Helmick Quits His IOC Job : Olympics: He maintains he did nothing wrong, but says he is stepping down so that focus returns to programs for athletes.

Robert Helmick’s free fall from the heights of the Olympic movement continued Tuesday, when the Des Moines, Iowa, lawyer and former president of the U.S. Olympic Committee resigned from the International Olympic Committee.

Helmick, speaking by telephone from the site of an IOC executive board meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, said he informed IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch of his decision Tuesday night.

In a formal letter of resignation later delivered to Samaranch’s hotel room, Helmick said: “I am taking this action because I believe it is the decent thing to do and because it serves the best interests of the IOC and the United States Olympic movement by returning the focus to the programs for athletes.”

Helmick, 54, has been under scrutiny since the first week of September, when it was revealed in published reports that he had business relationships with groups that either had or were seeking associations with the Olympic movement.

According to subsequent reports, Helmick and two law firms he has represented in recent years have received $325,000 from those groups since 1987.

Ten days ago, Arnold Burns, a special counsel appointed by the USOC’s executive committee to investigate the allegations before Helmick’s resignation on Sept. 18 as USOC president, released a report that said Helmick “repeatedly violated the conflict of interest provisions” of the USOC bylaws and used “USOC authority and influence for his own private benefit.”

While Burns said he found no evidence that Helmick attempted to influence the USOC on behalf of his clients, he concluded: “We believe . . . that Mr. Helmick has underestimated the seriousness of his conduct.”

As he has done since the initial reports in September, Helmick, in his letter to Samaranch, maintained his innocence.

“I want to strongly reassert my belief that I have done nothing ever of harm to the Olympic movement,” he said. “ . . . I regret the situation that has arisen as a result of how my actions have been interpreted by others.

“Over 30 years of my life has been devoted to the Olympic movement, first as an athlete, and then in my capacity the last 22 years as a member of the USOC and the IOC. There is nothing that I have done during this entire time to compromise the good work that is being done under the Olympic banner.”

A former water polo player who served as the U.S. team’s manager during the 1972 Summer Olympics, Helmick achieved prominence in international sports as an administrator, becoming arguably the most influential American in the Olympic movement since former IOC president Avery Brundage.

Already serving as president of the international federation for swimming, diving and water polo (FINA), Helmick, in 1985, was elected president of the USOC and also became one of two U.S. representatives to the IOC. He solidified his position four years later, winning a four-year term as USOC president and a place on the IOC’s 12-member executive board.

Until September, it was a foregone conclusion that Helmick would be reelected as USOC president next year, and, though he had detractors within the 92-member IOC who perceived him as an ambitious, political gamesman, there was speculation that he might someday become a candidate for the IOC presidency.

After the events of Tuesday, however, Helmick’s involvement with the Olympic movement is expected to be minor. As a past president, he remains one of 18 voting members of the USOC’s executive committee. His recent offer to resign from the committee was rejected by the other members.

But it is anticipated that USOC President William Hybl, elected in October to fulfill the final 14 months of Helmick’s term, will act on Helmick’s suggestion to appoint someone to replace Helmick as a vice president of the Pan American Sports Organization.

According to the IOC charter, Helmick could have remained an IOC member until he is 75. But after he resigned as USOC president, the IOC appointed a three-member panel to investigate whether his business dealings represented a conflict of interest in regard to his roles as a member of the IOC’s executive board and program commission.

That panel was supposed to deliver the results of its probe to the IOC executive board this week after meeting in Lausanne with Hybl to discuss Burns’ report to the USOC.

There was broad media speculation that Helmick might be asked to resign from the executive board and the program commission, and one newspaper, the New York Times, quoted an anonymous IOC source as saying that Helmick might even be asked to resign from the IOC.

Helmick bristled when asked Tuesday about that report. Although he said that the panel has not discussed its findings with him, he said that executive board members he has seen since arriving in Lausanne have been supportive.

“I can only tell you what I know,” he said. “If someone in the IOC wanted to force me out, rather than being an undisclosed source, I would hope that they would have the decency to speak frankly and openly and on the record in the press.”

Helmick said the decision to resign was his alone after discussions with his family, friends and business associates.

“I’ve been going through this for three months,” he said. “The press, and, in recent weeks, even the European press, had been so focused on this that it was no longer, in my opinion, possible to effectively carry out my functions as an IOC member. There is so much attention on my situation instead of where it should be, which is on our programs.

“When I look back on the last 25 years, the important thing is what has been accomplished and what can be accomplished in the future. Rather than volunteering my time to try to defend myself, it’s much easier to say that this has been an important and happy chapter in my life and now it’s time to go on to another chapter.”