Anita DeFrantz - just six votes
Anita DeFrantz, the senior International Olympic Committee to the United States, running Saturday for a place on the IOC’s policy-making executive board, finished dead last with six votes in balloting that saw one of the IOC’s most influential figures, Gerhard Heiberg of Norway, its marketing chief, win the seat with a decisive first-round victory.
This was no surprise.
Except, obviously, to DeFrantz.
“I am stunned,” she said from the assembly floor just moments after the results were announced on the final days of the IOC’s 119th session in Guatemala.
The vote Saturday leaves the United States, the most significant financial contributor to the Olympic movement, again without a seat on the IOC’s policy-making executive board.
The U.S. has been off the board since 2006, since Jim Easton of Van Nuys, Calif., came up short in balloting, and it’s not clear when an American might again make it. The only other U.S. IOC member, Bob Ctvrtlik of Newport Beach, Calif., has to figure out how to stay a member; his seat is tied to his role as an Olympic athlete (he was a volleyball star), and is due to expire in 2008.
From 1989 until 2006 – with a break here and there of a few months, as from July 2001 through February 2002, when DeFrantz rotated off the board and Easton was then elected a vice president – the United States had held a seat on the board.
The vote Saturday comes as Chicago undertakes a bid for the 2016 Summer Games amid a push by the U.S. Olympic Committee to renew international relations efforts.
In an interview with a group of reporters after the vote, DeFrantz said she believed the results show the United States must yet grapple with what she called “least-favored nation status.”
“I just don’t agree with that at all,” Ctvrtlik said when told of her remark, saying, “The relationship between the USOC and the IOC is the strongest it has been in 20 years. Is it perfect? No. But both sides are committed to growing the Olympic movement – which will help big and small countries alike.”
IOC President Jacques Rogge, asked at a news conference about DeFrantz’s remark, smiled, paused for a long second while collecting his thoughts and said, “I disagree with what my dear colleague is saying. I respect her very much but I don’t share that view.”
The distinct possibility is that the balloting was less about the USOC and the United States and more about DeFrantz, and the personality politics that typically drives the IOC.
And, for DeFrantz, the dilemma now is what the future for her holds within the IOC.
Only 54 years old, DeFrantz can be expected – good health willing – to remain an IOC member until she is 80, until 2033. But the obvious question is, to what effect?
DeFrantz, a bronze medalist at the 1976 Montreal Games in rowing, has been an IOC member for 20 years. In the 1990s, she served as the first female vice president in IOC history.
DeFrantz has always carried about her a resolute sense of destiny about her life’s path. Even when others with perhaps keener political instincts have cautioned that perhaps she ought to hold back, she has continued to seek IOC office.
Six years ago, she ran for the IOC presidency. Hoping to become the first black and first female president in IOC history, she finished last, with nine votes.
For months before the IOC’s meeting immediately before the 2006 Torino Games, she had insisted the time was right for her to get back onto the executive board.
Shortly before the IOC balloting in Torino, under pressure to withdraw in favor of Easton, she reluctantly did so – then saw him lose.
DeFrantz said at that time that withdrawing had been a “hard decision,” and in exchange for that 2006 withdrawal it was plain she intended to run in 2007.
DeFrantz has since 1995 served as chair of the IOC’s “women and sport” commission. But other women now wield considerably more influence within the IOC, including Gunilla Lindberg of Sweden, currently an IOC vice president. Others still are obviously in line for big things – among them Nawal el Moutawakel of Morocco, the 1984 400-meter hurdles champion who two years ago served as chairwoman of the 2012 Summer Games evaluation commission.
Six years ago, in Moscow, I sat next to DeFrantz in one of the buses going to the formal ceremony at which Jacques Rogge would be declared the winner of the presidential election. She was in tears.
I reminded her of that scene earlier this spring when she and I were sitting in her office in Los Angeles, she saying she was all in for the 2007 executive board race. Every bit of intelligence I had heard suggested she would again find herself humbled.
Heiberg ran the 1994 Olympic Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway. As the current head of the IOC’s marketing commission, he negotiates sponsor deals. He said here that the IOC’s 12 top-tiers sponsors are paying $866 million through the 2008 Beijing Summer Games and that eight companies have already agreed to $800 million in deals for the cycle ending in the 2012 Summer Games in London.
Moreover, Heiberg is among Rogge’s close advisors. And he was an incumbent.
He won 49 votes in the first round – a “rather exceptional” result, Rogge said from the dais.
Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. of Spain, son of the former longtime IOC president, finished second, with 22 votes.
Third: Mustapha Larfaoui of Algeria, the swimming federation president, with 15.
Then DeFrantz. With six.
Percentage-wise, DeFrantz did worse in 2007 than in 2001. Then, she got nine votes out of 107 cast, or 8.4%. On Saturday, it was 6.5%, six of 92.
Adding to the embarrassment – Rogge, in looking at the results, did not immediately see that Heiberg had gotten enough votes in just one round to win outright. Instead, he saw first that DeFrantz had received the fewest votes and announced that she was eliminated. Then, amid some scurrying about, Rogge corrected himself and pronounced Heiberg the winner.
Asked later if she now has concerns about becoming less relevant within the IOC than years ago, DeFrantz said, “I guess time will tell.” She laughed and said, “It’s hard for me to imagine myself marginalized,” then added a moment later, “No, I won’t be marginalized.”
Posted by Alan Abrahamson on July 7, 2007 03:53 PM