It’s a Five-Ring Circus at the U.S. Olympic Committee

Tumult at the top of the United States Olympic movement -- a parade of leadership changes, incessant political infighting, allegations of doping scandals and, most recently, ethics-related controversies -- is triggering fears that American athletes will win fewer medals in 2004 and beyond.

The U.S. led the medal count at the last two Summer Games and accounted for a team-record number of medals at the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Games.

But turmoil in the U.S. Olympic Committee appears to be chipping away at the organization’s credibility and may threaten funding that is the lifeblood of its athletes.

“There are ... too many people involved in the movement who are there just to take trips, to be team managers, to wear the blue blazers or the USA warmup jackets,” said Edwin Moses, a two-time Olympic 400-meter hurdles champion. “There’s a lot to be desired in the organization right now.”

A “laughingstock” is the way one prominent USOC official described the organization. Said another: “I’m not sure we can get lower.”

Frustration and disillusionment is deep-rooted, and the USOC would probably be hearing from even more critics from within its ranks were it not for a gag order imposed by its leadership in advance of a meeting today in Denver.

The meeting was called over revelations that USOC Chief Executive Lloyd Ward might have used his influence to help his brother’s company bid for a contract for the 2003 Pan American Games. The USOC’s policy-making executive committee is scheduled to decide whether to take disciplinary action against Ward, including his possible removal. If Ward is fired, his replacement would be the 12th person to hold the top staff job at the Olympic committee since 1978, a turnover that critics cite as evidence of the need for fundamental change and perhaps a congressional review.

“It is time to take a look at the organization,” said Moses, a member of the International Olympic Committee’s ethics commission. “We’re looking at back-to-back scandals, changes in leadership and other scenarios that aren’t pleasant for public consumption.”

Among them:

* Last May Sandra Baldwin, the USOC’s first female president, resigned after acknowledging she had listed in her official biography a doctorate in American literature she had not earned.

* In October 2000, Norm Blake resigned as chief executive after only nine months on the job because of institutional opposition to his plan to remake the USOC into more of a corporate-style entity. “It’s without question the most politicized organizational structure I’ve ever seen,” Blake said in a recent interview, adding with a rueful laugh, “It eats its own.”

* In January 1999, Alfredo LaMont, a former USOC director of international affairs, resigned after being linked to the 1998 scandal involving Salt Lake’s winning bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics. He pleaded guilty in March 2000 to two felony counts.

* In 1991, Robert Helmick, then the USOC president, resigned over conflict-of-interest issues.

The changes in leadership have resulted in constant shifts in direction. Over the years, the USOC has launched seven different strategic plans, leading observers to wonder: Is it a business? A nonprofit organization? Is its overarching goal to win medals? Or to serve as an example of the highest ethical standards and inspire the nation’s youth?

The U.S. Olympic Committee structure was created by Congress 25 years ago in the Amateur Sports Act, intended to strengthen and upgrade the country’s Olympic movement. In theory, policy is set by the volunteer 120-member board of directors -- Olympic groupies from every corner of the land -- and its president, officers and executive committee. The CEO -- currently Ward -- and staff in Colorado Springs, Colo., run the organization on a day-to-day basis.

But in practice, there has been a long-running tug of war for influence between the volunteers and hired staff.

Ward is in trouble because he directed USOC staff to introduce Detroit-based Energy Management Technologies to organizers in the Dominican Republic, site of the 2003 Pan Am Games. Ward’s brother, Rubert, is identified on at least two company documents as EMT president and a childhood friend of the brothers, Lorenzo Williams, is listed as CEO.

Lloyd Ward does not have a financial interest in EMT, and Pan Am organizers have not signed a contract with the company. Last July 1, Ward signed a USOC form that said he had no real or potential conflicts of interest.

Last week, in an e-mail sent to most of the members of the USOC’s executive committee, Ward acknowledged an “error in judgment,” though he said he did “nothing wrong.” He also apologized for his “part in causing this major distraction.”

In a letter dated Sunday and sent to the executive committee, Ward said it is “imperative” that today’s hearing “not be a ‘kangaroo court.’ ” He also said unless certain procedural issues were resolved in his favor -- changes USOC lawyers ruled against two days earlier -- he would not take part in the meeting.

A former Maytag CEO, Ward came to the USOC in November 2001 with a reputation as a marketing guru. But it remains uncertain if the committee, already planning for beyond the 2004 Athens Games, can reach its revenue targets. Those goals have been increased significantly for the next Olympic cycle, $600 million for the years 2005-08, about a 20% increase from $491 million from 2001 to ’04.

Committee marketing officials are optimistic they will meet that goal and that two deals are in the pipeline but have not been announced. Since the end of the Salt Lake Games, the IOC has announced four major sponsor deals, the USOC only one. Meantime, one of the USOC’s longtime corporate backers, United Airlines, recently filed for bankruptcy.

The financial picture is so unclear that Forbes magazine recently advised donors to be wary of giving to the organization.

“They’re totally dysfunctional,” a senior executive at one longtime sponsor said of the USOC. “You don’t even want to deal with them on anything of substance because they’re so screwed up.”

The USOC is also in hot water with many of the world’s sports officials, who remain aggrieved that the U.S. has not revealed the name of an athlete who competed in the Sydney Games after testing positive for drugs. The athlete tested positive in 1999 for an anabolic steroid, was exonerated by a USA Track & Field appeal board, and then competed in Sydney. Some USOC officials know the athlete’s identity.

A Swiss-based tribunal, the Court of Arbitration for Sport, ruled Friday that USA Track & Field -- and by extension, the USOC -- need not reveal the athlete’s name.

But Dick Pound, a longtime Canadian member of the IOC and chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said, “It’s a big disappointment to WADA that the USOC has not stepped into the leadership role that it appropriates for itself but doesn’t demonstrate by its conduct.

“It’s incomprehensible to me how officials with the United States are sitting on the knowledge of a positive test that affected an event at the Sydney Olympics and simply will not divulge who it was.”

By most accounts, given its opportunity to host the Olympics four times since 1980, the U.S.’s future should be as good as gold were its Olympic committee properly managed. Instead, there are dents in the armor.

The U.S. led the competition with 101 medals in Atlanta in 1996 and 97 in Sydney in 2000.

But in Atlanta the U.S. benefited in part from a home-field advantage -- as all host countries do -- a point again made abundantly clear in Salt Lake, where U.S. athletes won 34 medals, most ever for a U.S. team at a Winter Games.

And in Sydney, more than a third of the U.S. medals, 33, were won by the swim team. Five more were won by track star Marion Jones. The remainder of the U.S. team, competing in 27 sports, won only 59.

In 2002, the U.S. won 85 medals at world championships -- 12 fewer than it did in roughly the same number of opportunities at the Sydney Games.

The USOC is in such a state now that even those programs that are proven winners aren’t guaranteed continuity. The so-called “Podium” program, which identified potential U.S. medal-winners well ahead of the Salt Lake Games and invested millions in their coaching and training, played a significant role in the haul of medals. Yet no such program is in place for 2004.

“The USOC most assuredly does need fixing,” said John Lucas, professor emeritus at Penn State and an authority on both the USOC and IOC.

Another expert, John MacAloon, a professor at the University of Chicago, called for a thorough re-examination of the USOC, saying it currently has a “major structural problem,” with “absolutely no effective oversight.”

“The great failing of the Amateur Sports Act is that the U.S. Congress refused to accept an active oversight role itself but put in no effective independent board of directors to serve the same function,” MacAloon said.

Key lawmakers, including Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who played a leading role in enactment of the 1978 sports act, could not be reached for comment.

An emerging sense among many Olympic observers is that the incident with Ward -- however it is resolved -- may amount to a last straw that commands the attention of Congress.

“It’s not just that Ward has to go,” Frank Deford, a senior contributing writer at Sports Illustrated, said in a commentary broadcast Wednesday on National Public Radio. “It’s time that somehow more honorable and capable people were attracted to our Olympic organization who could then bring in top-drawer executives.” He added that even the IOC, “peopled by a great many knuckleheads and scoundrels,” is “appalled at the third-raters the world’s superpower presents as its Olympic elite.”

For all its flaws, the USOC remains the most important and powerful of the world’s 199 national Olympic committees.

Only the USOC gets a special cut of the IOC’s broadcasting rights -- a lucrative slice that for the Athens Games will total 12.75% of the fee paid by the U.S. broadcaster. NBC is paying $3.5 billion to the IOC to televise the Games in the U.S. from 2000 through 2008. The USOC’s share of the deal for Sydney was $70.5 million; for Salt Lake, $54.5 million.

And while there frequently has been considerable friction in the relationship -- for one, the IOC is intent on trimming that 12.75% fee as soon as possible -- the IOC has consistently made a point of paying attention to the U.S. Just days after being elected IOC president in July 2001, for example, Belgian Jacques Rogge journeyed to USOC headquarters in Colorado Springs.

The biggest question left unanswered is, how great would America’s Olympic sports accomplishments be were it not for the recurring distractions?

Pound, an IOC member since 1978, observed, “Everybody recognizes that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, and that its Olympic committee has an unprecedented position of power when you compare it with most [others]....

“Why does it seem impossible since 1980 to get somebody of real stature to lead the most important [national Olympic Committee] in the world?

He sighed, then said, in a reference to the Americans one sees at Olympic events, often attired in the USA warmups or navy-blue sport coats emblazoned with the USOC seal, “People of quality are unable to fight their way through the concentric circle of blazers.”