USOC Controversy Gets Rogge’s Attention

International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said Monday that the IOC was “concerned” about and “preoccupied” with the leadership “crisis” that for weeks has enveloped the U.S. Olympic Committee, expressing hopes for speedy resolution while giving lukewarm backing to Lloyd Ward, the USOC’s chief executive officer.

Stressing that the IOC will not intervene directly in USOC affairs, Rogge called Ward a “very capable operator” and then said: “Whether Lloyd has a future is not a matter for the IOC. I would hope for him he would continue. But if there is another capable chief executive officer, we’d be very glad to work with the next person.

“The future will tell with whom we are going to [work],” Rogge said.

Rogge made his comments in a conference call with reporters from the United States and Canada on the eve of a meeting of the IOC’s ruling executive board in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The agenda in Lausanne, he said, is full. Besides discussing USOC affairs, the IOC expects this week to review continuing talks aimed at negotiating U.S. television deals for the Games of 2010 and 2012. NBC holds the U.S. rights through the 2008 Games in Beijing.

Rogge said the executive board also would review allegations by former athletes and human rights activists that Iraq routinely tortures its Olympic athletes and other sports figures. Indict, a London human rights group, alleges that Uday Hussein, the son of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the head of Iraq’s national Olympic committee, has ordered athletes imprisoned, abused and sometimes executed.

The executive board will be updated on the case of Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov, a purported Russian mob figure accused by U.S. prosecutors of fixing the ice dancing and pairs figure skating events at the 2002 Salt Lake Games. He has been held since July in an Italian jail. U.S. authorities are seeking his extradition. Rogge said the FBI asked for, and the IOC provided, IOC files relating to the Salt Lake events.

With the IOC to select the site of the 2010 Winter Games in July, voters in Vancouver, Canada, one of the three 2010 candidate cities, are due to vote Saturday in a non-binding poll about whether they want the Games. Rogge said the IOC expects “strong support.” Salzburg, Austria, and Pyeonchang, South Korea, are the other candidates.

Meantime, the IOC executive board this week will decide if certain disciplines and events in a variety of sports will remain part of the Olympic program. In its November general assembly, the IOC already decided to keep softball, baseball and modern pentathlon in the Games, at least through 2004.

The USOC’s tumult, however, figures to be topic No. 1 on the agenda -- and in the behind-the-scenes discussions where much IOC business gets transacted. Since the disclosure in late December of an ethics-related inquiry centering on Ward, six USOC officials have resigned, among them president Marty Mankamyer and three members of the USOC ethics board, and the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee has held two hearings into USOC “dysfunction.”

Ward, who committed two violations of the USOC ethics code in directing staff to help a company with ties to his brother that was seeking a 2003 Pan American Games contract, has been ordered to forfeit his $184,800 bonus for 2002 but remains CEO. Bill Martin, athletic director at the University of Michigan, is now the USOC’s acting president. The USOC has had four presidents and four CEOs since 2000.

Congress is studying wholesale USOC reform.

The USOC also has appointed an internal reform study group. Rogge noted that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), head of the commerce committee, was “pushing in the right direction.” Although unlikely, the possibility exists that Congress might revoke the USOC’s charter. In many countries, the national government runs Olympic affairs. Rogge said such a move in the United States seemed remote: “It’s totally un-American.”

Meantime, he warned, “This crisis cannot continue for months.”

For one thing, he added, the USOC, the bellwether Olympic committee of 199 around the world, is “of vital importance” to the Olympic movement. “If the USOC does not go well, the Olympic movement does not go well.”

For another, the IOC -- having weathered its own crisis in 1999, the Salt Lake City corruption scandal -- is concerned about public relations damage. Many people, Rogge said, do not distinguish between the USOC and the IOC, making a “general amalgamation” between the two and, for that matter, lumping together all entities connected to the Olympic movement.

“Therefore,” he said, “we are concerned.”