LONDON -- The Olympics have survived boycotts, world wars, terrorist murders and a fleeting association with Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.
But can they overcome greed?
That's the question facing the Games' guardians as they gather for watershed meetings next week at their opulent headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland.
The International Olympic Committee is under fire over the bribery scandal in the awarding the 2002 Winter Games to Salt Lake City. With about a quarter of the committee's membership implicated in the vote-buying affair, the IOC faces a make-or-break week as it begins the process of reform.
Many outside the organization are calling for major initiatives to transform one of the world's more exclusive private clubs into a democratic and open body. At stake is the organization's relationship with sponsors, athletes and spectators.
And IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch, who brought the Olympics from financial distress to unparalleled success, may feel the greatest pressure of all.
Does he stay? Or does he go?
"We've lost some standing in the international sports community and we have lost some standing with the public," said Craig Reedie, an IOC member from Britain. "But I don't think the concept of the Games has been lost with the public. We can only re-establish our standing and credibility by reacting quickly to the demands for reform."
In characteristic fashion, though, the IOC will carry on its discussions behind closed doors, with the organization's powerful executive committee convening prior to a special general assembly Wednesday and Thursday. The aim is to punish the wrongdoers and reform the the bid process.
"I must confess that I consider the coming extraordinary session one of the most important in our history, and the most important of my presidency," Samaranch wrote to IOC members in a letter dated Tuesday. "Our duty requires that we take concrete decisions, in some cases painful ones, for the whole world will be observing."
Reputations and careers are on the line. And in some ways, so is the future of the Olympics.
"For better or for worse, the Olympic Games are the ritual performance of the global system," said John J. MacAloon, a University of Chicago sociologist and Olympics historian. "They are the only truly international festival that we have. Naturally, the public is interested in insuring the leadership understands this is not a plaything for them to capitalize on. That's what a lot of the outrage is about."
For 105 years, IOC members tried to cultivate a reputation for fairness and virtue as chief arbiters of a global sporting event. In many ways, they were the world's last amateurs in an expanding sports marketplace.
Based in Switzerland and composed of selected volunteer members -- 114 before the scandal -- the IOC presides over its charter, ethics code and rules.
The committee normally is answerable to no one but itself. The panel owns the rights to one of the world's best-known symbols -- the five Olympic rings -- and one of the world's biggest and best-known sporting events -- the Olympic Games.
Part of the IOC's problem is that it is very much an old world, aristocratic institution. The fact that present crisis is centered in the United States also poses difficulties for an organization accustomed to working in private.
"It has blown up into a kind of little soap opera, of U.S. and European antagonisms," MacAloon said.
A blend of sporting grit and Olympic grandeur historically has enabled the IOC to gloss over failures that might have sunk any other sporting body.
The Olympics survived the murder of Israeli athletes and coaches at the Munich Summer Games in 1972 and boycotts in 1976, 1980 and 1984. The IOC also managed to gloss over the stain of the 1936 Nazi Olympics, when Hitler and his propagandists tried to use the event as a platform for their notion of Aryan superiority on the eve of World War II.
Yet the IOC has found the Salt Lake City scandal hard to shake, with revelations over four months undoing decades of carefully crafted image-making.
"This chapter will be part of our history," said Anita DeFrantz, an IOC vice president from the United States. She has denied allegations made by a former Salt Lake Olympic organizer that she knew of the vote-buying scheme.
Since the scandal erupted, 30 IOC members have been implicated. Four resigned. And an IOC investigative panel has recommended six for expulsion and announced the censure of two, while warning eight and exonerating three others. Cases against six others were dropped. One member died.
Yesterday three major power brokers were tarnished as the IOC panel recommended censure for Kim Un-yong, an executive board member from South Korea, and for Australian Phil Coles. The panel also issued a "very serious" warning to former IOC Vice President Vitaly Smirnov of Russia. Kim's case remains open, and he could face expulsion.
Final action on the panel's recommendations will come at the assembly meeting.
After losing out to Nagano, Japan, in the race to stage the 1998 Winter Games, Salt Lake City's organizers decided they had to do what it took to win over IOC members. That meant buying votes.
From 1991 to 1995, the Salt Lake City bid committee systematically spent more than $1 million providing several IOC members and their families with cash, trips and, in some cases, college tuition, medical reimbursement and job placement. IOC guidelines state that members should not accept gifts of more than $150 in value from a bid city.
In the end, Salt Lake was awarded the 2002 Winter Games during a 1995 IOC vote.
"It was wrong for Salt Lake City officials to give money to IOC members and their families to win their votes. But what happened in Salt Lake City was not unique," concluded a report on the bid process compiled by a special U.S. Olympic Committee commission headed by former U.S. Sen. George J. Mitchell.
Putting the scandal in context, the report noted, "The intense competition to host the Olympic Games, coupled with the multibillion dollar enterprise that results from winning that competition, have exposed the weaknesses in the [Olympic] movement's governing structure and operational controls."
In effect, the IOC hierarchy had not kept up with the times, as the Olympics exploded from a relatively unsophisticated operation to a corporate extravaganza.
"The credibility of the IOC turns on how it responds to this crisis," the report stated.
For a few months, the IOC sought to pin the blame elsewhere -- on the local bid committees and on a few members. But with each revelation of alleged corruption, the IOC was backed further into a corner.
Now, the organization is playing catch-up, promising an ethical makeover. The IOC is also struggling to keep its main financial backers in line, the corporate sponsors that help finance the Olympics. In recent days, Samaranch reportedly worked the telephones to keep the support of such U.S. corporate sponsors as Coca-Cola and United Parcel Service.
If the corporate cash dries up, the Olympics could be in jeopardy.
Yet beyond money, the IOC is trying to regain its image as an organization above reproach.
"The IOC recognizes we lost a measure of public esteem," said Franklin Servan-Schreiber, the committee's spokesman. "We are confident we will rescue it with work and actions -- and not just words."
He said the IOC will sanction those caught up in the scandal, establish a reform commission to modernize the organization's structure and membership rules, and put in place new procedures to select the site for the 2006 Winter Games. In a bow to openness, the IOC is due to open its financial accounts, perhaps as early as Wednesday, Servan-Schreiber said.
He said the IOC is working as fast as it can to reform itself.
"It has only been four months since this thing has blown up," he said. "We are taking action and we will recover a measure of trust. People will think we're serious."
But a former Olympic insider turned persistent critic said the organization has to completely clean house.
"They have to become democratic and open up," said Robert Helmick, who resigned in 1991 as an IOC member and U.S. Olympic Committee president amid controversy over an alleged conflict of interest in his private dealings with sports-related companies.
"They need open meetings, voting, records -- and term limits," he said.
Helmick said the scandal touched a chord with the public because of the IOC members' "hypocrisy and pretensions."
To make a fresh start, he said, the IOC must get rid of its longtime president, Samaranch, the 78-year-old Spaniard.
"He turned his back on the excessive lavishness," Helmick said. "He allowed a system of corruption to go on. Those are big mistakes."
But Samaranch continues to enjoy the support of the IOC members, many of whom he selected. His supporters claim he has done much to help the Olympics during his 19-year tenure. Under Samaranch, the Games survived political divisions and became profitable. He also cut out the last vestiges of amateurism, which had become an anachronism and impediment to growth.
His final eight-year term ends in 2001, and there is no obvious successor.
"There is no one on the face of the earth who has more at stake in getting this solved," said DeFrantz, the IOC vice president from the United States.
Reedie, the British IOC member, said Samaranch "has been bruised by this crisis. He wants to resolve it."
Pub Date: 3/13/99