Word: samaranch
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Even before the opening ceremonies commenced, many snowboarders feared the Games would alter their subculture. Norwegian Terje Haakonsen, widely recognized as the best snowboarder in the world, opted to sit out Nagano altogether. Haakonsen even described I.O.C. president Juan Antonio Samaranch as an "Al Capone" figure. Samaranch shrugged off the boycott and said, "All I know is this: those who don't enter...
...Devils go out! Happiness come in!" Now a sumo wrestler whose Japanese name is an ancient word for dawn, attended by a sword-bearer and a dew sweeper, ritually purified the ground on a chilly silver morning. In something of the same spirit, International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch reminded the world (not least Baghdad and Washington) that the "Olympic truce" calls for an end to formal warfare during the competition...
...criticized for their commercialism, but from the time the American delegation proceeded down the ramp, NBC went an hour without a commercial. Indeed, the ceremonies went by in a flash: the remarks by Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games president Billy Payne and International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch ("Atlanta, here we are!"), the proclamation ("I declare open the Games of Atlanta!") by President Clinton, the entrance of the Olympic flag, a tribute to Atlanta's Rev. Martin Luther King, the introduction of past Olympians...
Ulvang was at the press conference to explain his jarring assertion that the service of I.O.C. president Juan Antonio Samaranch in the Cabinet of Spain's dictator Francisco Franco decades ago was "bad" and "may not be worthy of sport." The same day, in a rehearsal of an attempt to outdo the melodrama of 1992 in Barcelona -- when an archer ignited the Olympic flame with a streaking arrow -- Norwegian ski jumper Ole Gunnar Fidjestol sought to soar down the slope and vault into the air as one of the final bearers of the Olympic flame on its journey to Lillehammer...
Olympic business has been very good to the International Olympic Committee as well. Its full-time paid staff has ballooned from 30 to 100 since Juan Antonio Samaranch was elected president in 1980. Revenues from the sale of TV rights and sponsorships have exploded during the same time. NBC, for example, paid $401 million for the rights to televise these Games, and the dozen companies chosen as TOP sponsors shelled out an additional $170 million. But in significant ways, the International Olympic Committee resembles the College of Cardinals. The IOC does not communicate via smoke signals but probably...