The Ring Leader

Twenty-five years after he was hired to direct the committee that put on the 1984 Los Angeles Games, Peter V. Ueberroth has been summoned again to rescue a struggling entity in the Olympic movement, the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Ueberroth, 66, is mellower than the driven young man who intimidated and inspired his own staff and successfully confronted a host of dubious outsiders to bring about the most profitable Olympics in history, with a $232.5-million surplus.

As volunteer chairman of the USOC, he brings with him not only vast Olympic experience but also the respect and hopes of Olympic organizers throughout the world, who realize how vital the USOC is to assuring good competitions in Athens.

Although he doesn’t mention it often now, Ueberroth reluctantly endorsed President Jimmy Carter’s boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games at the time.

These days, he has a different view.

Addressing a dinner in Long Beach kicking off the U.S. Olympic swimming trials earlier this month, he said he now recognizes that “boycotts don’t do any good.”

Rather, he said, the athletes who go to Athens will serve as “links of peace.”

As chairman of the USOC board, Ueberroth will be an ardent supporter of New York City’s bid for the 2012 Games. The city is a finalist in the competition, which will be decided in 2005.

As president of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, Ueberroth adopted Draconian methods to bring about success, subjecting the staff to frequent tests, firing or transferring any inept staffers and facing down those who demanded any extravagance.

“It was unusual. There were not normal practices, not normal business practices,” he said later. “It wasn’t a time for kindness, to take the time and help people through problems, and people had to be moved aside and shunted. And all that happened. But the result worked.”

Since then, in the words of his frequent partner, former United Airlines Chief Executive Richard Ferris, Ueberroth has “thought outside the box” and exhibited “a very inquiring mind,” while raising fewer hackles than he did at the LAOOC.

He has always been free with practical advice. Three of his frequent advisories to friends over the years have been: “Don’t let anything stand as a bar between you and your daughters. Don’t run up unpaid balances on your credit cards. And travel in comfort.”

When he stepped down as commissioner of baseball, his personal worth was not much more than $10 million -- the amount he reaped when he sold First Travel years earlier. In the 15 years since, his fortune has climbed to about $100 million, mainly through partnerships and wise investments.

Often, he has acted with scant publicity. Few outside the hotel business know that between 1993 and 2000, Ueberroth and his partners assembled a hotel kingdom numbering 1,250 properties before selling out to the Hilton chain.

Ueberroth now sits on the Hilton board of directors, as he does on the boards of Coca Cola and the Irvine Co.

In 1999, Ueberroth and more than 100 partners paid a reported $820 million to Japanese interests to acquire the Pebble Beach Golf Links and other properties on the Monterey peninsula.

This includes not only the 161-room Lodge at Pebble Beach but the 269-room Inn at Spanish Bay, the 24-room Casa Palmero, several golf courses, the Beach and Tennis Club, the 17-Mile-Drive and the Del Monte Forest.

Joining Ueberroth as the key partners in this venture were Ferris, Arnold Palmer and Clint Eastwood, the former mayor of Carmel. Many other limited partners put up $2 million each.

Now, Ueberroth said, the Pebble Beach group has proposed developing some additional land on the Monterey Peninsula, while also promising in perpetuity to preserve all its remaining pristine holdings as open space.

Of the Pebble Beach acquisition, he said, “It’s given me the most satisfaction of any. It’s not the biggest transaction in which I’ve been involved, but I am proud to be able to permanently protect such a valued part of California life.”

Altogether, Ueberroth said his Newport Beach-based Contrarian Group has invested in about 20 companies, selling its holdings in only a couple.

Less successful was Ueberroth’s abortive bid for governor of California in last year’s recall campaign. He bowed out and returned all $5 million to outside contributors when it appeared he was not making much headway against the front-runner, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was elected, unseating the incumbent governor, Gray Davis.

“My view about it, I was never meant to be a politician and I guess I am fulfilling that prophecy, “ Ueberroth said. “But when I saw a three-year, one-term opportunity to try to fix an institution called California and then get out, I couldn’t pass it up.”

This and other abortive political moves put on display Ueberroth’s lack of comfort with press coverage.

Although he was named Time magazine’s Man of the Year for 1984 after the Los Angeles Games, and many felt he could be presidential material, Ueberroth’s political moves never were successful or long-lasting, in part because of his distaste for granting interviews and dealing on an everyday basis with reporters.

Similarly, he left the post of chairing the Rebuild L.A. effort after the 1992 Los Angeles riots after a year in which press critics said he failed to secure all the private investment commitments he had sought. Ueberroth, however, insists he was able to secure substantial investment commitments.

After the death of John C. Argue, Ueberroth became chairman of the Amateur Athletic Foundation, the group charged with disseminating the local Los Angeles one-third share of the Olympic surplus.

Typically, that group has been a huge financial success, making nearly $150 million in grants and program sponsorships to youth sports throughout Southern California, while investing its original stake to increase its capital by 50% to more than $140 million.

Ueberroth also saw to it that John Ziffren, a Hollywood producer who is also the son of Paul Ziffren, chairman of the 1984 Olympic organizing committee, was put on the foundation board.

At a time when the USOC was bedeviled with a bribery scandal involving the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games, drug problems and many organizational changes and rivalries, Ueberroth served on the panel suggesting USOC reforms, and then emerged as a highly popular choice for new USOC chairman, a volunteer position.

At the recent dinner in Long Beach, he mentioned his involvement with the Olympics actually goes back nearly 50 years, that he had failed in the 1956 Olympic water polo trials to become a U.S. Olympian.

Ueberroth met his wife, Virginia, known to all as Ginny, when she was 17. They were married two years later when they were students at San Jose State. Ginny is an accomplished fundraiser and organizer, and is on the board and an official of the foundation of Hoag Memorial Hospital in Newport Beach, where she chaired an event that raised $50 million.

The Ueberroths have four children and eight grandchildren.

Daughter Heidi is executive vice president of the NBA; Keri runs extensive family farming operations, with holdings in the Coachella Valley, Paso Robles and Washington state and products that include wine grapes, dates, alfalfa and walnuts; Vicki Booth heads the Ueberroth Family Charitable Foundation, with assets of about $12 million; and son Joseph is chairman and chief executive of Ambassadors, International, a travel company based in Newport Beach.

Ueberroth has an Idaho ranch where he and other family members spend considerable time. Their main residence remains Laguna Beach.