Barcelona, French Resort Will Host Olympics in 1992

Amid intrigue that would rival any political convention, the International Olympic Committee on Friday selected Barcelona, Spain, to host the 1992 Summer Olympics and Albertville, France, as the site of the Winter Olympics.

The romanticists will rejoice. The Summer Games are returning to a cosmopolitan city on the shores of the Mediterranean, the Winter Games to a resort village in the French Alps.

But there was nothing romantic about the selection process, which included protests by groups opposed to the Olympics in their cities, millions of dollars spent by candidates and charges of votes being bartered.

The announcement of the winning sites, which was telecast live throughout Europe, brought the 91st International Olympic Committee session to a dramatic conclusion at the Palais de Beaulieu here.

The subplots Friday included the election of four new IOC members, including Los Angeles attorney Anita DeFrantz, 34, as the second U.S. representative, and the announcement by IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch of a possible breakthrough in negotiations with North Korea that could avert a boycott of the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea.

Samaranch said he has a meeting scheduled today in Lausanne with North Korean officials, who are expected to respond to the IOC’s offer to allow them to stage archery, table tennis and a preliminary round of soccer and to share a cycling event with South Korea.

“I’m much more optimistic than I was four months ago, and I think perhaps we might be able to find a solution,” Samaranch said.

Bringing the Koreas together, even if only in athletics, would be considered a remarkable accomplishment, an appropriate exclamation point to what has been an extraordinary session.

Allowing Professionals

Earlier in the week, the IOC boldly moved to change the cycle of the Winter Olympics, starting in 1994, so it will not fall in the same year as the Summer Olympics, then welcomed professional hockey players, including those from the National Hockey League, into the Winter Games.

Next, the IOC will decide at the 92nd Session next May in Istanbul whether to allow all professional tennis players into the Summer Games

“The IOC is no longer the cautious, conservative body it used to be,” DeFrantz said.

The man considered most responsible for moving the Modern Olympics into modern times is Spain’s Samaranch, 66, who has been IOC president since 1980.

Although Samaranch did not campaign for Barcelona, his hometown, and even abstained from voting, the overwhelming victory for the Spanish city was viewed by the president’s admirers as an endorsement for his leadership.

Paris in Second Place

It took only three rounds of voting for Barcelona to gain the necessary majority. Of the 85 IOC voters, 47 cast their ballots for Barcelona on the third ballot to 23 for Paris, 10 for Brisbane, Australia, and 5 for Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Amsterdam was eliminated in the first round; Birmingham, England, in the second.

By contrast, it took Albertville six rounds to emerge as the winner. On the final ballot, it won 51 votes, to 25 for Sofia, Bulgaria, and 9 for Falun, Sweden. Berchtesgaden, West Germany, was the first city to drop out of the balloting, followed on successive rounds by Anchorage, Alaska; Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, and Lillehammer, Norway.

So excited by the victory that he kissed everyone in sight, including a startled reporter from the New York Times, Barcelona’s charismatic mayor, Pasqual Maragall, said the vote was a tribute to Samaranch.

“I think the president--now listen carefully; I want to be clear on this--had an effect on the vote in a moral sense, but only in that sense,” Maragall said. “The vote was a recognition of his contribution to the Olympics.”

Influential Host

The vote also underscored the influence of Horst Dassler, the West German president of Adidas and creator of ISL, a marketing firm which has a lucrative contract with the IOC. Dassler is not an IOC member, but he is widely believed to be the man who placed Samaranch in power.

While Samaranch, bound by neutrality, did not bid on Barcelona’s behalf, Dassler did.

One Italian sports official who is close to the IOC said Thursday that Dassler would deliver 30 votes for Barcelona on the first ballot. He overestimated Dassler. Barcelona received 29 votes on the first ballot.

Asked if Dassler endorsed Barcelona in order to gain a foothold in Spain’s athletic wear market, a delegate from one of the losing candidates said: “No, that would make him a merchant. He’s more important than that. He’s a power broker.”

Influential in delivering the remaining votes required for Barcelona’s majority was Brazil’s Jean Havelange, powerful president of the International Football Federation and an IOC member since 1963.

Vote Trading

One European IOC member, who spoke on the condition he not be identified, said Havelange swung the vote on the winter site, which came before the voting on the summer games, by delivering Barcelona supporters to Albertville.

After Havelange made his commitment, the IOC member said, Albertville went from a 29-28 lead over Sofia on the third ballot to a 42-24 lead on the fourth.

In return, the IOC member said, Havelange extracted a promise from Albertville supporters to vote for Barcelona.

Nevertheless, no one has expressed serious misgivings about the capabilities of Barcelona and Albertville to stage the games.

This was Barcelona’s fourth bid for the Summer Olympics. The city lost in 1924, when the IOC’s autocratic president, Baron Pierre de Coubertin of France, decided he wanted the games in Paris. Coubertin promised the games to Barcelona for 1936, but the Spanish Civil War erupted. Barcelona’s 1972 candidacy was not serious.

“Barcelona will remain committed to Olympicism, but we will not be back if we lose,” Mayor Maragall said this week. “Maybe our children will, but we will not.”

A First for Spain

He pointed out that Barcelona was the only summer candidate whose country had not been host to a previous Olympics.

Barcelona outspent all other candidates with a $10-million investment. At least, it has a chance for a return. Amsterdam spent $6 million and was eliminated on the first ballot with only five votes.

Albertville officials said they spent between $2 million and $3 million. Because of the greater magnitude of the event, summer candidates generally spend more than winter candidates.

Amsterdam is believed to have lost support when an environmental group from that city, called “No Olympics,” arrived in Lausanne this week to demonstrate against the bid. On two occasions, the protesters threatened to turn violent and were disbanded by police.

There also was a group here from Berchtesgaden to protest against that city’s bid, but it was tame, to the extent some of the demonstrators took naps on the steps in front of Palais de Beaulieu.

There have been several recent terrorist bombings in Barcelona, some believed to be related to the Olympic bid. A Catalan independence group, Free Land, has announced its opposition to the Games.