Reforms Leave the Room a Bit Cold

When Jacques Rogge took over as president of the International Olympic Committee last year, he vowed to embrace reform, reversing the culture of excess that has plagued the IOC for decades. He would start, he said, by setting an example.

And so he bypassed the luxurious accommodations typically set aside for his ilk this week and is living in the Olympic Village--a first for an IOC president. By mingling with skiers and skaters, munching on common fare such as brownies and apples and laying his head to rest each night on a dorm room pillow, he hopes to set a course for other IOC members to follow.

But against this backdrop of symbolic change remains evidence that several IOC members are clinging to the culture of entitlement that led to the worst corruption crisis in Olympic history, critics say. Two years after a 50-point reform plan was put into place in the wake of the bid scandal that blossomed here in Salt Lake City:

* A slate of rules detailing potential conflicts of interest that require public disclosure was met with such opposition from the IOC during a meeting here earlier this month that implementation was postponed until later this year.

* Some members are openly balking at limits on gifts.

* And there appears to be clear opposition to the current ban that prohibits IOC members from visiting bid cities--the very activity that led to the Salt Lake City bid crisis.

“The rejection of perfectly normal conflict-of-interest disclosure rules by the members really signals how far the IOC has to go,” said John Hoberman, a University of Chicago professor who studies the Olympic movement. “These are normal practices in any international organization, or major corporation, but some of the members come from national cultures where such disclosure rules are unheard of, so they perceive it as an egregious violation of privacy. This is a set of cultural differences the IOC still has to overcome.”

Conflict-of-interest rules and other guidelines were proposed or put into place after revelations that bidders here mounted a campaign for the 2002 Winter Games that included the wooing of IOC members or their relatives with more than $1million in cash, gifts and other inducements. The Salt Lake bid scandal led to other disclosures that portrayed IOC members living a caviar-and-champagne lifestyle on the backs of Olympic athletes.

It was this image that Mitt Romney, the president of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, invoked last week as he formally welcomed the IOC membership to town.

“You will undoubtedly note that your venue seats are not heated,” he said, “that your hospitality tents are a little small, that food and furnishings are modest and that dignitary and official seating is often quite limited. Even your hotel,” the Little America, “is a full star below its sister structure across the street,” the Grand America, NBC’s base during the Salt Lake Games.

“Of course,” Romney said with a smile, “it’s at least two stars better than the accommodation President Rogge will enjoy at the Olympic Village.”

Romney’s remarks left some members bristling.

One unnamed member later told a British newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, “It was very condescending the way he spoke to us. It made us look as though we IOC members are always demanding caviar, cigars and limousines, but this is what cities offer when they bid for the Games and want our votes.”

To be sure, many aspects of IOC management and membership have changed since the scandal.

The IOC, for example, now has an ethics commission, and certain budget documents are now easily accessible, all part of the IOC’s avowed commitment to financial and operational “transparency.”

A revamped membership is also helping to erode elitist attitudes. Athletes are now allowed to join the IOC ranks, and the heads of international sports federations and national Olympic committees can be members--key, advocates say, to keeping the IOC’s focus on staging the best Games possible.

“Opening the doors to the entire Olympic family--that is revolutionary,” said longtime IOC member Pal Schmitt of Hungary. For many years, he said, the IOC had “an old system. Now I see we develop a new one. I am very much satisfied.”

The IOC has intensified the fight against drugs, with the creation of the World Anti-Doping Agency, a joint enterprise of officials from the Olympic movement and governments from around the world.

But perhaps most important, the IOC membership, now totaling 131, is no longer permitted to visit cities bidding for the Games.

Many credit Rogge for a desire to apply basic business principals to the IOC, which has long operated as a club--for most of its history a gentleman’s club. One of Rogge’s first orders after his election was a corporate-style review of IOC operations.

But not everyone is embracing change, evident by the backlash Rogge experienced earlier this month during an IOC meeting at which the conflict-of-interest guidelines were raised.

New Zealand’s Tay Wilson said there was no need for the rules at all. Sinan Erdem of Turkey remarked the members should not be “treated as schoolchildren.”

The IOC used to have a $200 gift limit. Now it says that “only gifts of nominal value, in accordance with prevailing local customs, may be given or accepted ... as a mark of respect or friendship.”

Apparently, the message hasn’t gotten out to the members. Some are still focused on the $200 limit--and still upset by it.

“It is ridiculous,” Erdem said the other day, speaking in French. “If you give me a gift of $201, I have to give you back $1. It is ridiculous.”

Meantime, Rogge acknowledged in an interview, there are a “number of my colleagues” who want to reinstate visits to bid cities.

Rogge made it plain during last year’s election campaign that he had never gone on a bid-city visit and was personally opposed to such trips. But as president he recognizes sentiment exists for the trips and acknowledges that some members say they can’t properly judge a city without firsthand knowledge.

Rogge said a compromise may be to allow visits if they are under IOC control, and if members visit in groups, not individually. But, he said, no “dining and wining.”

At an IOC assembly in November in Mexico City, the IOC is due to reexamine these and other guidelines called for in the 50-point plan.

But some members have noted with concern an apparent lack of desire to follow through with reform plans.

“I don’t think it has changed at all,” said Paul Henderson, a plain-speaking Canadian member, “but you can’t judge it until you see what happens in Mexico City.”

Said Anita DeFrantz, the senior U.S. member of the IOC and a former Executive Board member: “Some members’ views of what is the IOC have not changed. That is not the same as saying the IOC as an organization has not changed.”

Another litmus test of sorts on the issue of whether the IOC has changed will be the reception to Rogge’s accommodations--after he has made his bed one final time in the Olympic Village.

Rogge and his wife, Anne, will take up residence in an apartment in Lausanne, Switzerland, where the IOC is based.

Those who say the IOC has changed would call it a rooftop flat. Critics might call it a penthouse apartment.

Located atop the Palace Hotel, the one-bedroom unit features a living room, small office, bathroom and a kitchenette.

The IOC will pay the rent--about $60 a day when Rogge is not there, and just over $204 when he’s present. The IOC estimates monthly rent will average $4,000, a “bargain,” according to IOC Director General Francois Carrard.

Coincidentally, the Palace Hotel is where former IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch lived for most of his term, in a two-room suite. The media worldwide criticized him repeatedly, sometimes savagely, for that choice--because he was often perceived to be regal and aloof, because the Palace is one of the two nicest hotels in Lausanne, and because it’s named “palace.”

Rogge said he had no public-relations worries about moving atop the hotel.

While the apartment did come with a view of Lake Geneva, he said, the ambience was hardly so charming given the location amid satellite dishes and air-conditioning units on the hotel roof.

Until then, he is enjoying the Olympic Village. It’s comfortable, cozy and reminds the three-time Olympian of his own quests for gold as part of Belgium’s sailing team.

“I think people know I’m a sober man,” Rogge said. “And I’ve started sobering out the IOC.”