 |
| USOC historian Bill Mallon |
Bill Mallon serves as historian for the U.S. Olympic Committee during the Games, spending the last month in Rio. A surgeon who played on the PGA Tour for four years in the '70s, Mallon lists his official title as past president of the Int'l Society of Olympic Historians. These are his 12th Olympics and his fourth with the USOC, beginning with the Vancouver Winter Games. Mallon, 64, spoke with SportsBusiness Daily staff writer John Bauernfeind about his post and his experiences in Rio to date.
■ How far back does your interest in the Olympics go?
MALLON: I’ve actually collected Olympic stats and records since the ’64 Tokyo Games. My father, John, was a cyclist and a speedskater. So I was always interested in those sports. That got me interested in the Olympics. A lot of American kids collect baseball cards and baseball statistics, and for some reason I just started collecting data on the Olympics.
■ How did your current position with the USOC come about?
MALLON: I was looking for a gig. I had worked for the International Olympic Committee, or for the [organizing committees for the Olympic Games], since ’96. I always had a place at the Games and credentials and things like that. When [former IOC President] Jacques Rogge came on, they did some cost-cutting at the IOC, and they cut back some of the stuff they were doing with me.
I was looking for a way to get to the Games, so I called up [former USOC director of media services] Bob Condron, and asked him if they had any interest in me helping them. And he liked the idea, so he invited me to go to Vancouver. I guess I did well enough because they keep inviting me back.
■ What’s a typical day like for you at the Games?
MALLON: I still sort of live a surgeon’s hours for my life. I get up around 3 or 4am, so I usually get to the [Main Press Center] by about 7, sometimes 7:30. I start collecting data from the night before, because a lot of the events haven’t finished by the time I get to bed. I start downloading data and stuff like that. Once 9 or 10 [am] comes, I start getting media requests, questions like, “Is this the first time somebody won this many medals in this event?” The requests can be all over the place.
The database resides on my laptop computer, among a few other places in the world. I work with a group of about 14 people. We have our own website that we use as sort of a private resource site, called www.olympedia.com. In addition to that, there’s a site called sportsreference.com/Olympics, and that’s our site, too. That’s a public site, but all the information on that comes from Olympedia. We update everything with the complete results of every event.
■ How have your experiences been in Rio so far?
MALLON: Rio has had some problems, but Rio has been better in person than the U.S. media made it out to be before the Games, for certain. I still haven’t seen a single mosquito, although I’ve heard of people who’ve had mosquito issues. But I haven’t seen one, so in terms of zika, if you don’t see a mosquito, you can’t get zika.
Security has been an issue. There’s the Ryan Lochte episode that everyone’s talking about. But we know about it, and we just try to be careful. We don’t go certain places. The Brazilian people have been nice and very helpful. I think they’ve had problems because Brazil basically ran out of money as the economy crashed. But otherwise they’ve done their best to put on a good Games.
■ What will you be working on once the Games wrap up?
MALLON: We’ll finish uploading all the results from here into our database. The second thing is going to be going through this list of the 2008 and 2012 drug disqualifications and then having to go back and updating all the results where these athletes are disqualified. That actually takes some work. We’ll continue updating stuff online, like biographical information. Then sometime late in 2017, I will start getting all my databases ready for PyeongChang.
