Hodler backs off Sydney claims
Senior IOC official no longer believes 2000 host to blame
Posted: Monday December 14, 1998 10:27 AM
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- Senior International Olympic Committee
member Marc Hodler appears to have backed off claims that Sydney
illegally bought votes to win its bid to host the 2000 Olympics.
Hodler sent the IOC into its biggest scandal since Canadian
sprinter Ben Johnson tested positive for steroids 10 years ago when
he claimed on Saturday that four agents -- including one IOC member
-- had been involved in vote-buying for the past 12 to 15 years for
bidding cities.
Australian IOC member Phil Coles said Hodler had later
acknowledged he had been "way off target" in alleging that Sydney
had paid for votes.
Hodler, an 80-year-old Swiss lawyer, said Monday that agents
claimed that votes had been bought on behalf of bidding cities.
"We believe that the agents are the real villains, the crooks,
the corrupters, not the cities," he told Australian Broadcasting
Corp. radio.
"I know that Sydney claims to have been resisting the offers or
the blackmails from the agencies, I don't know, I never said this
was not true ... but the agents claim they have corrupted all
cities.
"I don't know anything about Sydney, I only know that Sydney
very firmly says they never did anything against the existing
rules."
This contradicted the position he took on Saturday, when he
said: "I can't imagine that Sydney is different from the others.
Sydney pretends it is completely clean, clean, clean."
Coles said that Hodler had backed down on his earlier
suggestions that the Sydney bid committee had been involved in
bribery.
"He said he never said Sydney was involved, he just wondered
how they escaped the temptations," said Coles.
"That was the nearest to an apology we are going to get."
"There probably is a need for a change. It has been changed
over the years and it's pretty strictly controlled at the moment."
"I don't know how you stop it. It's a huge prize for the city
that won and when there is a lot at stake there is a lot of savage
disappointment."
Sallyanne Atkinson, who was heavily involved in Brisbane's bid
to host the 1992 Games, Melbourne's campaign for 1996 and Sydney's
successful bid for 2000, said she was aware of lavish gifts being
given as part of the process to decide the host cities.
Atkinson said gifts including offers of holidays, entertainment
and "sometimes material things" were part of the way the system
operated and the "wining and dining" was often lavish.
But she claimed she never saw money change hands in an underhand
fashion.
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