IOC Head Should Take the Blame

The Nagano folks got it right. They knew exactly where the paper trail would lead and what it would reveal, so they burned everything. Set it afire, baby. Otherwise, we all know what would have come out, right? Lucrative jobs, cash payments, trips to the Super Bowl, phony contracts, jewelry, lawn equipment, video cameras, rent, tuition, the list goes on and on. My favorite enticements in exchange for Olympic favors are $1,010 worth of dogs (retrievers) and $3,117 in draperies. When did Martha Stewart become an IOC member?

I’m sorry that I’m having so much trouble working up indignation over the escalating scandal involving the International Olympic Committee members and, oh, every city that’s hosted the Olympics since Zeus won the gold medal in the decathlon. Salt Lake City is the one that has its feet to the fire now, what with this ethics panel report having been issued this week. But bribery is as big a part of the Olympics as track and field. A significant number of IOC members, in exchange for giving their vote to a certain city, expect to receive stuff. It’s a longstanding tradition. The only people who are more obvious about wanting cash than IOC members are the Salvation Army bell-ringers.

This has been the climate for years and years, particularly during the Juan Antonio Samaranch era. The only healthy dislike I can work up is directed at Samaranch, the phony, and former fascist, who ought to be thrown out of office and banned forever from setting foot in an Olympic venue.

That the blame in this ethics panel report is being laid on former Salt Lake bid committee leaders Tom Welch and Dave Johnson is ludicrous. They were doing exactly what the SLOC’s board of trustees wanted, which was to get the 2002 Winter Games, no excuses. And they were doing exactly what the IOC wanted, which was to pony up the goodies. Rules? Welch and Johnson were following the exact rules as laid down by the IOC, and anybody who suggests otherwise must think we’re all idiots.

Let’s go straight to the ethics panel report. It says that prior to the vote to award the 1998 Games, Welch and Johnson met with Samaranch to get advice on “how to run a successful bid. Mr. Samaranch advised them to become personally acquainted with as many IOC members as possible and to become part of the Olympic Family.”

The report goes one, “... It quickly became clear that being a part of the Olympic Family put strong demands on this hospitality, as some IOC members expected to be treated on a lavish scale that included first-class airfare, the finest hotels, meals, gifts, and entertainment, all provided at the bid city’s expense.”

The Salt Lake people, perhaps not realizing just how lavish the scale needed to be, gave the IOC members clothing items with Salt Lake Olympic logos, and jars of Utah honey. Oh, and the official bid book was given to IOC members in a handsome leather saddlebag.

These weren’t exactly the parting gifts the IOC members had in mind.

Meanwhile, the Nagano bid committee gave $15 million to the IOC Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, shortly before the vote in Birmingham, England. While the Salt Lake bidders gave the IOC members disposable cameras, the Nagano people dug a little deeper and came up with video cameras. Yeah. Nagano won the ’98 Winter Games by a vote of 46-42. What a shock.

To marry into the “Olympic Family,” you’d better not be a Wal-Mart shopper. The IOC members were saying, quite pointedly, “Go into Tiffany’s and bring us the baubles. If you don’t, someone else will,” as they turned up their lordly noses at the Salt Lake gear and disposable cameras. It was extortion, plain and simple. All the studies in the world won’t change that. Nagano had learned the hard way itself in a previous vote. Now it was Salt Lake’s time to learn. And there were plenty of people in Utah who gave their blessing, spoken or unspoken, to Welch and Johnson.

The really pious folk out in Salt Lake can hide behind words like “scholarships” if they want. While talking about “establishing long-term, vote-influencing relationships with IOC members,” the fact is the only way to influence voting was to drop some moolah. Welch, Johnson and the people who worked for them weren’t going to change the IOC’s way of doing business, not while there were a half-dozen cities out there ready to pay tuition and buy dogs and drapes. If Salt Lake hadn’t ponied up, Salt Lake wouldn’t be preparing to host the Winter Olympics, plain and simple. (My personal favorite is IOC member Seiuli Paul Wallwork from Western Samoa, whose wife received $30,000 from Welch’s personal account because a friend of hers was in “a serious situation.” No, no, no, I take that back. The best story is the guy, Sudan’s Zein El Abdin Ahmed Abdel Gadir, who finagled a $7,000 payment to a fictitious daughter that turned out to be him!) We’re not talking four or five IOC members with their hands out, it’s more than 20 and counting.

Now, even as I sit here laughing at this stuff and the scuzballs who make this so Jerry Springer-juicy, I realize there is one important piece of Olympics-related news in the wake of that ethics panel report: John Hancock is canceling $20 million of TV advertising. Samaranch may do his Don King dance around all these allegations of corruption, but a $20 million loss is a punch he can’t slip.

NBC, you see, has ponied up more than anybody--about $3.57 billion. One day fairly soon, after a phone call from NBC boss Dick Ebersol, someone is going to knock on Samaranch’s door and say, “Your Former Excellency, it’s time to go.” And at that point, the man who allowed this climate of greed to prosper will be shown the door, and not a minute to soon.