JULIAN ROOSEVELT, OLYMPIC PARTISAN, DIES

Julian (Dooley) Roosevelt, grandnephew of President Theodore Roosevelt and controversial member of the International Olympic Committee, died Thursday at Glen Cove Hospital on Long Island, N.Y. where he had been undergoing treatment for liver cancer.

Himself an Olympic yachting champion, Roosevelt, 61, touched off an international furor in 1984 when he proposed readmission of South African contestants to the Games, and was an outspoken critic of the U.S. boycott of the Moscow Games.

He also aroused considerable hostility among some of his fellow countrymen when he opposed accreditation of Radio Free Europe correspondents for the Sarejevo Winter Olympics on grounds that their agency was a propaganda tool of the U.S. government.

Served in 3 Services “He did not intend to create controversy,” Bob Paul, special assistant to the secretary general of the U.S. Olympic Committee and a longtime Roosevelt friend, explained. “It was only that he was so imbued with the principles of the Olympic movement--of amateurism and sporting competition.

“He believed in that with all his heart and soul.”

Born Nov. 14, 1924 in New York City, Julian Kean Roosevelt was the son of noted yachtsman George Emlen Roosevelt. He was graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard College, served in the Coast Guard during World War II and later held commissions in both the Navy and Army.

An investment banker and vice president of Sterling Grace & Co, Roosevelt was a lifelong devotee of amateur sport--particularly yachting. He was a member of the U.S. Olympic team in 1948 and again in 1952, when his 5-man, 6-meter boat won a gold medal at Helsinki. He also served as manager of the team in 1956, 1960 and 1964.

A member of a dozen yacht clubs and a frequent organizer or judge of racing events, he managed the America’s Cup competition in 1968 and was a member of the New York Yacht Club’s America’s Cup committee.

In 1974, he succeeded Avery Brundage as U.S. representative to the International Olympic Committee and in 1982 began a four-year term on the 11-member executive board of the IOC, which is in charge of policy for the organization.

Arguing that the Olympics should be free of all political taint, he had fought--unsuccessfully--against banning South African athletes from the Games, and (using the same arguments with the same lack of success) was one of the more vocal opponents of the United States’ 1980 boycott of the Moscow Olympics.

He denied having voiced open criticism of Radio Free Europe but voted against accreditation of its correspondents, and he most recently emerged as leader of another seemingly doomed effort to prevent the IOC from letting professional athletes participate in the Games.

“He will be remembered,” Canadian IOC board member Richard Pound said, “as one to whom the Olympics and what they stand for were certainly important. He did his best to spread that to the United States and to the world. You never had a doubt as to where he stood.”

Roosevelt, whose first marriage ended in divorce, leaves his wife, Margaret Schantz Roosevelt, a daughter, Fay Fisher; three sons, Nicholaes Paul, George Emlen III and Robbin Addison Roosevelt, a sister, Margaret Roosevelt; a brother, George E. Roosevelt, and three grandchildren.

Funeral services were scheduled for 11 a.m. Monday in Christ Church, Oyster Bay, N.Y.