Helmick informs IOC of his resignation
Robert Helmick's free fall from the heights of the Olympic movement continued yesterday, when the Des Moines, Iowa, lawyer and former president of the U.S. Olympic Committee resigned from the International Olympic Committee.
Helmick, speaking by telephone to the Los Angeles Times from the site of an IOC executive board meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, said he informed IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch of his decision last night.
In a formal letter of resignation later delivered to Samaranch's hotel room, Helmick said: "I am taking this action because I believe it is the decent thing to do and because it serves the best interests of the IOC and the United States Olympic movement by returning the focus to the programs for athletes."
Helmick, 54, has been under scrutiny since the first week of September, when it was disclosed in published reports that he had business relationships with groups that either had or were seeking associations with the Olympic movement.
According to subsequent reports, Helmick and two law firms he has represented in recent years have received $325,000 from those groups since 1987.
AIDS testing
The NBA and NHL plan discussions this week on how to handle testing for the AIDS virus.
The NBA was to meet last night in New York City with the players association in what a league spokesman termed "a planning session" on AIDS testing and the possible ramifications of the disease for the league.
An NHL official said in Montreal that AIDS would probably be discussed at a meeting of the league's Board of Governors, which starts tomorrow in Palm Beach, Fla.
Gary Meagher, the league's communications director, said the NHL had no particular AIDS prevention program "but if a player comes to us for help, we'll do everything we can."
That statement came in the wake of a revelation by a Montreal AIDS specialist that a woman he treated told him before she died of the disease two years ago that she had had sex with about 50 NHL players.
No NHL player has thus far announced he is HIV-positive, but Dr. Clement Olivier, who made the disclosure Monday during a seminar on AIDS, said the ease with which athletes can have intimate relations with a variety of people puts them in a high-risk group.