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Race for IOC's top job
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JACQUES ROGGE, a Belgian surgeon who has won a reputation for fixing the pains and strains of organizing Olympics, on Monday joined the race for world sport's most powerful job, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) presidency.
The former Olympic yachtsman, 58, became the second of three heavyweight candidates to launch his public campaign to win the July vote to replace Juan Antonio Samaranch, who is retiring at a meeting in Moscow, the city where he clinched the job 21 years ago.
South Korean Kim Un-yong, a 70-year-old former United Nations General Assembly delegate, told IOC members in a letter last Friday that he would run in what is expected to be a desperately close race between the three main candidates.
Canadian Dick Pound, the IOC's marketing supremo, has been keeping his counsel on whether he will join the race but Olympic sources believe he is definitely running and is expected to announce his candidacy at the start of April ahead of the April 16 deadline, three months before the vote.
The two other candidates who have put their names forward -- former US rower Anita DeFrantz and Hungary's ex-fencer Pal Schmitt -- are not thought to have any chance of winning the race. DeFrantz is the only woman in the contest.
Rogge, who competed in the sailing at the 1968, 1972 and 1976 Olympics, was the IOC's chief coordinator at last year's successful Sydney Olympics and has shown composure in the same role in the problematic build-up to the next Summer Games in Athens in 2004.
Many see the former Belgium national team rugby player as the favourite, although he has a lot less experience in the organization than Pound and cannot match Kim in terms of international contacts.
At a press conference to launch his campaign Rogge said he would give up his job as a surgeon if he won and work as a volunteer for the IOC. He said his experience as a doctor would help him in the job.
“In my profession I have to take critical decisions on a daily basis and show responsibility,” he said. “Leadership is about decision-making and also listening to and uniting people.”
Former Olympic swimmer Pound, who joined the IOC in 1978, has played a key role in turning the Olympics into a commercial success in the past two decades by clinching lucrative sponsorship and television rights deals. He has a reputation for being tough and speaking his mind.
Rogge, by contrast, did not become an IOC member until 1991. But he has used his medical background as an orthopaedic surgeon to help the organization with world sport's biggest problem -- the abuse of performance-enhancing drugs.
The Belgian, who speaks fluent English and French, has won many allies in the organization with his diplomacy and composure under pressure.
At his press conference Rogge spoke out against the gigantism of the Games. Last year the IOC announced that no new sports would be added to the Games for Athens 2004.
“Scaling down the Games will be an important part of my programme,”he said.
“The Games are too big to be organized by lesser cities (than Sydney). Developing countries in Africa and Latin America can't afford it. I believe that is a sentiment shared by the vast majority of the IOC.”
Pound and Rogge have a fierce contender in Kim who has extensive contacts in international politics as well as in sport.
Kim, as head of the General Association of Sports Federations (GAISF), is an influential figure. But his age could count against him and the South Korean also received a warning from the commission probing the Salt Lake City bribery scandal in 1998 and 1999.
The commission found a Salt Lake bid official had arranged to pay at least part of the salary of Kim's son when he worked for a US company. Kim denied all knowledge of the arrangement and the commission said in a report that it could not prove otherwise.
In the biggest bribery scandal in Olympic history, 10 members left the IOC for breaking rules on accepting gifts from the US city when it was bidding successfully for the 2002 Winter Games.
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