Samaranch Dismisses Suggestion He Should Resign As President

International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch on Monday denied personal responsibility for the worst corruption scandal in Olympic history, saying, “I am not the boss of the IOC.”

Samaranch acknowledged the mounting calls for him to step down because of the scandal, in particular repeated calls from Robert Helmick, a former U.S. Olympic Committee president and IOC member. But Samaranch dismissed such calls, saying none have come from within the IOC, and lashed out at Helmick, who resigned from both organizations in 1991 amid charges of conflict of interest.

“If the proposals [are] coming from Helmick, for me they have not any kind of value,” Samaranch said in an interview. “He was a man who had to resign because he was facing expulsion from the IOC.”

Samaranch also declared: “I am not thinking of any kind of resignation in these moments that the Olympic movement is in real danger.”

His comments came the day after the IOC’s ruling executive board capped an emergency weekend meeting by expelling six members and moving to enact reforms in the way it selects cities to host the Games.

Three other IOC members remain under investigation and one more was given a warning. Three others have resigned in recent days.

Samaranch, meeting for 30 minutes Monday with a small group of journalists, also said: “I have made mistakes, but I would like also to tell you that the IOC is not run by myself. The IOC is run mainly by the executive board.”

Asked to describe his management style, Samaranch said, “To delegate a lot to the people surrounding me.”

Even as he reiterated his resolve not to resign, Samaranch confirmed the plan he revealed Sunday to ask the full IOC membership in March for a vote of confidence in his leadership.

It’s “the right thing to do,” he said. He also made clear that he expects to win, noting that he intends to serve out his full term, until 2001.

Sitting at the head of a table in a conference room at IOC headquarters on the shores of Lake Geneva, Samaranch also discounted the notion that he--rightly or wrongly--is the most visible symbol of IOC excess.

He noted that his presidential post is unpaid. “I have no yachts, I have no planes, I have no many things,” he said. What about a report that he has taken a helicopter from Lausanne to Geneva, all of 45 minutes by car? “Stupid.”

“I don’t like big dinners or big lunches,” he said. “I’m doing my best to try to be fit with exercises every morning. That is my life.”

The scandal broke last month amid revelations that IOC members or their relatives got cash, college scholarships, free medical care and other enticements from boosters of Salt Lake City’s winning bid for the 2002 Winter Games.

It widened dramatically last Friday, when Australia’s Olympic chief, John Coates, disclosed that he offered $70,000 in inducements to two African IOC members the night before Sydney won the 2000 Summer Games--by two votes.

The IOC announced Sunday that it intends to review every bid for the Games from the 1996 Summer Games, won by Atlanta, through the 2006 Winter Games, to be awarded this year. The mayor of Nagano, Japan, which hosted the 1998 Winter Games, said Monday there may have been flaws in his city’s bid.

Samaranch said Sunday that neither Salt Lake nor Sydney will be stripped of the Games.

The IOC also announced Sunday a wholesale change in the way it selects cities to host the Games. Instead of the traditional all-members vote, the IOC said the site of the 2006 Games will be picked by a 15-person panel made up of eight IOC members, three athletes and others. No longer, IOC officials added, will the process involve trips to the bidding cities by IOC members or junkets by city boosters to where IOC members live.

The reforms the IOC announced Sunday, as well as confirmation of the six expulsions, depend on a ratification vote at an all-members session on March 17-18 in Lausanne. Some of the six, notably African Olympics leader Jean-Claude Ganga of the Republic of Congo, have vowed to fight.

Another of the six, Zein El Abdin Ahmed Abdel Gadir of Sudan, told the Associated Press in a story Monday from Khartoum, that nation’s capital, that more than $18,000 from Salt Lake boosters to his son were education loans that were to have been repaid.

Samaranch said of the possibility that the six would be reinstated: “I can’t imagine this.”

The changes in the site-selection process would take away from IOC members, now down to 106, the one thing each of them has the power to do--cast a vote for one city or another. But Samaranch said he believed the scandal has made members understand they ought to delegate that responsibility.

“I think their reaction will be positive,” he said. “They know very well that at this time the International Olympic Committee is facing very hard times.”