DeFrantz Temporarily Sits In for Samaranch at IOC Session

With longtime International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch at home in Spain with flu, Anita DeFrantz of Los Angeles on Sunday took over the IOC--temporarily--even as she announced she wants the No. 1 job permanently.

Samaranch, 80, who has been ill for several days, flew Sunday to his home in Barcelona from IOC headquarters in Lausanne. IOC Director General Francois Carrard said Samaranch had a “stiff flu” and wanted to see his personal physician.

Carrard also said it remains uncertain whether Samaranch will make it to Africa for any of the meeting of the IOC’s ruling Executive Board, to be held today through Wednesday. Never before in Samaranch’s nearly 21 years atop the IOC had he missed the opening of an Executive Board session, Carrard said.

Under IOC protocol, DeFrantz, who currently serves as “first vice president,” takes over.

“He’s still the president,” DeFrantz emphasized. “I’m just chairing the meeting.”

Nonetheless, DeFrantz made formal Sunday evening what she had said in an interview published Saturday in The Times--that she wants to be the next IOC president.

She spoke after an emotional trip by the Executive Board earlier in the day to Ile de Goree--a volcanic island off Dakar’s harbor that served for centuries as the point of no return for untold numbers of Africans bound into slavery and headed for the New World.

DeFrantz is the only U.S. member of the Executive Board. Her forebears include Africans, native Americans and Europeans. It is not clear whether any of her ancestors came through Ile de Goree.

At the island, she lingered by the start of the hallway at which all those headed west across the Atlantic Ocean had to pass--then walked to the door, the literal point of no turning back. For a long moment, she stood there, running her hand over the rough stone of what essentially served as a prisonlike holding pen, while gazing out to sea. Then she turned around.

A few minutes later, tears welled in her eyes as she signed a museum guest book.

Afterward, she said snippets from two songs had been dancing in her head.

One: “Before I be a slave I be buried in my grave,” from the hymn “We Shall Overcome.”

The other: “All I [ever had] is songs of freedom,” from Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.”

She also said that her decision to run for IOC president is inextricably wrapped up in the sort of emotion she felt at the island.

“The issue of opportunity has been something that has informed my life,” she said.

“Growing up, when and where I did, knowing the struggles my parents, my grandparents and their ancestors faced, has been an important part of my life. We talked about it growing up.

“Again, what I’ve known about their lives, what I’ve known and learned about and what I’ve faced in my own life have led me to care about other people. And the respect--which is one of the fundamental principles of the Olympic movement, respect for others--is something I believe in and I make a part of everything I do.”

Speaking at an impromptu news conference in a hotel lobby, she also said: “Twenty-four years of service is what my candidacy is based on. Twenty-four years of service to the Olympic movement.”

DeFrantz, 48, won a bronze medal in rowing in 1976 at the Montreal Games. She led U.S. athlete opposition to the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games ordered by then-President Jimmy Carter.

In 1984 DeFrantz played a key role in operating the athletes’ village at the Los Angeles Games. In 1986 she became an IOC member and in 1992 made it to the Executive Board. In 1997 she became the first female vice president in the IOC’s 107-year history.

DeFrantz’s candidacy will draw serious review within the IOC. But Belgium’s Jacques Rogge and Canada’s Dick Pound are widely viewed as the front-runners. Neither has yet formally announced a candidacy. Nor has South Korea’s Kim Un Yong, whom many believe would be a formidable candidate.

Hungary’s Pal Schmitt is the only other declared candidate. None of the three other U.S. members of the IOC--Jim Easton, Bob Ctvrtlik and Bill Hybl--are expected to run. The deadline to declare is April 10. The election will be July 16 in Moscow--where Samaranch was first elected in 1980.

Carrard said Samaranch feels “very sorry” about his absence in Dakar--in part because the meeting is the first Executive Board session in Africa since January 1978, when the board met in Tunisia and Lord Killanin of Ireland was IOC president. This is the board’s first meeting in sub-Saharan Africa.

The meeting was scheduled for Dakar in part to pay tribute to several Samaranch allies from Senegal: Keba Mbaye, a former judge on the World Court and longtime IOC member who currently serves as an IOC vice president; Lamine Diack, the president of the international track and field federation and a newer IOC member; and Abdoulaye Seye Moreau, president of the world basketball federation.

At least twice in recent years, Samaranch has been briefly absent and unable to carry out some of his ceremonial functions as president.

Last September, Samaranch’s wife died just after the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics. He flew to Barcelona for a few days, then came back to Sydney. Pound, who at the time was first vice president, took over while Samaranch was gone.

In 1994, during the Lillehammer Winter Games, Samaranch flew to Sarajevo to urge peace in the Balkans. On that occasion, Australian R. Kevan Gosper took over.