Anita DeFrantz

In less than two weeks, the sky over Sydney, Australia, will fill with skyrockets, a thousand television cameras will light up and the Games of the XXVII Olympiad will get under way. These Games, however, are different from all the others. For the last 21 months, the movement’s controlling body, the 113-member International Olympic Committee, has been rocked by wave after wave of scandal. Various federal and local investigations show that the organizers who brought the lucrative 2002 Winter Games to Salt Lake City spent at least $1.2 million in various under-the-table payments to win the favor of selected IOC members, most of them from Third World countries. Since the first scandal broke in Utah in December 1998, the IOC has scrambled to reform itself, setting up a welter of commissions and other bodies to look after ethics and such nettlesome issues as sports doping. The scramble has transformed what was basically a private old boys’ club into a modern business claiming transparency and accountability.

One of the people at the core of all the change is Anita L. DeFrantz, a 47-year-old lawyer and former Olympic rower who heads the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles. DeFrantz, the first woman in the 106-year history of the IOC to be a vice president, is the most powerful American in the Olympic movement. She is also the first African American to represent the United States in the IOC.

While attending Connecticut College and law school at the University of Pennsylvania, DeFrantz was a serious rower and captain of the eight-oared United States shell that won a bronze medal at the Montreal Olympics in 1976. After rigorously training for the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, she protested the U.S. decision to boycott the Games because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The protest led to her career as an Olympic administrator, giving testimony before Congress, joining the organizing committee for the 1984 Games in Los Angeles and winning election to the IOC in 1986.

DeFrantz did not emerge unscathed from the recent scandals, although both federal authorities and the IOC have since absolved her of wrongdoing. Much of the controversy was about a gold-and-garnet necklace she was given in Japan in 1990. Newspaper articles claimed the value of the necklace surpassed the $200 limit then in force for gifts to IOC members. DeFrantz retorted that the necklace was a gift from the wife of a friend, not a bribe, and the giver of the gift said it had actually cost less than $100 to make.

DeFrantz is single and travels part of nearly every month on Olympic business, often to Lausanne, the IOC headquarters, where this conversation took place. Like all elected IOC members, she is an unsalaried volunteer. When traveling on IOC business, her expenses are paid, and she receives a generous per-diem allowance. DeFrantz’s name usually figures in speculation about who will succeed IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch, who has led the body since 1980 and whose term expires on July 16, 2001.

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Question: Is the International Olympic Committee a parliament, an executive committee, a court or a business protecting its monopoly?

Answer: The IOC is the board of directors of the world foundation for sports. . . . It is the only [foundation] that has as its mission to promote sports throughout the world and to promote all sports throughout the world. Of course, there are specific interest groups [like] FIFA [International Federation of Football Assns.], which is only interested in . . . soccer. . . . But the IOC is interested in all sports.

Q: When you were elected to the IOC, most members were much older than you, and there hadn’t been many women . . .

A: I was the fifth woman elected.

Q: What was it like?

A: I didn’t believe I had been elected. I thought I was being called to meet the president, to be told I was not elected. . . . I was called into a poorly lit and cavernous room, and an elegant gentleman said “Please follow me,” and I walked to the front of the room. Someone before me went up to a podium and was told to hold the Olympic flag, and he said something in French. I was told to read a card and hold the flag and hold my hand up--and it was the Olympic oath. . . . [IOC President] Juan Antonio Samaranch put the IOC member’s medal around my neck, and there was applause. . . .

Q: When you were on the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee for the 1984 Games, you had to deal often with the IOC. Was it different then than now, when you’re on the inside?

A: My first [dealing] with the IOC was at the session in Baden-Baden [in September 1981], where I received my Olympic Order [a medal for opposing the United States boycott of the 1980 Olympics]. . . . I believe in the right of athletes to be able to make their own decisions, which is what athletes do on the playing field. In 1980, the most fundamental decision of all was denied to athletes in the U.S. and, unfortunately, in a handful of other countries because of the U.S.

Q: A year and a half ago, because of the wave of scandals involving members of the IOC, many felt the Olympic movement was tottering, even in danger of ending. Were you worried?

A: I was worried for the athletes, that people wouldn’t understand the importance of what athletes did, the inspiration that their efforts provided the world. That that magnificence would be lost because of the misdeeds of a few. It worried me that the work of so many good people throughout the world, from volunteer coaches to the people who are volunteers as IOC members, would be lost.

Q: You had one of the key positions in carrying through IOC reforms. Do you think any more reforms are needed?

A: I’m in a wait-and-see mode. 1981 was the first enormous year of change. It was the first time that IOC members didn’t have to pay their own way or rely on money from their national Olympic committee or whatever. That was because the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee structured the payments of its television rights so that there was a $30-million check turned over to the IOC. The IOC went from having net liquid assets of $800,000 to $30 million and could fund the travel of its members. That was a watershed in the IOC. I could not have been a member of the IOC if the IOC was not able to fund my travel and accommodations. . . . I have to say thanks to those members, mainly white rich guys, who kept the Olympic movement alive all those years so I could be an Olympian, so I could compete in the Games.

Q: When you started rowing, were you ever tempted to try dope?

A: Never. I can’t imagine how somebody can cheat and look at themselves in the mirror. I feel sorry for those who have cheated and won medals. How can they be proud? . . . I know that the medal that I won . . . yeah, it’s bronze, maybe it could be a silver, maybe it could have been a gold--and maybe I could have been dead. But I know that I won this bronze medal on my own ability, and I’m proud of that. . . . Dopers are cowards. If you don’t have enough courage to face your own ability, you’re a coward.

Q: Do you think the days of boycotts and politics in the Olympics are over?

A: I’m doing my best to make it so. The only people who get hurt in boycotts are the athletes, and no one is served.

Q: How about South Africa, which was banned by the Olympic movement from competing while apartheid was in force?

A: South Africa was different, because the apartheid regime was a crime against humanity, so declared by the United Nations, although it was a bit late. The IOC was out ahead.

Q: So keeping South Africa out of the Olympics helped get rid of apartheid?

A: Yes.

Q: Has the press been a help or a hindrance in reforming the IOC?

A: I don’t think the press has been a problem. I wish that we in the Olympic movement had done a better job of expressing what we are about and getting across the many good things that we do.

Q: How did you feel when you were accused of accepting a gift of a garnet necklace, then doubts were raised about whether it was costly enough to have violated IOC rules?

A: Oh, that necklace! You know, the worst part is I can’t even find that thing. I’ve been looking all over for it. . . . It was a two-day story: the day they said I’d done something heinous, and the next day I hadn’t done anything heinous at all. . . .

Q: You have been an Olympic athlete or a power in the IOC for all 20 years that Samaranch has been president. How would you sum up that period of the Olympic movement?

A: I have called him the president of inclusion. During his time as president, women have been included for the first time, athletes have been included, more sports have been included, more national Olympic committees have been included, more people have been able to sit at the table of the Olympic movement. And I am one of those who have been included.

Q: The Olympics have changed in the last 20 years from a money-losing proposition to a billion-dollar business. Do you think the sudden arrival of money is a change for the better?

A: Money has made the Games open for more people to take part. It’s made it possible for athletes to train in many parts of the world where they would not have had the opportunity before. Money has made it possible for women to take part who would not have had the opportunity before. Someone said that it has democratized the Olympic movement, and I think that’s a very positive thing.

Q: How about the effect of money on Olympic sports? For example, because of its Olympic profits, the United States can afford to support athletes in even minor sports for $50,000 or even $100,000 a year, whereas an athlete in a poor country is going to get very little. Doesn’t that tip the balance in favor of rich countries in Olympic competition?

A: Actually, the IOC is able to support athletes in poor countries, which it wasn’t able to do at all in the past. Olympic Solidarity [a revenue-sharing program] has provided scholarships to athletes in the poorest of countries and has helped the national Olympic committees in poor countries with their operating expenses. Every national Olympic committee receives at least $10,000 a year, and countries that have a stronger marketing program receive more than $10,000 a year. The U.S. was able to strike a very favorable relationship with the IOC because it has a very strong market. . . . As markets develop, the poor countries, too, will have the benefits.

Q: What qualities do you think Samaranch’s successor needs?

A: He was absolutely the right president to get us through the world of the Cold War. The 1980s were a really tough time, and he managed us through [them]. Certainly, the 1980 and 1984 boycotts were the clearest evidence of the Cold War. . . . Last year, I kept saying that “[The scandal] is not as bad as 1980, this is not as bad as 1980.” Because the right of athletes to compete was not being affected. And another thing: 1999 gave us the chance to do something not quite as significant as 1894 [when the modern Olympic Games were founded] but almost as important. . . . We were not reinventing but we were making decisions that would allow the Olympic movement to endure and flourish.

Q: Would you be interested in running for the presidency of the IOC?

A: You know, I believe that I will someday be the president of the IOC. I don’t know when.