Crumbling of an Ideal

Juan Antonio Samaranch became president of the International Olympic Committee in 1980, at a time when it appeared that the risks of playing xhost to the Olympics far outweighed the benefits. Munich in 1972 had been visited by tragedy, Montreal in 1976 had cost its taxpayers $1 billion and Moscow had been boycotted.

Not quite two decades later, dozens of cities throughout the world are competing for future Olympics and some apparently will grant any favor to win the IOC’s approval.

That is due in no small part to the successful financial model introduced to the IOC by Peter Ueberroth in 1984, but the IOC’s ability to not only maintain but expand it will be part of Samaranch’s legacy.

He also democratized the IOC by championing the first women to be elected to one of the world’s most exclusive clubs and made it more accessible to athletes, authorized more funding for athletes in developing nations, oversaw increased opportunities for women athletes, ended the hypocrisy of pseudo-amateur competition by inviting all the world’s best athletes to participate and declared war on drugs.

It is clear that Samaranch is the most progressive president in the IOC’s 105-year history.

It is equally clear that Samaranch should now resign.

I did not arrive at that conclusion easily because, although there is no question that he is part of the problem now confronting the IOC, it is possible that he is its best hope for a solution.

The former Spanish ambassador to the Soviet Union is a consensus builder who has unified the IOC in previous crises. Without him, the membership would be fragmented, particularly if there were a prolonged campaign to choose his successor.

Also, Samaranch has not been directly implicated in a scandal that could result in as many as 12 expulsions of IOC members who allegedly accepted excessive gratuities from bid cities. Finland’s Pirjo Haggman already has resigned.

Samaranch has accepted two rifles and a shotgun valued at more than $2,000 from the Salt Lake City bid committee and an ornate Japanese samurai sword and oil painting from the Nagano bid committee and enough other gifts that space in the Olympic Museum had to be set aside for them.

His defense is that he is not subject to IOC rules limiting gifts to $150 because he doesn’t vote on Olympic sites, somewhat disingenuous because he does exert influence over the voters, and would vote to break a tie.

A more valid defense is that he accepts the gifts as a visiting dignitary on behalf of the IOC as required by internationally accepted protocol.

But the issue is not how much Samaranch accepted and when he accepted it but how much he knew and when he knew it.

Evidence suggests that he has been aware of nefarious activities involving the Olympic movement for more than a decade, dating back at least to the television negotiations for the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

Dick Pound, the IOC vice president in charge of the committee’s investigation, said Wednesday that he was offered $1 million to manipulate the negotiations by an unspecified member of the Seoul organizing committee. He told the Toronto Globe and Mail that he informed Samaranch of the bribe attempt. No action was taken.

Of two charges against Haggman, the most damning was that the Toronto committee bidding for the 1996 Summer Olympics provided a government forestry job and a $650-a-month apartment for her now ex-husband for 20 months in 1989 and ’90. Paul Henderson, president of the Toronto committee, said he reported the arrangement to Samaranch, who did not object.

Additionally, two British journalists wrote a book in 1992, “Dishonored Games: Corruption, Money and Greed at the Olympics,” detailing lavish gift giving.

Bob Scott, head of the failed bid to win the 1996 Summer Olympics by the English city of Manchester, boasted to the authors, “I even know the shoe size of the second daughter of one particular IOC member.”

Samaranch must have been familiar with the book because the IOC sued for libel.

Why didn’t he investigate?

My theory is that the Olympic movement had regained its momentum after the setbacks of the ‘70s and ‘80s and that he didn’t want to do anything that might impede it.

In his mind, he has succeeded because, in a 1998 interview with CBS, he said that the Olympics were more important than the Catholic Church.

His apologists said that Samaranch, who speaks good but not perfect English, meant to say that the Olympic logo was visible in parts of the world where even the church hadn’t made inroads.

That defense might have been plausible if Samaranch hadn’t already established himself as the IOC’s pope.

In 1995, he was behind the controversial move to change IOC age limits from 75 to 80 so that he could be elected two years later to a fourth term and serve until beyond his 80th birthday in 2001. Samaranch clearly did not believe that he could be replaced.

That sort of arrogance created a Machiavellian atmosphere in which corruption thrived. With no one threatening to check Samaranch’s power, he checked no one else’s.

It was a convenient arrangement. When IOC members gathered for their Centennial Congress in Paris in 1994, some were embarrassed to see francs flowing more freely than wine. After they complained, a grand gala scheduled for the Palace of Versailles was moved to a less opulent setting.

Still, the price tag at the end of the week was $16 million, and the bottom line was that many IOC members had been there not to celebrate the Olympics but themselves.

Randy Harvey can be reached at randy.harvey@latimes.com.

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Investigations at a Glance

A quick look at the four investigations underway into allegations of corruption stemming from Salt Lake City’s bid for the 2002 Winter Games:

* International Olympic Committee: A six-member panel, led by Vice President Dick Pound of Canada, has asked 13 IOC members to explain actions by themselves or members of their families relating to bid committees in Salt Lake City and other cities. The IOC executive board will recommend action Sunday, with the full 115-member IOC to decide their fate in a special session March 17-18.

* Salt Lake Organizing Committee: An independent ethics commission appointed by SLOC appears to focus on the string of cash, scholarships and lavish gifts that went from the bid committee headed by Tom Welch to IOC members and their families. Deadline for the report is Feb. 11.

* U.S. Olympic Committee: The USOC’s ethics oversight board, led by former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, is looking at the U.S. panel’s own bid-selection rules and operations, including selecting Salt Lake City in 1989 to run for the 1998 Winter Games. It received evidence this week in the resignation of Alfredo LaMont as USOC director of international relations because of his work as a middleman for Welch’s scheme to gather information about IOC members in Latin America. Mitchell says the inquiry will be finished by Feb. 28.

*

Justice Department: The FBI is trying to determine if federal law might have been violated in the Salt Lake City bidding. USA Today said a federal grand jury in Salt Lake City has drawn up subpoenas for a wide range of financial and planning documents.