Rogge Supported by Sydney Leader

The next president of the International Olympic Committee should be Belgium’s Jacques Rogge, says Michael Knight, the Australian state government minister who headed the operational team that put on the Sydney Games.

Knight said today that if the IOC “wants to keep the reform process going,” Rogge is the “only sensible person” to succeed Juan Antonio Samaranch, the Spaniard who has been atop the IOC for 20 years and who retires next July.

Knight’s comments came at a news conference he called to announce that he is quitting politics. That development surprised many in Australia’s political and sports hierarchies, who had expected that the success of the Games--acclaimed as the best in Olympic history--would catapult Knight into Australia’s highest government posts.

But after 19 years in politics, he said, he’s moving into the private sector. He said he intends to stay on the job until the turn of the year--to oversee the Paralympic Games, which run from Oct. 18-29, and to wrap up the business of the Olympics and Paralympics--and then formally step down.

He said he does not have a job lined up. “Make me an offer,” he said with a smile.

The IOC will pick a new president next July. Rogge and Canada’s Dick Pound are widely believed to be the leading candidates. Also in the mix: Anita DeFrantz of Los Angeles, South Korea’s Kim Un Yong and R. Kevan Gosper of Australia.

Knight’s comments about Rogge are noteworthy not because Knight will have a vote next July--he won’t--but because he is in a unique position to offer an opinion.

In the long lead-up to the Games, Knight worked closely with senior IOC officials, including Samaranch and all five potential successors. Gosper, of course, is a fellow Australian. And Knight was in charge in Sydney as the IOC, reacting to the Salt Lake City corruption scandal, enacted a wide-ranging 50-point reform program.

“There’s a decency and integrity about Rogge,” who headed the IOC’s liaison committee with Sydney Games organizers, Knight said today. “And that’s what the IOC needs.”

The other potential presidential candidates could not be immediately reached for comment.

Knight said that he and his wife, Anne, reached the decision months ago that he should leave politics. They have two daughters--Joanna is 15, Catherine 6--and he said today he wants more family time.

Olympic Notes

Greco-Roman wrestler Rulon Gardner, who upset Russian Alexander Karelin for the gold medal, will be a guest on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” on NBC tonight. . . . Two more athletes tested positive for banned substances in the last two days of the Olympic, the IOC said. The two unnamed competitors had already left Sydney. In all, nine athletes failed drug rests during the Games. . . . In a somber ceremony marking the arrival of the Olympic flag in Athens, Greece, athletes dedicated the 13 medals they won at Sydney to the victims of a ferry disaster off the island of Paros on Sept. 26, when at least 79 people died. . . . Cammie Granato was among 14 members of the 1998 U.S. Olympic gold-medal-winning women’s hockey team named to the 25-woman U.S. roster who will compete at Salt Lake City in 2002.