USOC official: Dallas broke the rules
Posted: Friday February 12, 1999 04:10 PM
DALLAS (AP) -- By offering the U.S. Olympic Committee a private
plane and limousine and car service, the people pushing Dallas'
Olympic bid broke the rules, a USOC official said.
"It was inappropriate," USOC spokesman Bob Condron told The
Dallas Morning News. "It is pretty much in our guidelines not to
be limousine escorted and type of thing. We pretty much travel by
bus or cabs or whatever is handy. It otherwise sends the wrong
message."
But Condron said the mistake was a small part of an otherwise
outstanding proposal.
The Dallas 2012 Olympic committee and the Dallas Convention and
Visitors Bureau apparently made the transportation offer as part of
the city's bid to host a media summit next year.
Condron said he informed a Dallas bid committee staff member
about the USOC's policies and advised the committee against making
such an offer again.
Committee spokesman Kevin Sullivan said Dallas 2012 was unaware
of the U.S. Olympic Committee's policies and called the episode a
learning experience. This was the committee's first bid for an
Olympic event, he said.
"They look at it as inappropriate for their people to fly on
private jets. We understand that now," Sullivan said. "We didn't
know it was inappropriate."
Dallas' committee submitted its offer to the USOC in September,
months before the bribery scandal surfaced involving the
International Olympic Committee. A Salt Lake City official has
acknowledged his city's bid committee paid housing, travel and
education expenses for relatives of members of the IOC.
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