USOC President Decides to Resign

Marty Mankamyer, president of the U.S. Olympic Committee, abruptly resigned Tuesday, saying there “seemed to be no possibility for peace” within the USOC “unless I stepped aside.”

Mankamyer, 69, elected USOC president last August, had fought off calls for her resignation for several weeks. Several high-ranking members of the USOC executive committee, including all five vice presidents, said they had lost confidence in her in the wake of an ethics-related inquiry into Chief Executive Lloyd Ward. They alleged she’d tried to manipulate the process to undermine him.

She had denied any impropriety and vowed to stay on. But she concluded Tuesday afternoon that she did not have the resources to mount what she viewed as an expensive campaign to keep her post -- among other things, she believed she would have to pay costly lawyers’ fees -- and said in a telephone interview, “I give up. I quit.”

Her resignation comes the week after a congressional hearing into the USOC’s tumult. Another hearing is forthcoming. Rather than quell the situation, it holds the potential to further roil an institutional instability so severe that Congress has already indicated a strong intent to restructure the USOC, perhaps as part of a revision of the 1978 law that gave the USOC authority in this country over Olympic sports.

“Maybe Congress can fix [the USOC],” Mankamyer said. “I hope so.”

The Athens 2004 Summer Games are 18 months away. But the USOC -- again, just as it had to do for months last year -- will be operating in the near term without an elected president. Mankamyer was the third president since 2000.

A slew of logistical details now confront the USOC, including the scheduling of yet another presidential election. The policy-making executive committee is due to meet in Chicago this weekend. Because he is the USOC’s secretary and thus one of the five vice presidents, William Martin, the athletic director at the University of Michigan, becomes acting president.

Ward’s future, meantime, is by no means secure. He is the fourth CEO since 1999.

Last year, in the incident that underpins the current turmoil, Ward directed USOC staff to make introductions in the Dominican Republic, site of the 2003 Pan American Games, on behalf of a Detroit company with ties to his brother and a friend. The company, Energy Management Technologies, was seeking to provide backup power generators. No contract was signed.

The USOC’s ethics board found that Ward had committed two violations of the USOC ethics code, including the creation of the “appearance of a conflict of interest,” but its report did not recommend any disciplinary action, and on Jan. 13 the executive committee took none.

An “error in judgment,” Ward has called it repeatedly, including in his testimony before Congress.

In that testimony, Ward also decried what he called the USOC’s “I gotcha” culture, suggesting that others in the organization could have and should have counseled him if he were nearing ethical peril.

On Tuesday, a Nov. 2, 2001, e-mail from Pat Rodgers, then the USOC’s ethics compliance officer, surfaced. The e-mail was sent to Mankamyer, then the USOC’s vice president-secretary, the day after Ward took over as CEO.

The subject of the e-mail was the possibility of a conflict of interest should Mankamyer, a real estate broker in Colorado Springs, Colo., where the USOC is headquartered, continue to help Ward and his wife search for a house. By then, they’d had some preliminary house-hunting discussion.

After passing along his view of the situation -- that a conflict appeared unlikely -- Rodgers said in the e-mail that he’d met that day with Ward. Rodgers wrote, “Lloyd, who was in a hurry (the meeting only lasted five minutes), said that he was the CEO and did not need an ethics advisor to counsel him on this.”

Ward could not be reached Tuesday for comment.

Rodgers is one of five USOC officials who had resigned since the executive committee’s Jan. 13 meeting. The others include three members of the ethics board and executive committee member Brian Derwin.

Mankamyer indicated before the Jan. 13 meeting that she would resign. But she changed her mind.

On Jan. 21, the five vice presidents, joined by the head of the athlete and sports federation groups, convened a conference call with reporters to demand Mankamyer resign. The “officers,” as they are dubbed in USOC lingo, said they’d lost confidence in her leadership.

Several of the officers also insisted that the call for Mankamyer’s resignation was not politically motivated, even though one of them -- Paul George -- had run, and lost, for the presidency twice, first in 2000 against Sandy Baldwin, then last year versus Mankamyer. George is one of the five vice presidents.

On Sunday, at a meeting at the Broadmoor Golf Club in Colorado Springs, Bill Hybl, a former USOC president, met with Mankamyer, sent there to gauge whether she might resign before the executive committee’s meeting this weekend in Chicago. He had performed a similar mission a few weeks ago with Ward.

As late as mid-afternoon on Tuesday, Mankamyer remained adamant that she was staying on.

Then, though, she decided she’d had enough. She portrayed the officers’ attitude as “destroy and take no prisoners,” and said, “I thought about it and I thought about it, and I can’t fight this over and over again.”

She also sent out an e-mail that said, “This is a time when the USOC needs to refocus on its priorities and get away from public displays of disagreement.”

She also said in the e-mail that she hoped “tonight’s choice will be remembered for its purpose and spirit and love, and will give others courage to do what is right when they are faced with similar decisions.”