Rogge Calls for Crackdown

International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said Wednesday that U.S. professional sports, in particular baseball, had made progress in the campaign to blunt athlete use of performance-enhancing drugs, but that much more should be done.

With Major League Baseball this season imposing a 10-day suspension for first-time steroid use, Rogge said, “We see steps in the right direction but they are very timid.”

He called Congress’ ongoing interest a “very good sign”; after a hearing last month that focused on steroid use in baseball, NFL officials have been summoned to a hearing next week.

Rogge urged U.S. pro leagues to adopt the standard that governs Olympic sports, which calls for a two-year ban for a first offense.

Rogge’s remarks, some of his most forceful on U.S. sports doping since he became IOC president nearly four years ago, came at the end of a three-day executive board meeting dominated by a controversy over London’s plan to offer a package of incentives and benefits should it win the 2012 Olympics.

The IOC will pick the 2012 site on July 6. London is competing with Madrid, Moscow, New York and Paris.

London officials have said they did nothing wrong in announcing a plan here under which athletes and others would be entitled to free phone cards, train travel and other benefits, and national Olympic committees could receive $50,000 in credit toward the cost of pre-Olympic training in Britain.

The IOC’s ethics watchdog, Paquerette Girard Zappelli, is seeking “clarification,” officials have said, and was unclear if the matter would lead to sanctions.

In general, bidders may not go beyond the details of plans they provided months ago.

New York’s bid also drew scrutiny after bid officials on Sunday promised free marketing assistance to the 28 Summer Games sports through an agency to be overseen by NBA Commissioner David Stern.

That plan is outlined in the file that New York 2012 delivered to the IOC. Moreover, Stern appeared Feb. 23 before an IOC inspection team that toured New York to discuss the plan.

Nonetheless, “it would have been much wiser” for London and New York to have informed the IOC about their plans in detail before the Berlin meeting, Rogge said Wednesday.

“Candidate cities have to understand where we come from,” Rogge said. “We come from a period of excesses. We come from a period of red-carpet treatment. And we come from a period where we had a corruption scandal in Salt Lake City,” which saw 10 IOC members resign or be expelled and prompted a 50-point IOC reform plan.

The scandal erupted in late 1998 amid revelations that Salt Lake had won the 2002 Games in part by showering IOC members or their relatives with more than $1 million in cash, gifts and other inducements. “And this is something we don’t want to repeat,” Rogge told reporters.

In other developments:

* Rogge said each of the 28 Summer Games sports will be put to a vote in July as the IOC decides whether to make any changes to the 2012 Olympic program. Golf, karate, squash, rugby and roller sports want in but no new sport can come in unless one of the 28 goes out.

* The IOC said 2004 produced $156 million in surplus revenue, exceeding projections of a $123-million surplus. The IOC typically produces a significant surplus in an Olympic year; it depends on such funds to carry it through non-Olympic years, which traditionally produce deficits. The IOC projects a $50-million operating deficit in 2005.

* Turin Winter Games organizers said that funds from the Italian national government and from regional authorities would largely close a roughly $200-million shortfall in a $1.7-billion operating budget.