Rogge Says New York Still in Running

New York’s plan to move a would-be Olympic Stadium to Queens almost surely will receive International Olympic Committee approval, and the race for the 2012 Summer Games is “going to be a very close call,” IOC President Jacques Rogge said Tuesday.

The move to a new Mets stadium in Queens, sparked by the defeat June 6 of the financing plan for a $2.2-billion stadium on the West Side of Manhattan, must be approved by the IOC’s executive board prior to the full IOC assembly July 6, when the 2012 winner will be chosen. Rogge said in a telephone interview he believes the New York plan “will be accepted” by the board.

Paris, London, Madrid and Moscow are also in the race, and selling a new stadium proposal, Rogge said, is “definitely a challenge that New York will have to have. But I think this is absolutely not diminishing the chances of New York whatsoever.”

Reflecting on the state of the IOC four years into his presidency, Rogge noted the glamour of the 2012 race, the success of the 2002 and 2004 Games, the prospects for a first-rate 2008 Olympics in Beijing and the IOC’s improved long-term financial position, he said: “All of this is about hard work and dedication and a lot of luck.”

Rogge deserves credit for engineering “a period of relative calm,” said John MacAloon, a University of Chicago professor and expert on the Olympics.

The corruption scandal leading into Salt Lake has turned into a 2012 race marked by the absence of serious ethical missteps.

The terrorism concerns in Athens gave way to a secure Games attended by athletes from 202 national Olympic committees -- more entities than belong to the United Nations.

The tension that for years marked the relationship between the U.S. Olympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee? Rogge offered nothing but praise for the USOC, in particular for Peter Ueberroth, chief of the 1984 L.A. Games, who last summer became USOC chairman.

“I have a very good relationship with Peter and I respect him very much,” Rogge said, adding that Ueberroth “is definitely going to be a very good partner for me.”

Concerns remain, however, in particular, the size and cost of the Summer Games. Chinese officials, for instance, plan to spend more than $30 billion readying for 2008. The Greek government spent more than $10 billion preparing for Athens.

The upcoming 2006 Winter Games, in Turin, Italy, have been shadowed by financial and management woes. A new management team was finalized just weeks ago; last Friday, the Italian government agreed to cover $159 million of the $195-million shortfall facing the Turin organizing committee.

“I think it’s moving well,” Rogge said.

There also is lingering tension about the authority of the IOC bureaucracy, which under Rogge has gained in stature from its base in Lausanne, Switzerland -- perhaps at the expense of IOC members, about 115 from around the world.

Even so, said John Lucas, a Penn State professor and Olympic historian who has attended every Summer Games since the Rome Olympics in 1960, “What we need more than anything is not a philosopher to head up the Olympic movement but a pragmatic, utilitarian, no-nonsense person who sees the immediacy of everything.”

Rogge, 63, of Belgium, an orthopedic surgeon who became an IOC member in 1991, was elected president in 2001, succeeding Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain, who had served as IOC president since 1980.

Rogge’s term expires in 2009; he is eligible to run for a second term of four years -- which would carry his presidency through to 2013.

The difference between the two men can perhaps best be seen in their management styles -- underscored by the choices each made in the decor of the presidential office.

Samaranch, one of the classic political operators in sports history, relied in large measure on personal suasion. He operated from a room painted dark green, lined with heavy curtains, dotted with oak furnishings and adorned with paintings by Hans Erni, an artist sometimes described as “the Swiss Picasso.”

Rogge, who runs the IOC in the manner of the multimillion-dollar businesses it oversees, had the office painted a pale green. The furniture is minimalist. The walls contain paintings by a variety of artists, including a reproduction of a work by Piet Mondrian, the Dutch master whose seemingly simple rectangular forms exhibit a deeper complexity.

Rogge, fluent in five languages, a sailor who took part in the 1968, 1972 and 1976 Olympic Games and who competed on the Belgian national rugby team, told a British newspaper recently that his favorite work of art is “Black Square,” done in 1913 by Kasimir Malevich.

The last time he was in St. Petersburg, Russia, where it hangs, Rogge said, he spent 20 minutes studying the painting -- which is essentially a textured black quadrangle, nothing more.

“This is something of a man who dared to break all the common rules,” Rogge said Tuesday of Malevich.

“You have to look at it in the period of the aftermath of Impressionism, of figurative painting. He had dared to enter the world of abstract painting.”

Upon taking over the IOC presidency, Rogge ordered audits of every department. He made the director-general -- the IOC’s administrative top job -- a full-time position.

He made clear that the IOC’s focus had to be on its primary product, the Games, and made changes so that the IOC assumed a business-like, franchising relationship with each succeeding organizing committee.

The next test of the Rogge years comes in Singapore. The IOC evaluation team assessing the five candidates for 2012 gave Paris, London, Madrid and New York high marks but offered nary a word of criticism about Paris.

As president, Rogge will not vote in the 2012 election. The winning margin will be narrow, he said.

“Definitely, I think it will be under 10 votes,” he said. “This is only a gut feeling, of course, because I cannot read the minds of my colleagues.”