(3/17/99)
LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) _ The applause washed over the embattled boss of the Olympics Wednesday, perhaps for one of the last times.
IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch received a near-unanimous vote of confidence from committee members at the start of an emergency general assembly dealing with the worst scandal in Olympic history.
Later, Samaranch and the rest of the International Olympic Committee's leadership received another boost when the rank-and-file endorsed their recommendations to expel six members, an unprecedented purge.
But the key moment for the 78-year-old Spaniard may have come when he formally opened the meeting with a review of good times and a plan for getting through the bad ones.
Toward the end of the honor roll of past successes and the caseload of corruption from Salt Lake's efforts to buy the 2002 Winter Olympics, Samaranch gave perhaps his clearest sign yet that his days at the top of the world's biggest sports event may be near an end.
"I have personally given the best of myself to the Olympic movement over the last 18 years ... and my last service to Olympism would be to restructure our organization in order to enter the new millennium even stronger than before," he said.
There was no mention in the speech of Samaranch's intent to fill out his term that ends in late 2001.
When asked in a brief news conference if he planned to serve out his term, Samaranch spoke mainly of his health. It's good, he said, despite reports that he has signs of Parkinson's disease.
Critics have called for Samaranch to step down now, which clearly won't happen.
He presented an ambitious reform plan, including a radical change in picking the 2006 Winter Games site, open financial records, the IOC's first ethics panel and a star-studded commission to plot the Olympics' fate, dubbed "IOC 2000."
"They should look at everything that can best prepare the IOC for the future," Samaranch said. He gave them until another extraordinary session later this year to come up with the plan.
Those changes will be debated _ and likely adopted _ when the special session wraps up Thursday.
Since becoming president in 1980, Samaranch has been a globe-trotting ambassador of the five rings, schmoozing with heads of state, posing with athletes and taking in just about every major athletic competition short of the Super Bowl.
His style and politics have helped turn the IOC from a bedraggled organization nearly broke to one with more than $122 million on hand and the owner of the most prestigious sports event in the world.
Still, with reform and resuscitation of the committee's image in mind, Samaranch can be expected to change his tactics, too, becoming a more hands-on CEO.
Samaranch has told close friends lately that he fears a plot within the IOC administration to force him from office. But he clearly has more friends than enemies.
"I could not think of a better way to say the next two years are yours," Jean-Claude Killy said of the 86-2 confidence vote, something Samaranch had sought when the scandal broke and which became so much of a formality that it was almost dropped from the agenda.
Samaranch was out of the convention hall when the vote was taken. When he returned, he received a standing ovation.
Even those who were expelled would not criticize their old boss.
"The IOC is going through a bad moment now, but don't forget what Samaranch has done over the past 18 years," said Agustin Arroyo, a member from Ecuador since 1968, now and ex-member for accepting ski vacations and financial help for his stepdaughter.
Arroyo said there had been three great leaders of the modern Olympics _ founder Pierre de Coubertin, longtime president Avery Brundage and Samaranch, "the man who spread it out to the world."
