Connections Count in This Exclusive Club

There are 6 billion people in the world, 131 members of the International Olympic Committee.

How to become one of the lucky ones?

It’s like they say about real estate and location--except that with the IOC, the key word is connections.

Cases in point:

* Francois Narman, president of the national Olympic committee of Belgium, was made a member at last week’s IOC elections. The president of the IOC is Jacques Rogge, born and raised in Ghent, Belgium.

* Two Arab royals, each in their early 20s, were also made members: Sheikh Tamin Bin Hamad Bin Khalifa al-Thani of Qatar and Prince Nawaf Fahd Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia. An influential behind-the-scenes IOC figure is Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah of Kuwait, head of the Olympic Council of Asia, which represents all that continent’s national Olympic committees.

* Last year, at an IOC session in Moscow, Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. of Spain was made a member.

He is a senior official in the modern pentathlon federation, but perhaps the other members noticed before the vote that Samaranch’s father was the outgoing IOC president.

About 10% of the IOC membership are women--but none of the new members.

To the IOC’s credit, Olympic athletes can now be members. Like the athletes at the Summer Games before them, athletes at these Games will select some members.

As part of the reform plan enacted two years ago in the wake of the Salt Lake bid scandal, the IOC now includes members who were proposed because of their positions in international sports federations or national Olympic committees.

For instance, Sandra Baldwin, the president of the U.S. Olympic Committee, was made an IOC member last week. She is replacing Bill Hybl in the IOC; Hybl was the former USOC president.

Over the past couple years, the U.S. has had four IOC members. Baldwin lives in Phoenix, the others in Southern California--Anita DeFrantz of Los Angeles, Jim Easton of Van Nuys and Bob Ctvrtlik of Newport Beach.

There are 199 nations in the Olympic movement--more than in the United Nations. And while many countries don’t have an IOC member (Vietnam, Ethiopia) and others have just one (North Korea), the principality of Monaco, which isn’t even really a country, has an IOC member (Prince Albert).

It makes abundant political sense for the U.S. to have several members.

Seven of the IOC’s top corporate sponsors are U.S. corporations. NBC is the IOC’s chief financial underwriter, with a $3.5 billion contract that gives it exclusive rights to televise the Games in the U.S. from 2000 through 2008.

For the past few years, Switzerland has had five. You think that might have something to do with the IOC being based in Lausanne, Switzerland?

Connections, connections, connections.

Alan Abrahamson