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TORONTO - There is no simple way to define or compartmentalize Juan Antonio Samaranch’s life.
He was a small man yet a giant figure; a great leader and an immense builder who, highly political, sometimes autocratic and too often party to the corrupt scandals of his office or his membership.
He liked to be addressed as “Your Excellency,” which tells you a little something about the former leader of the International Olympic Committee, who passed away Wednesday. I saw him as recently as the Vancouver Olympics, looking smaller and more frail than I remember but still carrying himself like royalty, slowly negotiating his way down the stairs of the Pacific Coliseum to get to his seat at short-track speed skating. Just about two months after that night, after those memorable Games, he died in hospital in Barcelona. He was 89.
Samaranch built the most powerful franchise in all of sport — and he certainly knew how and when to wield his mighty power. When he took over as president, the world and the sporting world was fractured: The Moscow Olympics in 1980 were a Games boycotted by many of the world’s most powerful countries, including the United States. There was barely any money in the IOC bank. As commodities went, the Olympics were hardly worth buying in or bidding for.
Yet when poor health forced Samaranch to resign his position nine years ago, after 21 years in charge, there was $335 million US in the IOC’s coffer and no shortage of cities, including Toronto, pushing hard to host Winter and Summer Games.
Samaranch, in truth, came across as an ally of this city, but twice Toronto bid for the Summer Olympics and twice it was defeated.
“He had nothing against Toronto,” said Paul Henderson, who headed up the 1996 bid for the Summer Games. It was between Atlanta and Toronto and when it came time to vote, there were two protesters from Toronto camped outside with signs “Don’t Give The Games to Toronto” and inside there was a kids’ choir from Atlanta singing Georgia On My Mind.Who do you think was going to win that vote? And we didn’t lose by a helluva lot.
“(Toronto) was never going to win the 2008 bid. It was going to Beijing. Everybody knew that,” Henderson said.
Henderson, who last spoke with Samaranch in Vancouver, claims His Excellency was misunderstood. “I thought he was incredibly inclusive, not like people talk about him,” said Henderson, not the hockey player. “The Olympics was his whole life. He worked seven days a week, 18 hours a day. Did he make mistakes? Yes. But I think he was outstanding.”
Even after Samaranch had resigned and Jacques Rogge had taken over as IOC president, there was no discounting Samaranch’s hold on IOC members. A story was told long after Toronto had lost to Beijing for the 2008 Games. It turns out that Samaranch wanted to further his own legacy — and that of the Olympic Games — by opening up China to the rest of the world: That was his farewell present to his beloved IOC.
Samaranch, in truth, was hardly seen as the vote approached in 2001. Apparently, NBC Sports president Dick Ebersol had told Toronto bid boss, John Bitove, that he was supporting Toronto’s bid for the 2008 Summer Games.
Ebersol said he wanted a Games that would play on television in prime time in North America — and with the kind of money NBC was paying for the rights, he thought it had some clout.
That was before Ebersol was summoned to a meeting in Samaranch’s hotel suite. As the story goes, when Ebersol was next seen by Bitove in the hotel lobby, prior to the vote that eliminated Toronto, Ebersol apparently said: “I’m sorry, John. I can’t support your bid.”
That was the Samaranch way. Getting his way, no matter what the circumstances. The IOC, put off by Toronto protesters, paid no attention to the violators of human rights in China. Samaranch paid attention to what interested him — expanding the franchise, opening the door for professional athletes, turning a blind eye to doping. There was no shortage of perceived scandal in his life or his career: And for all that was wrong, legally, morally, ethically, the Olympic Games under Samaranch still became the largest event in all of sports.
“You have to compare what is the Olympics today with what was the Olympics 20 years ago — that is my legacy,” Samaranch said before his retirement. A complex legacy of sport, money, scandal and contradiction.
steve.simmons@sunmedia.ca