With 346 events over 17 days at this summer’s Paris Olympics, how do we zero in on the most important events, storylines, and takeaways? CEO of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee Sarah Hirshland provides an insider’s guide, including a preview of Team USA’s strategy. Hirshland also talks about the latest Chinese doping scandal, how changes to the NCAA put the future of collegiate sport in jeopardy, and plans for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. 

There’s a certain amount of trust, I guess, that becomes part of it because you can’t safeguard everything. You can’t test for everything.

Well, you just used the big word of the day, maybe the big word of the decade: “trust,” right? And to what degree do we and can we trust? And who is it that we’re relying on to trust? We’re incredibly fortunate in the United States. We have an exceptional anti-doping system and athletes in this country are held to an extraordinarily high standard. And we do have violations. It happens in the United States. The trick is to have a system that catches the bad actors, weed them out of the system, and don’t let them play. That’s what we have to all count on. 

Representing Team USA

Do you feel like one of the goals for you is that everyone in the world, including Americans, look at the United States differently as a result of the games? 

We want to unite this country around Team USA, without a doubt. And I say to anyone who will listen—this is the only team we can all agree on, right? We love our sport in this country. This is the only team we all agree on.

This group of Team USA athletes represents the diversity of our country. I hope everyone in the country can see themselves in one of these athletes and be motivated and inspired by that. And at the same time, the way we represent ourselves as a collective team reflects well on this country to others around the world. It reflects the excellence that we strive for as a country. 

The relationship between the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee and the athletes has always been tricky. Some athletes want to use the Olympic platform to advocate for societal issues, for change. But they’re also representing the country and not just themselves personally. You’re like the keeper of those guardrails. How are you approaching that for Paris?

I wouldn’t call us a keeper of guardrails. But we’re a facilitator of being a bridge between those things. Everyone is an individual and we want to embrace and celebrate who each of these Team USA athletes is, while at the same time demonstrating what it can mean to be very individualistic and part of a team at the same time. But we view it as our obligation to help athletes understand the ramifications of decisions they might be making. 

We’re guests at the Olympic Games, just like every other country. We get an invitation and that invitation says, “we’d like you to send a delegation of U.S. athletes to these games as our guest.” And we, of course, accept that invitation. And when we accept that invitation, we also agree to be guests of that organization and we have to abide by the rules and the framework that they set out. And there are ramifications if you don’t. And so our job isn’t to tell athletes what they can and can’t do. Our job is to help them understand the ramifications of different decisions they might want to make. So they can make informed decisions and we also want to celebrate who they are as people and what matters to them in the avenues that we have to do that.

The best example I can think of is we have a number of athlete mothers and we’ve really done a lot to celebrate and let those women talk about what it means to be an athlete mother—the beauty of it, the challenges that they see, and the gaps that exist in society, whether it’s healthcare, childcare, or stigmas around being an athlete mother. Those are stories we encourage them to tell. 

Planning for Los Angeles 2028 is underway

The next Olympics in 2028 will be in Los Angeles. Are there things that you’re looking to learn from how the Paris games unfold? How much do you use this as a lens for what you’re going to do four years from now?

Enormously. We’ll test a million things in Paris, across every aspect of the organization. We’ll learn a lot, but to have a game on home soil is a completely different animal. I mean, you can go to a cocktail party at someone else’s house and you still want to have a lovely time. You want to look nice. You want to be a good guest. That’s a little bit different than having a cocktail party at your own house. We’ll use every minute of the next four years to get ourselves and more importantly, the country, ready to really embrace what it will be to have these games on U.S. soil again. 

Impact of the NCAA’s evolution

What kind of impact do you think the shifting NCAA financial model for college athletes will have on the future of Team USA and on sport?

The college system is being challenged and threatened in ways that we all have to be paying attention to. Don’t lose sight of the importance of broad-based sport, Team USA, and the development of our elite athletes in this country. Also, so many young people are participating in youth sports with the idea that one day, they might be a collegiate athlete. And if the collegiate system crumbles, youth sport will suffer and Team USA will suffer. And the development of human beings will suffer because sport is such an important part of the development of young people. 

Just to make sure I understand: What you’re worried about crumbling, is that as dollars flow to certain superstar athletes, there won’t be as much support for the broad group of collegiate athletes?

The revenue from collegiate athletic departments is coming predominantly from football programs. And as those football players begin to share in that revenue stream, which, by the way, we support athletes sharing in the revenue, the challenge will be that the incremental funds now get pulled away from supporting the fencing team, and the rowing team, and the baseball team. 

We’re all working together to try to identify what the new model will look like. We have conversations with athletic directors at the institution level, with the conference commissioners, and with the NCAA, to create a transformed model that will allow for broad-based sport on campus, while at the same time, providing greater benefits to those athletes who are contributing to the economic machine that college football has become. We need to preserve the opportunity for athletes to generate earnings, while at the same time ensuring that there is some sense of structure that provides for both competitive equity and parity—that’s what makes sports interesting—but also protects the very athletes that we’re trying to foster and develop. 

Going for the gold

What will define success for Team USA in Paris? 

Well, the number of medals is an easy one. And so I won’t deny that we’ll be paying close attention to that. We certainly will. We’ll also look at the engagement of the American public across all the typical measures you would look at as a marketer. Certainly our partners at NBC will be watching viewership metrics, as everybody would there: digital metrics and social metrics.

And then some of the softer metrics. We’ll evaluate the extent to which this experience for Team USA athletes feels fair. Does it feel inclusive? Does it feel safe? Are there measures around a healthy sport culture that we can point to and say, “this is going in the right direction.”