Max Siegel, USATF CEO, photo from USATF.org
I first heard that something was amiss with Max Siegel and the team around the US Olympic Trials. For the first time, Max had a security detail with him. A very large, imposing man, who I noted following Max around.
Sometime over the weekend, it first came out that the USOC had encouraged governing bodies to up their security details. Made sense in this age. Later, I heard something about some screwed up people, using the web to verbally attack Max, but also some threats. From the demeaner of the person, I knew this was not made up.
Read Alan Abrahamson's feature below, and just contemplate that there are still evil people in this world. The web just makes their racist blurbs easier to dispurse.
Ironic that they are coming after a sport that celebrates diversity as one of its strengths.
USATF chief executive, staff targeted in racially charged emails
Sport, as the International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach likes to put it, is supposed to be all about building bridges, not walls.
That is the theory. Real life can be considerably different. Sometimes, it's still ugly, indeed -- a signal, despite the fact a black man has twice been elected president of the United States, of how far we still have to go, and how difficult it can still be in our increasingly technology-dependent world to track those who would traffic in breathtakingly hateful invective.
Max Siegel is the African-American chief executive of USA Track & Field. He and Renee Washington, USATF's chief operating officer, who is also African-American, are among the very few senior executives of color in the entire U.S. Olympic scene -- a list that also includes Ron Galimore, chief operating officer at USA Gymnastics, and D.A. Abrams, chief diversity & inclusion officer at the U.S. Tennis Assn.
To read entire piece, in its original form, please go to: http://www.3wiresports.com/
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