Majestic passion: Rick Mack, HR director for the U.S. Olympic Committee, is on a mission to preserve Olympic ideals

HR Magazine, Dec, 2004 by Ann Pomeroy

After an American athlete tested positive for steroids at the Sydney Games in 2000, the USOC chose to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest by outsourcing its drug testing program to the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), an independent agency for Olympic sports in the United States, Mack says. (The USOC's former anti-doping chief filed a lawsuit against the committee shortly before the 2000 Games, charging, among other things, that it had "undermined" his anti-drug efforts.)

The USADA is a "cutting-edge industry leader," Seibel says. This year, "USADA will do 8,000 drug tests on U.S. athletes, half of which will be 'no-advance-notice' tests." Less than one-half of 1 percent of those tests will result in sanctions against U.S. athletes, he adds.

Although "we tend to look at life in four-year segments," says Mack, the work of the USOC is ongoing throughout the year. "'It's not every four years, it's every day,' is our slogan," he says. After the successful conclusion in August of the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad in Athens and the Paralympics in September, the staff is looking ahead to the upcoming Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, in February 2006.

"We have excellent leadership now," says Watkins, and a new spirit of optimism prevails at the USOC. Throughout the controversies of recent years, Mack maintained a "calm, measured, reasonable approach to the challenges he faces on a daily basis," says Seibel. "His intense passion and love for the USOC are in his fiber."

Mack was captivated in 1976 by Austria's legendary downhill skier Franz Klammer, who won the gold medal "on the brink of disaster," he says. "Watching him fly down the mountain and make that last jump, out of control, with one ski in the air, going 90 miles an hour, I thought 'Wow!'" Mack says he was already a sports nut, but after watching Klammer, whom he met a few years ago, he was hooked on the Olympics.

Now Mack can work out alongside Olympians- and Paralympians-in-training in the USOC athletic facilities--two triple gyms, a swimming pool and a shooting range. To manage stress, he jump-starts his day with 45 minutes on the exercise bike and the elliptical trainer each morning.

"I'd rather do this [job] than be anywhere," he says. "I believe the goodness of this [Olympic] movement will prevail."

Online Resources

For links to recent profiles of other HR executives, see the online version of this article at www.shrm.org/hrmagazine/04December.> RELATED ARTICLE: Sharing the Olympic Experience

This year, more than 100 U.S. Olympic Committee employees went to the Athens Games to work, doing "tough, blue-collar labor," says Rick Mack, managing director of human resources. "I've never seen any group of people work longer or harder than they do at the Olympics, where 20-hour days are not uncommon."

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For employees who didn't go to the games, HR provided an "Olympic experience" at headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo., Mack says. Throughout the games, an Olympic flame display burned around the clock, and employees were treated to daily recreational events and prizes.