Even though Americans won the medal count at the Sydney Games, the U.S. Olympic Committee finds itself adrift in leadership, lacking direction to such an extent that some officials of the organization fear an impact on performance at future Games and a loss in confidence by corporate sponsors.
While the USOC is considered pre-eminent among the world's Olympic committees, the volunteer-based organization has a reputation as a group that takes forever to make decisions, is heavily politicized and whose members often act out of self-interest.
In recent years, the USOC has lurched from crisis to crisis with a revolving-door leadership. As it begins meetings Thursday in Washington to elect a volunteer president and perhaps name a permanent chief executive officer, the USOC faces urgencies that, if not handled properly, could be "a potential catastrophe," according to a former head of the organization.
The USOC has been governed by five different leaders in the past six years. Norm Blake resigned as CEO in late October, less than nine months after he was hired to bring a streamlined, corporate approach to the organization. Blake accused the USOC of an unwillingness to change, while officials complained about his harsh management style. Scott Blackmun, the group's former sports director and general counsel, was named the interim chief executive and could be given the job permanently this week.
The organization has struggled to raise money since its chief fund-raiser, John Krimsky, left two years ago after raising $2 billion for the organization over 15 years. At one point, a shortfall of as much as $90 million was feared for the 2000-2004 quadrennium, although officials have since whittled that amount to $20 million on a yet-to-be- approved $495 million budget.
The past two medical directors of the USOC, Dr. Robert S. Voy and Dr. Wade Exum, have accused the organization of covering up positive drug tests and of creating an atmosphere that encourages the use of performance-enhancing drugs. The drug- testing program has become so discredited that in October, the USOC farmed out its testing program to an independent agency headed by Frank Shorter, the 1972 Olympic marathon champion.
An investigative panel led by former Sen. George J. Mitchell last year criticized the USOC for a lack of oversight during Salt Lake City's scandal-plagued bid to win the 2002 Winter Games.
The USOC has spent $57 million in the past four years to maintain regional training centers at its Colorado Springs home, in Lake Placid, N.Y., and in Chula Vista, Calif. These centers serve as symbols for corporate largess but have produced few gold medals. The majority of American medalists do the bulk of their training and competing elsewhere.
Signs of erosion in American Olympic success were evident at the Summer Games in Sydney, Australia. The American total of 97 medals, when ranked according to medals won per capita, was 46th among the 199 competing nations. And even with the dominance of the sprinters Marion Jones, Michael Johnson and Maurice Greene, American track and field athletes won the fewest medals in the Summer Games since 1896.
While the USOC has essentially completed fund raising 14 months before the start of the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, the organization still faces potentially embarrassing revelations during the bribery trial of the former chief Salt Lake City organizers, Tom Welch and Dave Johnson, which is scheduled for June.
Sustained corporate support has become more pressing because after Salt Lake City, the United States is not expected to play host to another Olympics for at least a decade, perhaps not until 2016. Seventy percent of international corporate sponsorship of the Olympics comes from American companies, and fund-raising for the USOC is easier when the Games are held in the United States.
Paralyzing disputes
The USOC is also trying to stem upheaval at a time when, Olympic officials concede, the Olympic movement has lost some of its luster as measured by declining television ratings in the United States, because of international drug scandals, and the embarrassment of the Salt Lake City bribery scandal.
In resigning under pressure as CEO, Norm Blake painted an alarming picture for reporters. He said the USOC might be facing the last chance to rescue itself, and he accused officials of being motivated by the idea of "What's in it for me?"
"Certain people viewed me as a threat to their self-interest," Blake said in an interview when he resigned. He added: "I took at face value that they were truly committed to change. But this was a far more political organization than I could have possibly imagined."
The USOC is a federation made up of the national governing bodies of 39 Olympic sports, a dozen affiliated sports and community-based organizations, the armed forces and sports organizations for the disabled. It provides from 6 percent to 80 percent of the funding for the national governing bodies. Successful, popular sports such as figure skating need little outside funding, while lesser-known sports such as team handball rely on the USOC as a financial lifeline.
The unwieldy organization is run by a paid CEO (formerly called the executive director) and a volunteer president and is overseen by a 115-member board of directors, representing various sports . Many of the board members are volunteers. There are about 550 paid staff members affiliated with the USOC and about 400 directly affiliated volunteers, although hundreds of thousands of volunteers form the backbone of the American Olympic movement.
Historically, there has been great tension between the volunteer base and the paid staff. While the volunteers provide a great service and the Olympic movement would wither without them, they have also been meddlesome, bogging down the USOC, lending a sense of paralysis. This indecisiveness was most evident in recent years: in the hesitancy to take action against Tonya Harding before the 1994 Winter Olympics after her associates attacked the favored Nancy Kerrigan. It took several years to devise an athlete's code of conduct after the Harding episode, just as it took a protracted period to excise the National Rifle Association as the governing body of the United States Shooting Federation. The USOC looked particularly helpless at the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, when it was unable to determine which American hockey players damaged three apartments in the Olympic Village in an embarrassing episode.
The bickering among USOC members has, at times, reached almost absurd levels, involving such issues as whether staff members should be entitled to the same leather jackets and rings as the Olympic athletes. Volunteer leaders have frequently been accused of being more interested in free airline tickets and T-shirts than in assisting athletes. "The volunteer leadership has to focus on what it can give, not on what it can take away," said Harvey Schiller, a former executive director of the USOC. "The motto shouldn't be, 'Where's
mine?'"
Leadership problems
Last February, Blake, a corporate turnaround artist, was hired for $500,000 a year. An independent study had determined that the USOC would be more successful if it brought in a chief executive and a strong professional staff, and kept volunteers at a distance. Blake, however, left before he had served nine months of his three-year contract.
"This is a watershed time for the USOC," said one senior official of the committee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "I guess we are viewed with ridicule and disdain by the public. We realized clearly the last two years that you can't continue this dysfunctional relationship between the volunteers and the staff."
Blake trimmed 40 USOC staff positions, reduced the number of committees to four from 40 and alerted the national governing bodies that future funding would be tied, in part, to Olympic performance.
He quickly met with resistance. Bill Stapleton, chairman of the USOC's athletes advisory council, said in an interview that Blake did not understand the complexity of the organization, moved too drastically without trying to build consensus and operated with the flawed premise "that we were a train wreck."
"The USOC, for all its failings, remains the best Olympic committee in the world," Stapleton said. "The athletes didn't win 97 medals in Sydney in spite of us."
Some USOC officials also said they became concerned when Blake hired several staff members at $300,000 or more a year and provided lucrative packages, including guaranteed bonuses and $70,000 to $90,000 in moving costs. On Oct. 10, Sandy Baldwin, a USOC vice president, sent a letter to Bill Hybl, the committee's outgoing president, raising concerns about the proposed budget and salary levels.
Two weeks later, Blake resigned. He called Baldwin's letter "underhanded" and said that compensation packages he offered were within industry standards.
This week, Baldwin, who owns a Phoenix real estate company, will run for president of the USOC, the top volunteer position, against Paul George, a Boston lawyer.
George, whose style is to lead by accommodation, has called for a reappraisal of the role of CEO. While at odds with Blake, Baldwin said that she would remain committed to the idea of a strong chief executive.
"I don't believe the organization is broke," she said, "but it needs to be fixed." Baldwin added: "We have a $450 million-plus budget that cannot be administered by politicians and volunteers.
Volunteers must set policy and then leave the staff to run day-to-day operations and make decisions that are not politically driven."
While she disagreed with Blake's "money for medals" plan to base financing on performance, Baldwin did say that national governing bodies would have to be more accountable and creative in determining future levels of USOC financing.
"You just don't throw money against the wall and hope it produces greatness," Baldwin said. "Instead of saying, 'Here is the money,' we say, 'Figure out a program, we'll give you expert help and funding where it's needed.' That's opposite ends of the telescope."