It’s a Sweden Sour Week for Nebiolo : Track and field: Before world championships, federation president mixes it up with media.

Primo Nebiolo will be elected without opposition today or Thursday to a fourth term as the international track and field federation’s president, one of sport’s most powerful positions. But he has been no match for the Swedish media, which have battered him to the extent that he is threatening to return home to Italy even before the World Championships begin Friday.

After a week of articles in the local press examining his autocratic leadership style and his role in alleged scandals involving the International Amateur Athletic Federation, Nebiolo erupted when Sweden’s best-known television interviewer, Britt-Maria Matteson, tried to follow a similar line of questioning for a program that aired here Tuesday night.

Scheduled for an hour, the interview that took place Monday afternoon in Nebiolo’s hotel suite was halted after only eight minutes by an IAAF public relations official.

Nebiolo then insulted Matteson, asking: “What would you think if I asked how many men you have slept with?”

Matteson, considered the Barbara Walters of Sweden, was stunned, telling reporters, “I’ve worked for 23 years as a foreign correspondent, interviewed dictators and other nuts, but I’ve never met anyone who behaved like Nebiolo.”

Nebiolo later protested to Swedish track and field officials, telling them that he was considering going home after the IAAF Congress concludes Thursday because of his treatment by the media.

Two of the officials, Chairman Berent Groon and General Secretary Ulk Ekelund, hurriedly called a news conference to ask the media to back off Nebiolo.

They said he was in tears when he came to them, a revelation that was met with little sympathy by the media.

“What do they think this is, Romania in the ‘70s?” asked Szymon Szemberg, sports editor of the Goteborgs-Posten.

A columnist for the newspaper, Jan Hansson, asked the officials if they felt like court jesters for Nebiolo.

Responding simultaneously, Groon said no and Ekelund said yes.

After a pause, Ekelund added: “But I’m prepared to take it.”

While rack cards Tuesday for Goteborgs-Posten said, “Nebiolo, Go Home!” Hansson wrote: “The dictators of Europe have fallen. The free world has won. But the despots of sport are still here--more comfortable than ever.”