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Olympics briefs

Compiled from Times wires

© St. Petersburg Times,
published September 19, 2001

Salt Lake City residents raise concerns about security

SALT LAKE CITY -- Stephen Pace never liked the idea of bringing the Olympics here. Now, with his home a scant mile from where the medals plaza will be, he fears for his life.

If terrorists are looking to make another global statement, what better place than the middle of the 2002 Winter Games in February?

"Putting 100,000-plus people and 10,000-plus reporters there every night is lunacy," said Pace, a health industry consultant. "They are saying it's worth risking everybody's life for. The motto ought to be: 'Don't do anything in downtown Salt Lake they wouldn't do in downtown Tel Aviv.' "

Pace said the International Olympic Committee should consider putting off the Games for a year.

Pace, perhaps the loudest local opponent of the Salt Lake Games, may find more people who think the same since the terrorist attacks.

While International Olympic Committee officials stoutly declare the Games will go on, more people now are asking: What if?

The IOC said Tuesday all aspects of security will be reviewed in the wake of the terrorist attacks. But it said a "catastrophe scenario" of an airliner crashing into the opening ceremony has been part of security planning since the 1972 Munich massacre.

"In fact our scenario was, and is, a plane crashing in the midst of the opening ceremony, full of people, full of fuel, broadcast live worldwide on television," IOC director general Francois Carrard said.

Salt Lake Organizing Committee chief Mitt Romney will report to the IOC on Thursday on the latest plans for keeping the Feb. 8-24 Games safe.

Meantime, Congress has bolstered the $200-million security plan with an additional $12.7-million. Lawmakers also are moving to repeal legislation limiting the use of military personnel in Olympic operations.

IOC DISCLOSES PAYMENTS: The law firm of IOC member Dick Pound received more than $3-million from the IOC in a 15-year period in compensation for his "extra legal services" conducted on Olympic business, the IOC disclosed.

The IOC said there was nothing improper about the payments, which were part of a private arrangement struck in 1985 with Pound by then-IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch.

"It's an arrangement that's been completely above-board. It was in writing at the request of the president of the IOC," Pound said from Toronto.

IOC director general Francois Carrard said the payments covered Pound's legal work in negotiating Olympic sponsorship and TV contracts. He said the deal was made on condition that the payments went to Pound's Montreal firm, Stikeman Elliott, and that Pound himself would not receive any money.

COLES REINSTATED: Phil Coles, implicated in the Olympic bribery scandal, was reinstated to the Australian Olympic Committee's executive board.

Coles, an IOC member since 1982, also was forced to quit the organizing committee of the Sydney Olympics.

Coles lost his job as the AOC's international relations director when his IOC membership was suspended in 1999 because of the Salt Lake City scandal.

OBITUARIES: Former runner Paul Cummings drowned when his canoe overturned while he was fishing in a reservoir. He was 48. Cummings was with a friend 120 feet from shore when their canoe tipped in choppy, 68-degree water. The friend, Jay Woods, was able to swim to shore, but Cummings didn't make it. ... Don Hume, who won a gold medal in rowing at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, died Sunday of complications from a heart attack and a stroke. He was 86.

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