junior Olympic qualifier events to reduce travel burden
Restrict ranking-eligible events geographically at younger ages
Require non-ranking, skill-focused events
Publish a distinct development calendar separate from performance pathways
Outcome: Lower cost, less pressure, better alignment with biological development.
Explicitly separate benchmarks from selection criteria
Outcome: Shared language that supports development without distorting competition.
Cost Control Through Incentive Design
Current state: The system directly rewards expensive actions and those who can afford it.
Proposal:
Remove ranking advantages tied to national travel at young ages
Prioritize regional selection over national qualifiers
Require transparent cost disclosures for sanctioned pathways
Outcome: High-cost behavior is no longer structurally rewarded.
Later and Reversible Selection
Current state: Early selections are treated as final.
Proposal:
Delay irreversible selection points by 3-4 years
Replace fixed teams with rolling pools and invitations
Publish selection criteria in advance
Outcome: Selection becomes a process, not a verdict.
Accountability for System Health
Current state: Success is measured almost entirely by elite results.
Proposal:
Track participation, retention, regional access, and coach coverage
Include development metrics in leadership evaluation
Publish development outcomes alongside performance results
Outcome: Development becomes an operating responsibility, not a marketing line.
This isn’t an argument against excellence. It’s an argument that durable excellence depends on system design, not individual heroics.
The question isn’t whether we can afford to do this. It’s whether we can afford not to.
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