In order to make room for athletes’ families and friends, Salt Lake Olympic organizers have cut the number of public tickets for the medal ceremonies. All medalists at the 2002 Winter Games will receive 10 tickets to the medal ceremony. The Salt Lake Organizing Committee also bumped up the number of spaces reserved for other athletes from 4,600 to 8,700 over the 15 days when medals will be presented at the plaza. SLOC president Mitt Romney’s administrative team also decided to provide more tickets for volunteers. Each of the estimated 22,000 volunteers will receive two tickets to the medals plaza. And SLOC has set aside 72,700 tickets, about 5,000 per night, for the public.
When athletes receive their medals at the 2002 Salt Lake Games, the gilded copper angel atop the Mormon Temple is expected to be in full view of the TV cameras. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is lending the Salt Lake Organizing Committee prime downtown real estate and paying millions of dollars to convert it into the Medals Plaza. Some critics fear church elders will exploit the Games as a global missionary effort. They worry the temple will become the sole icon of the Olympics, which journalists worldwide already have dubbed “the Mormon Games”. Church officials describe their offerings as acts of goodwill.
Swiss and Dutch sports and marketing groups will be issued a series of permits that will allow them to sell alcohol during the 2002 Winter Games. Groups from the Netherlands plan to hold two events in downtown Salt Lake City and in order to sell alcohol at these functions, the groups needed to secure “single event” permits from the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission. The permits are good for only three days, and no single group can be issued more than two permits per year.
The USOC executive committee listened to a progress report on the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Games and declared that plans are nearly complete. And before its next executive committee meeting in New York in September, the USOC will honour Dr. Henry Kissinger for his work on reforming the IOC charter following the Salt Lake bribery scandal.
Mitt Romney, head of the organizing committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah, has agreed to help the U.S. Olympic Committee find a permanent chief executive officer. But he declined to run for the position himself. Acting CEO Scott Blakmun, former USOC vice president Mike Lenard and athletic directors Mike McGee of South Carolina and Ted Leland of Stanford are in the pool. Finalists will be selected in September.
The International Olympic Committee has formed a public foundation to promote the ideals of the “Olympic Truce”–the tradition of stopping wars during the Olympic Games. The International Olympic Truce Center, based in Greece, will develop education and research programs and run campaigns to promote the Olympic Truce. It will also cooperate with other organizations devoted to peace and conflict prevention and resolution. The official documents were signed at the IOC headquarters in Lausanne Switzerland by IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch, director general Francois Carrard and Greek consul General Ekaterini Loupas.
U.S. Magistrate Ronald Boyce has upheld all 15 felony charges against the Salt Lake bid leaders accused of bribing IOC members who awarded them the 2002 Winter Games. Judge Boyce’s latest ruling affirmed charges of mail, wire and honest-services fraud against bid chief Tom Welch and his deputy, Dave Johnson. Boyce previously upheld conspiracy and racketeering charges. So far Boyce has rejected every defence argument. Boyce also ruled the government doesn’t have to prove that Welch or Johnson personally benefited from their dealings. Meanwhile both sides persuaded U.S. District Court Judge David Sam to push back the trial to July 30 to give attorneys two more weeks to prepare. The trial delay is also a convenience for Utah’s jury pool, which includes many people who vacation for a week to celebrate Pioneer Day, a Utah holiday that falls on July 24. Government witnesses include Utah Governor Mike Leavitt, Anita DeFrantz, the highest ranking American on the IOC, Canadian Dick Pund, whose internal investigation into the bid scandal ended with the purge of 10 IOC members and U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah.
And finally, Francois Werner, special representative to the IOC ethics comission, met with Gen. Lassana Palenfo, the No. 2 official in the Ivory Coast’s former junta government and an IOC member, to try to determine if he should be expelled from the Olympic committee. The IOC will decide Palenfo’s status July 12 during its general assembly in Moscow. In March Palenfo and Brig. Gen. Abdoulaye Coulibaly were sentenced by a military court to a year in prison for their part in an alleged assassination attempt on Junta leader Gen. Robert Guei last September. Palenfo was appointed to the IOC in September 2000. Under the Olympic Charter, an IOC member can be expelled if he or she “neglected or knowingly jeopardized the interests of the IOC or has acted in a way which is unworthy of the IOC”.
