Samaranch's legacy should be reviewed, his son says

By Sebastian Fest Apr 20, 2011, 8:16 GMT

Madrid - Juan Antonio Samaranch Junior always carried the weight of being the son of one of the most influential men in world sport.

Now, a year after the death of the former president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), he asks for a review of some of the reforms that were launched by his father during 1998-2001.

Samaranch was head of the IOC between 1980 and 2001.

'By 2011, reform done in 2000 should be subjected to review,' Samaranch told the German Press Agency dpa in an interview.

His father died in Barcelona on April 21, 2010. A year later, Samaranch Junior's proposed changes mainly target the taboo around IOC member visits to cities that are bidding to host Olympic Games.

A corruption scandal around visits to bidding cities that broke out in 1999 came close to bringing down Samaranch himself. The case - which marked the toughest time in his 21 years at the head of the IOC - was solved with the expulsion from the IOC of several members, and with a strict ban on member visits to bidding cities.

From then on, visits are to be carried out by 'evaluating commissions.' It was the end of the luxurious travelling, gifts and favours with which bidding cities had previously sought to earn the votes of IOC members.

Things changed, but the final decision is still up to individual members of the IOC: it is they who vote to choose a host city. For Samaranch Junior, 51, one of Spain's two members in the IOC, there is a contradiction in this.

'The issue of visits to cities is something that needs to be re- regulated,' he says.

A meeting with representatives of bidding cities in Lausanne a few weeks before the vote is 'a very big step forward,' he says, but it is not enough.

'In many cases it is still difficult to vote, to get an idea without having physically seen the facilities and the country,' Samaranch complains.

Improvements should be made, he insists, because the process is decisive for many issues that are discussed within the IOC.

A vice president of the International Modern Pentathlon Union, he thinks the world is now quite different from what it was in 1999.

Change is needed, he says, even if it cannot be done in time for the 2018 Winter Olympics. A decision is to be made on those on July 6 in Durban, South Africa, among bids from the French city of Annecy, the German city of Munich and the South Korean city of Pyeongchang.

'We are in a different world, with a lot more information and transparency. There is a way to do it. Visits can be done in such a way that they are not personal, freely-chosen visits, so that there is every guarantee for it to be a normal process,' Samaranch Junior stresses.

He says he misses his father as a 'source of experience and knowledge.' And he praises his work at the head of the IOC.

'The creation of the World Anti-Doping Agency, the creation of the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the promotion of women and athletes,' he lists his father's legacy.

In his last public appearance, in October 2009, Samaranch Senior asked members of the IOC to vote for Madrid as host of the 2016 Olympics. He said he was 'near the end' of his life, and seeing Madrid host the Games would fill him with joy.

In contrast, former FIFA president Joao Havelange opted to invite IOC members to his 100th birthday in 2016 on Copacabana Beach. Several members of the IOC did not like Samaranch mixing the vote with his approaching death, and the Games went to Rio de Janeiro.

But Samaranch Junior does not think that his father made a strategic mistake.

'I think it was an act of infinite generosity of my father's towards Madrid. He gave it the last he had in life, a very personal request,' he says.

'He did it from the heart.'

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