IOC Official Doesn’t Fault Salt Lake

Marc Hodler, the senior member of the International Olympic Committee who set off the biggest corruption scandal in IOC history, said Monday that Salt Lake City was blackmailed during its successful bid for the 2002 Winter Games.

Hodler said the city is not to blame for a scholarship program that provided nearly $400,000 in aid to 13 people, including six relatives of IOC members. He described the program as a bribe to sway votes of IOC members.

“Salt Lake City was a victim of blackmail and not a villain,” he said. “The real villains are the agents who put the cities in awkward positions using blackmail. . . . Salt Lake City had been forced by blackmail to give financial favors.”

Hodler, 80, of Switzerland, said his life has been turned upside down since he first came forward on Saturday: “These have been the three worst days I have spent in my long career in sport.”

He has alleged that four agents--including one IOC member--had been involved in vote-buying over the last 10 years.

Meanwhile, a Sydney newspaper, the Australian, reported that cash payments between $3,100 and $6,200 were made to IOC members during Melbourne’s unsuccessful bid for the 1996 Olympics. The Sydney Morning Herald said Sydney bid officials channeled several million dollars to the Australian Olympic Committee to sway wavering African votes and win the 2000 Games. The Herald reported the AOC set up a trust fund with the money to administer an African Olympic Training Center at Canberra’s Australian Institute of Sport.

In Lillehammer, Norway, IOC member Gerhard Heiberg, former head of the Lillehammer Games, said offers of gifts and services by cities seeking the games have become common, and that he had been approached.