By now most APSE members know that the USOC’s Bob Condron will be retiring at the end of the year.
And if you’ve ever had reporters and photographers at any Olympics since 2002, you also know that you could count on Condron and the USOC media services staff that he directed, to help you through the process. Everything from credentialing to housing to covering the Games.
We in APSE have a special relationship with the USOC. It is the only organization we work with directly to decide what U.S. organizations get what credentials to cover the Games. Condron, and his predecessor, Mike Moran, cultivated and developed this relationship over many years, and Condron thinks it works wonderfully.
“It works because of talent on both levels,” Condron said by phone recently. “We talked with each other and we did it right. The process was good for everyone, not just the big guys, but the small papers too. I liked that the Olympics Committee had at least one small paper on it. And everybody that applies is scrutinized.”
Condron added that working with APSE wasn’t done over a day or two of doing the credentialing, but started long before then. And he worked with outgoing APSE Olympics chair Roy Hewitt on the group who would do the credentialing.
“Roy and I did a lot to select the committee that would do the credentialing,” he said. “It was not done on a first-come, first-served basis. We wanted to make sure women and minorities had some representation. We wanted to do it right. Roy and Bill (Dwyre, former APSE Olympics chair) also told those on the committee, check your organization at the door. It’s a good philosophy. It shows the people (on the committee) care.
“I have nothing but fond memories of working with APSE.”
Condron has worked in the media services office since the 1983 and his first Olympics were the 1984 Los Angeles Games. He said the biggest change he’s seen as far as media is the growth of online sports services.
“The big change the last two Olympics is online,” he said. “Yahoo, Fox Sports, ESPN.com and all the others. Yahoo had one person in Torino (in 2006). And they had 20 in Beijing (in 2008). When they (websites) first started we had to ask ‘how do you judge this?’ as far as credentials.”
Condron went on to say that the other major change he’s seen is the growth in interest media had in covering the games. He said he saw media interest rise dramatically for the Los Angeles Games and newspapers started adding reporters full time to cover Olympic sports after those Games.
One tip Condron had for all the media: Attend the Olympic media summit before any of the Games. The first one was before the 1988 Seoul Games.
“It’s the most important thing a paper can do,” he said.
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Here’s a link to a story by Irv Moss of the Denver Post, which talks more broadly about Condron’s life and contains a bio box.
