Word: samaranch
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That's shocking--I mean, that they were caught. For years I.O.C. czar Juan Antonio Samaranch has exhibited a pronounced ambivalence about drug use, and certainly his stance has allowed a number of golden boys and girls to keep their images shiny while doping. Careful athletes can easily beat the system that is in place to catch drug abusers. Unscrupulous sports federations can tailor testing schedules and tip off their constituents. Steroid creams can be flushed from the system in 24 to 48 hours. And for some of the most commonly used enhancers, such as erythropoietin (EPO), there are still...
Operating under the theory that your palms can't be greased if you don't hang out with the greasers, International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch on Sunday easily pushed through the hardest part of his recent batch of reform proposals: keeping IOC members from making financially tempting visits to cities looking to host the games. Many reluctant members grumbled that such a ban implied they couldn't be trusted, although one might think that the haul that several of their former colleagues extorted out of the Salt Lake City Olympic Committee - which included silver, scholarships for their kids...
...reputation? Maybe. The pressure to reform is considerable: Major corporations, such as Coke and IBM, which send the IOC $50 million checks so that they can use the Olympic rings in their ads, are not amused with the committee's image as a bunch of shameless shakedown artists. But Samaranch doesn't inspire much confidence when he still largely blames the mess on the competing cities for putting out all those tempting bribes...
...organization that prides itself on showcasing agility and swiftness, but as its president once again demonstrated on Wednesday, the International Olympic Committee is an organization that values inertia above all. Addressing a committee gathering in Seoul, South Korea, Juan Antonio Samaranch firmly announced he would stay at the helm of the scandal-plagued organization at least until his term expires in 2001 and declared: "We say no to hasty reforms to please our critics." Samaranch said the IOC had already carried out many of its promises, including a housecleaning of 10 members accused of accepting improper inducements from Salt Lake...
...Samaranch?s speech is nothing surprising," says Robert Sullivan, who has covered the Olympics for TIME. "The organization is an insular group and he is a stubborn man who is not someone to change things." Many observers believe that change will eventually be forced on the Olympics for commercial reasons. "A number of major sponsors, concerned about their image, are still applying pressure," says Sullivan. Many of them intend to monitor the TV ratings for the 2000 games to see how much the public has soured on the Olympic movement. If the ratings drop significantly, says Sullivan, "that will...