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Photo by: MARC BRYAN-BROWN
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[Siegel initially addressed the subject of racist emails sent to him and other USATF employees late last year.]
I personally don’t like to give a lot of attention to ignorance. I think there’s a time and place to address these kinds of things.
But from the Olympic family and people in general, people have been incredibly supportive. I think many of my colleagues have been surprised that this type of behavior actually exists and, frankly, the most disappointing thing is that my kids have seen this kind of stuff. But it’s been an opportunity to have a teaching moment with them.
When you are, especially, a professional of color, and you’re in a leadership role, leadership is hard enough in and of itself. This is just another of those things people throw in your way to make it more difficult to do your job, so you have to strike a balance between focusing on the task at hand … but also there is a time and a place to bring awareness to a situation for people to increase their awareness and sensitivity.
A lot of what I feel like my mission has been my entire career is to not just impact my organization, but culture change.
I hear people talk a lot about restoring the public trust in the sport. It’s a difficult topic to talk about.
If you look throughout the history of sport, regardless of sport, people have been looking to get a competitive edge, and throughout the history of sport people cross the line.
I don’t know how you change human nature. It’s unfortunate when you have problems that are as systemic and broad as you’re seeing right now in our sport, but the reality of the situation is, it’s also an opportunity to recalibrate. It’s also an opportunity to look across the sport in general and have a collective view on how you raise the standard.
I heard a long time ago that most people don’t do what you expect, they do what you inspect. That has resonated with me.
I think when you’re under a tremendous amount of scrutiny, a lot of people rise to the occasion and you put the best feet forward. I’m actually encouraged by the steps the international governing body has taken, and you have to stay focused and work through all of this.
Many senior members of my staff lived through the ugly days of doping scandals here in this country. … Having experienced that and taken steps to keep it from happening again, we can be a … resource.
I think it’s really important to share all of the experiences, good and bad. People always talk about best practices, but I think some of the deepest, darkest moments shared with our colleagues in the sport can be enlightening to them as well.
We have a really diverse constituency, from the cradle to the grave, so being able to stream a Junior Olympics event to grandparents who can’t make it is as important as bringing international competition to a domestic audience with some of our brightest stars.
Staying on the cutting edge, whether it’s all the social platforms or the digital space, is really important.
What we have found is that even when we move some of our product from the mainstream networks to the digital platform, it’s demonstrated that we have a pretty loyal fan base, and we see a spike in the ratings with the network.
When we communicate information to our younger athletes, it’s no longer done in a traditional sense. No one really reads emails any more, so it may be Snapchat. It may be Twitter. It may be social media where they’re looking to get information about how to go about their work.
I have a really diverse staff, not just in ethnic diversity, but in age, interests, how they consume products, so I get well-rounded feedback. I may get our chief of sports performance, who’s 72, and ask him how do you consume information? He still has notebooks … and I have some of my younger executives who just graduated from college.
I was a sports agent for many years, so I understand both what it means as an athlete to perform and want to be rewarded and really trying to maximize your professional opportunities.
Then, when I had the opportunity, first through the ownership of my own race team, and running Dale Earnhardt Inc., you see when the economic balance gets out of whack, when it’s not healthy for the people actually providing the financial incentives, it’s bad.
People like to compare our sport to — whether it’s NASCAR, NFL or NBA — but the reality is we don’t have 18,000 to 100,000 people coming to the events, our viewership is not in the millions, and what I try to communicate to athletes is that those are things that drive value.
If we want to create more value for our sport, we need to have the biggest stars compete, show up, we have to drive fans, we have to have engagement, have our TV ratings go up, and the value of the sport goes up and there are more resources. I feel like I’ve gotten tremendous support and buy-in from the majority of our athletes.
Some still need more information, and there are some that you’ll never please, no matter what you do.
