Rebuild Olympic System

The greed and corruption infecting the international Olympic movement is revealed to an excruciating degree in the report of Salt Lake City officials investigating the payoffs made to help the Utah city land the 2002 Winter Games. The report issued Tuesday identifies 10 additional members of the International Olympic Committee who received favors from the Salt Lake bid committee, bringing the total to 24 of the IOC’s 114 members.

The investigating committee did not attempt to put a dollar amount on the graft, but it’s obviously in the millions. There were free trips to Yellowstone, Disneyland and the Super Bowl, gifts ranging from an exercise machine to a violin and cash payments that can be described as nothing less than bribes.

Four IOC members have resigned and the committee has moved to expel six. Also, IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain has promised to reform the process by which the committee selects Olympic sites. But it’s obvious now that far more needs to be done. The very structure of the Olympics must be reorganized or re-created and the hyper-commercialization of the Games needs to be reexamined. The private-club management of the IOC, as exemplified by the imperial Samaranch, is a throwback to the start of this century. The committee is not capable of the public disclosure and accountability necessary to a credible Olympic operation.

The report tells a sad story of thrifty Salt Lake civic leaders watching Nagano, Japan, snatch the 1998 Winter Games from them with a sophisticated multimillion-dollar campaign. The Utah officials learned their lesson. From then on, any IOC member had only to ask and the wish was fulfilled.

Two former Salt Lake Olympic leaders, Tom Welch and David R. Johnson, were blamed for carrying out the campaign. But it’s difficult to believe that more officials were not aware that payola was extensive.

The root cause is the culture of the IOC. One former member says there never was any serious effort to restrain the gift-giving “because this amounts to a secret society where all members pledge to support each other.” Pressure to restructure must come from governments that deal with the committee and from the national Olympic committees and the national and international sports federations that are part of the Olympic system. Change will take time, but it must start now. A good beginning would be Samaranch’s resignation at the IOC’s March meeting.