Primrose Takes Charge of L.A. Olympic Festival

Elizabeth M. Primrose assumes her role today as president and executive director of the 1991 U.S. Olympic Festival in Los Angeles, becoming the first woman to act as chief operating officer of an Olympic Festival.

Primrose, 41, succeeds Earl Duryea, who held the position for less than four months. In a letter to the board of directors last week, Festival chairman Harry Usher said that it had “become necessary to terminate” the relationship with Duryea.

Usher, who was general manager of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, would not elaborate Monday, but he said that the parting was amicable.

“Both he and I felt it was in the best interests of his future progress and the future of the Olympic Festival to make this move now,” Usher said.

Duryea, 51, could not be reached for comment.

Unlike Duryea, whose previous sports and event management experience includes positions as president of the Harlem Globetrotters and manager of various arenas, Primrose has been involved for a number of years with international amateur sports.

As a 15-year-old from Baltimore, she won a gold medal in the 400-meter freestyle swimming relay at the 1963 Pan American Games. In 1964, she missed a berth on the U.S. Olympic team by one place in the 100-meter backstroke.

With an undergraduate degree from Stanford and an MBA from UCLA, she had her initiation into sports management as assistant executive director of San Jose’s 1981 World Games, which included 16 sports that were not on the Olympic program.

Because of that experience, she was recruited by the LAOOC in 1982 to work in the planning department and eventually became an associate vice president of ticketing. She was one of the final three candidates for the Festival’s executive director position when Duryea was named April 7.

“There’s so much I’ve learned through the World Games and the Olympics,” Primrose said Monday, her last day as manager of external relations for McKinsey & Co., Inc., a Los Angeles management consultant firm. “Almost by osmosis, I know what needs to be done, even though the framework of the Festival is different.”

Sponsored by the U.S. Olympic Committee, the Festival brings together about 4,000 athletes in 37 sports each year except those in which the Olympics are held. The ninth Festival since it was originated in 1978 ended Sunday at Oklahoma City. The 10th Festival next summer will be held in the Twin Cities of Minnesota.

The USOC plans to hold its first Festival exclusively for winter sports in February of 1991 at Lake Placid, N.Y., before the L.A. Festival, which is scheduled for July 12-21.