I have written about what the LA28 priority cable does and does not do, and about the I visa most broadcast crews have never heard of. This article is about the people who travel with the athletes, and it makes one argument: the officer at the window does not adjudicate a delegation. The officer adjudicates one person’s employment, and an accreditation list says nothing about that.
How the Athletes Come In
Most Olympic competitors do not come on athlete visas. They come as visitors, on ESTA or a B visa. The FAM lets a professional athlete whose career is based abroad and who is paid abroad compete as a business visitor so long as no U.S. source pays him anything but prize money, and it lets an amateur who receives nothing beyond expenses come as a tourist. That is how athletes have come to every Games held here. The priority cable exists to get those athletes appointments. It does not change what they are applying for.
The staff are a separate paragraph, and it is a new one. In September 2025 the Department rewrote 9 FAM 402.2-5(C)(4) and spelled out who counts as “necessary personnel” for a foreign athlete or team: coaching staff, athletic trainers, medical support staff, nutritionists, equipment specialists, analysts, and the like. They can be issued a B-1 on three conditions: they already perform the same services, for pay, for that athlete or team abroad; the athlete or team is based abroad; and their salary accrues abroad. The paragraph is written around professional athletes, and plenty of Olympians are amateurs who enter under a different one, but it is the paragraph written for support staff, and the officer will read it as the rule for the staff of any athlete. A federation reads its list and sees athletes and staff, all credentialed alike. The officer sees, for each name, three facts that are either there or not.
The first fact is the one federations miss. It is not “employed by us.” It is “does this for us at home.” That distinction runs through every example below.
The Coach, and the Coach Who Is Also Running a Clinic
The federation’s head coach is the easy case and the reason federations assume everyone else is easy too. He or she is on the payroll, they were in Paris with the same athletes, and they will be doing in Los Angeles what they do every week at home. All three facts are visible from the coach’s own description, and the officer confirms them in two questions.
Now take the same coach, except that a club in Southern California has arranged for him or her to run a paid three-day clinic for its juniors the week before competition. The three facts are still true. But a B-1 visitor may not take a salary or fee from a U.S. source, and the clinic is one. He or she is a visitor with a side engagement, and the officer will treat the side engagement as the application, because it is the part that is not covered.
The Physiotherapist, Three Ways
If the physiotherapist is on the federation’s staff and goes everywhere the team goes, they are the coach’s case. Federations from smaller countries rarely have one. They engage a physiotherapist for the Games, and how they engage this person decides the interview.
The first version is what most federations will do: find a good practitioner at home, contract him or her for the six weeks, pay from the federation’s account, and put them on the list. It looks clean, and it fails the first fact. He or she has never done this for the team abroad; they were hired for the trip. A case that does not fit the paragraph is not one the officer can issue on their own authority. The FAM requires an advisory opinion from the Department before a B-1 goes to anyone whose U.S. employment is not clearly within one of the listed categories, but whether an officer working a long Games queue is going to send an AO for a physiotherapist is another question. The likely outcome is a 221(g) that never resolves or a 214(b) refusal, and neither was necessary. The fix is to make the first fact true before he or she applies: bring them onto the team for the qualifying meets and the pre-Games camp, pay them for that work, and let them describe a job they already have.
The second version is the practitioner who was engaged properly, has a private practice at home, and says at the window that a colleague has put them in touch with two athletes from other delegations who would like treatment while they are in Los Angeles. He or she thinks they have described a busy trip. But instead, they have described a foreign medical professional coming to see patients for fees in the United States, and there is no visitor category for that. The officer heard it in the sentence, and the sentence is now the case.
The third version is the practitioner who trained in the United States, holds a state license from those years, and has kept it current. He or she may intend to do nothing but treat their own team. The license is in the record, and it answers the officer’s question about what they could do here better than anything they say about what they will do. This is not fatal, but it is no longer a one-minute interview, and it should not be a surprise at the window.
The Doctor, the Cook, and the Groom
The team doctor raises the physiotherapist’s question in a form that federations find harder to see. Two federations sharing a training base decide, sensibly, that one of them does not need to send a doctor because the other’s will cover both teams for a fee. The doctor is now treating athletes he does not treat at home, for an organization that does not employ him, and other than the necessary-personnel paragraph, the FAM’s only B-1 provision for a physician is for one who will observe and consult, with no patient care. That the second organization is another Olympic delegation, paying from abroad, does not bring him back inside the paragraph.
The cook is the case federations think is obviously fine and officers think is obviously not. Nutritionists are in the FAM’s list of necessary personnel; cooks are not. A cook on the federation’s payroll, sent to make the food the team eats at home, is a defensible case, and the officer will decide it on how it is presented. The chef who will be cooking in the country’s hospitality house is a different person. Those houses are run by sponsors and caterers, the caterer is operating in the United States, and the chef is working for it, whatever the delegation credential in his pocket says.
Equestrian delegations produce the groom problem, and here the FAM is unusually specific: a groom performing services for a foreign-based employer is a B-1. The groom who has worked in the rider’s yard for six years and is paid by the yard is exactly that, and a good officer will not spend long on him or her. The freelance groom booked through an agency for the Games, paid by the day by whichever owner’s horse they are holding, some of them based here, has no foreign-based employer, and equestrian federations, which staff that way routinely, will send several of these without noticing anything is different about them.
For completeness: referees, judges, and technical officials are the one group the FAM handles cleanly. It names the Olympics as an example of the event they may officiate on a B-1, provided no U.S. source pays them beyond expenses. They are not the problem.
Titles Are Not Facts
Every delegation has people whose title is “team official” and whose function is something else: a federation president’s spouse, a sponsor’s representative, a politician’s aide, a relative who was given a credential because credentials were available. The officers who will adjudicate LA28 have not done an Olympics. The last one here was Salt Lake in 2002, before most of them joined the Service. What they have done is this summer’s World Cup, under a paragraph rewritten the September before, and years of ordinary sports-delegation cases at ordinary posts, the youth tournament in Florida, the martial arts championship in Las Vegas, where enough “officials” turned out not to be officials that the pattern is familiar. A title on an accreditation list makes them look harder, not less hard. The applicant who says “I’m a team official” and cannot say what he does for the team in one sentence has an interview that is now about whether he belongs to the delegation at all.
“Manager” is the other title that gets people in trouble, particularly in the individual sports. When I asked a manager what he would be doing, the answer that ended the question was “getting him to the track and to the village and back.” The answer that started a different one was a list of companies he hoped to meet. Handling an athlete’s logistics is support. Negotiating an athlete’s endorsements with American companies is business, and possibly not the kind a visitor may do. The officer will ask which, and the manager who has not thought about the difference tends to give the second answer because it sounds more important.
What I Asked
Who pays you, and what will you be doing every day you are in the United States? A person whose salary comes from the federation and whose days are spent with the team answers both in one breath, and the answer usually carries the first fact with it: “the same thing I do at every competition.” A person who has to think about the first, or who describes the second in terms of what she hopes to arrange while she is there, has answered the question the officer was really asking.
Why This Matters More for Staff Than for Athletes
Here is the part federations do not see. If an athlete’s visitor basis fails, there are work categories designed for athletes, and a petition can be filed. The work categories designed for sports support staff, the P-1S and the O-2, hang off a principal athlete who holds a P-1 or an O-1. Olympic athletes coming as visitors do not. The physiotherapist hired for the trip, the doctor covering two delegations, the chef at the hospitality house: none of them has a category to fall back on short of a U.S. employer willing to sponsor them, which at that point does not exist. For the athlete, the visitor basis is a floor. For the staff, it is the only floor there is.
And a refusal does not just cost the trip. It is on the record, and it will be read by the next officer this person sees, for any visa, for years. A federation that puts a marginal case on the list and hopes has, if the case fails, started a Prior Refusal Spiral for someone who did nothing except accept a credential.
What I Would Tell the Federation
Go through the list one name at a time, before the appointments are booked, and for each name test the three facts: does this for the team at home, for a team based abroad, paid abroad. Anyone who fails one needs a different plan, and for most of them that means changing the arrangement so the facts are true, not finding a visa that fits the arrangement, because there is not one. The Games-only physiotherapist starts working for the team this year. The doctor covers one delegation. The hospitality-house chef is the caterer’s problem, not the federation’s, and should not be on the federation’s list.
For the people who are clearly support, make sure their paperwork says in plain words what they do for the team, since when, and who pays them, because the officer has 2.5 minutes and a credential answers none of those questions.
If your federation is assembling a delegation for LA28 and the list includes anyone beyond the athletes and the coaches on payroll, we recommend that you consult with us before the appointments are made rather than after the first refusal.
