The USOC is angry. The folks in Colorado Springs that run the Olympic movement are peeved, and it's triathletes who've made them so. They just frankly don't like us. They like running, and they're reasonably fond of cycling, and they just love swimming—who wouldn't, what a medal haul!—but stick these three sports back-to-back and the neighborhood goes to hell.

At least the Olympic neighborhood. That's their problem with me, and with my kind. Then there's my problem with them. For certain sports the Olympic neighborhood is about as well conceived as a Chicago Southside project, and if you're a triathlete it's starting to feel like living in one. As an example...

Our national governing body is in the middle of its "quad review" right now. The body language the USOC is showing is reminiscent of the device used by employers who want to legally get rid of their employees. We appear to be on the verge of getting the list of items we need to fix in order for us to keep from being fired. Below is a part of that list, generated from internal documents.

1. Remember that Petition you all voted for last year? The USOC doesn't like it. At all. It's not the contents of the petition they abhor—the stuff regarding election behavior was almost word-for-word what the USOC required of USAT to fix its election practices (but the members beat the USOC to it by fixing election practices first). No, what the USOC doesn't like is the IDEA of the petition. That is, they don't like the fact that the members have any right to direct voice in their own organization (even though the members, by law, own their organization).

2. Not only do they not want you to have a strong voice in how your organization is run, they want to further remove you from any sort of real power by limiting what your elected board can do. They want the organization run by "professionals," that is, by the paid staff, who are housed in Colorado Springs, two off-ramps down the turnpike from the USOC's own headquarters.

3. They are also very nervous about race directors being on our board of directors. And worse yet, age-groupers! They want independent, unaffiliated board members. In other words, they want people on the board who have no idea how triathlon runs, as a business, so that the paid staff can run the office the way they want. Well, that's not entirely true. There is one specific kind of board member they do want. They don't understand why it is we don't have former Olympic athletes on our board. What bedevils the USOC is that the members have this inconvenient habit of electing who they want to run the organization they own.

4. The USOC doesn't want you to elect directors from your region. They want you to choose your directors by type. One board member among all the Olympic coaches, for example, one board member from the society of former Olympic athletes, stuff like that. They might allow a race director, but only as long as he's not allowed to vote on anything that affects race directors. Does that mean Olympic athletes and coaches can't vote on anything that affects Olympic athletes and coaches? I doubt the USOC would see it that way.

5. The USOC thinks we aren't paying enough money toward Olympic development.

Depending upon whom you talk to, over the last several years we've paid an average of $330,000 per year in hard cash to elite athletes, and this money has come directly from a treasury filled through age-group (largely member-driven) initiatives. According to my count, and I looked at the 2003 budget closely, that number was over $400,000. That's straight cash dollars going to ITU-style elite athletes and programs, not counting overhead and staff that works on elite business part time. I have no quarrel with this. However, I do have a quarrel with an organization that says this is not enough, and also that we're not spending it right.

We are singular among national governing bodies in that Olympic style triathlon does not occur in any meaningful way in this country. Name another sport in which this is the case.

Yet somehow our federation managed to rank three women in the top three spots worldwide last year; a woman not among these three got herself and her country an Olympic medal; and two of our men were in the top dozen in the World Championships. In light of that, how is it we're spending our money badly?

In fact, if you want to count medals at the four events the USOC is most interested in—Olympic Games, World Championships, Goodwill Games, Pan-Am Games—America's medal haul over the last quad is in the neighborhood of two dozen. When you consider medals, and medal quality, per event, American triathletes did better than almost any other sport under the Olympic umbrella!

If the USOC doesn't like our governing body, it should do what other entities do when there's a chronic bad fit. Do business with us, or don't do business with us. But don't threaten us, and please, above all... don't whine at us. If there's one thing our office staff, members, and directors don't need, it's a naggy partner. Just do business with us or don't. And, frankly, I'm leaning toward the latter.

Which brings me to the point. We've been in this marriage too long. I like marriage. People, companies, partners, should strive to make marriages work. But sometimes they just don't work, and if a relationship is strained over the better part of a decade, perhaps it's just a bad fit and everyone should recognize it.

So, what do I propose? We should set up a new organization for elites. We ought to voluntarily unhinge ourselves from this marriage. We should not wait for the USOC to "decertify" us, or to "strip us of our franchise," as they have threatened. We should throw off the albatross from our shoulders ourselves, and not give the USOC the pleasure.

We do not legally owe the USOC, or the 35, or 50, or 75, or 150, elites who are following their Olympic dream, a dime. If we decertify ourselves the USOC must scramble to find another NGB, certainly one without any financial means.

However, I am not an elite basher. I have nothing against our Olympic elites. So I propose another solution. We have been asked for the better part of a decade to match USOC funds. Let's do the converse. Let us pledge $750,000 of our money, right now, today, to start a new federation only for Olympic development athletes. Let us ask the USOC to match that pledge with $750,000 of its own. This new federation will start off with $1.5 million in the bank, certainly a start unprecedented in sport (when USAT was founded it had zero money, and certain members like David Backer and Lew Kidder paid $1000 for lifetime memberships, just so the office could stay afloat).

I predict the USOC would turn that offer down flat. Why? Because what would it use for cash next year, and the year after? Where is that $330,000, or $420,000, or $600,000, going to come from each year? The USOC has asked that USAT put $550,000 into Olympic development in 2005. I have no doubt that USAT would gladly do this. But the USOC has put additional requirements on this. "This is HOW you must spend your own money," they say.

Thanks, but that's going a bit too far. We know how to develop medal contending triathletes better than does the USOC, and we have the medals to prove it. We'll spend the money, but we'll spend it the way we deem most appropriate.

So, let us offer that $750,000 seed money, decertify ourselves, and walk away. We'll make that money back in one year, because we won't need to spend it on Olympic athlete ventures. Meanwhile, from whom will the USOC get its $550,000 if not from you, the dastardly, pesky, age-group members?

For any ITU-style elites reading this, I'm not your enemy. I'm on your side. You've almost certainly come to our sport out of a high-level single-sport program, such as a university swim team. That's our idea of "pipeline." We want to take that $550,000 and give it to you, because you're the best, and you've earned it. You're our future. The USOC wants us to spend that $550,000 toward coaches, and under-23 programs, and second-tier resident teams, and juniors programs, and as well as I can tell plucking the next generation of triathletes out of high school and bribing them away from college with a paltry stipend. So, how can we give our own money to you, our best athletes, to make your life a bit easier, when the USOC is telling us straight out that we can't?

So, basically, I've heard the whining long enough. I'm ready to bolt. Olympic NBG status isn't that important to me. Not this important. It's not that I don't like the Olympics, I do, it's the USOC that's the problem. A very few years ago our Congress thought it fixed the USOC. It seems to me it didn't. Perhaps Congress ought to take another look. Either way, should the USOC decide to treat us as equal partners, I'm in. But I'm tired of seeing our board of directors down on its knees in front of a USOC that thinks it can dictate to it.

So, here's to the USOC: We'll put up $750,000, you put up $750,000. We go our separate ways. Otherwise, we'll go away anyway, and you don't get the $750,000. Or, option-three. We're equal partners in this, and you treat us as such, and you do it soon. Do it before it's too late to save this marriage and you have to explain to the world why a successful, growing, lifestyle sport voluntarily left the Olympic movement in America.