Governing Olympic Sport

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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

1. Participation, program quality, and retention come before selection
2. National development standards with regional input, locally delivered
3. Later, flexible, and reversible selection
4.  Governance reform
5. Measurable accountability for system health, not just performance outcomes

Proposed Structural Reforms

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. Coach Education: Centralize Standards, Decentralize Delivery

Current state: Credential-heavy systems disconnected from daily coaching realities.

Proposal:

• Delivery entry- and mid-level education regionally, based on the defined needs of the region
• Encourage mentored coaching hours
• Publish age-specific coaching expectations
• Incentivize volunteer and part-time coaches to support programs.
• Asses the viability of mandatory education and the ability to deliver

Outcome: Better coaching at the base without added bureaucracy and excessive expenses for the coaches.

4. Development Benchmarks Instead of Rankings

Current state: Results are treated as proxies for development and a measure of success.

Proposal:

• Define age-appropriate, non-competitive benchmarks (skills, tolerance, adaptability)
• Make benchmarks visible to parents and clubs
• Explicitly separate benchmarks from selection criteria

Outcome: Shared language that supports development without distorting competition.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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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