2 pages sports and econ class Pick a professional sports venue ( Not one used for Spring Training ) in your favorite city and find out:1. How was it initially financed- Private , Public, c

Olympic Athletes Ask: Should We Start a Union?

A sexual-abuse scandal highlighted the powerlessness athletes have long felt within the U.S. Olympic Committee; they and athletes elsewhere seek a louder voice

Rachel Bachman

Feb. 26, 2019 10:09 a.m. ET

Chicago

Meetings of the Athletes’ Advisory Council, an athlete-led group within the U.S. Olympic Committee, are usually routine affairs. But at a gathering of the group here last weekend, in the basement conference room of an airport hotel, the presence of two very different attendees highlighted fault lines in the U.S. Olympic movement.

On one side of the room sat Sarah Hirshland, hired months ago as CEO of the USOC to excavate it from the wreckage of a years-long sexual-abuse scandal in gymnastics.

On the other side sat Don Fehr, the union executive director who led Major League Baseball players through brutal but successful fights against ownership in the 1990s. Fehr was invited by the council to answer questions and advise athletes how to seize more control in a decision-making system some say they’ve been largely shut out of.

“Just having him here, it lends a different level of credibility,” said Han Xiao, a table tennis athlete and chairman of the athletes’ council. “It recognizes that [athlete] leadership is serious.”

The push for more compensation and influence by athletes long considered “amateurs” is building in several corners of the sports world, including college athletics. Now it’s extending to Olympic sports, where an expanding global movement seeks to treat athletes like the professionals many of them have become.

“It feels almost like there’s an Arab Spring taking place,” said Norm Bellingham, an Olympic kayaker in the 1980s and ’90s and a former chairman of the Athletes’ Advisory Council who attended last weekend’s meetings. “Waiting for the people in power to implement appropriate changes is something athletes are less and less willing to tolerate.”

Winter Olympics Wind vered a volution

Women are stretching the boundaries of what was thought possible with their jumps, while men are nailing quads in bunches. Oh, and the Americans no longer reign supreme.

CLICK TO READ STORY

Gender Gap Women’s Curling Team e way

In the coming months, for example, a subgroup of the AAC will study options for amplifying athletes’ voices. That includes the possibility of forming something like a union, a step that athletes have taken in some other parts of the world. In Germany, for example, athletes have founded an independent athletes organization to support and bolster athletes’ rights.

Asked to comment on the prospect of unionization, the USOC provided a statement from Hirshland that stressed the importance of “meaningful athlete participation and contribution” and the desire to “modernize our governance.”

The athletes are seeking ways to maximize their earnings with fewer restrictions imposed by the bureaucracy of sports governing bodies.

In December, for example, three elite swimmers sued the sport’s international governing body, FINA, under antitrust law, alleging that FINA’s restrictions on non-FINA meets hurt athletes’ earning power and destroy competition. The named plaintiffs are Americans Michael Andrew and Tom Shields, a 2016 Olympic medalist, and Hungary’s Katinka Hosszu, a four-time Olympic medalist and FINA’s 2018 female swimmer of the year.

According to a January news release from FINA, swimmers are free to participate in independent events but organizers must seek approval to have records recognized.

Earlier this month, a nonprofit organization called Global Athlete was launched to address the balance of power between athletes and sports leaders. It grew out of athletes’ frustration over what they viewed as lax treatment of Russia in the wake of its doping scheme at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

As sports have become more professionalized, national and international sports leaders still treat athletes like amateurs, athletes say. They want more agency in what’s become an international business with billions of dollars at stake.

In the worst cases, athletes fear that not having a seat at the table can jeopardize their safety. Former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar pleaded guilty in 2017 to federal child-pornography and state sexual-abuse charges and is serving an effective life sentence in federal prison. That scandal is “the worst example we’ve seen to date of how powerless athletes are feeling in the system,” Xiao said.

An investigation by the law firm Ropes & Gray into the Nassar scandal found that “as the USOC evolved toward a more traditional corporate governance model, it did not meaningfully involve athletes in decisions or policy-making.”

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, center, and NHL Players' Association Executive Director Don Fehr, left, during an event in 2016. PHOTO: GENE J. PUSKAR/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Olympic athletes have long rebelled against the strictures of Olympic federations.

In the 1970s, runner Steve Prefontaine rebelled against the AAU’s ban on athletes accepting prize money for races, lest they lose the amateur status then required to compete in the Olympics. Federation and Olympic rules eventually relaxed, allowing Olympic athletes to earn prize money and sign endorsement contracts.

In the 1980s, the USOC’s “diffuse governance structure encouraged grass-roots participation and consequently, athletes had a ‘huge voice’ and a ‘significant presence,’ ” former USOC employees told Ropes & Gray.

But as the USOC professionalized its leadership setup, it didn’t always treat athletes as professionals. USOC leaders and athletes transitioned to, as one former employee told Ropes & Gray, a “hierarchical business relationship.”

The USOC bylaws require that athletes make up at least 20% of the voting power of the board and 20% of all USOC committees and task forces. Some athletes say that’s not enough.

Fehr, now executive director of the NHL Players Association, spoke briefly at the AAC’s public meetings—in introducing himself, he said he’s “spent 40 years representing elite athletes”—and declined to comment on his private discussions with the AAC. Xiao declined to say what was discussed in a session involving Fehr that was closed to USOC staff and media.

Hirshland was conciliatory in her comments to the group, saying she’d heard athletes lament, “ ‘You take us, you use us and when you’re done with us, you spit us out.’ We will fix that.”

Susanne Lyons, chairwoman of the USOC board and also in attendance, told the group, “We are eager to change. We want to change, and we want to know what it is you want us to do.”

Katie Uhlaender, a four-time Olympian in the winter sport of skeleton who attended the AAC meeting, said she wasn’t moved by Hirshland’s pledges.

“Frankly, the athletes are seen as products,” said Uhlaender. She said meaningful change most likely would come from outside the USOC, in the form of help from Congress, which continues to investigate the organization in the wake of the Nassar scandal, or from professional advocacy.

The Athletes’ Advisory Council is run by volunteers, who cycle through as they retire from competition and often must hold down day jobs, making it difficult to tackle complex issues over time.

Olympic athletes need to be more like partners with the USOC, Xiao said. He pointed to professional sports leagues and their established player representatives as a possible model.

“Crises happen in all these other sports all the time,” he said. “But in the end I think athletes feel empowered and enfranchised because they have a seat at the table.”

Write to Rachel Bachman at rachel.bachman