AN INFLUENTIAL member of the International Olympic Committee made a savage attack on Salt Lake City yesterday, describing it as the birthplace of Olympic corruption. On the opening day of the IOC’s 109th session, relayed live on television for the first time, IOC members also squabbled with Sydney over a decision to cut back IOC perks during the 2000 Olympic Games.
The Mexican press baron, Mario Vazquez Rana, who heads the Assocation of National Olympic Committees and is an IOC powerbroker, told a visiting delegation from Salt Lake City, the host of the 2002 Winter Games, that they would never be forgiven for besmirching the Olympic movement.Ten IOC members lost their jobs after the exposure of a million-dollar vote-buying scam by the Salt Lake bid team earlier this year, provoking the worst crisis in IOC history. “I can assure you that the problem inherent to corruption was born from people in Salt Lake City,” Vazquez Rana said “We will have always been besmirched. I’m sorry to say that this is something that comes from that wonderful country, the United States of America.”However, Michael Knight, who is head of the committee organising the Sydney Olympics in 2000, put a slightly different twist on the IOC’s thorniest issue and antagonised some delegates by lecturing members on the need for reform just two days after cutting millions of dollars in IOC “luxuries” from the Sydney budget.Briefing the organisation on Sydney’s preparations, Knight blamed a Sydney budget shortfall on the IOC’s recent corruption and said the IOC should “share some of our pain”.”We are relieved you have begun the necessary process of reforms,” added Knight, the president of Sydney organising committee “The process must be followed through.”. MAURICE GREENE, who reduced the world 100 metres record to 9.79sec on Wednesday evening in Athens, yesterday forecast further improvements before the season is over And he did not restrict the record-breaking to himself. The 24-year-old American, known as the Kansas Cannonball, said he expected that his friend and training partner Ato Boldon would soon get into the act himself.
“I believe we are just going to go back and forth with the record this year,” Greene said in the wake of the emotional scenes which had followed his monumental performance. As the realisation sank in of what he had achieved – reducing the mark from the 9.84sec Donovan Bailey recorded in winning the 1996 Olympic title, and equalling the time which Ben Johnson recorded in winning the 1988 Olympic title before it was annulled because of doping abuse – he sobbed on the shoulder of his coach, John Smith.Boldon, who went on to beat Greene over 200m later in the evening, predicted after the 100m that he would be the next man to break the record, and Greene readily agreed that was possible.

“Now that one person can say they have broken the 80 barrier I believe it will be broken a couple of times,” Greene said. “I mean, just because you run a certain time it doesn’t mean that has to be the end of what you can do I believe I am very capable of running faster I just have to train and run the best race I can. My goal right now is 9.76, so I have to train and try to figure out a way to run 76.”Greene is a softly spoken, God-fearing man, whose frequent references to the Lord after winning the 1997 world 100m title caused him to be slyly mocked by the silver medallist, Bailey. He would also be in order to offer thanks after this latest achievement to the coach who has transformed his running.

After Greene’s failure to make the US Olympic team in 1996, his parents, Ernest and Jackie, drove him over from Kansas to Los Angeles to join up with Smith’s prestigious and highly talented group.Since then Greene has become the group’s leading light, eclipsing – if not silencing – the ebullient Trinidadian Boldon.He knows that his achievement in taking the largest slice off the 100m record since electronic times were introduced in the 1960’s is likely to be regarded with cynicism by some.Johnson, who is seeking to return to the sport despite two doping offences after a Canadian court ruled that there had been irregularities in the handling of his last appeal, said after his run in Seoul: “No man will ever run as fast as I did without doing what I did.”Greene’s reaction on being reminded of these words was phlegmatic. “I know what Ben Johnson said, but then he would,” Greene commented. “But I know how hard I work and I can say, on my mother’s life, I have never, ever taken anything illegal, nor would I. Let people say what they want, but I know the truth.”I was born with a gift the Lord gave me, but you have to work at your talent. The people who think we don’t work hard should come and watch us for a week.”The latest predictions by Boldon and Greene throw the emerging ambitions of Britain’s new generation of sprinters into context.

Dwain Chambers, the 21-year-old Londoner who on Sunday became only the second European to break the 10- second barrier after Linford Christie, has another three metres to make up if he is to challenge the world leaders.Greene’s historic achievement overshadowed other performances at the Tsikliteria meeting on a windless evening ideally suited to fast times.Britain’s world indoor 60m silver medallist, Jason Gardener, ran 10.08sec in the B race to become the fourth-ranked Briton behind Christie, Chambers and the European champion, Darren Campbell.Ashia Hansen, competing for only the second time following a foot operation, produced a respectable if unspectacular triple jump of 14.10m to take fourth place and provide reasonable expectations for the European Cup event starting in Paris tomorrow.. PITY THE Olympic bid PR man in the new, seen-to-be-clean era. “They’ve clamped down so much now, you can’t even feel safe buying an International Olympic Committee member a drink,” bemoaned an adviser to one of the six cities who will learn tomorrow if they have secured the 2006 Winter Games. In the wake of the bribery scandal involving the last successful Winter Games bidder, Salt Lake City, following which six IOC members were sacked and four resigned, there is an overwhelming need for the Olympic movement to refurbish its tainted image.
The six bidders present in Seoul for the award decision – Sion (Switzerland), Klagenfurt (Austria), Turin (Italy), Helsinki (Finland), Proprad-Tatry (Slovakia) and Zakopane (Poland) – have been obliged to play by different rules to the ones which prevailed when the state of Utah set about its task.While the long-term aims and structure of the movement are being considered by the newly created IOC 2000 Commission – which numbers many figures from outside the IOC itself, including Henry Kissinger and Sebastian Coe – the latest bidding has been conducted on the basis of interim rules.The old system of inviting as many IOC members as possible over for a look around your front parlour has been replaced by a new scheme, in which bidding cities are visited only by a limited number of members who comprise an evaluation commission, which in turn passes information on to the main body of IOC members.The voting has been simplified. After presentations by all six bidders in Seoul this morning, a jury of 15 members will be charged with the task of whittling the contenders down to two.The jury will be made up of eight IOC members, representatives from National Olympic Committees and Winter Sports Federations, three athletes, the Japanese chairman of the Evaluation Commission, which has prepared a 288- page report, and – for reasons not entirely clear – Joao Havelange, the former president of Fifa, the world governing body of football.They will be chaired by the IOC president, Juan Antonio Samaranch, who weathered calls to resign following the traumatic revelations at the beginning of this year. Once the finalists have been chosen, the full IOC membership will decide the winning bid by secret ballot.Sion, close to the heart of the IOC movement at Lausanne, are favourites to win by dint of their technical facilities, their access to prestigious St Moritz for the bobsleigh and luge events, and, perhaps, a warm spot in the heart of Samaranch for a near neighbour.But Klagenfurt’s bid, based just inside the Austrian border but envisaging a Games linking up with the two bordering countries of Italy and Slovenia, has a freshness which might be telling. The women’s downhill, for instance, would start in Slovenia, cut through a bit of Italy and end up in Austria.

A new approach for a new era? Perhaps.In the longer term, however, this award is significant not for where it goes, but how it goes. While Princess Anne will be otherwise engaged tomorrow at her brother’s wedding, Britain’s other IOC member, Craig Reedie, is likely to be a member of the 15-strong jury.He is well aware of the significance of the occasion. “The selection process needs to be fair, transparent and done properly,” said Reedie, who is also one of the 80 members on the 2000 Commission. “If you visit a bidding city, you only see what the city wants you to see. The IOC needs a much better bidding department with experts who will be able to give unbiased opinions on which bids will be good.”In terms of public image, the Olympic movement is steering its way through turbulent waters at the moment But its appeal appears to be an enduring one.