Another USOC Hearing Set

The U.S. Senate committee that last week heard testimony about what one senator called an “Olympic-sized food fight” announced plans Thursday for another hearing next Thursday, with the aim of airing ideas for a fix to the U.S. Olympic Committee’s management structure.

The Senate Commerce Committee, headed by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), will hear testimony from at least five current or former USOC officials.

The session affords Congress a stage to pressure the USOC to set up its own internal mechanism for reform -- either in concert with or overseen by a committee made up of outsiders.

With revision by Congress of the 1978 Amateur Sports Act a possibility, the USOC’s executive committee is due to meet this weekend in Chicago.

The 1978 act gave the USOC authority for Olympic sports.

The Senate hearing last week saw the word “dysfunctional” used repeatedly amid a three-hour display of the leadership turmoil that has consumed the USOC in the wake of an ethics inquiry into Chief Executive Lloyd Ward that led Tuesday to the resignation of President Marty Mankamyer.

Ward directed USOC staff to help a company with ties to his brother try to land a power deal for the 2003 Pan American Games.

Among those scheduled to testify -- voluntarily -- next Thursday is noted Washington attorney Fred Fielding, who wrote the report that formed the basis of the USOC ethics board’s findings regarding Ward’s conduct. The board found he had committed two violations of the USOC ethics code but recommended no disciplinary action and, in a Jan. 13 meeting in Denver, the executive committee took none. Five USOC officials then resigned, including three members of the ethics board.

Fielding had been asked to testify at the first hearing, Jan. 28, but did not appear, drawing McCain’s ire.

Also on the tentative witness list released Wednesday: Dave D’Alessandro of John Hancock Financial Services, a USOC sponsor; sports commentator Donna DeVarona, a swimming gold medalist who has long been an influential Olympic voice in Washington; and Don Fehr, executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Assn. and one of a handful of the “public sector” members of the USOC’s 120-member board of directors.

In addition: Anita DeFrantz, the senior International Olympic Committee delegate to the United States who also serves on the USOC’s executive committee, and Harvey Schiller, a former USOC executive director now involved in New York City’s bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics are also on the tentative list.