THE NEW YORK TIMES SPORTS FRIDAY, JULY 31, 2020 Y B11
SOCCER
The relationship between the
United States Olympic and Para-
lympic Committee and its most
decorated Olympian, Michael
Phelps, has been rocky for years.
The more Phelps won, and did
he ever win, racking up 28
Olympic medals across five
Games, the more he became the
organization’s poster child, wor-
thy of whatever special treatment
it could provide. Or, from Phelps’s
perspective, he was the latest and
greatest commodity that
Olympics promoters cared about
only as a medal-producing swim-
ming machine.
Phelps distills that dynamic
near the end of “The Weight of
Gold,” the HBO Sports documen-
tary he narrates about depression
and other mental illnesses with
which Olympians struggle.
Phelps is also an executive
producer of the film, which was
set to have its premiere on
Wednesday night.
“I can honestly say, looking
back on my career, I don’t think
anybody really cared to help us,”
he says, staring blankly at an off-
screen interviewer. “I don’t think
anyone jumped in to ask us if we
were OK. As long as we were per-
forming, I don’t think anything
else really mattered.”
In recent weeks, as they have
braced for the release of the film
and the criticism it levels at a sys-
tem that long prioritized winning
over everything else, Olympic of-
ficials past and present have
noted all the perks Phelps re-
ceived during his career, including
top training and coaching, access
to cutting-edge technology and a
two-bedroom suite at the Olympic
Training Center in Colorado
Springs that only he and the occa-
sional visiting physician used if he
wasn’t there. Everyone else slept
in single or double rooms.
But that uneven treatment and
response to the film, Phelps said
in an interview this week, illus-
trates how Olympic officials and
coaches view athletes as valuable
assets during their brief windows
of Olympic glory, but then leave
them largely on their own during
the years between Games. And
when their careers are inter-
rupted or over, the system moves
on to the next star.
“I feel like they don’t care about
anything I do right now,” Phelps,
35, said of the United States
Olympic and Paralympic Commit-
tee.
In recent months, the commit-
tee, which says it has always wel-
comed and wanted Phelps’s input,
has formed a mental health task
force to help change and expand a
system that its chief executive,
Sarah Hirshland, has made clear
needs to be updated. The organi-
zation takes roughly 1,000 ath-
letes combined to the Winter and
Summer Olympics during each
four-year cycle but has just three
mental health officers on its staff.
“There is room for us to grow
and improve,” said Bahati Van-
Pelt, who became chief of athlete
services for the U.S.O.P.C. last
year. “I am a big believer in a
framework that is holistic and
available throughout the entire
life cycle of an athlete’s career.”
The crux of the problem, Phelps
and other athletes say, is that for
several years Olympic officials
and elite athletes have had two
very different definitions of ath-
lete support.
To the Olympic committee, ath-lete support has largely meant
providing services — state-of-the-
art training facilities, top coaches
and sports scientists, access to
sports psychologists, plus a lot of
Team U.S.A. swag — that seem-
ingly led directly to bringing home
medals.
To athletes, support should
have evolved by now into some-
thing more holistic that included
caring for their mental health in
ways beyond the sports psycholo-
gists who focused on priming
their minds for competition.
“We have to educate people that
mental health is not a weakness,”
said Katie Uhlaender, a four-time
Olympian in skeleton who is
among the athletes profiled in the
film. Others include Steven Hol-
comb, a gold medalist in bobsled
who died in 2017; the figure skat-
ers Sasha Cohen and Gracie Gold,
and Jeret Peterson, an aerial skier
who killed himself in 2011. “It’s a
matter of having people come at
this from the perspective of per-
forming versus healing,” she said.
Uhlaender and others say thereis a dire need for athletes to have
easier access to therapy that does
not involve going through the
coaches and high performance
staff — people who each year eval-
uate their fitness for competition
and membership on the national
team and who might penalize an
athlete they know has needed
help dealing with mental illness.
The U.S.O.P.C. has tried to move
in this direction. A growing num-
ber of athletes have access to un-
limited phone counseling and six
in-person therapy sessions with a
licensed professional through the
employee assistance company
ComPsych. The benefit was ex-
tended this year to some 4,400
athletes, more than three times
the number that had access to it
before the coronavirus pandemic
caused the postponement of the
Tokyo Games to 2021.
Critics say ComPsych is really a
corporate human resources tool
rather than a mental health serv-
ices entity. VanPelt confirmed that
the Olympic committee is in talks
with Talkspace, a telehealth and
digital therapy company for
which Phelps is both an investor
and a spokesman.The committee is also building a
registry of mental health profes-
sionals whom athletes will be able
to consult without approval from
anyone at the U.S.O.P.C., though
who qualifies and pays for that
benefit is still being worked out.
In 2019, Kelly Catlin, an
Olympic cyclist, killed herself, and
this year, Pavle Jovanovic, a for-
mer Olympic bobsledder, killed
himself.
“I can’t see any more suicides,”
Phelps said.
Phelps said he discovered the
value of therapy in 2014, during
the first months of his comeback
attempt ahead of the 2016
Olympics, when he was caught
speeding and driving while intoxi-
cated in a tunnel in Baltimore. He
said he views the incident, and the
suicidal thoughts he had after-
ward, as the culmination of years
of “stuffing down” his feelings of
emptiness, vulnerability and a
lack of confidence about anything
other than winning races.
The opportunity to make “The
Weight of Gold” arose in 2017
when its director, Brett Rapkin,
approached Peter Carlisle,
Phelps’s agent, about the project
as Phelps was becoming more vo-
cal about mental health. Rapkin
had been working on a film about
Holcomb, the bobsledder who
struggled with depression and
spoke openly about his suicidal
thoughts. Rapkin last interviewed
Holcomb in the spring of 2017, just
days before Holcomb died alone at
the Olympic Training Center in
Lake Placid, N.Y., of an overdose
of sleeping pills and alcohol.
“The metaphor I like to use is
when it comes to the spectrum of
sports performance, we think the
top is hitting a grand slam to win
the game and the bottom is strik-
ing out, when in fact the actual
bottom is not wanting to be alive,”
Rapkin said.
The filmmakers approached
U.S.O.P.C. officials about partici-
pating in the film and providing
footage. The organization said it
would only do so at a cost of
roughly $100,000 — a discount of
its standard licensing fee. It also
wanted the film to highlight the
health services it provides, serv-
ices that Phelps and other sub-
jects in the film deemed wanting.
That was not the film Phelps,
Carlisle and Rapkin wanted to
make. The result only has athletes
on camera talking about their
struggles.
“I knew it was going to be emo-
tional and raw,” Phelps said. “It’s
the real emotions we lived with
our whole career.”Michael Phelps felt his swimming was all that mattered to U.S. Olympic officials.JAMES HILL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES‘I Can’t See Any More Suicides,’
Phelps Says in Documentary
By MATTHEW FUTTERMAN“I feel like they don’t care about anything I do right
now,” the 28-medal winner said of the U.S.O.P.C.DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMESA portrayal of the
mental struggles of
Olympic athletes.
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign
wealth fund on Thursday with-
drew its bid to become the latest
foreign owner in England’s Pre-
mier League, pulling out of an
agreement to buy Newcastle
United after a tumultuous take-
over process and significant pres-
sure on the league to block the
sale.
Without criticizing the Premier
League directly, the group led by
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment
Fund attributed the collapse of the
deal in part to “an unforeseen pro-
longed process.”
The Premier League, which had
been vetting the proposed sale
since April, made no comment on
the withdrawal.
The Saudi-led consortium,
which included the British busi-
nesswoman Amanda Staveley
and a British-based property com-
pany in addition to the kingdom’s
sovereign wealth fund, was set to
pay about $400 million for the
team and its stadium, which has
been owned by the sportswear
magnate Mike Ashley since 2007.
While the Premier League’s
glamour and global reach have
long made it a magnet for the
world’s super rich — its team own-
ers currently include American
billionaires, a Russian oligarch, a
Chinese holding company and the
brother of the ruler of the United
Arab Emirates — Saudi Arabia’s
bid for a team led to a level of dis-
cord rarely seen.
Human rights groups and even
the widow of the murdered jour-
nalist Jamal Khashoggi wrote to
the Premier League’s chief execu-
tive, Richard Masters, to urge him
to block the sale because of the in-
volvement of the Public Invest-
ment Fund, the Saudi sovereign
wealth fund led by Saudi Arabia’s
de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mo-
hammed bin Salman.
A more important challenge to
the takeover, at least for top Pre-
mier League officials, had come
from beIN Media Group, the Qa-
tar-owned television network.
The network, one of the Premier
League’s biggest broadcaster
partners, has for three years has
accused Saudi Arabia of being be-
hind industrial-scale piracy of its
programming.
Only weeks before it began con-
sidering the Saudi takeover bid,
the Premier League had written
to the United States government
to urge it to keep the kingdom on a
watch list of countries that breach
intellectual property rules.
Once the Saudi bid became pub-
lic, senior beIN officials lobbied
the league and even the British
government not to allow a Saudi
state vehicle to join the ranks of
club owners, and the Premier
League spent months deliberat-
ing the so-called “fit and proper
test” that is applied to all new
owners.
The Premier League was not
known to have ever previously
blocked a sale, and with the Saudi
group's withdrawal, it did not
have to do so in this case.
“Unfortunately, the prolonged
process under the current circum-
stances coupled with global un-
certainty has rendered the poten-
tial investment no longer com-
mercially viable,” the investment
group said in a joint statement. It
said its agreement with Newcas-
tle’s owners to buy the team had
expired and appeared to blame
uncertain economic conditions as
the reason to walk away. Ashley
had collected more than $25 mil-
lion as a nonrefundable deposit.
Premier League matches have
a reach that surpasses any other
similar global sports competi-
tions, with its teams counting mil-
lions of passionate fans on conti-
nents thousands of miles away
from the stadiums where games
take place. That reach has at-
tracted perhaps the most diverseownership group in sports: Over
the last two decades, British busi-
nessmen who once dominated the
league’s ownership ranks have
been edged out by billionaires
from the United States, Europe,
Asia and Africa — a membership
that currently boasts a Russian-
Israeli oligarch (Chelsea’s Roman
Abramovich), one of Africa’s rich-
est men (Aston Villa’s Nassef
Sawiris) and the heirs to a Thai
duty-free shopping empire
(Leicester’s Srivaddhanaprabha
family).
The Saudi-led investors had
proposed spending as much as
$320 million over five years to
turn Newcastle into a competitive
force in the league and to invest in
infrastructure around its stadium.
The Saudi fund would not have
been the league’s first Gulf-state
owner: Manchester City, who won
the league in two of the last three
seasons, is controlled by the rul-
ing family of the United Arab
Emirates.
While the league spent weeks in
an uncomfortable spotlight creat-
ed by the Saudi bid, Newcastle
fans had largely rejoiced at the
prospect of the unpopular Ash-
ley’s being replaced by deep-pock-
eted owners.
Since the first details of the pro-
posed takeover emerged earlier
this year, many Newcastle pro-
moted it on social media, with
some even changing their profile
pictures to incorporate images of
the Saudi flag or Salman, the king-
dom’s crown prince.
Most seemed to hope that the
Saudis’ wealth would allow the
team, whose raucous home sup-
port endures despite a middling
on-field record, to compete for ti-
tles again. Newcastle narrowly
missed missing winning the Pre-
mier League title twice in the
mid-1990s but has not won a major
domestic trophy since the 1955
F.A. Cup. The last of the club’s four
English titles came in 1927.Citing Lag,
Saudis Pull
Offer to Buy
Newcastle
By TARIQ PANJASt James’ Park is the home
field of Newcastle United,
which has been owned by the
sportswear magnate Mike
Ashley, left, since 2007.POOL PHOTO BY LINDSEY PARNABYDAVID KLEIN/REUTERSA federal prosecutor in Switzer-
land said on Thursday that he had
opened a criminal investigation
into Gianni Infantino, the presi-
dent of FIFA, after concluding
that there were “indications of
criminal conduct” in meetings be-
tween Infantino and an official
overseeing an investigation into
soccer corruption.
The investigation follows the
resignation last week of Switzer-
land’s attorney general, Michael
Lauber, who stepped down after a
federal court upheld allegations
that he had lied about meeting
with Infantino. Lauber had been
overseeing an investigation of the
2015 corruption scandal that led to
criminal indictments against
some of the top leaders at FIFA,
soccer’s Switzerland-based world
governing body. The scandal led
to the ouster of most of FIFA’s sen-
ior leadership, and paved the way
for Infantino’s victory in a special
presidential election a year later.
The federal prosecutor, Stefan
Keller, announced the new investi-
gation after reviewing two com-
plaints made against Infantino,
Lauber and Rinaldo Arnold, a re-
gional prosecutor and a childhood
friend of Infantino’s who had
helped arrange meetings between
the FIFA president and the attor-
ney general. Arnold is also under
investigation, Keller’s office said.
Prosecutors called for Lauber’s
immunity to be lifted so he could
be investigated, too.
In a statement, Keller said the
allegations in two new complaints
against Infantino, Lauber and Ar-
nold center on the abuse of public
office, breach of official secrecy,
assisting offenders and incite-
ment to break the law.
The announcement is the latest
legal complication for Infantino
and Lauber, the attorney general,
since details of their meetings
emerged more than a year ago.
They first came to light after a
leak of emails by the Football
Leaks platform, and became sub-
ject to more scrutiny when both
men failed to remember what had
been discussed at a meeting at a
hotel in 2017, the third the pair had
held in 15 months.
“On the basis of general life ex-
perience, such a case of collective
amnesia is an aberration,” was the
conclusion in the federal court rul-
ing that largely upheld an earlier
censure of Lauber.
Infantino has pushed back
against the allegations, which
have been the focus of intense
news media interest in his native
Switzerland and in Germany. In a
statement on Thursday, Infantino
pledged to continue to assist the
Swiss investigations into FIFA.
“People remember well where
FIFA was as an institution back in
2015, and how substantial judicial
intervention was actually re-
quired to help restore the credibil-ity of the organization,” Infantino
said. “As president of FIFA, it has
been my aim from Day One, and it
remains my aim, to assist the au-
thorities with investigating past
wrongdoings at FIFA.”
But FIFA’s statement also
pointedly rejected any implication
of wrongdoing. “To meet with the
Attorney General of Switzerland
is perfectly legitimate and it’s per-
fectly legal,” Infantino said last
week. “It’s no violation of any-
thing.”
When he resigned, Lauber in-
sisted he had been truthful at all
times, but he said his position had
become untenable. “The fact that
I am not believed as the attorney
general is detrimental to the fed-
eral prosecution office,” he said.
Keller, the federal prosecutor,
was appointed in July after the re-
ceipt of anonymous criminal com-
plaints that Infantino described as
“quite absurd.”
The speed of the proceedings
against Infantino is in stark con-
trast with the plodding pace of
previous Swiss soccer investiga-
tions, including the one started af-
ter a 2014 complaint by FIFA
about suspected money launder-
ing in the 2018 and 2022 World Cup
bidding campaigns.Since then, a number of other
cases have been opened, but none
have concluded with a conviction.
The only criminal trial, against a
group of former German soccer
officials, collapsed because it had
surpassed a statute of limitations.
Lauber held a news conference
after the details of the first two
meetings with Infantino were re-
vealed by Football Leaks. He
claimed they were justified be-
cause of the longstanding investi-
gation into the soccer body,
though he recused himself from
the FIFA case anyway. A third
meeting came to light only after
further revelations by the news
media.
That disclosure prompted an in-
quiry into Lauber’s conduct by a
supervisory body. In March, it
punished him by cutting his salary
by 8 percent. Lauber then hired
the same lawyer as the former
FIFA president Sepp Blatter, who
is facing a separate criminal in-
vestigation, to mount an appeal.
That panel restored some of the
salary reduction, but it also issued
scathing comments about his con-
duct in its final ruling.
Lauber, the panel said, had “in-
tentionally made a false state-
ment” to the supervisory body
“and knowingly concealed the
third meeting with FIFA presi-
dent Infantino.”
The investigation is a new blow
for FIFA, which has tried to turn
the corner on the corruption scan-
dal by instituting governance re-
forms under Infantino.
Infantino, a former official at
European soccer’s governing
body, UEFA, has often claimed the
days of cronyism and corruption
are now behind the organization.
But accusations of wrongdoing
against senior officials have con-
tinued. A day after Infantino had
told the FIFA Congress in Paris
last year that the days of scandal
were over, one of his vice presi-
dents, the head of African soccer,
was arrested and questioned by
French financial prosecutors.
A separate FIFA ethics probe
into the official, Ahmad Ahmad,
has yet to come to a conclusion
even though the case has been
with its investigators for more
than a year.FIFA President Faces Criminal Inquiry
By TARIQ PANJATwo men say they
can’t recall what they
discussed at a hotel.
OLYMPICS
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