Olympics: Final flourish for IOC supremo

By MIKE ROWBOTTOM

The words "and the winner is Beijing," which Juan Antonio Samaranch all but uttered in announcing the hosts for the 2000 Olympics, may yet pass his lips this year.

Eight years after his Freudian slip in Monaco, where he corrected himself to announce the word "Sydney," the International Olympic Committee president is due to preside over the decision on where the 2008 Games will go.

It will be his last major task before stepping down - belatedly - aged 80.

As Osaka, Toronto, Istanbul, Paris and Beijing muster their final support before July's crucial IOC annual session in Moscow, a parallel operation is taking place among key individuals within the movement. They are fighting for position in the quest to succeed the man who has led them for the past 20 years.

In that time the wily Spaniard has overseen a big commercial expansion of the Games. But he has been increasingly dogged by criticism over the widespread and deep-rooted corruption among IOC members.

The scandal which emerged 18 months ago over bribery which took place in order to secure the 2002 Winter Games for Salt Lake City had a seismic effect on the movement. It forced Samaranch to revoke many of the privileges previously accorded to IOC members, most notably the right to visit bidding cities.

But the scandal has not gone away. The two men who led the Salt Lake City bid, Tom Welch and Dave Johnson, have been indicted by the United States Justice Department on a 15-count felony and conspiracy charge.

They are accused of falsifying evidence to disguise the fact that they plied more than a dozen IOC members with $US1 million ($2.23 million) worth of cash, gifts, travel and other inducements. The latter included a golden retriever worth $US555.

The case is expected to take at least a year to play out and might even drag into the Salt Lake Games themselves, which start in February next year.

Whatever the case, the rumblings will go on in the background as the Olympic movement determines its medium-term future in the Russian capital.

Samaranch accompanied his predecessor, Lord Killanin, on visits to China in 1978 and 1979 which resulted in the Chinese rejoining the IOC fold in time to compete in the 1984 Olympics.

The IOC president is officially neutral when it comes to determining the fate of bidding cities. But few would question that Samaranch would like to leave with a flourish of bequesting the Games to the most populous nation.

Such a move could open up a big lucrative market for the organisation he has presided over.

Beijing was seen as a co-favourite to host the 2000 Games.

But before the decision was announced, Beijing's bid attracted negative publicity because of China's abysmal record on human rights and the massacre of students in Tiananmen Square.

But when the final reckoning came, the Chinese capital lost out to Sydney by just two votes.

It later emerged that the votes had been brazenly bought in a desperate intervention by Australian officials.

A number of IOC members were quoted at the time as saying that the human rights issue had not been a factor in their deliberations.

Eight years on, a number of the most rotten fruits within the IOC have been shaken off in the wake of the Salt Lake City scandal. The 127 members now include 15 present or former athletes, including 1984 Olympic 400m hurdles champion Ed Moses and Jan Zelezny, three-times Olympic javelin champion.

But there is no indication that the bulk of IOC members have undergone moral rebirth in recent years.

Beijing has emerged as a favourite for the 2008 Games ahead of Paris and Toronto. This is in spite of PR blunders which recall the statement made before the 1993 vote in which the Chinese threatened to boycott the 1996 Olympics if their bid for the following Games should fail.

It has been suggested that Tiananmen Square could host beach volleyball during the Games. There has also been a suggestion that it should host the finishing stages of the triathlon.

So far, no one has suggested that the shooting section of the modern pentathlon might take place there.

Where the Chinese bid may have made up significant ground is in the crucial area of doping abuse.

After the widespread suspicion of their meteoric successes in track and field in the year they were bidding for the 2000 Games, the perception about the Chinese attitude to doping has been somewhat altered by mass testing which ruled out the bulk of their athletes from the Sydney Games.

Paris, which played a key part in hosting soccer's successful 1998 World Cup, is also mounting a strong bid for the Games to return to it after an 84-year absence.

The bid by Toronto could have the backing of NBC, which owns the rights to televise the Games.

After the nightmare of delayed transmissions from Sydney, NBC would welcome the opportunity to transmit from near enough within its own time zone.

But NBC's owners, General Electric, have big business interests in China.

The situation over Samaranch's successor is equally unclear.

Ten years ago the favourite would have been Canada's Dick Pound, who swam in the 1960 Rome Olympics and negotiated the multibillion-dollar television contracts that have swelled the IOC coffers in recent years.

But Samaranch is more likely to favour Belgian Jacques Rogge, the man with whom he has worked closely in recent years at the IOC headquarters in Lausanne.

Should the Belgian succeed, the status quo of the movement is likely to remain the same.

Rogge was coordinator for the successful Sydney Games and has similar responsibility for the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

But the perceived criticism of him is that he lacks the mental toughness for a job which attracts regular criticism.

Pound has alienated many IOC members with his off-hand manner and his stock hardly rose in 1996 when he was the coordinator of the Atlanta Games which were riddled with inefficiency and bureaucracy.

Pound's wife hardly helped when she was arrested during the Games for hitting a traffic policeman, even though there were many in that city who would have known exactly how she felt.

Other contenders for Samaranch's position include the Hungarian Pal Schmitt, German Thomas Bach and the controversial former head of South Korea's secret police, Kim Un-yong.

One further complication to watch out for at the Moscow session is that it is an unwritten rule of the IOC membership that favours should not be concentrated in one quarter.

Thus, just as the hosting of the Games rotates among continents, there is likely to be an unwillingness to reward one area with both the 2008 Games and the IOC presidency.

This means that if Toronto gets the Games, Pound's chances will plummet.

And if Beijing should triumph, Kim will not.

The whole business is as clear as crystal ...