Senator Applies the Heat to IOC

On the International Olympic Committee’s scale of justice, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has issued the organization “the most serious of warnings.”

That is because the IOC did this week what many organizations, including the U.S. Senate, do when confronted with a crisis. It established a couple of committees and declared victory.

McCain, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee that is scrutinizing the IOC’s tax-exempt status in the United States, was not impressed.

“The IOC’s actions today fall short of the reforms needed to bring transparency and accountability to the organization,” he said in a statement. “Nothing I have witnessed provides any substantive movement in that direction.”

If discussion from the floor of the IOC session Thursday is an indication, many members do not particularly welcome the U.S. government’s intervention. After all, the U.S. government didn’t seem all that concerned about the Olympic movement when it led the boycott of the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow.

Outside the closed session, however, IOC members said they would cooperate fully. That is the right response, considering McCain has a nuclear warhead pointed in the IOC’s direction.

When it begins its hearings on April 14, the Senate Commerce Committee will consider a proposed bill that would limit tax deductions U.S. corporations can declare from their IOC sponsorships. With nine of the IOC’s 11 international sponsors located in the United States, the IOC would be hit where it hurts most--in its Swiss bank accounts.

In view of the $1-million bribery scandal connected to Salt Lake City’s successful bid for the 2002 Winter Games, U.S. corporations are already wondering if perhaps the $50 million they commit to IOC sponsorships over a four-year period couldn’t be better spent.

But they, unlike McCain, weren’t ready to declare this week’s special session called to address reforms a false start.

“It’s not fair to suggest that, at the end of the day Thursday, we will have the resolution of the scandal,” said Ben Deutsch, Coca-Cola’s spokesman for worldwide sports, before the meetings began. “What we’re looking for them to do is make progress toward delivering on their promises.”

If it was an unambitious agenda the sponsors wanted, they got their money’s worth.

The only real pain the IOC inflicted upon itself occurred Wednesday, when it expelled six members for corruption.

On Thursday, the IOC adopted new rules for selecting the 2006 Winter Games host in June. It prohibited visits by members to the six candidate cities and established a 16-member commission, including some non-IOC members, that will narrow the finalists to two a couple of hours before the entire IOC selects the winner.

(Bid committee officials from Klagenfurt, Austria, this week were distributing “the first post-Salt Lake City gifts”--money clips without money.)

The IOC also agreed Thursday to the establishment of an ethics committee and a committee called “IOC 2000” that will recommend structural changes.

Both committees will consist of half IOC members and half non-IOC members and are expected to be in place before another special session in December.

“These steps signal a very clear message to the rest of the world that we are doing what we promised, to enact positive reforms within the IOC,” President Juan Antonio Samaranch said. “Exceptional circumstances require exceptional measures.”

Except that it’s impossible to determine at this point whether the measures actually will be exceptional.

There should be a certain amount of cynicism about the committees because both will be appointed and presided over by Samaranch, whose lack of concern about alleged unethical behavior by some members enabled the corruption to fester and grow.

Lambis Nikolaou, an IOC member from Greece, said Thursday that he warned Samaranch three years ago that rules were being bent. Samaranch’s response, Nikolaou said, was that the IOC was powerless to act unless he had evidence.

Others have also said they tried to alert Samaranch. But he has never explained why he did not pursue that evidence. If the IOC held athletes to the same slack standards, Ben Johnson would still have a gold medal.

Emboldened by an overwhelming vote of confidence from the members, Samaranch defended his role with the new commissions.

In response to a question about IOC 2000, he said, “I am the president of the IOC and it must be presided over by the president.”

He also confirmed that he plans to serve as president until his term ends in 2001.

“After the vote of confidence yesterday, my proposal is to go to the end of my mandate,” he said.

And what is that mandate?

“The world needs the Olympic Games,” he said. “It is the most important event in the world, not only sports, the most important event in the world. Youth deserves that the Olympics must be kept, with all the prestige we had until now.”

Perhaps Samaranch will prove that he indeed is the right person to restore that prestige.

Until then, McCain and others are right to hold Samaranch’s feet to the flame.

Randy Harvey can be reached at his e-mail address: randy.harvey@latimes.com.