I have a true story to tell. I posted this on my Facebook, and am re-posting here because this isn’t just my story, this is also the story of why Nick Symmonds founded the “I’m Tired” Facebook group. This story affects every elite and hoping to someday be elite athlete in the United States.
In late 2010 and early 2011, the USATF National Office began placing restrictions on the logos athletes could wear at USATF National Championships. The restrictions were the same as for the Olympic Trials, which are basically the same as the IAAF restrictions, but they exempt colleges and longstanding clubs.
It began with the major National Championships but quickly spread to smaller meets. Athletes like Lauren Fleshman and Nick Symmonds began to speak out against this. I was told by several people on AAC that they had to do this because the IAAF said so. I know these people believed what they said was true. They were not making this stuff up, they were repeating what they heard from the National Office.
This issue struck home when the National Office changed the website for Club Cross to state that we would have to follow these rules as well. My Club and Association were hosting the meet that year. No one from the National Office bothered to tell the LOC about this, I found out about it via an athlete mentioning it on Facebook.
That just wasn’t going to work for us. The majority of USATF Clubs do not have IAAF-compliant jerseys because the majority of Clubs don’t have athletes competing in the Olympic Trials or Diamond League Meets. We had teams threatening to boycott the meet.
At the 2011 USATF Annual Meeting (one week before our event), these issues came to head at an AAC Meeting that Stephanie Hightower eventually kicked me out of, when she “closed” the meeting in violation of USATF and AAC policies.
But before she closed the meeting, our IAAF representative Bob Hersh made a startling statement: The IAAF was NOT telling USATF that they had to restrict logos at their domestic meets. In fact, the IAAF had just passed a new rule that eased the IAAF’s logo restrictions, allowing a second sponsor logo on the jersey for non-Championship IAAF meets (for example, Diamond League meets).
We spent a YEAR fighting this issue very publicly with the National Office. When did Stephanie ever fight for the rights of athletes? When did Stephanie ever try to find out the truth behind the matter? What I personally observed was Stephanie lose her shit when there was a miscommunication about filming the AAC Meeting, and kick everyone who was not an AAC member out of the room, despite her not having the authority to do so. The AAC meeting went into closed session without following the proper protocol to do so because when the President of USATF tells you to close the meeting, you close the meeting.
Interim-CEO Mike McNees told me everything would be resolved with Club Nationals in that meeting, instead myself and Club Council Chair Devon Martin were among the many people kicked out, and we only got the issue resolved by dragging Mike into the Club Council meeting where we convinced him to let it go.
USATF has released a letter saying that Stephanie is a better candidate than Bob because she has a “strong record of advocacy for USATF and our athletes at the international level.”
I would like to challenge anyone reading this to give me specific examples of this. Because I can’t speak for what goes on at the international level, but I can tell you that here in the US, Stephanie has NOT been advocating for our athletes. At no point in 2011 did she tell the National Office to cut out the bullshit and stop making up rules that HURT our athletes. All I saw her do was close an AAC Meeting because she said she had a fiduciary duty to USATF to keep Nike happy, and Nike wasn’t happy with the meeting being filmed. FI-DU-CI-A-RY this was emphasized several times.
You want another specific concrete example of Bob Hersh doing something to benefit American Athletes? In the first World Relays Championships, there was no Sprint Medley or Distance Medley Relays because these events are primarily run in the United States. The rest of the world doesn’t “get” them. Bob said at the end of 2013 that he was working on getting them added. The first World Relays was a big hit, but everyone realized that the 4×1500 was kind of a dud, that Kenya would always get too big of a lead if they sent their “A” team. So the IAAF listened to Bob and changed the 4×1500 to the Distance Medley Relay. That DIRECTLY benefits American athletes, we have a much better chance of being successful at the DMR than the 4×1500.
So please, tell me what I am missing about Stephanie? Tell me what she has done to benefit American athletes internationally? Heck, tell me what she has done lately to benefit American athletes here at home?
This latest letter from USATF makes me sick. I am so incredibly sick of hearing these lies about Bob being spread by Board members. So there. There are two specific, SIGNIFICANT, things that Bob has done to advance the position of American athletes using his position with the IAAF. And this is just scratching the surface of what Bob has done and can continue to do to advance the rights of our athletes and our sport both here and abroad.
Bob Hersh was not chosen by Lamine Diack to be Senior Vice President as the letter states. Bob earned that position be receiving the most votes of all of the IAAF Vice Presidents: https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/14141/american-hersh-succeeds-bubka-as-iaaf-senior-vice-president It is accurate that retention of either position is not automatic, but given that he was the most popular person in 2011, it is very likely that he would continue to hold a spot on the Council in 2015. While there is going to be a new President in 2015, both candidates are current Vice Presidents like Bob, and he enjoys a close relationship with both of them. There is no evidence that there will be much turnover within the rank and file of the IAAF.
Bob won’t be around forever. Someday we will have a different American representative at the IAAF. But I think there are many other people within USATF who would do more to defend the rights of our athletes and our country than Stephanie will. Despite the change at the top of the IAAF, this is not the right time for us to make a change.