'You Scratch My Back, I'll Scratch Yours'Last of Two Parts |
 |
Some believe it is the goal of Nebiolo (left) to wind up in Samaranch's seat as IOC president.
photograph by
|
Egotistical, vengeful and armed with a street fighter's survival instincts, Nebiolo has a thirst for power and personal aggrandizement that has made him one of the most influential—and feared—people in the highly politicized world of international sport. He has increased his power base despite profligate spending habits, a managerial style that one former employee likened to "a police state without the torture" and his failure to acknowledge the most outrageous case of cheating in the recent history of track and field.
A short, proud man who carries a chip on his shoulder the size of a discus, Nebiolo is the product of a different era. "To understand me," he says, "you have to understand where I was born, what was my education, who were the people around me and what is the history of my country."
Born on July 14, 1923, Nebiolo went to a school for the best students in Turin. "I was 10 years old, a little boy, but the teachers called me Mr. Nebiolo," he says. "They had a fascist regimen. I had to stand and not move and answer. We had great discipline and order."
At 16 Primo began competing in the long jump for a sports club sponsored by the University of Turin. "I was the youngest," he says, "like the ball boy, carrying shoes for the others, putting numbers on athletes' uniforms. After one year I was given shoes with spikes, which was an incredible luxury. We were given gym bags that were like cardboard suitcases. To make it look nicer, when we traveled we would go into the best hotels and ask the doorman to give us the luggage tags of these hotels. I had a bag with the tags of these hotels I had never been in."
Judges clearly cheated in bestowing bronze on Evangelisti, a revelation Nebiolo never conceded.
photograph by
He served in World War II, becoming an officer in the Italian army. After the army's surrender in 1943, he joined the anti-Nazi partisan movement. "The partisan movement functioned as the government after the war," Nebiolo recalls. "I was made inspector general for all of Piemonte at 22. It was quite a high function." He also returned to track and field with the university sports club, moved into administration and in 1953 became the club's president. Six years later he was asked to organize the World University Games in Turin, the first that involved nations from both the East and West blocs.
That was the start of what was to become a strong relationship between Nebiolo and the Communist bloc, which helped elect him to the presidency of the International University Sport Federation (FISU), overseer of the World University Games, in 1961. It is a position he still holds 35 years later, but more important at the time was that it enabled him to establish a beachhead of power. Once that was done, it was a fairly easy task for a man of his ambitions and energy to broaden his influence in international track and field.
As co-owner of a construction firm that rebuilt roads and bridges after the war, Nebiolo had sufficient personal wealth. But as an international athletics administrator, he found he could consort with kings, princes and heads of state. In 1969 he became head of the Italian athletics federation (FIDAL), a job he held for 20 years. In '72 Nebiolo became a member of the IAAF council, and then in '81, at the IAAF congress in Rome, he was elected to succeed 78-year-old Adriaan Paulen of the Netherlands as head of track and field.
Six years later Nebiolo solidified his support within the IAAF by ramming through a one-country, one-vote rule. The old system, colonial in nature, had weighted voting. The oldest member countries—the U.S. and most of Europe—had up to six votes each, the numbers of votes progressively declining to one vote for the newer, smaller countries. During the debate on the proposed change, Nebiolo ignored delegates trying to make the case for the traditional system and called for a vote by acclamation. He won easily. The U.S., Germany and Russia have no more say in the running of international track and field than the Caicos Islands—a change that made Nebiolo the champion of the have-nots of the world. "The president realizes the Africans will vote for him," says Fasulo. "He saw that the world of sport was changing, and he seized the opportunity."
Nebiolo, with Nelson Mandela in '92, cleared a path for South Africa's return to the Olympics.
photograph by
Nebiolo's power is such that in the five times he has been elected IAAF president, he has never been opposed.
The money the IAAF has given to developing countries has been sufficient to keep the wolves from Nebiolo's door when he needs to call in his markers, which he had to do in 1987 in the wake of what has become known as the Evangelisti scandal, an act of organized cheating that nearly brought down Nebiolo. The World Championships that year were held in Rome, Nebiolo's home turf. He is a track fan in general—Nebiolo will happily sit through all the preliminary heats of a five-hour meet—but, says Fasulo, "the times I've seen him get most emotional are at athletic events when Italians do well." One of Italy's best athletes in '87 was long jumper Giovanni Evangelisti, who was competing in Nebiolo's old event. Nebiolo and his wife, Giovanna, have no children, and, according to one associate, "Evangelisti was like a son to the Nebiolos."
On the last of his six attempts, Evangelisti's jump was measured at 27'6", surpassing American Larry Myricks's best jump by two inches for the bronze medal. However, coaches and journalists watching at the side of the long jump pit immediately suspected something was amiss. Evangelisti hadn't appeared to go nearly that far and left the pit looking dejected. But the Italian judges quickly erased the mark he had left in the sand and declared the jump a clean one. According to an account of the incident in The Lords of the Rings, an unflattering portrait of the men who run the International Olympic Committee (IOC) by British journalists Andrew Jennings and Vyv Simson, the director of the championships, Paolo Giannone, told an Italian coach who was suspicious of the long jump results, "You must understand, we were told that Evangelisti had to get a medal."
Who had told Giannone that Evangelisti had to win a medal has never been established. No one ever charged Nebiolo with malfeasance in the affair, although every step of the way he denied that anything out of the ordinary had occurred. Finally, hard evidence in the form of a videotape, taken by an unmanned camera, clearly showed one of the Italian officials placing a measuring marker in the sand before Evangelisti's jump.
Even after that tape had been broadcast on Italian television, Nebiolo ignored the scandal, insisting that the long jump results were official and that only the IAAF had the right to investigate the affair. The Italian Olympic Committee eventually issued an 83-page report confirming that fraud had been perpetrated. Three FIDAL officials who worked the long jump were banned from the sport, and Luciano Barra, Nebiolo's assistant and secretary general of FIDAL, resigned from that organization for having conducted a shoddy initial investigation.
As head of both FIDAL and the IAAF, Nebiolo might have been expected to step down in disgrace for having overseen the whole despicable business. But he accepted no responsibility for the scandal. Two years later, in 1989, Nebiolo finally resigned under pressure—mostly from the Italian Olympic Committee—as president of FIDAL, just a month after being elected to a new four-year term as head of the IAAF.
Nebiolo was able to hold on to his powerful positions as head of the IAAF and the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF) thanks to some old-fashioned horse trading. Hearing that a movement was afoot to unseat him as head of ASOIF, Nebiolo offered in 1988 to split the IOC's television money equally between all the Summer Olympic federations. Traditionally, track and field had received 20% of the pot, while the other 24 federations divided the remaining 80% equally. "He, so to speak, bought the presidency of ASOIF," says one ASOIF member.
When Nebiolo returned to the IAAF with the news that its 20% share had been sliced to 4%, the other executive council members were livid. "I don't think we ever voted on it," says Ollan Cassell, head of USA Track.
"We did it to reinforce the Olympic movement," Nebiolo says, denying that he sold out his sport to keep his seat of power. "This [ASOIF] had to be a group that would be all together. It's like the old Neapolitan proverb: You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours."
That pretty much sums up his philosophy of governing. When South Africa was readmitted to the IOC in July 1991, after a 21-year ban for its apartheid policies, Nebiolo saw an opportunity to satisfy a craving he had harbored for years—to gain admittance to the IOC. So desperate was he for a seat on the committee that the late Italian committee member Giorgio dé Stefani told friends that Nebiolo had offered him 50 million lire in 1985 to step down and create a vacancy. Each IOC member nation was allowed two seats on the committee, and Italy's two allotments had already been filled. Asked if the attempted bribe was true, Nebiolo says evasively, "How can you offer money to a guy like Dé Stefani? It's gossip. He was impossible to talk to. The problem was the guy had become very old and it was difficult to even have a conversation with him."
Nebiolo believed IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch should make an exception for him and appoint him to the IOC despite his nationality, since he was the head of the most powerful Olympic sport and the president of ASOIF. The South Africa issue gave him leverage because the nation's participation in track hinged on it being readmitted to the IAAF. Nebiolo expressed reservations about reinstating South Africa in time for the 1992 Olympics, which were being held in Samaranch's hometown of Barcelona. Samaranch, desperate to have the South Africans compete, gave in. He got the IOC to pass a rule allowing him to appoint two federation heads to wild-card positions on the committee. Despite the specter of the Evangelisti scandal, Samaranch appointed Nebiolo to the IOC in early 1992, along with the head of the International Skating Union, Olaf Poulsen of Norway, and shortly thereafter Nebiolo announced that the IAAF was readmitting South Africa.
"He is dreaming of one day becoming IOC president," says one former Nebiolo colleague, painting a scenario that many consider preposterous. Still, it would be unwise to discount his chances. It was Nebiolo, after all, who, with Brazil's João Havelange and Mexico's Mario Vasquez Raña, spearheaded a drive at the IOC session in Budapest in June 1995 to change the age limit of its members from 75 to 80, a move that will allow the 75-year-old Samaranch to run for president again in '97, should he so choose. That same change might also allow Nebiolo to run for the IOC top spot in 2001, when he will be 78 and Samaranch would have to step down.
"I don't want to make competition with Samaranch," Nebiolo says, keeping his options in 2001 open. "It's not in my plans. I think life is good sometimes when you don't know what's going to happen in the future."
Bongarts
Gray Mortimore/Allsport
SI Olympic Dailies
Day: 1
|
2
|
3
|
4
|
5
|
6
|
7
|
8
|
9
|
10
|
11
|
12
|
13
|
14
|
15
|
16
|
17
|
18
