One of the biggest challenges facing New York in its bid to host the 2012 Olympics is finding a way to distance itself from Salt Lake City. Or, to put it another way, lobbying for votes under a zero-tolerance ethical standard even as opponent cities gradually proceed on a business-as-usual, if not less blatant, basis.
The Salt Lake scandal was pinned on a place and its lead campaigners, Tom Welch and Dave Johnson, but the scandalous framework of bidding for Games -- votes for favors -- originated deep within the cultural underpinnings of the International Olympic Committee.
Last week, the attorney representing Johnson in his continuing legal battle with the Justice Department said the caretakers of New York's 2012 bid would ignore at their peril the aftershock of Salt Lake's mid-1990s campaign.
"The Olympic movement is an international, cultural [phenomenon]," said attorney Max Wheeler. "What [public opinion and the government] are trying to impose on it as Americans is ... our standards of conduct. These IOC members don't understand why they are being demonized. All of this creates resentment."
New York has ways of distracting IOC members from thinking about Salt Lake's aftermath. It is home to all the major television networks and dozens of Fortune 500 multinational companies. They are the financial fuel of the Olympic movement.
"It is important to the IOC that American broadcasters are very interested in [rights to] 2012, and important to the IOC that in terms of economic health going forward that corporate America is behind the Olympic movement," said former U.S. Olympic Committee, Turner Sports and YES Network boss Harvey Schiller, chairman of the NYC2012 management committee. "There are a lot of elements involved."
NYC2012 headquarters will become a spontaneous party if the case charging improper influence-peddling against Johnson and Welch goes away for good. If not, there are IOC members who might be alarmed into thinking that the feds really are after them, not two guys from Utah.
It is this underlying fear that had some IOC members shaking their heads at the possibility that the United States would name Washington, D.C., as its 2012 candidate. They wouldn't go near the place, what with U.S. lawmakers poised to call hearing after hearing.
The Eurocentric IOC squarely rejects the idea of the United States becoming the global arbiter of sports ethics. That is why NYC2012 staffers are watching closely to see if federal prosecutors succeed in extraditing alleged Salt Lake Olympic skating fixer Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, a Russian citizen arrested in Italy in September.
The attention on the alleged mastermind of last February's judging scandal standing trial in the United States is an Olympic dream for U.S. law enforcement, but quite the opposite for NYC2012 supporters.
HOUSE HUNTING: A U.S. "Olympic House" might be established in New York as soon as next year, said NYC2012 marketing and communications director Amy Stanton, as part of bid helmsman Daniel Doctoroff's pledge to pursue the Games in close partnership with the USOC. The USOC has not had a Manhattan operational base since 1981, though it did maintain a regional fund-raising office there from 1986 to 2000, said USOC senior spokesman Mike Moran. "No discussions or actions" to locate a future Olympic House have occurred, he said.
The next scheduled face-to-face between bid leaders and USOC senior management and staff is planned for mid-December.
RING TOSSES: The IOC plans to launch a sponsorship "road show" across China on May 21 as part of a joint effort with Chinese organizers to solicit domestic sponsors for the 2008 Beijing Summer Games. Industry sources say sponsorship categories for the '08 Games will be priced around $100 million, or 35 percent more than a four-year global sponsorship deal with the IOC. ... The IOC might delay action on a panel's recommendation to eliminate baseball, modern pentathlon and softball as Olympic sports by 2008 when its 114th Session convenes this week. The Olympic Charter says adding or cutting sports must occur seven years ahead of a Games' scheduled start. The Beijing Games are less than six years away. The IOC still could take a vote and implement the changes in 2012 instead, so lobbying efforts by the three sports to avoid the ax have not eased as hundreds of IOC members and sports administrators gather in Mexico City beginning today. Also pending: review of a recommendation to create the position of chief operating officer at IOC headquarters in Switzerland.
Steve Woodward can be reached at swoodward@sportsbusinessjournal.com.
