Two Emerge as USOC Favorites

Lloyd Ward, the former chairman of Maytag Corp., and Kurt Schmoke, a former mayor of Baltimore, have emerged as favorites to become the next chief executive officer of the U.S. Olympic Committee, sources said Wednesday.

Also in the running are former cable TV executive Peter Barton and the USOC’s current boss, interim CEO Scott Blackmun.

They are among six candidates who made an initial cut and were interviewed by a special USOC committee in Chicago this month. Two have since withdrawn to pursue other options. The USOC hopes to name a CEO at a meeting Oct. 21 in New York.

The decision comes at a sensitive moment for the USOC. The Salt Lake Winter Games start Feb. 8.

Since the late 1970s, chief executives have rotated in and out of the job every two years, on average. Reasons for the frequent changes include:

* The USOC is headquartered in out-of-the-way Colorado Springs, Colo.

* Tension between its volunteer board of directors and professional staff is perpetual.

* Politics as practiced on the policy-making executive committee is often personal and petty.

Most important, critics say that the USOC can’t seem to figure out what it is: A charity? A business? A non-governmental organization--albeit one chartered by Congress? Is its job to win medals--or something more amorphous, such as serving as a source of inspiration and patriotism?

Added to the mix at the moment is an unsettled financial situation.

The USOC’s budget now runs to more than $100 million annually--though, like most Olympic entities, it calculates budgets on what’s called a quadrennial, a four-year cycle that roughly runs from one Summer Olympics to the next.

Revenues for the current quadrennial, 2001-2004, are secure, USOC officials say. But some leading sponsors include companies that have been hit hard financially in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

For the next cycle, the years 2005-08, prospects are highly uncertain. The USOC’s great leverage for most of the last 20 years has been its ability to use the Games on American soil--in Los Angeles in 1984, Atlanta in 1996, Salt Lake City in 2002--as a sales tool.

After the Salt Lake Games, however, there will be no Games in the United States until at least 2012--if then.

The USOC has gone the corporate route before. Norm Blake, a corporate turnaround artist, arrived just last year--and lasted only nine months, resigning shortly after the Sydney Games.

Blackmun took over and has won high marks for his quiet diplomacy and skill at consensus-building. Detractors, however, point out his relative lack of managerial experience--he was a lawyer before becoming Blake’s chief deputy, then interim CEO--and say he would most likely need a marketing guru should he stay in the job.

A group of prominent Olympic medalists has urged the USOC to retain him.

Schmoke, who is African-American, has won admiration within the USOC for his keen intellect, political savvy and leadership skills. Ivy League-educated, he was mayor of Baltimore for three terms.

Schmoke would likely need a marketing specialist. More problematic, he would have to explain his support for decriminalizing “recreational drugs,” substances that are banned within Olympic sport. That could be a roadblock for the USOC, which has drawn intense criticism from Olympic entities abroad for what they view as an inconsistent enforcement of rules on athlete use of performance-enhancing substances.

That leaves Ward, who became only the second African-American to run a Fortune 500 company when he took over Maytag in 1999. Ward left Maytag after a stormy 15 months--he has supporters and detractors there. He also has extensive experience in internet technologies.

A basketball player in college at Michigan State, Ward has also wowed many within the USOC. “He is the whole solution,” one source said.