Olympic Games: A president they won't impeach

Back in the mid-Eighties when the Atlanta Olympics were just a twinkle in Coca-Cola's eye, I sat in the Presidential Suite of the American city's finest hotel interviewing an elderly, autocratic Latino leader of world sport. We were repeatedly interrupted by a succession of bell boys bearing gifts, stacking the boxes of silk shirts, ties, crates of liquor, cartons of Coke, paintings, artefacts and assorted, expensive souvenirs high along the walls.

The great man's aide smiled at yet another knock on the door. "At this rate, Mr President, we'll have to charter another plane to take all these with us." Mr President was Joao Havelange, of Fifa, world football's governing body. His aide was Sepp Blatter, who succeeded him last year. Havelange, also a member of the International Olympic Committee, was being courted on two counts. The United States wanted the World Cup and Atlanta hankered after the Olympics. They got both.

Gift-wrapping has always been the name of the Games. So do not expect Havelange's pal Juan Antonio Samaranch to fall on the Samurai sword he received from the Japanese city of Nagano when it was bidding for the last Winter Olympics. That is simply not his style. Head honcho of the IOC he may be, but the fast buck doesn't stop here.

"He is not a quitter," says the chairman of the British Olympic Association, Craig Reedie, who, with the Princess Royal, sits on the 115-member IOC. "Neither do I doubt his integrity. I think he is very sad, but I have always thought him an honourable man. He has been badly shaken by all this but he will see it through."

Whether he should be allowed to do so, of course, is now the subject of worldwide debate, but short of a Clintonesque impeachment - and there is no provision for this in the IOC regulations - Samaranch will keep his feet firmly under the presidential table until 2001, when he will be replaced by a more streetwise and certainly a younger man - or maybe even a woman.

Tsars of world sport are renowned for living the life of Nero, and Samaranch has been the grandee grandaddy of them all, a small man with the clout of a Colossus, who is referred to in godfatherly terms by his inner circle as "The Boss".

Like Reedie, I do not believe the one-time career diplomat from Barcelona is personally corrupt, rather an incorrigibly vain old man, who has allowed himself and his ambitions to be seduced by the grandiose trappings of his status. No doubt, his greatest disappointment will be the knowledge that his long-cherished hopes of a Nobel Peace Prize have been sunk in the murky waters of Utah's Salt Lake.

Today, Samaranch faces the most difficult and certainly the most embarrassing hours of his 19-year span as Olympic chief when the fate of the Dirty Dozen (two members have already resigned) is made public at the IOC summit in Lausanne. International sport is no stranger to the business of back- handers, but in this one the scale of the skulduggery, now also embracing Nagano and Sydney, is believed to include at least double the number of those in the dock today - or around one-fifth of the IOC's membership.

Understandably there is an escalating feeling that the Games have gone, but Reedie pleads that we should not give up on the Olympic ideal. "I am shocked and disappointed about what has happened because I feel strongly about the Olympic movement. I have seen so much good come out of it in so many different ways and any wrongdoing should not be allowed to tarnish the memory of great moments like Christie and Gunnell winning so gloriously in Barcelona, or the sight of a million Indonesians flooding on to the streets of Jakarta when a wee girl from Java and her fiance returned with the country's first gold medals."

As an independent financial adviser, the 58-year-old Reedie is well versed in the fiscal machinations of big-time sport. He says that since becoming an IOC member in 1994 he has never been offered a bung or a bribe (perhaps because he has never been a member of the evaluation committee which examines the potential Games sites). Acknowledging that the mess needs to be cleared up promptly, Reedie has faxed a four-point plan for consideration by the IOC's executive board this weekend.

This embraces a complete revision of the process by which Olympic cities are selected through the establishment of an electoral college which would include athletes and other independent assessors. The final decision would be made by this panel and not, as at present, by the full IOC.

Any British bid for a future Games has still to be formulated, and the Minister for Sport, Tony Banks, insists this will be kept on ice until the IOC has "rooted out its rotten apples". The year of 2012 would be a logical target, and by then, the Games will he under new management.

One suspects it will all be rather different from the patrician stewardship of Samaranch, who assured me in Lausanne recently that, come what may, he will not be standing for re-election after the Sydney Games, which will be his fifth as overlord of the Olympic rings. "I assure you my position is final, absolutely final."

The contenders to take over the most prestigious post in sport are jockeying for position, though one of the front runners, Kim Yong-un of South Korea, is among those up before the beaks today in the IOC's chateau overlooking the somewhat less salty lake of Geneva. He claims that the allegations against him are a smear to damage his own presidential campaign.

At the moment the favourite is the Canadian lawyer Dick Pound, empowered by Samaranch to do the IOC's bung-busting. With cute timing, Pound has revealed that he once refused a $1m bribe to facilitate an Olympics television deal, and is said to be "clean as a whistle". Another old hand, the Australian Kevan Gosper, and two newer members, Jacques Rogge, a Belgian surgeon, and the former German fencing gold medallist Thomas Back, will also be in the frame. But Samaranch's influence will remain strong enough for him virtually to nominate his own successor.

This could be one of two formidable personalities. The first is the one-time heart throb of the Winter Games, the former triple skiing gold medallist, Jean-Claude Killy who, at 55, is still one of sport's beautiful people, pugnaciously handsome and as eternally French as Bardot and berets.

But the most revolutionary and arguably the best choice would be the black Los Angeles lawyer and ex-Olympic rower, Anita deFranz, the only woman to become an IOC vice-president. "Why not?" Samaranch responded when I asked him whether the old boys of the IOC would relish being ruled by a woman. "She is extremely capable and a great Olympian."

The IOC certainly need a breath of fresh air at the top to blow away the cobwebs of corruption. Meanwhile the saddened Samaranch, his tenure destined to terminate in ignominy, remains in the saddle, charged with the task of restoring credibility to an organisation which, early next month, hosts a conference designed to stamp out the drugs cheats. Whether the physicians can heal themselves in time to be regarded as worthy guardians of Olympic morals remains to be seen.

REEDIE'S OLYMPIC CLEAN-UP PLAN

l Establish an electoral college consisting of the present IOC executive board supplemented by representatives of the National Olympic Committees, international federations, athletes and other independent members to carry out an initial assessment to reduce the number of applicant cities to around four.

l Appoint an expert evaluation commission to prepare a full report on the technical capabilities of the applicant cities. Only the evaluation commission would be allowed to visit them.

l Establish a template of expenditure by applicant cities. These expenses would be subject to independent audit.

l The final cities to present their bids to the electoral college, perhaps before the full IOC membership, but the electoral college would make the final decision.