If Ballot Is Omen, Kim at Top of List for IOC President

Under the beneficent gaze of a huge golden chicken that clucks on the hour, its metallic wings flapping over a red-carpeted lobby awash in fountains and rumors of every sort, the International Olympic Committee on Monday kicked off a historic series of meetings.

Signs, portents and kismet were the order of the day as the IOC’s ruling Executive Board honored longtime President Juan Antonio Samaranch and affirmed procedures for the two elections dominating the meetings--the site of the 2008 Olympic Games and the all-important ballot to select a new president. Samaranch is stepping down in a few days after four terms.

In a random drawing, the Executive Board assigned the order by which the candidates will be listed next Monday on the electronic presidential ballot.

No. 1 went to Kim Un Yong of South Korea.

No. 2: Dick Pound of Canada. No. 3: Jacques Rogge of Belgium. No. 4: Pal Schmitt of Hungary. No. 5: Anita DeFrantz of Los Angeles.

Kim, Pound and Rogge are widely considered the leading candidates. Coincidence?

Kim laughingly declined to ascribe too much importance to the No. 1 button. However, he seemed delighted to get it.

“It’s just what happened,” he said with a big smile to a knot of reporters inquiring repeatedly about symbolism and fate in the lobby of the Mezhdunarodnaya Hotel--the golden chicken towering above lending an even greater air of surrealism to the proceedings.

The presidential election will be held three days after Friday’s selection of a site for the 2008 Summer Games. Both votes are key to the future of an institution that in recent years has become a billion-dollar business and sports enterprise.

Beijing is considered the 2008 favorite, ahead of Paris and Toronto. Also in the race are Osaka, Japan, and Istanbul, Turkey.

The Executive Board on Monday voted to recommend to the IOC’s full membership that Samaranch be named chairman of the board of the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, as well as the IOC’s “honorary president for life.”

The museum is only a few miles down the road from the IOC’s Lake Geneva headquarters, and being its chairman would ensure that Samaranch, who turns 81 on July 17, would remain actively involved in the movement.

The board also recommended that the museum be renamed the Samaranch Olympic Museum. The proposals are expected to generate little, if any, opposition from the full roster of 122 IOC delegates.

“Don’t expect him to sell tickets if you visit with your family next week,” IOC Director General Francois Carrard quipped.

Critics might consider the IOC rash for renaming the museum in honor of the president on whose watch the Salt Lake City corruption scandal erupted in late 1998. It marked the worst episode of corruption in Olympic history.

Pound said that misses the big picture.

“It’s important to put into perspective a truly astounding record of leadership,” Pound said of Samaranch’s 21 years, during which the IOC has become financially secure, shaken off boycotts, welcomed professional athletes into the Games and seen women compete in increasing numbers at the Olympics.

“Beyond doubt, he’s one of the greatest presidents,” Pound said.

Kim received a “most serious” warning for his role in the scandal. It is a measure of his increasing acceptance by Olympic insiders, however, that U.S. Olympic Committee President Sandra Baldwin on Monday said of him, “He’s a very smart man, and he understands sports.”

The USOC has publicly endorsed DeFrantz, and Baldwin was careful Monday to add: “I’ve also said we are very supportive of Anita. But I’m concerned it will be difficult to get an American elected.”

Some have suggested that a Kim presidency would be a PR disaster for the IOC, particularly coming only a few months before the Salt Lake Winter Games in February.

Baldwin said: “The election of Dr. Kim to the IOC presidency would certainly cause initial controversy, but I believe that he has the best of the Olympic movement at heart and cares greatly about his public image. And he would work very hard to overcome the initial negative ramifications of his election.”

Carrard, meantime, said the board confirmed the secret-ballot procedure for both the 2008 and presidential votes:

* Simple majorities will win.

* The candidate in each round with the fewest votes is eliminated.

* As the voting is proceeding, the IOC will not release, even to members, the numbers of votes cast for a particular city or candidate. The figures will, however, be available afterward.

The reason for keeping the figures secret while the balloting is going on, Carrard said, is to discourage vote trading, though he quickly said he did not mean “trading of votes . . . in the commercial sense.” The 2008 vote is the IOC’s first for the Summer Games since the Salt Lake City gifts-and-cash-for-votes scandal, which dominated the IOC in 1999.

The rules say that IOC members may not vote when cities in their nations are under consideration. So, for instance, Pound and the three other Canadian members may not vote as long as Toronto is still in the 2008 race.

The rule is the same for the presidential election but with one important variation: The candidates may vote, but others from their nations may not.

For example, DeFrantz may vote for herself. But the three other U.S. members--Jim Easton, Bob Ctvrtlik and Bill Hybl--may not vote in the presidential election unless DeFrantz is eliminated.

It won’t be known until later in the week how many members it will take to secure a majority vote--after the IOC knows how many of the 122 make it to Moscow.

Two for sure will not make it. Vera Caslavska of the Czech Republic is ailing and has been “excused” from the meeting, Carrard said. And Mohamad “Bob” Hasan of Indonesia recently was convicted in Jakarta of corruption and sentenced to a six-year prison term. Hasan’s IOC membership has been suspended, and he probably will be expelled at the Moscow meeting.

It remains unclear whether Lassana Palenfo of Ivory Coast will attend.

Palenfo, who had been the state security minister in the west African nation, was convicted there a few months ago in a case rife with political overtones. His IOC membership has not been suspended, but it is uncertain whether he is free to travel.