Ctvrtlik Selected to Join IOC

Former U.S. volleyball player Bob Ctvrtlik is among eight athletes selected by competitors at the Sydney Games to be members of the International Olympic Committee, officials announced Thursday.

Ctvrtlik, who helped the U.S. win the gold medal at Seoul in 1988, was one of several athletes who last year had been appointed IOC members as part of a wide-ranging IOC reform plan. He and five of last year’s appointees were confirmed for membership by elections during the Sydney Games that also saw the addition of two new athlete members--swimmer Susie O’Neill of Australia and water polo player Manuel Estiarte of Spain.

All eight--now elected to the IOC’s Athletes’ Commission--will become full IOC members on Saturday unless rejected by a review board, IOC Vice President Anita DeFrantz of Los Angeles said Thursday.

The top vote-getters, who will serve eight-year terms, were pole vaulter Sergei Bubka of Ukraine, swimmer Alexander Popov of Russia, O’Neill and Ctvrtlik.

“I just look at this as a big honor,” Ctvrtlik said today.

Serving four-year terms will be javelin thrower Jan Zelezny of the Czech Republic, former Canadian runner Charmaine Crooks, German rower Roland Baar and Estiarte.

The IOC said that 5,216 votes were cast Sept. 16-27 at the athletes’ village in Sydney. Each of the 11,035 credentialed athletes was eligible to vote for eight of the 44 nominated candidates.

Ctvrtlik’s reelection gives the United States four IOC members. Besides DeFrantz, the others are Jim Easton and Bill Hybl. All but Hybl, chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee, live in Southern California; Hybl lives in Colorado Springs, Colo.

The elections at the Sydney Games mark the latest step in a complicated series of appointments and elections--all part of a 50-point reform plan the IOC enacted last year in the wake of the Salt Lake City corruption scandal.

The overall strategy is to make the IOC membership younger and more diverse and help it better serve athletes at the Games.

None of those elected at Sydney, however, represent Africa, Asia or Latin America. Only two of the eight are female.

IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch is due soon to appoint three other athletes to the IOC, who will be sworn in next July, at an IOC meeting in Moscow. DeFrantz said these nominations will probably address geographic and gender imbalances.

Meantime, three athletes elected at the 1998 Nagano Games will remain IOC members until the 2002 Salt Lake City Games. Under the reform plan, athletes at those Games will choose four new members.

The addition of the eight athlete-chosen members puts IOC membership at 128.