Outraged by the Larry Nassar sex abuse scandal and the financial struggles endured by many of America’s Olympic athletes, a congresswoman from Colorado announced Monday she is proposing legislation that could lead to a fundamental overhaul of the U.S. Olympic Committee and the other organizations that oversee Olympic sports in the United States.
“Our own U.S. Olympic Committee has failed. . . . No number of gold medals are worth putting the health and safety of our athletes at risk,” U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette (D) said at a news conference Monday outside her office in Denver. “We want to make sure that it’s doing the job it was created to do: to empower and serve our nation’s top athletes.”
Entitled the Strengthening U.S. Olympics Act, the bill would create a commission to study the structure of the USOC and individual sport national governing bodies, commonly referred to as NGBs — organizations such as USA Swimming, USA Gymnastics and USA Track and Field. It mirrors a bill proposed in January by Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), who was also at Monday’s news conference.
