Legacy of Triumph, Scandal

By ALAN ABRAHAMSON

July 31, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — It is a quiet morning at the International Olympic Committee, and the patriarch of world sports allows himself a wistful thought: If only he had retired after his crowning glory, the spectacular 1992 Summer Olympics in his hometown.

“Retiring myself after the Barcelona Games, I could have been a hero, no?” asks IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch. Looking down momentarily, he thinks about what might have been, then adds: “I cannot regret. I have to write my history again.”

As he prepares to journey to Sydney in September for the final Summer Games of his 20-year reign, Samaranch’s legacy is very much in jeopardy.

He led the IOC out of turmoil to unprecedented prosperity and harmony. Then the organization plunged into the worst corruption scandal in Olympic history: an outpouring of lavish favors that tarnished Salt Lake City’s winning bid for the 2002 Winter Games.

As he became one of the world’s most controversial figures, a target of intense criticism in the global media, Samaranch remained an intensely private and poorly understood personality.

Who is the man, really?

To understand Samaranch is to peer into the inner workings of the IOC--because he set the tone that drove its most spectacular successes and most damning failure.

What emerged from dozens of interviews and from access to Samaranch and IOC files is a man full of contradictions and contrasts.

A former official of the fascist Franco regime in Spain, he now rules a worldwide organization that has the reach of a multinational corporation and rivals the United Nations in its lofty goals.

He draws no salary. Yet the IOC pays nearly $200,000 per year for his personal upkeep, including a hotel suite that overlooks Lake Geneva.

For an internationally known figure, he is truly shy and rarely makes speeches more than two minutes long.

He often comes across in public as an arrogant, stiff and aging autocrat, while his intimates find him drolly funny, generous and so softhearted that he can’t fire the most incompetent employee.

Samaranch’s routine mixes military-style discipline and pampered elegance. He never misses a rigorous morning workout--but he customarily performs it in his hotel suite.

He has the power and skill to generally get what he wants. His supporters say he seduces people with his personality, but his critics say it is with more.

The onetime diplomat prides himself on being politically astute, sensitive to the winds of public perception. But he missed or ignored repeated warnings that could have helped avert the ugly scandal that threatened to bring him down.

That’s the ultimate, inexplicable contradiction--the one that haunts Samaranch’s past and clouds his future.

Although his term expires next July, the 80-year-old Samaranch says he won’t quit, because corruption within the Olympic movement is not his fault.

Some of his supporters have come to their own conclusion: Until he is out of the picture, the Olympic movement cannot fully regain its credibility. “No matter how good Samaranch is--and he is very, very good--it can’t happen while he’s still president,” said one senior IOC official.

Quest for Power

Manfred Ewald, for years the head of East Germany’s sports machine, once remarked to Samaranch, “It doesn’t matter who has the power, as long as I have the glory.”

“The power is the glory,” Samaranch shot back.

This is a man comfortable with power. He has spent his life chasing and wielding it.

The son of a textile manufacturer, Samaranch studied business in school and boxing in Barcelona’s gyms. In his 20s, he played roller hockey and dabbled in sportswriting. He was reputed to be a ladies’ man.

At 35, Samaranch cemented his station in Barcelona society by marrying Maria Teresa Salisachs-Rowe. Salvador Dali designed their wedding menu card.

Friends describe Bibis, as she is known, as Samaranch’s perfect partner: a social mixer, fluent in several languages, supportive of his work and tolerant of a schedule that frequently keeps him away from their Barcelona home. They have two children and several grandchildren.

Early on, Samaranch chose government as an outlet for his ambitions. Much of the world watched in dismay as Gen. Francisco Franco endured for decades after World War II as the “last surviving fascist dictator.” Meanwhile, Samaranch rose steadily in the Franco regime. As a deputy sports minister, he was inducted into the IOC in 1966. In 1973, he was named president of Catalonia’s provincial government in Barcelona.

In April 1977, two years after Franco’s death, a crowd gathered in the square outside Samaranch’s office, shouting: “Samaranch leave! Get out!”

Weeks later, Samaranch accepted a post as ambassador to the Soviet Union. “I recognized that my political career in Spain was over,” he recalls.

While his relations with the Soviet bloc would help propel him to the IOC presidency, his past association with the anti-communist Franco regime would give detractors ammunition to denounce him as authoritarian.

Andrew Jennings, a British author and Samaranch critic, said he would love to ask Samaranch at a news conference, “Will you show me the [fascist] salute you did for 37 years?”

While denying that he was ever a fascist, Samaranch said Franco did some “positive things” for Spain--keeping it out of World War II, creating a middle class and choosing a successor, the current King Juan Carlos I.

Catalonia’s president, Jordi Pujol, who was imprisoned in the 1960s under Franco, said Samaranch had sought a “useful and fruitful connection” to those who--like himself--were working for democracy. “He has helped us,” Pujol said.

But the IOC president’s sensitivity to the issue is keen.

Arriving for a Times interview in South Africa, Samaranch brought a 1959 photo of Franco embracing then-U.S. President Eisenhower. It was Samaranch’s way of suggesting that if Ike wasn’t ashamed to associate with Franco, then no one should condemn him for working under the dictator.

Reaching the Heights

Lord Killanin of Ireland stepped down as IOC president in 1980. The night before the vote to replace him, he wandered into a hotel bar in Moscow with Dick Pound, now an IOC vice president from Canada.

When Killanin predicted a Samaranch victory, Pound said he knew little about the Spanish diplomat.

“He’s much better than you think,” Killanin replied. And Samaranch did win.

Looking back, the mystery is why anyone with ambition would have wanted the job. The IOC had little in its bank accounts. The 1972 Munich Games were stained by terrorists. Montreal in 1976 and Moscow in 1980 were hit by boycotts.

As president, Samaranch transformed the Olympics from a strictly amateur operation to an international economic powerhouse.

Olympic income, from 1997 through 2000, has rocketed to a projected $3.6 billion.

But people who worried that the Games were becoming commercialized have seen their fears confirmed. Since the 1980s, professionals in various sports have been allowed to compete.

Meanwhile, Samaranch actively recruited IOC members from developing nations and increased funding for their athletes, although their share remains small. He opened IOC membership to women, although they remain underrepresented. He sharply expanded the number of women’s sports at the Games.

As former Canadian Olympian Bruce Kidd, now a University of Toronto professor, put it, Samaranch deserves “respect for engineering important changes in difficult terrain.”

But some are skeptical about Samaranch’s methods. Barcelona journalist Jaume Boix Angelats, co-author of a biography of Samaranch, said, “All his life, he has tried to seduce with regalos,” the Spanish word meaning gifts or favors. “He’s a master, a professional, at seduction.”

Others insist that Samaranch’s success is attributable to tact, tenacity and tireless travel that costs the IOC about $400,000 a year, in addition to his Lausanne hotel and personal expenses.

By CEO-style standards, he is a bargain, according to experts in executive compensation.

Some years, Samaranch has been on the road two of every three days, records show. He has visited almost all the 199 national Olympic committees now in the movement. Personal visits, Samaranch says, are always the best way to build consensus.

Even those who lock horns with him say he is tremendously effective one-on-one. Michael Knight, head of the committee organizing the Sydney Games, said, “He understands how the levers of power work, the pressures on people he’s dealing with . . . and how far they can and can’t go.”

To maintain and broaden the sweep of the Olympic movement, Samaranch has embraced some people with unsavory baggage.

He honored the brutal Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu for bringing the Romanians to Los Angeles in 1984. Ceausescu was overthrown and executed in 1989.

Maj. Gen. Francis Nyangweso of Uganda, an army commander during Idi Amin’s reign of terror, became an IOC member during Samaranch’s tenure. “I am not a judge,” Samaranch commented.

Former East German sports leader Ewald, whom Samaranch honored for helping get East Germany to the Seoul Games, was convicted this month in the systematic doping of his country’s athletes. He was given a 22-month suspended jail term.

Asked earlier if Ewald’s Olympic honor ought to be rescinded should he be convicted, Samaranch said: “No. The past is the past.”

Samaranch endorsed for IOC membership Jean-Claude Ganga of the Republic of Congo, an anti-apartheid activist and leader of the 1976 African boycott of the Montreal Games. Last year, Ganga was one of six IOC members expelled in the Salt Lake City scandal, accused of receiving about $320,000 in cash and gratuities.

Samaranch said he felt betrayed and “very much disappointed” in Ganga. But he said, “It was much better to have him inside than outside.”

Style All His Own

Samaranch’s closet in his suite at the Lausanne Palace Hotel, his home away from home, is packed with blue suits, blue shirts and blue ties--arranged like uniforms.

“I like this color,” he said. “I like to be discreet. I don’t like to wear a tie that says, oh listen, or that is wonderful or that is hopeful. I prefer to have my own style.”

That he does.

Samaranch, a slight, small man with alert brown eyes, wakes up early, dons gloves and shorts and works out on the sit-up bench and stationary bike near his bed, all the while listening to a Spanish news station or the BBC.

Samaranch is proud, even playful, about being fit. After squeezing off seven pull-ups, he said: “For my age, not bad, huh? I can do 20. Not perfect, though.”

One of his three secretaries chauffeurs him to work in a Mercedes sedan that DaimlerChrysler, an Olympic sponsor, makes available to the IOC. He typically puts in 10-hour days at his office at the lakefront Chateau de Vidy.

Though his energy level remains high, his age has been showing in recent months. His head trembles, though he said doctors have assured him it’s nothing to worry about. He also has started using a hearing aid.

Samaranch has his quirks. He twirls a chestnut or pencils between his fingers--a habit he took up after he quit smoking 40 years ago.

He is superstitious. He prefers to schedule significant events for the 17th--the day of his birth in 1920 and of his first full day as IOC president in 1980.

Like his predecessors, he receives no salary. He has made money over the years, he said, through investments and by serving on various corporate boards. Asked his net worth, he declined to say, adding with a laugh, “Listen, you are not speaking with an American.”

His administration now is so sensitive to public relations that it uses a computer service to analyze news stories for bias and negative inflection.

Samaranch himself shuns self-promotion. Few people know that he directs IOC funds each year to a Soviet gymnast crippled by a training accident before the 1980 Moscow Games.

He could demand the sort of security reserved for heads of state and rock stars, but does not. When it is offered, he accepts it. When it is not, he does what he did last month on a trip to Turin, Italy, when he walked through a city park unrecognized and undisturbed.

Above all, he values loyalty. Some trusted assistants have been at his side for a decade or more. He once said that the figure he despises most is Judas.

Warnings, Whispers

There had been indications since the mid-1980s that the high-stakes world of Olympic bidding was corrupting the movement.

After joining the IOC in 1986, Anita DeFrantz of Los Angeles was told by other members that she missed “the big birthday party” related to bidding for the 1992 Games. Cities--including Barcelona and Paris--kept sending expensive, unsolicited gifts to IOC members, she was told.

The IOC did eventually pass rules banning gifts over minimal amounts; they were widely ignored.

Bidders courted Samaranch in style, although he has not voted as president on Olympic bids.

During its successful quest for the 1998 Winter Games, the Nagano bid committee welcomed him for one visit with a private three-car train. At the Games, he and his wife stayed in a hotel suite that cost about $3,000 per night.

Full details of Nagano’s largess will never be known, because the accounts were burned. A local official called the destruction a courtesy to the IOC.

Samaranch makes no apology for the royal treatment, saying, “I think all the presidents have been like me.”

But critics charge that Samaranch’s lifestyle encouraged IOC members who were susceptible to gratuities. With no one watching his conduct, they say, he watched no one else’s.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) put it this way during congressional hearings last year: “I think he needs to be removed sooner rather than later. I think he’s created a cesspool at the international level.”

Samaranch said he heard whispers of wrongdoing. But he said such rumors seldom came with names attached and could not be substantiated when he tried.

In 1991, the Toronto committee that had bid unsuccessfully for the 1996 Games alleged that 26 IOC members broke the rules on visits--for example, by coming with more than one guest. It also reported “blatant abuse” in travel expenses, with some members trading their plane tickets for cash.

“Had they given us a name, we would have been able to take action,” Samaranch told a congressional inquiry last December.

Samaranch recently said he also recalls hearing reports that an IOC member behaved improperly during Cape Town’s unsuccessful bid for the 2004 Summer Games. He said he asked Francois Carrard, a Swiss lawyer who serves as the IOC’s director-general, to investigate--and believed Carrard had flown to South Africa.

However, Carrard said he never took such a trip. Instead, he said, he made a phone call to Johannesburg that provided “a full confirmation that there was nothing” to investigate and he left it at that.

The core problem, U.S. investigations into the Salt Lake City scandal found, was that the IOC lacked suitable controls over its members, instead trusting them to behave honorably. When misbehavior occurred, the IOC did not have a suitable mechanism for investigating it, according to congressional testimony by former U.S. Sen. Howard Baker (R-Tenn.), a member of the IOC’s newly established ethics committee.

Should Samaranch have done more through the years to look into allegations of wrongdoing? Hired lawyers? Accountants? Detectives? “The answer is yes, of course,” said Jacques Rogge, an influential IOC member from Belgium.

But, Rogge added, “We are collectively responsible for not having been tough enough to address the problem. I’m saying we are responsible, not him personally.”

Under Siege

The first reports from Salt Lake City hit the media in November 1998. Then came disclosures that IOC members had taken cash and gifts worth more than $1 million from the local bid committee. Samaranch said he received souvenir firearms from Utah, then turned them over to the Olympic Museum.

Samaranch was pleasantly surprised, albeit in a strange way, by the rush of coverage. When hundreds of journalists attended an IOC meeting to see if he would resign, he said, “It means the Olympic movement is . . much more important than I [had] thought in our society today.”

Ultimately, the ferocity of the coverage--and sustained calls for his resignation--shook him. “He was really worried,” said Josep Vilarasau, a Barcelona banker and friend. “He felt very unjustly treated.”

Although Congress members and others chastised the IOC for its culture of gift-giving, Samaranch took comfort in knowing his position was secure. In March 1999, IOC members gave him an overwhelming vote of confidence.

An IOC commission formed by Samaranch later adopted 50 reforms, including a ban on visits to bid cities--a central issue in the Salt Lake City scandal.

“I don’t know about what happened in the past,” said former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a panel member. “But the reforms would not be possible without Samaranch.”

The IOC president rammed through the ban on bid city visits with a vintage display of parliamentary manipulation.

Instead of asking for a show of support for the ban, Samaranch forced opponents to identify themselves. “Those in favor of visits, raise their hands,” Samaranch said from the dais, scanning for anyone who opposed the ban--and therefore him. Only 10 out of 100 members did.

Key reforms have yet to be fully implemented.

Meanwhile, Samaranch has taken to drawing analogies between the IOC and the Barcelona opera house, which was destroyed by fire and reopened to great acclaim last year. “We have to make the best of this crisis--to come out of the fire like a phoenix,” he said.

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Milestones in the Life of Juan Antonio Samaranch

1920 Born July 17, Barcelona, Spain.

1939 Military service.

1940 Received business degree.

1943 Becomes trainer/manager for roller hockey club and dabbles in sportswriting.

1955 Becomes provincial deputy and sports commission official in Franco regime; marries Maria Teresa Salisachs-Rowe.

1956 Named to Spanish Olympic Committee.

1966 Elected to the International Olympic Committee.

1970 Elected to the IOC’s ruling body, its executive board.

1974 Becomes an IOC vice president.

1977 Named newly democratic Spain’s ambassador to the then-Soviet Union.

1980 Elected president of the IOC, succeeding Lord Killanin of Ireland.

1984 Presides over Los Angeles Olympics, which show the Games can turn a profit.

1988 Coaxes 160 of the 167 countries in the Olympic movement to the Summer Games in Seoul, ending boycott era.

1989 Elected to second term as IOC president.

1993 Elected to third term.

1997 Elected to fourth term.

1999 Salt Lake City corruption scandal explodes; four members resign and six are expelled. Samaranch wins 86-2 vote of confidence and shepherds through a 50-point reform package.

2001 Scheduled to retire as president.

Sources: IOC biographies; “Samaranch--El Deporte del Poder,” by Jaume Boix Angelats and Arcadi Espada. Photos, except for far right, provided by Samaranch.

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Home Suite Home

When at International Olympic Committee headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, Juan Antonio Samaranch stays in a two-room suite at the Palace Hotel. Perhaps no IOC perk has stirred more mystery and misinformation. It even came up during congressional hearings last year into the IOC.

Paying the Bills

Samaranch does not draw a salary. But the IOC pays for his travelabout $400,000 annually and for many of his personal expenses. For bookkeeping purposes, the IOC combines his costs at the Palace Hotel with other charges for his personal upkeep. Here are the amounts in 1999:

Room total: $50,000

Rate when Samaranch was there: $228 per night (153 nights)

Rate when he was not there: $69 per night (212 nights)

Meals, telephone, laundry: $73,000

Tips and incidentals: $47,000

Swiss taxes and social security: $15,500

Medical insurance: $1,500

Total: $187,000

Source: IOC

Note: Figures are rounded and based on average exchange rate for 1999.

* Includes at least $15,000 for official meals.

** Includes tips for Palace Hotel employees as well as Samaranch’s incidental expenses when traveling.

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Face Time With IOC Chief

Juan Antonio Samaranch has managed to stay atop the International Olympic Committee for 20 years. Diplomacy and the value of relationships--especially one-on-one--are keys to his success. Here are summaries of two of his calendar pages from the time of last year’s world track and field championships in Seville, Spain.

Tuesday, Aug. 24

9:30-10 a.m. meet with Australian Olympic Committee President John Coates

10-10:30 meet with Jacky Delapierre, promoter of the annual Lausanne track meet

10:30-11 interview by Karl-Heinz Huba of Germany, who publishes Sport Intern, a newsletter for Olympic movement aficionados

11-11:30 meet with Carl-Olaf Homen of Finland, then-president of the European Athletic Assn.

1-2 p.m. cocktail reception given by Alfredo Sanchez Monteseirin, the mayor of Seville, which is bidding for the 2008 Summer Games

2:30-4 lunch with Andreas Fouras, Greek undersecretary of state for sports

5-5:30 meet with the national Olympic committee of Kyrgyzstan

6-6:30 meet with Prema Pinnewale, member of the national Olympic committee of Sri Lanka

Friday, Aug. 27

9:30-10 a.m. meet with Helmut Digel, president of the German Athletic Assn. and member of the IAAF Council

10-10:30 meet with acclaimed Olympic filmmaker Bud Greenspan

10:30-11 meet with Colorado-based agent Brad Hunt, who represents sprinter Michael Johnson, among others

11-11:30 meet with Enrique Sanz Jiminez, president of the International Blind Sports Federation, known as IBSA

12:30-1 p.m. cocktail reception thrown by IBSA

1-1:30 visit to the Museum of the Plaza de Toros “La Maestranza”

2-3 lunch with Mayor Monteseirin

6-9:30 attend the track meet

10-10:30 cocktail party thrown by Swiss marketing firm ISL

Sources: Juan Antonio Samaranch and IOC

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About This Series

For decades, the Olympic movement has promoted itself as the United nations of sports, a force for fair play. Then came reports of gift-giving and other corruption in Salt Lake City’s bid for the 2002 Winter Games. As disturbing questions swirled around the international Olympic Committee, The Times embarked on a yearlong examination of the movement: Who runs the IOC? How does the organization spend its money? How does it treat athletes? Can the IOC really change its ways?

This is the third of seven weekly reports leading to the Sydney Games.

Week 1-- Struggle Behind the Games: While the IOC brings in more than than $900 million a year, little trickles down to athletes in developing nations.

Week 2-- All About Money: Mighty nations and sports get a disproportionate share of IOC money through power politics and side deals.

Today-- Man Behind the IOC

Next Week-- The IOC’s New Breed

Complete series online at www.latimes.com/ioc