USOC Board Acts on Three Key Issues

After five years of debate and delays, the United States Olympic Committee has adopted a master plan that will bring renovation and expansion of the USOC’s existing training centers in Colorado Springs, Colo., and Lake Placid, N.Y.

During Saturday’s first meeting of the USOC’s new board of directors at the Omni Hotel, the 100-member board voted on the three key issues that had promised to stir the most controversy.

In addition to the adoption of the Olympic Training Center Master Plan, the board approved a six-year budget proposal of $436 million for the period ending Dec. 31, 1995, and a funding system that means more money for the athletes in sports that have achieved a high level of success and to athletes within striking distance of medals.

According to USOC President Robert Helmick, the passage of the training center plan was the result of in-house streamlining of the USOC at meetings in February in Phoenix.

“The streamlining of the USOC demonstrated at this meeting that it works,” Helmick said. “I think today you witnessed the fact that it works.”

Groundbreaking for the USOC’s newest training facility, the organization’s first year-round center in Chula Vista, followed the four-hour meeting. The San Diego training center is scheduled to open in early 1993.

“For the first time we have compliance for state-of-the-art training centers from the northeast to the southeast,” Helmick said. “We have stated and adopted as policy the training of athletes as our highest priority both monetarily and through training.”

Also approved was a budget amendment that would lift the current $25 million ceiling on training center expenditures and extend it to $53 million. Helmick told board members to prepare to vote for the expanded training center budget at the board’s Oct. 19-20 meetings in Durham, N.C.

On approval of centralized funding for athletes, Sandra Baldwin, chairman of the Member Services Committee, said: “It used to be if you did well, money was taken away. Now, we’re slowly shifting it toward succeeding.”