June 17, 1999
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) _ An Olympic meeting became a stage for America
bashing Thursday, with members venting their resentment at having to take blame
for the games' biggest scandal.
"Our marvelous, wonderful movement ... will always have been besmirched,"
Mexico's Mario Vazquez Rana told the IOC's general assembly. "This is something
that comes from that wonderful country that is the USA."
Vazquez Rana referred to the bribes-for-votes scandal surrounding Salt Lake
City's bid for the 2002 Winter Games that resulted in 10 International Olympic
Committee members losing their seats.
"I can assure you that the problem inherent to corruption was born from
people in Salt Lake City," Vazquez Rana said on the first day of the IOC's
109th session, which was open to the media for the first time.
Michael Knight, who heads Sydney's 2000 games, also got a tongue lashing. He
was accused of acting like a school teacher for telling IOC members the
Australian city was cutting its budget and eliminating many of their perks.
But it was the attack on Salt Lake by Vazquez Rana, a media magnate who
heads the world's national Olympic associations, that created the biggest stir
among IOC members.
Some members privately admitted that the Salt Lake City scandal has brought
a backlash against the United States from colleagues who feel they have been
unfairly painted as corrupt.
The affair is being investigated by state and federal agencies, and three
IOC members were questioned by the FBI when they attended a Coordination
Commission meeting in Salt Lake. A fourth expects to be questioned.
Mitt Romney, who was named in February to replace the ousted head of Salt
Lake's Organizing Committee, told the assembly the scandal stemmed from the
actions of a few bid committee officials, not the people of the Utah capital.
"We share the concern, the sense of outrage that something as lofty as the
Olympic spirit could be tarnished by the actions of a few," Romney said.
"We are dedicated to the principle that a few people cannot ruin anything so
great as the Olympics. The people of Salt lake City ... did not take those
inappropriate actions. A few people did."
But IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch suggested some IOC members might be
reluctant to visit the United States for fear they might be subjected to
questioning or even charged.
Noting that the IOC executive board plans to meet in Salt Lake next year,
Samaranch said, "I hope before this meeting, as soon as possible, these
problems can be over."
Anita DeFrantz, an IOC vice president from Los Angeles, bemoaned Vazquez
Rana's comments.
"Assigning blame is useless at this point," she said. "We know what
happened. It's time to get on to putting on the games."
Salt Lake City was also criticized for underestimating the cost of the games
when its bidding committee submitted its estimated budget, forcing the new
organizing committee to cut costs.
"I remember when we voted for Salt Lake four years ago, the budget was $790
million, not $1.45 billion," said Alex Gilady of Israel.
He suggested Salt Lake and other bidding cities "like to decorate" their
proposed budgets "so we'll like it when we are voting."
Romney said the reason Salt Lake's budget was so low was because "there is
no effective equivalent of accounting principles passed from one games to the
next."
Knight, making his first report to the IOC general assembly in 18 months,
said the corruption scandal had hurt Sydney's fund-raising efforts and forced
the organizing committee to make budget cuts.
Knight said the IOC has to "share some of the pain for the cuts we had to
make," including in some of the perks and other hospitality services for IOC
members.
Thomas Bach, a German board member, said Knight was making a show of cutting
items which the IOC never requested in the first place.
"The IOC never asked for flowers," Bach said, referring to cuts in floral
arrangements in Sydney.
