Speakers Appeal for IOC Reform

Politicians, government officials, members of the International Olympic Committee and national leaders of sport gathered here Tuesday . . . and for what again?

An anti-doping summit?

Or an anti-IOC summit?

Day 1 of the IOC’s much-trumpeted world conference on drugs in sports quickly deteriorated into a long session of target practice as guest speakers took turns lambasting the scandal-ridden IOC, some of whose members have been accused of accepting bribes from bid committees seeking to host Olympic Games. Four IOC members have resigned and five more have been suspended and are facing expulsion.

Tony Banks, British minister of sport, demanded that the IOC “clean up its act” and “reform its structure, because it is clearly not the sort of structure we would want to enter the 21st century with.”

Barry McCaffrey, White House drug policy director, blasted the IOC for “alleged corruption, lack of accountability and the failure of leadership [that] have challenged the legitimacy of this institution,” adding that “these events have tarnished the credibility of the movement.”

Elsebeth Gerner Nielsen, Denmark’s minister for culture, argued that the governing of international sport is “too important to be left to the forces of the free market, entertainment and plain greed” and implored the IOC to “stress the importance of values--not the importance of its leaders.”

And Otto Schily, Germany’s minister of the interior, in an interview with German television, called for the resignation of IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch shortly after deriding his organization as a destructive “constitutional monarchy of sports.”

Asked about Samaranch during the interview, Schily replied, “Everyone must know when it’s time to go.”

With Samaranch listening, 49 speakers made their way to the microphone for opening remarks at the summit meeting and an unmistakable theme took root: For the IOC’s proposed international anti-doping agency to succeed, it must be fully independent of IOC oversight.

“The British government enthusiastically endorses the call among sports ministers for an independent and transparent anti-doping agency to be set up,” Banks said. “However, we do not believe that the IOC should be that agency. . . . We believe it must be under the aegis of the United Nations or possibly the World Health Organization.”

Spyros Pappas, speaking on behalf of the European Union, said the agency must be “independent and very open in its work. An anti-doping agency with links to [the IOC] will have only limited credibility and will spoil yet another good initiative.”

Prince Alexandre de Merode of Belgium, director of the IOC’s medical commission since 1967 and Samaranch’s choice to co-chair the new agency, angrily countered those arguments.

“I don’t understand this lack of trust, this lack of confidence,” de Merode said. “I don’t find it very pleasant. I take it as some kind of insult made against us.

“Why should we trust politicians [to run the agency]? They have financial problems of their own, as you can see from the headlines in Spain, in France, in England, in Germany. If you ask the people on the street whether they would like to trust politicians with this, you might get some surprising answers.”

Added De Merode, “If you exclude IOC members from the agency, I don’t see who’s going to bring it together. First of all, who is going to finance such an agency? The IOC has proposed funding this agency. I don’t see why any organization should fund this agency with no members representing that organization.”

This lack of trust in the IOC, of course, stems from the continuing site-selection scandal.

Case in point: Tuesday’s curiously timed announcement that the IOC was closing the book on its examination of the Sydney bid campaign for the 2000 Summer Games, formally clearing Sydney of any wrongdoing--even though the bid committee made “donations” of $35,000 to the Kenyan and Ugandan Olympic Committees on the eve of the election.

Sydney won that election by two votes over runner-up Beijing.

“What Sydney did was perfectly correct,” said Jacques Rogge, a member of the IOC ad hoc investigative commission. “ . . . We are satisfied that everything was genuine and legal. Everything is in order according to IOC rules. There is no need to look further.”

The day was punctuated, however, by emotional appeals for IOC reform. McCaffrey outlined a four-point plan that called for the IOC to hold democratic elections, open its books and records, open it’s voting records and ensure that the elected membership be held accountable to the public.

Banks agreed. “You’ve got the call from America, from Britain, from a number of other European representatives here that we do expect the IOC to reform its structure,” he said. “There is a lot of public feeling, a lot of governmental feeling on this. Because the principle of the Olympic movement transcends the present incumbence of the IOC.

“And I think they have a responsibility that they restore faith in the Olympic movement. I know these sound like pious thoughts, but the fact is, you’ve got to have something you believe in in sports. For so long, we’ve believed in the principles of the Olympic movement as the finest achievement in sport. But I think it’s rather soured at the moment, rather sullied by what we’ve been hearing about.”

* CALL FOR CHANGE: Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt is among those leading an early push for a restructuring of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. Page 8