Embattled Ex-IOC Boss Dead at 84

Lord Killanin, whose tenure as International Olympic Committee president was marked by politically charged boycotts and pressure for a growing role in the Olympic movement for women and for professional athletes, died Sunday. He was 84.

Killanin, an English-Irish nobleman whose health had been failing for some time, died at his home in Dublin, Ireland, his family said. The cause of death was not disclosed.

Killanin served as IOC president from 1972-80. His term began shortly after the massacre of Israeli athletes and coaches at the Munich Games. It ended with the Moscow Games, boycotted by the United States and other nations.

Though his term was turbulent, Killanin remained a committed Olympic idealist. He referred to the IOC’s members as “custodians of a trust” established by the Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic movement.

Meanwhile, in a comment that underscores the core structural problem fueling the corruption scandal currently enveloping the Olympic movement, Killanin once described the IOC--a self-selecting, self-perpetuating body--as the “most exclusive club in the world.”

And, in a remark with remarkable resonance for investigators now unraveling the scandal that surfaced last December with the first reports of alleged bribery in Salt Lake City’s winning bid for the 2002 Games, Killanin said in 1983, “One of the greatest mysteries surrounding the Olympic Games is their operation: how it works, who does what, and why.”

Historians and close observers of the Olympic movement have noted that Killanin’s answer to that question was to further concentrate power in the IOC presidency--a lesson he learned from his predecessor, the autocratic American Avery Brundage, and one continued by his successor, the Spaniard Juan Antonio Samaranch.

In a new book on the Olympics, University of Wisconsin professor Alfred E. Senn writes that Killanin professed to “want to hear everyone out” but still maintain “ultimate control of the Games.”

As president, Killanin did push for reform, albeit in limited doses. He chaired a convention that called for greater participation of women in the Olympic hierarchy--but the first female IOC members were not named until 1981, after Killanin stepped down. Under his watch, the IOC took a first step at liberalizing eligibility rules, pointedly dropping the historical references to “amateurism”--but true professionals, such as the U.S. basketball “Dream Team,” came later.

It would, in fact, be left to Samaranch to oversee the transformation of the Olympic movement into the entity it is now--a worldwide empire fueled largely by corporate sponsorships and American TV money, with competition open to professionals and female athletes and with a growing role for female executives and administrators.

An apologist might suggest it was up to Samaranch because Killanin was largely preoccupied by boycotts. There was the 1980 U.S.-led action, a response to the Soviet invasion the year before of Afghanistan. And there was the 1976 boycott of the Montreal Games by several African nations, a protest over racial discrimination in South Africa.

But, Olympic experts said, the reality is that Killanin lacked an overarching vision of the future--particularly of the key role of the United States in the Olympic movement.

In his memoirs, written in 1983, Killanin said that the “American-Olympic connection in my time has not been a very happy one,” adding that the IOC “may still come to rue” its arrangements with organizers of the 1984 Los Angeles Games--which went on to produce a $225-million profit.

And, experts said, Killanin also suffered from his own personality and management style. University of Texas professor John Hoberman said Sunday, “He was not the most exciting Olympian.”

Killanin was born in London on July 30, 1914. His real name: Michael Morris. His mother was Australian, his father an officer in the Irish Guards.

He was educated at Eton College, the Sorbonne in Paris and at Cambridge University.

In 1935, he embarked upon a career in journalism. He was a war correspondent in China in 1937; after the war, he wrote a political column. Then he became a film producer, making such movies as “The Playboy of the Western World” and “The Quiet Man.”

He became an IOC member in 1952. He joined its executive board in 1967 and the next year became a vice president.

He is survived by his wife, three sons and a daughter.