IOC Message: It’s Not Just One Man : Meetings: Choice of Atlanta for 1996 Olympic Games over Samaranch’s favorite, Athens, clouds his future.

A year ago, at the International Olympic Committee’s 95th session in Puerto Rico, Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain was elected by acclamation to a second term as president, establishing him as the most influential leader in the movement since Avery Brundage and perhaps even founder Pierre de Coubertin.

But the message sent to Samaranch during the 96th session, which ended Thursday, was that the 94-member IOC is not the domain of one man, no matter how capable or popular he might be.

On the important issue of selecting the site for the 1996 Summer Olympics, the president could not deliver the vote for his favored candidate, Athens.

The failure has led to speculation that Samaranch, 70, may decide to resign at the end of his second term in 1993 instead of seeking to remain as president for four more years.

Samaranch said upon his reelection last year that he had no desire to preside over another Olympics after the 1992 Games in his hometown of Barcelona. But as recently as last month, while visiting U.S. Olympic Committee headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo., he indicated that he was reconsidering.

“Maybe yes, maybe no,” he said when asked whether he would stand for election again at the 1993 session in Monte Carlo.

A third term would enable Samaranch to preside over two momentous occasions in IOC history: the centennial celebration of both the first Congress and the first Summer Games of the modern Olympics.

The 1994 Congress is scheduled for Paris, site of the IOC’s first session 100 years earlier. When the 1996 Games were awarded to Atlanta instead of Athens, site of the 1896 Olympics, Samaranch was hardly able to hide his disappointment.

“If the Games had been in Athens, I think he certainly would have run for another term,” said Richard Pound, an IOC vice president from Canada who is considered a leading candidate to become Samaranch’s successor. “Now, I’m not sure.

“It would have been a tremendously heady experience for him to follow in De Coubertin’s footsteps of 100 years before in Paris for the Congress in 1994 and in Athens for the Summer Games in 1996.”

The implication, of course, is that it would not be equally intoxicating for Samaranch to spend the 100-year anniversary of the modern Games in Atlanta, a point that he tried to make on behalf of the Olympic movement while uncharacteristically campaigning for Athens. In past votes for Olympic sites, he has at least tried to maintain the illusion of neutrality.

In light of the fact that Samaranch has led the Games into the modern era, regarding commercialism and professionalism, his support for Athens revealed another facet of his personality.

“Mr. Samaranch is very sentimental,” said Patrick Hickey, president of the Irish Olympic Committee.

A majority of IOC members are not. Atlanta emerged from the pack of shiny, modern cities that also included Toronto and Melbourne and won 51 votes on the fifth and final ballot. Athens had 35.

“I would like to pay tribute to all the other cities, particularly Athens, which was the second city in the running,” Samaranch said during a news conference at the close of the session Thursday. “As the president of the IOC, I bow to the democratic process and choice, and I will do everything to make the Games successful.”

Although most of the members did not vote with Samaranch for one of the few times since be became president in 1980, Pound said the result should not be interpreted as a referendum on Samaranch’s administration.

“It was not an anti-Samaranch vote or even an anti-Athens vote,” Pound said. “It was a preference for looking forward rather than backward. But the president still gets 99.999% of what he wants. He is a very able leader of a complex international flotilla.”

Samaranch’s decision to overtly support Athens, in fact, might have been an example of his leadership.

“The man plays chess,” Pound said. “This isn’t a game of checkers. He’s always thinking four moves ahead. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that he knew all along that Athens wouldn’t win.

“In that case, he couldn’t lose. He’s able to go to the Greeks and tell them that he defended the tradition of the Olympic movement, but that they, like he, will have to abide by the democratic decision.”

Samaranch intends to go to Greece. He said Thursday that the IOC will offer the country a special event of an undisclosed nature in 1996 to celebrate the centennial.

If Samaranch had not supported Athens, it is doubtful that his offer would have been well received.

As of Thursday, the Greeks did not appear to be willing to accept an olive branch even from Samaranch. They were still complaining that the 1996 Games were bought by Atlanta-based Coca-Cola, a major Olympic sponsor.

“That sells newspapers, doesn’t it?” Samaranch said. “It makes good headlines, but Coca-Cola, while it helped Atlanta, also helped the other cities. It is not just an American company but a multinational company that helps promote sports worldwide.”

Pound said he believed Athens’ supporters were using Coca-Cola as a scapegoat for their loss.

“As a Toronto supporter, I don’t think we lost to Coca-Cola,” he said. “Actually, Coca-Cola contributed to our bid, just as it did to some of the other cities’. I know they were nervous as hell about Atlanta because if Atlanta won, people were going to say that Coca-Cola influenced the vote.”

Pound insisted that it was a coincidence Thursday when the IOC elected as one its new members Kenyan Charles Mukora, who is director of Coca-Cola Africa.

The IOC elected seven other new members, including its seventh woman, Canadian Olympic Assn. President Carol Anne-Letheren.

The IOC also named a woman, Flora Isava-Fonseca of Venezuela, for the first time to the 11-member executive board.

Others elected to the 94-member IOC were Antonio Rodriguez of Argentina, Philippe Chatrier of France, Shun-Ichiro Okado of Japan, Richard Carrion of Puerto Rico, Zein el Abdin Abdel Gadir of Sudan and Nat Indrapana of Thailand.