Sandra Baldwin, the first woman to become president and chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee, resigned on Friday, a day after she acknowledged that she had lied about her academic credentials.
Baldwin's resignation was the latest embarrassment in the United States for the Olympic movement, and the latest example of sports figures inflating their professional and academic achievements.
On Wednesday night, Baldwin left a meeting of the International Olympic Committee in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and returned to the United States. On Thursday, in a letter to members of the USOC executive committee, she said: "I do not think I have hurt the credibility of the USOC. I have certainly hurt my own, and I ask you to carefully consider the best course of action for the organization."
On Friday morning, Baldwin held a teleconference with the 23 members of the USOC's executive committee. Later, while the committee was deliberating without her, she resigned, saying in a statement released by the USOC, "I accept full responsibility for the mistakes I have made."
According to Baldwin's USOC biography, she graduated from the University of Colorado in 1962 and received a doctorate in American literature from Arizona State in 1967. On Thursday, she acknowledged that she left Colorado in 1959 after three years at the university, and received a bachelor's degree from Arizona State in 1962. She said she completed doctoral studies at Arizona State, but did not have time to do the dissertation because she had to care for her two children and run the family farm after her parents died. Baldwin subsequently taught English at Arizona State for 11 years before starting a real-estate firm in the early 1980s.
She disclosed the discrepancy in her resume after she learned that a University of Colorado student who had interviewed her for an alumni publication was going to reveal the information.
"I should have changed it a long time ago. But once it was published it got paralyzing," Baldwin said. "Now I'm going to have to live with it for the rest of my life."
"Around the Rings," an electronic newsletter about the Olympics published in Atlanta, listed Baldwin as the 11th most influential person in the Olympic movement prior to the 2002 Winter Games.
Fraser Bullock, Salt Lake Organizing Committee president, was sorry to see her resign.
"It's unfortunate because she was a very good friend of Salt Lake," he said. "She's always supported the Games here."
Baldwin, he said, also was a proponent of leaving a legacy of venues in Utah for future Olympians.
Bill Stapleton of Austin, Texas, a USOC vice president and former Olympic swimmer, took part in the teleconference with Baldwin.
"She was on for 15 minutes, and questions were asked," he said. "She was embarrassed. She said it was a big mistake and said she should have corrected it. Nobody asked for an explanation. When she hung up, we discussed it and recommended that it be referred to the ethics committee. By then, I think she had made the decision to resign."
She resigned, effective immediately, in a telephone call with Lloyd Ward, the USOC's chief executive officer. In making the announcement of her resignation, Ward said:
"She did what she considered best for the USOC and the Olympic movement. She took full responsibility for her actions and the mistakes in her biographical sketch."