Will this season's athlete bloom be the one that lifts the Olympic Game to the next level?
By aping the Olympic status quo that says no matter how wealthy we become, sports stars should not be paid, Kirsty Coventry has triggered a revolution in which the real Athlete Voice could finally be heard through the truly independent collective that is essential to change.
Think of it this way: jellyfish bloom when a combination of ideal environmental conditions - warm water, abundant food, and favourable currents - align to trigger massive, rapid reproduction.
It's alignment season in the Olympic ocean right now, a bloom of Athlete Voice offering more hope of lifting the Games game to the next level than at any time since the amateur era came to an official end in the late 1980s but was never actually laid to rest. Time it was. Here's how:
Disband the IOC athletes commission.
Thank the departing members, while explaining to them and the many others they were supposed to represent that there's a better way to a brighter day.
That's what a mature organisation with faith in its own code, and charter and wedded to integrity would do in response to the bloom of an Athlete Voice that wants Olympic bosses to listen to it through independent, collective representation in an adult conversation about revenue shares.
The child has grown up - works hard, and is no longer happy to be handed pocket money to make the multi-billion-dollar estate thrive without due reward. It remains to be seen if the child has grown up enough to realise that if it wants a professional pay day from the challenge that brings the biggest test of its sporting life into billions of households around the world once every four years, then it needs professional representation of the kind that Global Athlete and peer organisations do and can provide:
Athletes are the asset of the Olympic movement. Without them, and without the best of them, there is no business. No multi-billion dollar business, that is. No governance required no lifestyles to offer no more than $55 million (perhaps $65m) of wages to pay out to IOC directors in one Olympic cycle.
Jens Weinreich
A mature organisation with faith in its own code, and charter and wedded to integrity knows this of course.
The question for the IOC is clear: is it ready to grow up and make itself relevant to athletes in the second century of its existence.
It's 2026. Elite athletes are professionals. They want Fair Pay for Fair Play. And now, as a result of Kirsty Coventry's clear statement as IOC president that she does not believe in paying athletes, the world's top Olympians have spoken back with one, powerful athlete voice to an organisation that has only ever listened to the voice of the hand-picked who are 'willing, able and able to stay on-message' as part of an in-house team heeding the voice of leaders rather than conveying any message from athletes that the leadership does not want to hear.
That's how it's been. Time it wasn't.
