announcer: The following is a presentation
of HBO Sports.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Tonight on "Real Sports"...
We'll look at how one company
is betting on major league futures
by paying minor leaguers big money today.
- I tell the players this is not a charity.
We're investing in you
because we think we're gonna make money.
- We'll look at how young, healthy Olympians
around the world are getting the COVID vaccine
ahead of those who desperately need it more.
- One of the last groups you would normally get to
would be healthy, young athletes.
The International Olympic Committee has a huge amount
to answer for.
- We'll meet a rebellious, 34-year-old skateboarder
who's at odds with the idea of even being an Olympian.
- I never thought skateboarding would be in the Olympics.
I never would've thought.
Like, "Well, what are we gonna be wearing, uniforms?
They're gonna be scoring us?" Like, I can't picture it.
- And despite the pandemic, or maybe because of it,
America's long-standing bike wars are getting nastier...
- The bike lane is over there, dude!
- That's a bike lane. - That's the bike lane!
- And deadlier. [bike tire squeaks]
♪ ♪
announcer: And now your host, Bryant Gumbel.
♪ ♪
- Good evening and welcome to "Real Sports,"
where tonight,
for the first time in 16 months,
we are broadcasting from our studios in New York.
While it has been a long, strange experience
working from home,
this was very much our home before the pandemic.
And since our return is indicative of the belief
that the worst is now behind us,
we are delighted to be back.
Let's get started with baseball,
a sport in which the average major league salary these days
is north of $4 million a year.
Over 100 players are getting
an excess of $10 million a season.
With that kind of money at stake,
betting on a young player's future earnings
could be a smart investment.
One man is already doing just that
and his approach is impacting
not only his company's bottom line, but also the game
and the young men who are chasing their baseball dreams.
Our Soledad O'Brien has the report.
- The day after the first month...
- In an office outside Washington D.C.,
a group of financial analysts
is trying to find the next big thing,
looking for just the right investment
that will make them all rich.
- Are you doing it by investor,
by dollars coming in, or is this...
- But Michael Schwimer and his team
don't invest in stocks or start-ups.
They invest in something more unpredictable: people.
More specifically, baseball players.
- Barrel percentage, the best in the major leagues.
- Around here, the numbers crunchers
watch not CNBC, but ESPN,
and track not the stock ticker,
but the box scores.
The goal: to figure out
which players are going to go bust
and which will go boom.
So if there is a player who is out on this field,
I could point to that player and you'd say,
"He's gonna make it, or he's not gonna make it."
- I could tell you his expected career earnings
in the major leagues throughout his entire career
and the likelihood at every stop,
like likelihood to make it,
likelihood to become a Hall of Famer.
Like, you know, all of those different probabilities,
I could give you that.
- With how much accuracy?
- Better than anything else that's out there.
- So, like an investor who buys shares
in start-up companies they think will hit it big,
Schwimer buys shares in start-up ballplayers,
minor leaguers, giving them cash today
in exchange for a portion of their earnings tomorrow.
Players like this one-time hopeful
who, back in 2017, was a little-known teenager
but who Schwimer identified as a future star.
- Our model said he was the second-best prospect
in the last 15 years.
Last 15 years.
We gave him a massive amount of money.
- Three years later,
that teenager became one of the best players in the game.
- Tatís!
- Like Superman!
It's Fernando Tatís, Jr.!
- And not long after that, one of the richest too.
- 14-year, $340-million contract.
- The contract stunned the sports world,
but few knew the most stunning part of all:
That a good chunk of that $340 million,
believed to be 10%, or $34 million,
will go not to him,
but to him.
And Michael Schwimer says
there's a lot more where that came from,
that he owns large chunks of the future earnings
of dozens of baseball's young stars.
- We've got multiple people in the top ten of MVP voting
and rookie of the year voting and all this stuff,
so that's when I realized,
you know, look, okay, we got something here.
- How much is this worth to you?
Are you rich now? - This is not a charity.
I tell the players, this is not a charity.
We're investing in you
because we think we're gonna make money.
And if we do make money,
it's gonna be a heck of a lot more than we paid you.
[bat cracks]
- Investing in human potential is new to baseball,
but I actually first heard about the concept
when I was just starting out and someone made me an offer.
I'm Soledad O'Brien reporting--
When I was a new reporter, someone offered that to me.
- Really? - Yeah. It was interesting.
Like, "I think you're gonna be successful.
"I give you a chunk of money, I'd invest in you
to help you figure that out."
- I think that's a great thing. And guess what?
There's always a number that makes sense for everybody.
And if it doesn't, the person-- you should just say no.
- I didn't take the offer,
but there's a good reason so many young ballplayers
take Schwimer's: they need the money.
For all the millions paid to stars in the major leagues,
the thousands of hopefuls
spread across baseball's minor leagues
make virtually nothing,
a fact Schwimer knows first-hand.
[cheers and applause]
Because before he invested in aspiring ballplayers,
he was one himself.
What was your salary?
- $5,500 for the year,
which equates to about $2 an hour.
I thought it was a joke at first.
- Really? - I really did.
And it wasn't.
- Life in the minor leagues
is baseball's dirty, little secret,
a side of the industry few ever see,
with living conditions like this:
half a dozen players often sharing
the same small apartment just so they can make the rent.
- The toughest thing that I witnessed
was literally a player on my team
in the dumpster looking for food.
I mean literally.
It is extremely, extremely difficult
and I don't think the American public
really realizes that.
[cheers and applause] - And he strikes out Ankiel.
- Schwimer was one of the lucky ones.
He made it all the way to the big leagues,
pitching for the Philadelphia Phillies
before an injury ended his career at the age of 27.
That's when he says he had an idea
for a new line of work:
to help other young players reach their dreams
by fronting them money when they needed it most.
- The more money that you have in the minor leagues,
the higher likelihood you are to make the major leagues.
You can eat healthier,
you can live in your own one-bedroom apartment
on a mattress instead of an air mattress.
And that helps you succeed.
And I thought, "Well,
"there might be people that want to take on an investment,
"get money in order to give themselves
the best chance to make it."
- Schwimer put together a proposal
for a business he called Big League Advance.
Now, he just needed the money to pursue it.
Enter Bill Miller,
a billionaire known for investing
in upstart ideas.
Miller had once spent heavily on a couple of ventures
that worked out okay: Amazon and Bitcoin.
Now he would agree to help bankroll Michael Schwimer.
So when he came to do his proposal,
what do you remember about it?
- I was surprised at how sophisticated it was.
There's almost nothing that I could ask him
that he hadn't thought about.
- Are you happy with your investment in BLA?
- Oh, yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's gonna be pretty hard not to make money on it.
And the data that Michael showed us was
at least 30% a year for, you know,
20 years or so.
- Our investors see the players that we have
and you can expect their returns
and that number could be massive.
It could be in the multi-billions.
The numbers don't lie.
I believe it's gonna be unbelievably successful.
[bat cracks]
- Why, exactly, is he so bullish?
Well, consider a standard deal.
Schwimer says the numbers vary,
but for a typical player,
he might offer $350,000 in cash
in exchange for 10% of that player's earnings
for the rest of his baseball life.
If that player makes-- make up a number--
$100 million, which would be a great contract...
- Yeah.
- How much money will they pay you back
on that $350,000 that you gave them up front?
- That would be $10 million if they did the full 10%.
- That's a lot of money on $350,000.
- Making $100 million is a lot of money.
- Of course, on the flipside,
if Schwimer and his team of numbers crunchers
invest in the wrong player, they take the loss.
If the algorithm is wrong, player never makes the majors,
what do they have to pay back?
- Zero. Absolutely nothing.
- Are you mad about that when it happens?
- I am not. I know it's the risk that I'm taking
and our company's taking and our investors are taking.
- Which makes the company's statistical analysis
of each minor leaguer crucial.
Schwimer says it's their secret sauce.
- We are trying to figure out
what are they doing that is predictive to future success
and what are they doing that is harmful to future success?
- If I wanted to see the various measurements
of the algorithm popped up on your screen, could I do that?
- [laughing] No.
- Why are you laughing? - That's--that's--
this is our secret-- this is--
why don't you go to Coke's offices
and ask for the recipe there?
See if they'll let you in and give you the recipe.
- The day we visited
the Big League Advance offices,
one of Schwimer's best investments
had just played one of his best games of the year.
[bat cracks] - Hammered!
Deep left field!
The Franimal has been unleashed here tonight!
- Look at the Franimal.
- He's one of your guys? - Oh, yeah.
A great Big League Advance example.
Like, prime example.
- Around here, watching the highlights
is like watching a stock go up or down.
- He smokes that one! Franmil Reyes!
- How often, when you come in here,
do you see your guys up on the screen?
- All the time.
We've got, you know,
60 players in the major leagues right now.
This is what we do.
I always think you can do everything better.
- And with the success of all those players,
Schwimer has become a wealthy man
who recently built his dream home
complete with all the features of a star athlete's house.
A basketball court
with an automatic rebounding machine...
- That could be good.
- A golf simulator so he can play any course in the world,
and a home gym
where Schwimer's wife, a personal trainer,
puts him through a daily workout.
- Nice job, nice job.
- It's enough that some wonder
if he's the solution
to the exploitation of minor leaguers
or just another part of the problem,
preying on vulnerable, young players,
especially those from poor Latin American countries
where so much of baseball's best talent is from.
Do you think they're taking advantage of the players
who are in a desperate situation in many cases?
- You walk into a home of an indigent family,
they're unsophisticated,
often many of them don't have high school educations,
and here's $800,000.
They're often going to accept it immediately.
- Baseball's super-agent, Scott Boras,
represents dozens of players
across the major and minor leagues.
He claims that BLA often approaches these players
directly, without looping their agents into the process.
- The biggest concern we had was that our players were
being solicited without our knowledge.
The issue is not what they're offering,
the issue is the tactics they're using
to get the players to sign the contracts.
- We tell every single player,
"We want your agent on the call."
- Is that right? - Every single one.
- And do their agents join?
- Well, the players will very often,
you know, 30% of the time, be like,
"I don't want my agent to know about this."
I built this company by players, for players.
Not for agents.
- Still, Schwimer insists
that BLA has never signed a player without having
the player's own lawyer review the contract.
In fact, Schwimer says that before each signing,
he requires the player to name their lawyer on camera
in a videotaped interview.
- What is the name of the lawyer
who reviewed the contract with you?
- And make sure the players
know what they're getting into.
- We do an interview with the player on camera
asking him questions.
"Do you understand if you make $500 million,
"you're gonna owe us $50 million
over the course of your career?"
If they can't answer the question correctly,
we don't do a deal. I will--
- That sounds like you're protecting yourself
for a later lawsuit. - No. Absolutely not.
- Say this into the microphone. [chuckles]
- It's the literally exact opposite.
I would not be able to sleep at night
if I knew a player did a deal with us
and didn't fully understand it.
- But Schwimer acknowledges
that at least 50% of the players they've signed
are from poor Latin countries,
players like Fernando Tatís Jr.,
Franmil Reyes,
and this year's sensation, Yermín Mercedes.
[audience exclaiming] - Yermín Mercedes!
Send him to the All-Star Game!
- Mercedes says he made the deal
with Schwimer's company when he was in the minors
because his family back home
in the Dominican Republic needed the money.
- I have a big family.
They need me all the time
because right now, I'm the head of my family.
I just want to do the best I can do for them.
- So you got $165,000 from BLA?
- Yeah, [unintelligible].
- And then what percentage of your future earnings
do they then get?
- 15. - 15%?
- Yes.
- If Mercedes keeps hitting, he will make millions.
That's the good news.
The bad news is that for the rest of his career,
he'll owe Big League Advance
15% of every MLB check he earns.
They gave you $165,000,
you have to pay them, if you make $10 million,
$1 1/2 million.
- I gave it to them. Yeah.
You know why? - Why?
- Because those people trust in me.
They believe in me, you know?
Nobody believe in me at that point.
And they believe in me.
- Yermín's story kind of broke my heart, right?
He needed the money for his family.
- Thank God for us, right? - In the DR.
- How else was he gonna get the money?
Imagine what would've happened to his family
if we didn't exist.
These are real lives that we are changing.
- But agent Scott Boras says
the more these players have to pay,
the more they're going to regret the deal they made.
Do you think these players,
maybe when they're paying back millions
on a $165,000 that they were given,
that's when you'll hear the complaints and the anger?
- Their level of sophistication will grow
as they become earners.
Did they need the money?
Did it resolve a problem for them?
That's always the case.
But the question is,
"How pleased are they gonna be when they're 45?"
- Does it upset you when people say that you're exploitative?
- The good news is,
no one that's logical or intelligent has said that.
I do this for minor league players.
I do this because I lived it.
I do this because it's wrong, this system is wrong.
Any time you build any business that's disruptive,
there's going to be people that don't understand,
and that's fine. And that's why--
why do you think I'm here talking with you?
So people can understand.
♪ ♪
- Soledad, I love this story. - Thank you. Me too.
- BLA, Big League Advance,
about how many players do they have
in the major leagues, how many in the minors?
- 350 overall... - Wow.
- Of which 60 have made it into the majors,
so that's a lot.
- They invest in a player's career.
Do they ever intervene in that career in terms of saying,
"We'd like you to go here because you'll make more money,
we'd like you to sit this out."
Do they ever intervene?
- It does not sound like they do that.
I think they leave all that management to the agents,
but the financial aspect is
once you make it into the majors,
even if you play for one day,
we get a percentage of what you make.
- They get a percentage of just their salary
or also their endorsement money?
- It looks like not endorsements, just the salary.
- So how does MLB view what BLA is doing?
- Well, they wouldn't talk to us.
- Pretty shocking.
- So it's hard to completely tell you.
But listen, MLB sets the salary.
They could actually solve the problem, to a large degree,
on their own end and they choose not to.
- By paying minor leaguers? - Right.
The union, however, has said that they do not endorse BLA
and also wouldn't talk to us on camera.
- Are you as happy to be back in the studio as I am?
- I am so happy.
- I mean, we're a little distant from where we were.
- That's okay, that's okay.
- This is good, this is good. - I'm so happy.
- Soledad, thanks.
- Nice to see you. - Thank you.
Let's move on.
The Olympic games, after a year-long delay,
are set to open in Tokyo next month.
With the pandemic still raging, many observers
and most Japanese people
believe that the games should be delayed again
or cancelled altogether,
but the folks with the International Olympic Committee
don't share that view.
For them, the Summer Games are a multi-billion dollar business
which is why the IOC has moved heaven and earth
to ensure the Tokyo Games go on as planned
even if the cost of doing so is paid in human lives.
Our David Scott explains.
- Here in America, life is returning to normal.
The number of COVID cases now mercifully small
due to a supply of the vaccine that is plentifully large.
But in much of the rest of the world,
a typical day can look less like this
than like this.
Here in India, funeral pyres have burned day and night
and makeshift graves have been dug around the clock
as COVID cases and COVID deaths
have piled up out of control.
Because this nation, like most others on Earth,
has not a healthy supply of the vaccine,
but a devastating shortage.
- Few people are more aware of the shortage
than Raninder Singh, a long-time politician here
who has watched in horror as his country deteriorates.
- The crisis reached its peak on May 6th
when India set a world record for single-day COVID cases.
Yet it was forced to shut down
many of its vaccination centers
because there were no vaccines to give out.
But a far different scene took place that very day
behind closed doors in this hotel ballroom
where amidst the disaster,
a parade of young, healthy, and strong men and women
were being vaccinated.
The man who organized the event
was the politician Raninder Singh
who doubles as a powerful Olympic figure
in the country.
Singh had been given marching orders, he said,
by the International Olympic Committee, the IOC,
to vaccinate his Olympians before this summer's games.
- The same pattern has played out around the world
in recent months.
Even as most of the world's nations
have far too few doses of the vaccines
for their citizens,
the IOC has been imploring them
to vaccinate their Olympians
from Brazil
to Kenya
to Cambodia and beyond.
The IOC president wrote the head of state of Peru
saying, "The global Olympic community
has in its affections the brave Peruvian people."
And he goes on to say,
"The IOC would strongly appreciate
"if Peru's Olympic teams could be vaccinated
before the Games."
- What I hear, a very unethical edict
from the IOC in those words.
- Dr. Michael Baker is the architect
of New Zealand's renowned COVID elimination strategy
which has prevented anyone from dying in that country
from the virus for nearly a year.
He says that the world's priority
in distributing vaccines should be clear.
- It starts with healthcare workers
and then it goes to older populations
and those with long-term conditions
and you gradually work down
through the list's vulnerable groups.
And one of the last groups you would normally get to
would be healthy, young athletes.
- Mexico began vaccinating
its Olympic hopefuls and athletes
ahead of doctors.
Lithuania started vaccinating its Olympians
ahead of oncology patients and people over the age of 80.
Uganda and Zambia, Vietnam,
poor countries that had almost no vaccine supply,
started vaccinating athletes and Olympic hopefuls
before 99% of the population
had yet to get a single shot.
- The International Olympic Committee has a huge amount
to answer for if they have promoted this distortion
of vaccine prioritization in countries around the world.
Diverting vaccines away from the high-priority groups
means people get sick and die.
It's very simple.
- It was very clear the IOC were going to push ahead
no matter what challenges got in their way.
- Evan Dunfee is a Canadian race walker
who'll be competing in his second Olympics
next month.
He says that the IOC is so determined
to get athletes vaccinated
because the other option, cancelling the Tokyo Olympics,
would cost them billions of dollars.
- There's countless examples of how they're driven by greed
and I think the steadfast...
view that the show must go on
is just another example of that.
- The IOC's campaign got off to its start in January
when its longest-standing member,
Canada's Dick Pound,
went on television to make the pitch.
- To take 300 or 400 vaccines out of several million
in order to have Canada represented
at an international event of this character and level,
I don't think there'd be any kind of a public outcry
about that.
- Just the idea that
I might be getting vaccinated as a young,
healthy, relatively low-risk individual
ahead of those in my community
that needed it much more greatly than I did,
it angered me.
And I can't see any way in which
some people aren't going to die
because of this diversion of vaccines.
- We first took note of the IOC's
seeming willingness to place
their own interests above public health
in the first days of the pandemic
way back on March 12, 2020,
the day most every sports league
in the world shut down.
- Whether it's football, rugby, golf, or Formula 1,
world sport has come to a standstill.
- But on the same day those sports were going dark,
the IOC was holding a ceremony in Greece
to light the Olympic flame.
- This demonstrates once more
our commitment to the success of the Olympic games,
Tokyo 2020.
- The IOC made it clear
the upcoming games would proceed as planned
and any athlete or coach who hoped to attend
would need to qualify
by competing in upcoming events
around the world, virus or no virus.
- Right.
- Tomo Kadic is a coach
for the Croatian national boxing team.
He and his team and teams from 45 other European nations
were summoned to London
for the IOC's boxing qualifiers.
Kadic says friends and family urged him not to go.
- It's especially dangerous in your sport
because boxers and coaches come into contact
with bodily fluids all the time, right?
Spit, snot, sweat.
- But the real danger came
when the athletes from those 46 countries
were sent back home,
potentially carrying the virus to places all across Europe.
- Did you worry about that?
- But that may have been exactly what happened.
"Real Sports" has learned that at least a dozen boxers
and coaches from four different countries
brought the virus home with them.
Among them, the Croatian boxing coach,
Tomo Kadic.
Before long, countries began
to pull out of last summer's Olympics,
forcing the IOC to postpone the games.
But they seem determined not to be denied again.
This year, the IOC is arguing that the pandemic,
far from being a reason not to hold the games,
is the very reason they should be held.
- These Olympic games
will be the light at the end of the tunnel.
They will be a celebration of solidarity,
of unity of humankind in all our diversity,
and of resilience.
- It's the same message we heard
from Olympic officials
in the COVID-ravaged nation of India
where the Olympic team
is now part of that country's most exclusive club,
the 4% of citizens who've been fully vaccinated.
- Don't you think that there are people
who need that vaccine more than your athletes?
- And you think it's justified to make them a priority
even in a circumstance
where so many people are more vulnerable?
- You aren't really thinking about this
as a national problem,
as vaccines as a precious, scarce resource?
- But as national governments
appear to be giving the IOC what they want,
Citizens are dying for lack of vaccination
like in Hungary,
which in January began vaccinating Olympians
while elderly citizens were kept on the waiting lists.
- [speaking Hungarian]
- I was watching out for the phone calls 24 hours a day
to see when my parents would be notified.
We were actually thinking that the solution would be
a vaccine, a vaccine, a vaccine.
- So Tamás Nagy was unsettled to learn that
while his elderly parents were waiting their turn in line,
a select group of much younger Hungarians
were moved to the front.
- I kept reading in the news
that Olympians were receiving early vaccinations,
like the Hungarian kayak-canoe team.
They got vaccinated sooner.
- Weeks later, still waiting for his shot,
Nagy's father contracted COVID and fell severely ill.
Within days, he would be dead.
- The worst thing was that
we had seemed to stumble on the threshold.
We got a phone call on the following Sunday
that my parents could go in for their vaccination the next day.
The solution had been so close.
- Did it occur to you that
that had several hundred vaccines
not been diverted
to young, healthy Olympic athletes and hopefuls
that one of them might have been available to your father?
- Yes, it could've been, and it could've helped.
The lives of hundreds or thousands
could've had a different course
without these changes to the vaccination schedule.
- The behavior of the IOC
seems to go against all public health principles
and also, I think, the own, the principles,
as I understand, the Olympics,
which is that it's a celebration
of global unity and fair play.
So it just seems a sham
to hold the Olympics in these conditions.
- And some athletes who've been
training their lives for this moment
feel the same way,
like Canadian Olympic race walker Evan Dunfee,
who, given his nation's vaccine shortage,
now has to either take a dose arranged for him by the IOC
or go off to the games unprotected.
- At this point in time,
it's looking like I'm gonna be relying on these vaccines
that are available to the athletes in Canada
to get my second dose.
- Here you are, right?
Against jumping the line but planning to jump the line.
- What it comes down to is-- is just
narrowing my lens to me and those around me.
And I know it's hypocritical.
And I have to be able to accept that
because I'm going to take it because I'm selfish
and I want to protect myself
and I want to protect my community and my family.
And I know that comes with the trade-off
of someone else being less protected
who could, you know,
could get COVID and could die as a result of it.
♪ ♪
- David, this is a very disturbing story.
I'm not surprised, but it's disturbing.
Let's make sure I get this quote right.
The Indian official said,
"Worrying about the scarcity of a resource
is not the concern of a sports federation."
Should it be?
- Well, amidst a global pandemic,
amidst the national devastation as is unfolding now in India,
if the Indian National Olympic Committee
doesn't stand for the collective good,
then it seems to me they've all lost the plot.
- Can I assume the IOC ran from this,
doesn't care about this, cares but not enough?
What's the answer?
- Well, you know, the IOC starts from the presumption
that the Games are an essential activity.
- Hm.
- Even in the midst of the pandemic.
And if you buy into that,
then much of what they do has a logic to it.
But as soon as you challenge that first presumption...
- Right.
- Then I think it all falls apart.
- Overall, how many vaccines are we talking about?
- Tens of thousands.
- Yeah, 'cause it's not just the athletes.
- That's right. It's not just the athletes,
it's Olympic hopefuls who are still trying to qualify,
it's coaches and other personnel.
You get into the tens of thousands very quickly.
- And so any vaccine that's used for anybody
who is Olympic-related is one fewer for the rest of society
that desperately needs it? - Exactly.
This is a zero-sum game and at some point,
the Olympic committee procured a stock of donated vaccines
from Pfizer and another manufacturer,
but epidemiologists will say, "No, no,
"a shot that you give to Person A
is one that's not available for Person B."
That is why all public health authorities
issue guidelines
for prioritizing those most vulnerable
and those are not young, healthy, athletes.
- Something to keep in mind when the flame is lit
and we're all "Ooh, yeah."
- Exactly. - All right, David.
Among the 11,000 Olympians who are expected to compete
in the Tokyo Games is an American named Alexis Sablone.
Although she's viewed in some circles
as a strong medal favorite,
she would be the first to tell you
that she doesn't really belong at the Olympics
because in so many ways,
the Games represent the kind of buttoned-up structure
that she has railed against her entire life.
The very idea of her fitting into some corporate
or patriotic peg just doesn't work.
You see, Alexis is a skateboarder,
and to her, it's as much a lifestyle as it is a pursuit.
Our Mary Carillo explains.
- Yeah, drive it home! Drive it on! Yeah!
- This is how the world's best athletes are preparing
for this summer's Olympic Games.
In the pool, on the mats, and in the gym.
And this...
is how skateboarder Alexis Sablone
is getting ready for her trip to Tokyo.
You see, Sablone's training grounds
are the streets of New York City.
- These are kind of spots right here.
Like, these black ledges. - You've done time on this one?
- A little bit, yeah.
- And if you think she seems an unlikely Olympic athlete,
and skateboarding an unlikely Olympic sport,
she couldn't agree more.
- I never thought skateboarding would be in the Olympics.
I never would've thought.
Like, what are we gonna be wearing? Uniforms?
They're gonna be scoring us? Like, I can't picture it.
I mean, and now, here we are.
- This summer marks the first time skateboarding
will be included in the Olympics,
and Sablone, as one of the best street skateboarders
in the world...
- Oh, my gosh!
- Will be part of Team USA.
She hopes all the tricks she has up her sleeve
will get scores high enough to win gold,
even though she thinks the whole idea
of scoring skateboarding is ludicrous in the first place.
- There is this, like,
"sportification" of skateboarding happening,
but skateboarding itself is not a sport.
- It's an Olympic sport.
- It's more...
some people call it, like, I don't know, a lifestyle,
or an art, or--all the words sound really cheesy to me.
Like, dancing. Is, like, dancing a sport?
Like, not--it's physical.
But it's also a kind of expression.
Maybe it's closer to that?
Don't quote me on that, but yeah.
[chuckles] I don't know.
- [chuckling] I think we just did.
- Yeah, I think you just did. Maybe that's on the record.
- But if skateboarding doesn't fit neatly in a box,
that may explain why it appealed to Alexis Sablone
to begin with.
As a little girl in Connecticut,
she was constantly defying convention and breaking rules.
While the other girls played with dolls,
Sablone took a different route.
- I was collecting, like, dead bugs and I was gonna,
like, battery power-jump the bug parts back to life.
I don't know where that came from.
- Were you successful? - No.
[chuckles]
Obviously not. No.
- She would take apart our television sets
and take things--our phones. - [laughs]
- And she broke a light bulb to study what was inside it.
- Sablone's mother, Terry Donovan,
says her daughter would also study "Gray's Anatomy"
at age five,
consumed not just by the scientific explanations,
but by the drawings that illustrated them.
- And then at a very young age,
sitting at this table, she began these drawings.
- I was obsessed with drawing.
Like, always loved drawing.
And I would just draw until, like,
you know, like, 2:00 in the morning or something.
Just be working on diagrams and ideas
for whatever I was working on.
- She became more and more enthralled
with understanding the space around her,
and that fascination began to reach new heights.
- I came home from work one night
and Alexis was limping.
And she said, "I always wanted to see what it would feel like
to jump out of the second floor of a house."
- Did you not believe in gravity at the time? Or?
- I think I wanted to test out, like,
see if a parachute would work,
like, see if I could, like, hold a sheet and jump,
if it would slow me down at all.
- Then at age nine,
she discovered a new way to test the limits of gravity.
- One night, I saw two kids skating out in a parking lot.
And immediately, I was like, "What are they doing out there?
Like, what are the rules?"
- To Sablone's delight, there weren't any,
and she became obsessed with the endless possibilities
on her skateboard.
Too shy to learn in public, she spent hour after hour
here in the family garage
where no one else could watch her or judge her.
- She didn't let me come in while she was skating.
- So what'd you do if you had to call her in for dinner?
- If I needed her,
I would knock on the door on the other side
and gain admittance to our garage.
- Skateboarding, it just felt like my thing.
Like, what space can I find to do it in
where no one will see me?
I'll just be practicing on my own.
- But as Sablone had finally found her thing,
she began to realize that even in this world,
she'd still be an outsider.
Like the time she signed up for a skateboarding camp
in Pennsylvania.
- I got a phone call from the camp
and the person said,
"Your daughter is the only girl who's still signed up."
And I said, "Well, how many boys are there?"
And he said, "600."
- Sablone went anyway and kept rolling from there--
through the ups and the downs.
- [screams]
- Then at age 15, she got her big break
when she was featured
in a hugely popular skateboarding video.
- ♪ Hey, mambo! ♪
♪ Mambo Italiano! ♪
♪ Hey, mambo! ♪
♪ Mambo Italiano! ♪
- I think it was the number one-selling skateboarding video
of the year that year.
- ♪ Mambo like a crazy with a ♪
♪ Hey, mambo! ♪
- The appearance made Sablone
one of the most talked about talents
in the skateboarding world.
That was the good news. The bad news?
She was still "just a girl."
So while her male counterparts
began scoring lucrative sponsorships,
she got none.
- Men were paid to just be street skaters
and to film parks and women weren't.
You could get free stuff,
but in terms of, like, an actual paycheck,
that was-- it just wasn't happening.
- For girls and women,
there was only way to make money on a skateboard:
by treating skating not as art, but as sport
and entering competitions.
To Sablone, it was a nightmare scenario.
- Contests were never seen as,
like, this cool thing in skateboarding.
Because that is, like, structured,
scored skateboarding.
- It just sounds like it's not the ethos of skateboarding.
- Yeah, and competition for me
is definitely unpleasant.
It is like the most stress you've ever been.
When I think about just the start of a contest,
I can get, like, a--
like a heart palpitation just thinking about it.
Like someone standing in front of you, counting you down
and then it's, "Go now. Skateboard."
Like, on command.
I remember just being like, "I hate contests."
- [chuckling] - I never wanna do that again.
- Still, the girl who wouldn't
let her own mother watch her skate in the garage
figured out how to wow judges and crowds at competitions.
- Oh! - Oh, my God!
- Are you kidding me?
I haven't even seen that in the men's skateboard street.
- Soon, she was winning big events and big money,
enough that she could now support not just her skating,
but a return to her first love...
- My studio's in there.
I've been there for about three years.
- Her love of art and design.
These days, when Sablone's not out on the streets,
you can find her in this little art studio in Brooklyn
where her curious mind can run wild
just like back in the old days.
What kind of imaginings are these?
- Most of those were ideas for these skateable sculptures
in Montclair, New Jersey.
- The sculptures are designed to be skated on
by the town's young riders,
but they double as works of urban art.
She created a similar skate park
for a town square in Sweden which also makes a statement.
When viewed from above,
it reveals the face of a woman.
And if it looks to you like these must have been designed
by an honest-to-god architect, well, you'd be right,
because this skate master
also has a master's degree in architecture
from a school you may have heard of--MIT.
Does the architect you and the skateboarder in you
see space the same way?
- I think that there's this element of creativity
and, like, imagining something beyond what's there
that ties design and skateboarding together.
It's like you're trying to
create something from nothing.
- Sablone's creations all seem to blend
her two passions, skating and design.
There are those skate parks, of course,
but there's also the video she created last year
during the early days of the pandemic.
Sablone worked the camera, scored the music...
[chill techno music]
Edited the video, and created all of the animation.
Oh, and she was also the star.
♪ ♪
And then there are these,
the shoes that Sablone has designed.
- So these are some of the different designs.
- Easy on the eyes
and tough enough for the streets.
The shoes are sold by Converse,
the sportswear giant.
Yes, at age 34, ancient in the world of skateboarding,
Sablone finally has a sponsor paying her a salary.
- After all those years of skateboarding,
to suddenly have a monthly paycheck
for skateboarding is, you know, in my 30s, um...
it's pretty crazy how that worked out.
- But fear not.
Money hasn't changed Alexis Sablone.
She's still happiest with just her skateboard
and a world of obstacles to take on.
♪ ♪
Across the river from her studio
on Manhattan's Upper West Side,
Sablone took us to
the American Museum of Natural History.
- And you basically jump over this chain...
- Uh-huh.
- And over this and into the sidewalk.
- It's a structure whose features and materials
make it beloved by both architects and skaters.
- This is like just the right texture, basically...
- Yeah. - So you can feel it grinding.
- Out here, Sablone is not seen
as America's next gold medal hope,
but just a public menace security has to stop
from terrorizing the neighborhood.
- Communication with the museum.
- Okay. We gotta go, guys.
- Can you just tone it down, please?
[unintelligible] You can't do that.
That's what's happening.
- And even with no security in sight,
she sometimes has to pump her own brakes
when prying eyes throw her off-balance.
- I get shy when people watch,
so whenever people are watching,
I just wait.
- She knows she can't wait forever.
After all, what was once underground
will officially go global next month in Tokyo,
where a panel of judges and the whole world
will be watching Sablone's every move...
and keeping score. - Whoo!
- By competing in the Olympics,
are there gonna be fellow street skateboarders
who think, "Ah, she sold out."
- Probably.
When I was ten years old,
I would've thought that about myself,
but skateboarding's changed a lot, you know?
And not many people get this opportunity,
and it's just, you know, it's the Olympics.
It's an honor.
- Yeah, this isn't your mama's garage.
- [chuckling] No. No, definitely not.
I'm sure everyone will be watching and it's--
I'm just gonna try not to think about that part.
♪ ♪
- Mary, I confess I'm very biased here.
Alexis, very cool. - Oh, she--
this could be recency bias,
but she's my favorite athlete of all time.
- Yeah, she's really cool.
Has she had any serious injuries?
I mean, the stuff she does is kinda scary.
- She can go through and explain every scar to you.
"This was Ohio, this was Rome, this was--"
but she, oddly enough, she has never been--
I mean, she's had broken bones and stuff,
but that's the deal if you're a skateboarder.
- You said the boarding industry is male-oriented,
and I get that.
Are most boarders guys
and is she at any physical disadvantage
by not being a guy?
- There is a trick that Alexis hopes she can land in Tokyo
that very few women can do-- guys can do it.
If she lands it, she gets gold.
If she doesn't land it, it's not gonna happen.
So obviously,
there's always a difference between men and women,
but she's really good at this. - Yeah.
Is it fair to say
or is this just my bias against the IOC saying this...
- [chuckling]
- Is it fair to say the IOC's inclusion of skateboarding
as an event is kind of indicative
of their desperate attempt to remain relevant
in today's world?
- Well, I think it's clear in winter sports as well,
telegenic sports like aerials, you know?
- Right. - All that kind of stuff is--
They're trying to keep the youth movement going,
so the fact that Alexis is 34 years old?
- Yeah. - It's kind of cool.
- I love it. - You and me both.
- I also love that she said it's not a sport.
Do you agree?
- I--well, I don't know what it is.
- [imitating stuttering]
- This is a show called "Real Sports,"
and we've gone through all manner of discussions.
- I get it. This is a yes or no answer.
- I'd say yes,
but in 2024 in Paris, the Summer Games,
breakdancing is a sport.
So limber up. - [laughing]
That myth ends with me. - [laughs]
- Mary, thanks. - You're welcome.
- Our final story tonight is an update of a report
we first aired six years ago about the battle for space
being waged by cyclists and motorists
on all of our streets and roads.
Last year, as virtually everything got upended,
the pandemic changed the dynamics
of how Americans get around.
But those changes, it seems, were merely temporary,
leaving this country again lagging behind
the kind of creative transportation outlook
that Europeans are now enjoying.
- Hey, watch it!
What the fuck? Dude!
You serious, man? - Motherfucker!
The hell's your goddamn problem?
- You saw me the whole way, bro.
- Huh?
- Across the United States,
a nasty battle has been brewing for years.
- I have the right of way. I'm going straight.
- Fucking bike lane.
- Get the fuck out of here, you asshole.
- You're in a fucking bike lane. You're the asshole.
- It's a battle for the space shared by bikers, motorists,
and pedestrians.
- [grunts] [onlookers yelp]
- And it's being waged on roadways
from coast to coast.
[metallic clattering]
America's bike wars are ugly, scary,
and unforgiving,
and while cyclists are often the victims...
[bike tire squeaks]
They all-too-often victimize others.
- Whoa! - Whoa!
- It's a non-stop, unbounded war
in which there seem to be few rules...
- Move the fuck over, buddy!
- And even fewer levels of understanding.
- The bike lane is over there, dude!
- That's a bike lane. - That's the bike lane!
That's the bike lane, dude!
- Last spring,
when the pandemic emptied the streets,
it also triggered a biking boom
on streets and roads that were suddenly car-free
and therefore much safer, bicycles took over.
[bike bells ringing]
Around the world, people gravitated to biking
as a safe and socially-distant way
to commute and exercise.
Interest in cycling surged
and record sales actually caused
an international bike shortage.
- Whether you're turning to a bike for transportation
or for exercise, they're a godsend right now.
But if you're trying to buy one, good luck.
- John Pitts, an avid cyclist,
was excited to see his sister, Sarah,
discover the joys of biking in New York City.
- She took up biking and found that she loved it.
She started calling me every weekend going on, like,
20- or 30-mile bike rides across all five boroughs,
all across the city.
- But John's excitement proved short-lived
when his sister became a bike wars fatality.
Talk me through September 7th of last year
and how you found out,
how you learned what had happened.
- So I woke up to a phone call from my father
who could barely even speak.
He said, "Sarah has been hit by a car.
They say she has no brain activity."
- Sarah Pitts had been struck and killed
by this charter bus while biking through
a notoriously dangerous intersection in Brooklyn.
- I am unbelievably sad every day
to not have her in my life.
And to not see everything else that she was going to do.
- Sarah's story is one that is tragically familiar.
On average, two to three cyclists
are killed every day on America's street and roads,
and with more cyclists now on the road than ever before,
the shared spaces are being contested at every turn.
It's an all-out battle that has only grown worse
since we first looked at it six years ago.
- God damn it.
- There is chaos. There is certainly chaos.
Megan Hoffman was once celebrated for her biking
as a national cycling champion.
But commuting to work
and biking around her home state of Colorado
often left her feeling like an object of scorn.
- I get yelled at quite frequently by motorists
telling me to get off the roads and get on the sidewalks.
I've had plenty of people pass very closely to me and buzz me.
There's a lot of conflict. There's a lot of tension.
- What is it Americans don't get about bikes?
- For many, they don't understand
why we would ever ride a bike
when you have a perfectly- functional car at home.
There's a component of frustration.
"You're getting in my way. I'm trying to get somewhere.
I'm in a hurry."
There's a component of,
"I don't have to share the road with you.
You're not an equal road user. Bikes belong over there."
- Hup, hup! - Yeah, boy!
- In truth, bikers haven't exactly endeared themselves
to motorists or pedestrians, either.
Darting in and out of traffic...
- Stop!
- Running red lights with reckless abandon...
And pedaling through crowded places
at speeds better suited to the Tour de France.
- Look out!
- It has created levels of mutual distrust so deep
between bikers, cars, and pedestrians
that it makes one wonder if there's any way
that bicycles can ever have a place
in our most dense and modern urban centers.
But it turns out there may be an answer,
even if it's 4,000 miles away.
This is Copenhagen, Denmark's largest city.
On a typical morning in this city
of 2 million people,
nearly half of whom commute by bike,
cyclists do exist in peaceful harmony
with pedestrians and cars.
They enjoy a vast network of fully-protected lanes
complete with dedicated stoplights.
There are special, bike-only highways
and bridges just for bikes.
- The bicycle in Copenhagen has become mainstream.
That's today the majority's choice of transport.
- So in Copenhagen,
you'd think bicycle first, car second?
- I'd say bicycles first, public transport,
walking, and then the car.
- Morten Kabell oversaw urban planning for Copenhagen,
a city that remarkably looked like this 50 years ago--
an ugly thicket of exhaust-belching automobiles.
- In the '70s, Copenhagen was car-oriented, car-dominated.
- What changed?
- Copenhageners made a change.
They took to the streets.
We had 150,000 people standing outside the city hall,
and they were tired
of having their squares used as parking lots,
they were tired of not being able
to send their kids off to school on their own,
so they actually wanted to get their city back.
- You're telling me that simply because
the traffic had become so terrible
that people said, "We need something new"?
- They wanted something else.
- With Kabell's help,
Copenhagen made way for the bicycle.
And as a result, reaped many rewards.
It has become one of the most
environmentally-friendly cities in all the world,
one whose citizens reportedly save more than a $1/4 billion
a year in health care alone, thanks to bikes.
And despite the vast number of riders in Copenhagen,
fatalities are exceedingly rare.
Safe, healthy, economical.
Biking's proponents say it's also practical.
- It's simply the fastest way from A to B, you know?
That's why people ride here.
They don't ride 'cause they're eco-hippies, man.
Pinko commies, you know?
They just ride because it's the fastest way
to go anywhere in this city.
- Mikael Colville-Andersen specializes in showing cities
around the world how to become more bike-friendly.
His consulting firm is aptly named Copenhagenize.
What is it that Europeans understand
and appreciate about the bicycle...
- Mm-hmm.
- That Americans in the main don't get?
- A large number of Americans, they're going, "Oh, bikes.
"Great on the weekends down by the river
on that little green trail," you know?
They don't think of it as transport.
That's the trick, is that perception
of the bicycle as sport and recreation and not transport.
Here, we understand it.
- Others have recently come to understand it as well.
Pandemic bike boom provided the perfect opportunity
for cities to rethink their traffic patterns and habits
not just to accommodate the new wave of bikers,
but to radically reimagine
what was possible for their roads.
Once again, it was Europe leading the way.
Paris set the gold standard
for rethinking their infrastructure
by producing a network of over 40 miles
of newly-protected bike lanes.
While visiting the city this month,
Mikael Colville-Andersen showed us
how even the Rue de Rivoli,
a bustling street in the heart of Paris,
has been transformed.
- It's really cool to ride from the Champs-Elysées
down to where I'm standing today.
It really is an amazing transformation.
One of the most exciting ones I've seen.
- And why have you chosen
to show us this street in particular?
- Well, this has really been the showpiece
of corona infrastructure.
So it is just this ocean of space
given over to the bikes
with one car lane left for cars,
so it's really, you know, an iconic boulevard
that has just gone all in with bicycle infrastructure.
- Paris wasn't alone.
In Europe, London, Berlin, and Milan
also used the bike boom to rethink their roads,
install miles of new bicycle lanes,
and dramatically transform their infrastructures.
- European cities were the first movers
and on a scale that I, you know,
I never dreamed possible.
We have built in all the different countries
over 600 miles of protected bicycle infrastructure.
We've gone all in.
- American cities made some changes.
Seattle added 20 miles of bike lanes,
Washington, D.C. lowered its speed limits,
and New York created bike-friendly open streets,
but helpful measures in this country
have been woefully inconsistent
and mostly temporary,
leaving urban design experts like Colville-Andersen
frustrated about what might have been.
- I am totally disappointed at this missed opportunity
in so many American cities, man.
There's a list of cities that did some cool stuff,
but it is an incredibly short list.
- And that missed opportunity comes at a cost.
Amid the pandemic biking surge,
despite the reduced auto traffic, last year
America's roads still saw about 700 cycling fatalities
including Sarah Pitts.
Today, other than a memorial that sits
on the Brooklyn corner where she was hit,
little has changed.
That intersection is still riddled with blind corners
and bike lanes are still often obstructed.
In three years, there have been 126 crashes in the area,
and for Sarah's brother, John,
that's unacceptable, as is the very idea
that his sister's death was just a tragic accident.
- I really object to "accident"
because we often talk about, "it's an accident"
when a cyclist is killed or when a pedestrian is killed.
It's not an accident.
Someone planned that intersection,
someone made the decision of whether it was safe or not.
And that means it's never an accident.
Right? It's a choice.
You've got cities in Europe
that are much better for bike infrastructure
because they've made a choice to be better for that.
And I think if you have enough demand
and have the political will,
it's a choice you could make here.
♪ ♪
- Quick tag.
While bike-sharing systems are available
in over 60 U.S. cities now, studies show that their use
is heavily dependent on infrastructure,
with most people claiming they want to ride
only on those streets with protected bike lanes.
Until political will leads to more of those,
it is unrealistic to think
that our heated American bike wars
will cool anytime soon.
And that's our show for this evening.
Boy, it's good to be back among the troops.
For all the good folks here at "Real Sports,"
I'm Bryant Gumbel.
Thank you so very much for being with us and good night.
♪ ♪