Ioc Members

A lawyer for one of two bid leaders indicted in the Salt Lake Olympic bribery case said there is evidence that more International Olympic Committee members may be linked to the scandal. "There were many IOC members who received gifts in addition to those identified in the indictment," Max Wheeler, a lawyer for Dave Johnson, said yesterday. "There will be other evidence offered that has yet to be publicized. " Wheeler wouldn't identify the IOC members or the kind of unreported gifts they received.

A fourth International Olympic Committee member implicated in the Salt Lake City bribery scandal resigned yesterday, three days after he was accused of accepting payments arranged by the bidders. Kenya's Charles Mukora, one of six IOC members facing expulsion, proclaimed his innocence even as he quit. David Sibandze, of Swaziland, Libya's Bashir Mohammed Attarabulsi and Finland's Pirjo Haeggman had previously quit, and five others have been essentially ousted pending a formal IOC vote in mid-March.

Two IOC members convicted or accused of serious criminal charges could be expelled. The International Olympic Committee told its ethics panel yesterday to study the cases of Mohamad "Bob" Hasan, of Indonesia, and Lassana Palenfo, of the Ivory Coast. Hasan, a business crony of former dictator Suharto, was found guilty by a court in Jakarta last Friday of embezzling $243.6 million through scams involving a state forest mapping project during the early 1990s. Hasan was sentenced to two years in jail.

Acting swiftly and strongly to try to save its credibility, the IOC ousted six members yesterday in an unprecedented housecleaning stemming from the biggest corruption scandal in Olympic history. With the future of the organization, its president and the games themselves under threat, the International Olympic Committee said it was determined to bring to an end "the ugliest chapter" in its 105-year history. Embattled IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch apologized to the world for the Salt Lake City scandal but vowed to stay in office and restore the prestige of the Olympics.

Outside the great auditorium where the International Olympic Committee conducted its somber business this week, six cities bidding for the 2006 Winter Games erected their booths like colorful outposts pitched against a storm. In one corner of the hall, the man from Zakopane, Poland, stood at his display and surveyed the other sites. "This system is not the best," said Pawel Bytnar of Zakopane's Olympic Strategy Office. "This is not good for us. " In the past, before the Salt Lake City scandal that resulted in the removal either by expulsion or resignation of 10 IOC members, bid cities were able to host the voting delegates, take them on sumptuous tours, wine them and dine them, and - sometimes properly, sometimes not - win their support.

Everything seemed so casual, so pristine. A perfect atmosphere for the high-ranking International Olympic Committee official to breeze into this mountain town to celebrate the opening of the 1991-92 ski season and give reassurances to the locals that their bid to land the 2002 Winter Olympics had a good chance of success. Then the official, Marc Hodler of Switzerland, mentioned in an almost offhanded way that the International Olympic Committee was investigating itself. And the whole selection process.

IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch fired back at one of his most vocal critics yesterday, saying former U.S. Olympic chief Robert Helmick had no business calling for his resignation. A day after expelling six IOC members in the organization's biggest corruption scandal, Samaranch expressed disdain for the attacks against him by Helmick, a former IOC vice president and U.S. Olympic Committee president who resigned from both organizations in 1991 over conflict-of-interest allegations.

Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt says he didn't know about expensive gifts, scholarships and cash going to International Olympic Committee members and their relatives. Leavitt responded yesterday after fellow Republican legislative leaders said the governor was told about some inducements for IOC members a year before Utah's Olympic bid scandal broke in December 1998. Leavitt acknowledged he was aware early of persistent rumors that prostitutes entertained IOC members who selected the city to be the host of the 2002 Winter Olympics.

The board of ethics of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee delivered a fat report yesterday that, as expected, was thin on local culprits. It did, however, offer a detailed and seamy look into the business of Olympic site selection. Delving into improprieties by the bid committee that landed the 2002 Winter Games, the ethics panel found that the former management team of president Tom Welch and vice president Dave Johnson engineered a systematic program designed to influence the votes of International Olympic Committee members.

Salt Lake City's own investigation into the Olympic bribery scandal could provide answers to questions many people in the city are asking: Who knew what and when. Today, a report will be issued on the second of five investigations into the payments of cash and freebies to International Olympic Committee members. Unlike the IOC commission report that last month focused on IOC members, the closely guarded report by the Salt Lake Organizing Committee's ethics panel looks into the role Utah Olympic boosters played in seeking the 2002 Winter Games.

The man who helped the Americans make waves in Nordic combined will carry the stars and stripes tomorrow into the party that puts a capper on the Winter Olympics. In a vote among Olympic athletes, Billy Demong was selected late Thursday as U.S. flag bearer for the closing ceremony, an ideal reward for giving the Americans their first medals in the sport that mixes cross-country skiing and ski jumping. Demong, 29, of Vermontville, N.Y., edged Johnny Spillane by 4 seconds Thursday for a gold in the individual large hill competition in Whistler, then proposed to his girlfriend, Katie Koczynski, a retired skeleton racer.

BEIJING - At great expense and with heavy hearts, they came to China to watch their sport die. Their banner read: "Goodbye Softball . . . And They're Keeping Ping-Pong?" Danielle Pope, 23, and Megan Torbert, 24, traveled from Phoenix to watch the last Olympic softball tournament. They wore floppy Uncle Sam hats. Pope wept as the U.S. team fell to Japan, 3-1, in the gold-medal game. Pope and Torbert were part of a packed, pro-Japan house at Fengtai Field that waited through a 20-minute rain delay in the top of the fourth inning.

First in a series of previews, TAKE A GOOD look at Jennie Finch, Cat Osterman and Jessica Mendoza in China, because you might not be seeing them wearing red, white and blue again. At least, not on network television, and not in an Olympics. They got too good. They suffered from an association with baseball and its reluctance to institute a strong anti-doping program and allow access to the best players. There was anti-American sentiment; unequal representation at the sport's highest level; poor game growth globally.

Marion Jones was erased from the Olympic records yesterday when the International Olympic Committee formally stripped her of her three gold and two bronze medals at the 2000 Sydney Games. Once the world's biggest track and field star, Jones is now just a disgraced drug cheat. "She is disqualified and scrapped from the results," IOC president Jacques Rogge said at the close of a 3-day executive board meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland. The IOC also banned Jones from attending next year's Beijing Olympics in any capacity and said it could bar her from future games.

Edson Cholbi Nascimento, the son of soccer legend Pele, was arrested Monday in an operation to dismantle a drug gang in southeastern Brazil, police said. Nascimento, 35, was arrested along with some 50 other people after an 8-month investigation into a cocaine-trafficking operation in the port city of Santos, some 44 miles southeast of Sao Paulo, said Antonio Carlos Silveira, a spokesman for Sao Paulo's state police. No charges have been filed against Nascimento, but he was detained in Sao Paulo on suspicion of drug trafficking.

The International Olympic Committee is investigating allegations of unethical conduct in the host-city bidding process for the 2012 Summer Games. The move, centered on accusations in an upcoming British Broadcasting Corp. program, comes 6 years after the IOC was rocked by the Salt Lake City bid scandal. The IOC said yesterday it has asked its ethics commission to look into the points raised by the BBC investigative news show "Panorama. " The program, titled "Buying the Games," is scheduled to air next Wednesday.

With a stinging attack on prosecutors, a federal judge in Salt Lake City threw out the case yesterday against two civic leaders accused of bribery for lavishing $1 million in cash, gifts and favors on Olympic officials to bring the 2002 Winter Games to Salt Lake City. The ruling by U.S. District Judge David Sam came midway through the trial of Tom Welch and Dave Johnson, and all but closes the book on the worst scandal in Olympic history. The judge said that in his 18 years on the federal bench, he had never seen a case so devoid of "criminal intent or evil purpose.

Vancouver was selected yesterday as the host of the 2010 Winter Olympics, taking the games to Canada for the first time since 1988 when Calgary played host. Vancouver, located in British Columbia in western Canada, won by a mere three votes (56-53) over Pyeongchang, South Korea, in balloting by International Olympic Committee members. The election wasn't without controversy - several members didn't vote, which could have swung the result the other way. The IOC said it was unsure why. Awarding the 2010 Games to North America leaves Europe in a strong position for the 2012 Summer Olympics - at the expense of New York.

If the 2002 Winter Olympics were a Broadway show instead of a renewal of the world's most popular sports tournament, that show would never have seen the lights of the big stage. With the financial, legal, political and security challenges that have confronted the Salt Lake City Games, any other production would have quietly struck the set and closed during rehearsals. In a tribute, however, either to the native tenacity of the local hosts or to the steamroller inevitability of the commercial entity that is the modern Olympics, the flame will be lit in Rice-Eccles Olympic Stadium and 2,400 athletes from 80 nations will gather for what promises to be the biggest and best Winter Games ever produced.

The organizers of the PGA Tour's B.C. Open in Endicott, N.Y., have decided to sell the title sponsorship to the highest bidder - on the Internet. It marks the first time a pro sporting event has done so. The 10-day auction began yesterday on eBay. It carries a minimum opening bid of $1.1 million per year for a two-year deal. The title sponsorship includes such perks as national television coverage on The Golf Channel, a comprehensive TV, print and electronic advertising package, VIP boxes and ticket packages.