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On The Ground: The Winter Games

Influential Voice Ruggiero Ends 8-Year IOC Term Sunday

Angela Ruggiero, the most prominent American member of the International Olympic Committee, will leave the body after an eight-year term Sunday. While she remains on several key commissions, she says her first priority is her tech-in-sports consultancy startup.

Shown during Team USA's women's hockey victory ceremony on Thursday, IOC member Angela Ruggiero's eight-year term ends this weekend.Getty Images

Ruggiero, a 1998 women’s hockey gold medalist who rose to become chair of the Athletes’ Commission and a member of the IOC Executive Board, was non-committal when asked if she’d pursue an individual seat on the IOC in the future.

“I definitely want to come back into the movement somehow, whether that’s through [the Los Angeles ’28 organizing committee] or through the USOC or the IOC,” she said. “But I think for now I’m trying to focus on Sports Innovation Lab, given the first-mover advantage and the opportunity we see.”

Ruggiero is now CEO of Sports Innovation Lab, a technology and research firm she founded in 2016 with Josh Walker, former Forrester vice president of research, and the since-departed Isaiah Kacyvenski. The company combines consultation services and a database of tech vendors, and aims to provide detailed analysis of the sprawling, rapidly changing world of technology to clients in the sports world.

The startup counts Intel, a global IOC sponsor, as a client, and Ruggiero believes she can provide advice to many parts of the Olympic community as it tries to keep pace with more technologically advanced professional leagues.

“Knowing I have the contacts, the context and the understanding for how tech is evolving within the movement, I honestly think my contribution will be better through the lens of my company right now,” she said.

While her eight-year term as an athlete representative is up, she would be eligible to one day be elected as an individual member.

“If in the future as L.A. ramps up and the IOC says I’m greatly missed, and maybe the president wants to have a discussion, or someone puts my name forward, obviously that’s a different conversation,” she said.

Ruggiero has avoided controversy during her time with the IOC, generally endorsing the positions of President Thomas Bach and the Executive Board. This week, she said she was “disappointed” in Canadian member Richard Pound’s public criticism of the body’s response to Russian doping. She believes IOC members should disagree privately.

She will be replaced on the IOC by American cross country skiing gold-medalist Kikkan Randall, who won one of two seats up for election by athletes in Pyeongchang. One of Ruggiero’s last acts as an IOC member was one of her proudest: awarding the medals to the gold-medal-winning USA women’s hockey team after its thrilling shootout win versus Canada on Thursday.

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