Rogge in charge

With Samaranch era over, new face takes center stage

Jaques Rogge will stay in the Olympic Village in Salt Lake. Mike Hewitt/Allsport

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) -- Jacques Rogge has attended 14 Olympics as a competitor or official. As a modest sailor and behind-the-scenes administrator, he went largely unnoticed.

In Salt Lake City, Rogge will be hard to miss.

The former Belgian surgeon is going to the Winter Games in a new high-profile role -- president of the International Olympic Committee.

For the first time in two decades, someone other than Juan Antonio Samaranch will be presiding over the games. Six months after Rogge was elected to succeed the Spaniard, who ruled the IOC from 1980 to 2001, the winds of change are evident.

In the most visible example, Rogge will stay in the Olympic village in Salt Lake along with athletes and team officials rather than enjoy the five-star hotel luxury and other perks so long associated with the IOC.

"I've always loved the atmosphere of the village," he said. "This is going to be my 15th games. I stayed eight times in the village, three times as a competitor and five times as a chef de mission [team delegation leader]. It's a wonderful atmosphere and I wanted to go back."

Rogge, 59, seems intent on eschewing the trappings of power. In keeping with the sober, levelheaded approach honed during his career as an orthopedic surgeon, Rogge is taking a no-big-deal attitude toward his Salt Lake City debut.

"I'm not a man to have personal feelings on that - I've a job to do," he said, noting that he already played a leading role as the IOC's chief coordinator at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

In Salt Lake, Rogge will also have to perform ceremonial duties, meeting with prime ministers and heads of state, making speeches, and addressing the world at the opening and closing ceremonies.

"That's something I have not done yet, but that's not a daunting task," he said. "So I'm going there in the same mood and same attitude as I was in previous games. You go there and do your job and come back."

Rogge spoke in a hour-long interview with The Associated Press in his spacious but spartan IOC office, his windows looking out on a blanket of fresh snow covering the shores of Lake Geneva.

Rogge reiterated his confidence in the security measures put in place in Salt Lake City since the Sept. 11 attacks, calling them "the maximum we can ever dream of."

While the Salt Lake Games have been tarnished by the Olympic bribery scandal and overshadowed by terrorist concerns, he insisted the "magic" of the games will prevail once the flame is lit on Feb. 8.

"All elements are in place to have excellent games," Rogge said. "I'm quite sure the atmosphere will take over as it has taken over at all the previous difficult games."

"I remember in Moscow in 1980 when people were predicting the end of the games because a big part of the Western nations were not present," he said, referring to the U.S.-led boycott. "From day one, they were forgotten, nobody paid any attention to their absence. The same happened in Los Angeles. Nobody noticed the Communist countries that were not present. That's the magic of the games."

Rogge said he will use the opening ceremony to issue the IOC's traditional appeal for an 'Olympic Truce," but acknowledged the IOC has no means of enforcing peace. The Bush administration supported a U.N. resolution for an Olympic truce, but ruled out any military ceasefire in Afghanistan.

United Nations Secretary-General Koffi Annan has been invited to the opening ceremony. Rogge said he won't single out Afghanistan in his speech.

"I will not go into specifics," he said. "Actually if you look at the world situation, there are zones where there are more conflicts today than in Afghanistan, where there are more killed. I will not be specific, it's not my role."

Meantime, Rogge said he will soon send a delegation to Kabul to help re-establish a national Olympic committee -- suspended by the IOC during Taliban rule -- with the hope of having an Afghan team at the 2004 Athens Games.

"Ultimately, we want athletes of decent quality," he said. "I don't want tokenism. The games are not a place for symbolic tokenism."

One thing Rogge will not do in Salt Lake City is continue Samaranch's unofficial tradition of using the closing ceremony to declare whether the games measured up as the "best ever."

"I won't do that," he said. "I'll give the opinion of the IOC on the games, but I will not compare to the other games. I believe you can't do that. It's a different environment, different culture."

That also describes the IOC since Rogge took over from Samaranch.

In his first six months in office, Rogge has begun reshaping the IOC administration and setting out his top priorities -- fighting doping, cutting the size and cost of the Olympics and reviewing the reforms enacted after the Salt Lake bid scandal.

While Samaranch operated in a more autocratic and secretive fashion, Rogge engages in an open, give-and-take style which he says reflects his medical background.

"In medicine, you first listen to your patient, you listen to what he has to tell you, then you do the examination, you analyze, then you make a diagnosis, then you come up with the treatment," he said. "That's about the way I do it.

"I'm definitely a listener. I consult with people and try to make an analysis. I won't do it alone. I'm a team worker."

IOC director general Francois Carrard, who has worked closely with Samaranch and Rogge, said the difference between the two men is striking.

"Samaranch was always reserved, very prudent," he said. "He was seen as fairly cold and distant and not very expressive. Jacques Rogge throws out ideas and encourages debate. He reaches out to people. His policy is one of dialogue."

 

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