U.S. Role Is Waning in Politics of the IOC

Belgium’s Jacques Rogge, the newly elected president of the International Olympic Committee, received the keys Friday to IOC headquarters amid much pomp before an international crowd of sports dignitaries.

But not a soul from the United States Olympic Committee showed up.

USOC President Sandra Baldwin said they’d been told by IOC staff not to bother--that it was a small party for the locals. “I would have been there with bells on,” she said.

But the U.S. absence on a day set aside to formally welcome the man who will rule the IOC for the next eight years--and maybe more--was more than simply an example of bungled communication.

It represented another missed opportunity.

The U.S. is preparing to step center stage again for the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. But the country that dominates the medal count at the Summer Games, supplies much of the IOC’s financial support and has regularly played host to the Games over the last 20 years plays a remarkably subdued role in driving the Olympic agenda.

“There’s no question American influence has declined in the Olympic movement,” said Peter Ueberroth, head of the 1984 L.A. Games who has retained close ties to the IOC.

“Our influence is practically zero in many quarters,” said Don Porter, president of the Florida-based international softball federation.

The four-member U.S. voting bloc on the IOC, for instance, is equal to that of Australia--which has not even one-tenth the U.S. population--and Spain and Canada. Italy and Switzerland wield more clout, with five votes apiece.

Rogge’s election in Moscow this week reaffirmed the IOC’s symbolic and concrete ties to Europe--home to all but one of the last seven IOC presidents.

U.S. influence is so lacking that as the countdown to the Salt Lake Games next February gets underway in earnest, there is now no American member--an emphatic zero--on the IOC’s 15-member ruling Executive Board. That means the U.S. has no voice on the board that sets IOC policy.

The lack of U.S. influence holds potentially significant import for a wide range of issues in the near and far term.

Foremost is administration of the Salt Lake Winter Games in February.

And, as impossibly far off as it may seem now, the IOC is giving serious preliminary consideration to the selection of the 2012 Summer Games site.

Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and five other U.S. cities are already vying for the 2012 games, which will reward its host with worldwide recognition and millions in economic impact. Also in competition are Rio de Janeiro, London, Madrid and Moscow--and, perhaps, Toronto and Paris, runners-up to Beijing in the 2008 selection.

On the surface, Beijing’s selection would seem to give U.S. chances a boost for 2012 because the IOC tends to spread the Summer Games around the continents:

In 1996 they were in Atlanta (Americas); in 2000 in Sydney (Oceania); in 2004 they will be in Athens (Europe); and in 2008 in China (Asia). If form follows, the Games would go to Africa or back to the Western Hemisphere in 2012.

Rogge reiterated Friday that he wants to downsize the Games--to make them more affordable for countries and regions that haven’t had them--which could foreshadow the United States being passed over in its future bids.

It’s not clear that any city in Africa has the resources to stage the Games. Cape Town and Durban, both in South Africa, are mentioned as possibilities. Rio, however, intrigues the IOC, and Carlos Arthur Nuzman, one of two Brazilian members, moves in IOC circles with increasing authority.

So why does the U.S., home to corporations including NBC and others that remain the IOC’s key financial underwriters, lag behind in building and maintaining the person-to-person relationships that drive IOC decision-making?

“This is a people movement. Influence is based on personal relationships,” and there are neither enough relationships nor enough quality relationships, said Anita DeFrantz of Los Angeles. The senior IOC representative in the United States, she failed in her recent bid for the IOC presidency--another indication of the lack of U.S. clout.

Still, there are signs of hope.

Rogge again made a point--as he has repeatedly since he was elected Monday--of reaching out to the United States.

Even before getting the keys to the IOC’s lakefront Chateau de Vidy, he was finalizing plans to visit Salt Lake City and Colorado Springs, home of the USOC, in early August. The trip will mark his first visit to each city. “An important visit,” he said.

The visit promises at least to be symbolically important because Samaranch’s last trip to Salt Lake was April 1997. The Executive Board has not held a meeting in the United States since 1996, at the Atlanta Summer Games.

The failure to come to the U.S. can be traced in part to the fact that many IOC members remain furious at the U.S., in particular at Congress, over the Salt Lake City bidding scandal, which erupted in late 1998. Samaranch was called to testify before Congress in December 1999; among the 199 nations in the Olympic movement, no other country’s legislative body demanded, as did Congress, that the IOC president show up and account for the scandal.

Some U.S. points for diplomatic approach have slowly been won by Hernando Madronero, the current USOC international relations director. But he took the job with much ground to make up--his predecessor, Alfredo LaMont, pleaded guilty in March 2000, to two felony tax counts and is awaiting sentencing.

Still, the Olympic scene is full of reminders of how the U.S. has failed to translate its sporting and economic prowess into political strength.

Perhaps one of the best examples of how others play the game is Aldo Notari.

An Italian, Notari has been president of the international baseball federation since 1993. When he was elected, he said, he promptly moved its headquarters from Indianapolis to Lausanne, to be closer to the IOC.

“It’s good politics,” Notari said.

“Baseball was out of the influence of the IOC,” he explained. That’s not the case in Lausanne: “Now, it’s every morning, good morning, Mr. President.”

If U.S. access to the top levels of the IOC is one problem, insiders say, issues of continuity and money are the others.

The USOC, for instance, elects a new president and governing Executive Committee every four years. The turnover short-circuits the opportunity to develop long-lasting relationships.

“We change people too often,” said IOC member Jim Easton of Los Angeles, who also is president of the archery federation. “We do it because we want to be democratic. But it’s not the way to [make] friends and build influence so that you get placed on committees or councils or win a presidency.”

Money is another particularly sensitive issue.

Only the USOC, for instance, gets a special cut of the IOC’s broadcasting rights--currently 10% of the fee paid by the U.S. broadcaster to the IOC. The USOC got a $70.5-million chunk of the $705 million NBC paid to air the Sydney Olympics.

At an IOC meeting in May in Lausanne, several European members said the issue of the USOC’s cut needs to be revisited.

Rogge hinted Friday at the direction he may push forthcoming discussions when he acknowledged that the majority of the IOC’s top corporate sponsors (seven of 10) are American but said, “Not all the revenue is generated in the United States because these are multinationals.”

John Lucas, an Olympics expert and professor emeritus at Penn State, said: “The crux of the whole matter, the anger that is manifested quietly or overtly toward the United States and especially the USOC, is the excessive moneys the USOC has demanded and won [from the IOC], which is in excess of any other nation.”

These are the sticking points that the USOC hoped to smooth over when it sent a sizable contingent to Moscow this past week.

“We’ve done a poor job of interacting with the international community,” interim USOC CEO Scott Blackmun acknowledged. “The best way to change that is to start building relationships.”

The ceremony and party Friday in Lausanne, however, represent a significant opportunity lost.

Asked about the U.S. absence, Rogge preferred to focus on constructive steps the U.S. might consider--training more bilingual sports leaders, hosting more world and continental championships, giving financial or coaching aid to athletes in developing nations.

Other IOC members seemed puzzled that no one from one of the most powerful countries in the world was on hand.

“I am an IOC member, it’s important to be here,” observed Alpha Ibrahim Diallo of Guinea, president of the Assn. of National Olympic Committees of Africa.

In fact, about 20 leading IOC members from around the world flew to Lausanne to formally welcome Rogge, who succeeds Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain, president since 1980.

“It’s very unusual,” said Ruben Acosta Hernandez of Mexico, who is also president of the international volleyball federation. “It’s once every 21 years.”