At the annual meeting of USA Track & Field, delegates will be asked to vote on a change in governance bylaws. The changes largely being made due to requirements by the U.S. Olympic & Para Olympic Committee. This issue is a reminder of the existence of a long standing issue for our sport.

The obvious long term solution should be the obvious long term goal.

The supremacy of the World Track & Field Championships over the Olympic Games.

The championship our sport controls vs the one it doesn’t.

The championship that has advanced the professionalization of the sport vs the one that put the ball and chain of amateurism around the neck of the sport during the time frame when the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL accelerated away from us into sport marketing, sport promotions, athlete pay, TV broadcast rights fees, etc, etc, etc. This was proposed within IAAF in the 1990’s.

Here we are again, still yapping about these Olympics people and their continued influence and control over our sport.

At some point this will have to end. We should be the ones to end it.

We are a stand-alone sport. We should conduct ourselves as if such is the case.

The Olympic dream has been a 40 year nightmare to the professional development of our sport.Time to cut the cord.