“Swimming has a dark side of abuse and poor oversight” — Op-Ed in the Sunday Chicago Tribune
July 28, 2024“May take wide readership of ‘UNDERWATER’ to push parents to demand reforms” — San Francisco’s Beyond Chron
July 30, 2024by Irvin Muchnick
In the wake of my Sunday op-ed essay in the Chicago Tribune, “Swimming has a dark side of abuse and poor oversight,” the Tribune editorial page today weighs in with its own similar take, “As Olympic Games begin, U.S. has work to do in better protecting athletes from sexual predators.”
The link to the newspaper’s editorial (behind a paywall) is https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/07/29/editorial-athletes-olympics-sexual-predators/. Shortly, Concussion Inc. will be publishing the full text of my op-ed, which will include the restoration of cuts of paragraphs about George Gibney and Bob Bowman, which the editors told me were “for legal reasons.”
Noting that the U.S. is one of the few countries without a national sports ministry, the Tribune editorial opines that our country has yet to ensure that the “framework for protecting athletes has teeth.”
UNDERWATER: The Greed-Soaked Tale of Sexual Abuse in USA Swimming and Around the Globe will be published shortly after the Paris Olympics by ECW Press (distributed by Simon & Schuster). Pre-order links from many outlets are here.
