Paris 2024: Behind the Olympic spectacle lies a history of corruption

Simone Del Rosario:

Every four years billions of people worldwide tune in to the Summer Olympics, and the vast appeal stretches far beyond sports.

While polls show the number of people who are extremely proud to be an American is at record lows, the Olympics have a way of turning that around. During the Tokyo games, 63 percent of Americans said they had a “very positive” reaction when they saw the stars and stripes.

No matter where you live on the planet, the Olympics drum up profound memories. I’ll still tear up to this day thinking about Muhammad Ali fighting through Parkinson’s to light the cauldron at the ’96 Atlanta Olympics…36 years after he won the gold in Rome, only to throw the medal into a river after facing racism when he came home. Even as a child, I knew that was a moment.

But the one that still gives me chills was watching Kerri Strug stick the landing on her vault after hurting her ankle, clinching gold for Team USA, the Magnificent Seven.

Sure, we watch the Olympics to see excellence and world competition in 300 different events. It’s where GOATs are born. Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky, Simone Biles. Of course, your list of superstars will be different depending on where you live.

But the Olympics also show off some of the world’s greatest cities. For over two weeks we get to learn about the culture and history of faraway nations. The opening ceremony in Rio resurfaced a century-old debate that Brazil’s Alberto Santos-Dumont was the first human to fly, not the Wright Brothers. Watching events like the triathlon bring you right into the city, while the Paris opening ceremony will take place on the city’s famed Seine river.

It’s easy to take for granted a production that miraculously beams into our homes. But well before the starter pistol fires, there is so much that goes into a city scoring the Olympics and then pulling off an event of global proportions that attracts millions of visitors. It might surprise you to hear that both cases can be rife with bribes and other shady deals. Or maybe it won’t.

Controversy has been part of the Olympics since the ancient games in 776 B.C.

The Olympic Games were literally founded on cheating, despite the longstanding tradition of swearing an oath to Zeus to play fair.

As the Greek myth goes, Pelops won his bride’s hand by sabotaging her father King Oenomaus’ chariot before a race. The king died in the race and Pelops founded the Games to commemorate his victory.

Stroll toward the Ancient Games stadium in Olympia, the pathway is littered with what’s left of the Zanes. These pedestals once supported bronze statues of Zeus, paid for by fines imposed on cheating Olympic athletes. The pedestals had the offenses inscribed, to warn other athletes not to cheat. Centuries later, they still need to be warned.

News Coverage:

“New revelations about an elaborate scheme of alleged doping at the 2014 Winter Olympics.”

“Russia received a 4 year ban for doping from the World Anti-Doping Agency.”

Simone Del Rosario:

But it’s not just athletes foiling fair play.

In the modern Olympic era, misconduct can happen years before athletes even qualify for the Games.

News Coverage:

“It’s the Olympic bribery scandal in Salt Lake City. There are allegations the city won the Winter Games for the year 2002 by bribing some members of the International Olympic Committee.”

“Brazilian police have arrested the head of the national Olympic committee, Carlos Arthur Nuzman in a new phase of the so-called unfair play investigation.”

Simone Del Rosario:

Welcome to the world of bid-rigging.

David Wallechinsky:

You started to get real bidding corruption maybe in the ’60s…

Things got worse and worse. When you talk, It finally blew up in the bidding for the 2002 Salt Lake City Games.

Simone Del Rosario:

Olympic Historian David Wallechinsky says this corruption scandal was so ridiculous, it was almost humorous. All told, the bribery scandal surrounding Salt Lake City’s 2002 bid is the stuff of legend.

Olympic corruption was a poorly kept secret, but Salt Lake’s really the first time it all publicly came to light. Since then, the stain on the International Olympic Committee has been hard to scrub out.

Here’s a bit of important context: Salt Lake City tried and failed to get the Olympics four times before this happened. So this whole saga started after they lost out – for the fourth time – on the ’98 Olympics to Nagano, Japan.

Salt Lake’s organizing committee later learned that Japanese officials spent as much as $14 million – $32 mil in today’s dollars – to land the games.

Little-known Nagano had reportedly given IOC officials the first-class treatment. The bid committee hosted them in ritzy digs in Tokyo, Nagano and Kyoto. They entertained IOC members with geishas and helicopter rides. And to cover up any bribery, they burned 10 large boxes of documents, incinerating the paper trail.

Instead of licking their wounds from losing out – again – Salt Lake City took notes.

David Wallechinsky:

The Salt Lake City people realize that you you had to keep a file on each IOC voting member. And then, you know, do whatever you could to get their vote. And so there was one case in particular, caught my attention, where there was an IOC member from Togo. Well, Togo doesn’t compete in the Winter Olympics. That didn’t matter, because the guy still voted. So they kept flying him out to Salt Lake City. Well, that wasn’t good enough. So they had to include the stopover in Paris so his wife could go shopping on the bid committee’s pocketbook. It’s just the whole thing was so ridiculous. But they got the games, and that was all they cared about.

Simone Del Rosario:

Some might say Salt Lake City just played by IOC’s rules. If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying?

But the revelations broke bid-rigging corruption wide open. In response to investigations, the IOC expelled 10 members.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department brought bribery and fraud charges against the president and VP of Salt Lake City’s bid committee, who both resigned years before the games came to town. The charges were dropped a year after SLC’s successful run as host city.

But if you think that was the end of IOC and bid-rigging corruption, let me direct you to the 2016 Rio Games. In 2021, Brazilian Olympic Committee President Carlos Arthur Nuzman was sentenced to 30 years in jail for crimes connected to buying votes.

But he’s still a free man after a federal court ruled the judge didn’t have the legal competence to rule on the case.

Does winning an Olympic bid take a Faustian bargain? It doesn’t have to.

Charlie Battle:

I always loved the Olympics. Growing up as a child, I loved to watch the Olympics, I was fascinated by that. I believed in it.”

Simone Del Rosario:

Meet Charlie Battle.

Charlie Battle:

“I bought into the whole, bringing the world together through sport.”

Simone Del Rosario:

The Atlanta lawyer was in public finance before playing a key role in bringing the Games – and honor – to the ATL.

Charlie Battle:

We were just in the ’80s, beginning to get international plane service. But we call ourselves the world’s next great city.

Simone Del Rosario:

Atlanta’s jockeying for the Olympics came when the mid-size city was just a blip on the global map.

Charlie Battle:

Truth be known. When we started this, people wondered if we were going to have blackjack because they thought maybe they got us confused with Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Simone Del Rosario:

But before organizers could start lobbying IOC members, Atlanta needed to win the USA crown. After beating out San Francisco, Nashville, and Minneapolis came the unenviable task of raising money to challenge international bids.

Charlie Battle:

The government doesn’t support the Olympics in this country. And it’s, you know, there are a lot of constitutional provisions that prevent cities and counties from pledging money.

We couldn’t start building our stadium until we had a TV contract in hand. That was a bankable contract.

And then when we won the US designation, we were able to get some, you know, corporate support, and we kind of kept on keeping on.

Simone Del Rosario:

The plan went down as smooth as ice-cold Coca-Cola in the hot Atlanta summer.

The Atlanta-based beverage behemoth put up tens of millions – at least – to bring the games to their home turf, though they’d long been an Olympic sponsor. Atlanta’s Olympic promise was a privately-funded affair.

But Battle says they didn’t just have to sell sponsorships, they had to sell the IOC on the city.

Charlie Battle:

there were 88 international members, we had to meet them, try to get them to come to Atlanta, go to see them. And basically, I ended up just on the road for the next couple of years.

Simone Del Rosario:

And who needs bribery when you have Charlie Battle in your corner? He says he won the IOC over with good ol’ fashioned Southern hospitality.

Charlie Battle:
that’s why I went on the road so much is to go visit people, visit them in their homes, get to know their families, try to get them to come to Atlanta, show them that we’ve got the people they can trust.

it’s a marketing deal in the end, but from our perspective, making friends was the key.

News Coverage:

“The International Olympic Committee has awarded the 1996 Olympic games to the city of Atlanta.”

Simone Del Rosario:

The city exploded in victory when the Games were announced in 1990.

Battle was quoted on the front page of the Atlantic Journal saying he was stunned, excited, elated, shell shocked.

Six years later, the host city was celebrating a wildly successful start to the games when fear struck. A bomb detonated at Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park, killing one woman and injuring more than 100 others.

Security guard Richard Jewell was initially hailed a hero for discovering the suspicious backpack and moving Olympic fans out of harm’s way. The bombing could have been much more destructive. But within days, Jewell was wrongfully targeted as the prime suspect. It took years to catch the real bomber, Eric Rudolph, whom police arrested in 2003.

Clint Eastwood captured Jewell’s part of the story in the 2019 movie, “Richard Jewell.”

Where was I?

Outside of the tragedy – and the traffic – and the heat – the ’96 Games was mostly seen as a success.

But in 2013, when the U.S. Olympic Committee asked cities to put their names in the ring for the 2024 Games, former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, who co-led Atlanta’s ’96 bid efforts, said the city shouldn’t go for it.

Plain and simple, he said, “I don’t feel like going through it again, and I don’t imagine anyone from 1996 will. It’s a 10-year commitment.”

But he did say hosting the Olympics is good for any city. Battle says Atlanta especially benefited greatly from the Games.

Charlie Battle:

Without question. Absolutely. Yes.

Charlie Battle:

There are always people who say, Well, we shouldn’t spend this money, we ought to spend it on something else. And there’s no doubt about that. We should, but that isn’t the way the world works, you know, just because we wouldn’t have had this money, you know, what we raised, they weren’t going to raise to revitalize, you know, something else, or help build housing or this that and the other.

Simone Del Rosario:

Battle says winning the Olympic bid turned the wheels on downtown development.

Charlie Battle:

We built a downtown park in Atlanta called Centennial Olympic Park, which was on nobody’s radar at the time we started, but ended up being really the best legacy of our games.

Simone Del Rosario:

In the three decades following the games, Atlanta’s population doubled. And the Olympics helped solidify the ATL as a premier sporting event destination. They’ve since hosted two Super Bowls, multiple Final Fours and the College Football National Championship.

Charlie Battle:

We were fortunate to get this and we had a tremendously positive impact.

Simone Del Rosario:

But not every host city scores gold. With the Olympics, budgets seem to be more of a false promise. From 1960-2016, Summer Games went over budget by an average of 213%. The 2008 Beijing Games supposedly went over just 2%, but they also budgeted higher than average and you can insert your own snide comment on government control over economic data. The 1976 Montreal Games had the biggest busted budget, exceeding it by 720%.

For the Winter Olympics, the average overrun is 142% with the 1980 Lake Placid Games going 324% over budget.

And not everyone’s fit to foot the bill.

Charlie Battle:

The only reason Greece was able to put on the games was the EU, but they borrowed too much money and went into financial (trouble) because they built all kinds of monuments that they didn’t need.

Simone Del Rosario:

Abandoned state-of-the-art facilities often become an eyesore on Olympic legacies and city spending.

Charlie Battle:

They build way too much stuff, and they build stuff they don’t need, and they waste a lot of money. And one of the things we always were proud of is that we really didn’t do that.

Simone Del Rosario:

In Atlanta, the track-and-field stadium transformed into Turner Field in less than a year, home of the MLB’s Atlanta Braves for two decades.

Overbudget and overdeveloped are just two reputational hazards the IOC is trying to overhaul.

David Wallechinsky:

Now it’s not as bad as it was. Because what the IOC has done is they’ve introduced a system where you have to, in advance, before you’re even allowed to bid, you have to meet a certain criteria of where you’re going to get the money, what are the venues that are going to be built. The environmental aspects, sustainability…

Simone Del Rosario:

But what about when the corruption comes in after a city wins the bid?

News Coverage:

“While Sochi is better known for its palm trees than snow, there is a blizzard of allegations of unsavory ties to organized crime figures, official corruption…”

“It’s just days until the Winter Olympic games open in Sochi. They’re already the most unlikely, and perhaps controversial games ever, they’re certainly the most expensive ever.”

Simone Del Rosario:

I can always count on Russia to help me make a point.

Enter the 2014 Games in Sochi, a $55 billion affair.

David Wallechinsky:

This was totally corrupt. Vladimir Putin gave 27 contracts to a friend of his.

Simone Del Rosario:

Well isn’t that nice. Bloomberg describes Arkady Rotenberg as “the boyhood friend and former judo partner of black-belt President Vladimir Putin.” Bloomberg counts at least 21 contracts worth more than $7 billion – which by the way – is more than some entire Olympic budgets.

The contracts ranged from a share of the transportation system linking Sochi to ski resorts, a highway along the Black Sea, and a $387 million media center.

I’ve been in quite a few media centers in my day. I can’t say I ever felt like someone spent hundreds of millions of dollars on it. I hope it came with a good spread.

After the fact, Putin also quietly handed out medals to his billionaire friends who invested in the games.

Charlie Battle:

When there’s money, there’s corruption.

Simone Del Rosario:

And let’s be very clear, there is a ton of money involved in the Olympics.

News Coverage:

“There have been a series of scandals and controversies from the moment, actually, that Tokyo won the bid for the summer games.”

“Japan’s Fair Trade Commission has filed criminal complaints against the big advertising company Dentsu and 5 other ad firms over alleged bid rigging for contracts on Tokyo 2020.”

David Wallechinsky:

There were bribes, TV, TV rights, bribes, all sorts of bribes, which sponsor would get the rights to this or that.

Simone Del Rosario:

Advertising giant Dentsu, five other companies and seven individuals are charged with colluding in assigning contracts for the Tokyo Games.

David Wallechinsky:

Afterwards is really corrupt.

Simone Del Rosario:

But Tokyo is what we call a 1-2 punch, because the committee also faced allegations of bribing IOC members to win the games.

While Tokyo’s corruption scandal still plays out in the courts, Paris is pilng on before the games even begin.

Officials raided organizers’ offices back in October. A judicial source told Reuters the raid is part of an investigation into alleged favoritism for several awarded contracts.

While heads rolled over internal bid-rigging corruption, the IOC has less control over what happens after bids are awarded. Paris will be the first Games held under the IOC’s new anti-corruption clause.

David Wallechinsky:

What we’ve seen now is a real change. Because the IOC under Thomas Bach, who’s the president of the IOC, they realize this is not good, we can’t have another Sochi situation, we can’t have another Rio situation.

So when they got really good bids, for the 2024 Summer Olympics from both Paris and Los Angeles, they went, Wait a minute, let’s not pit these people against each other. Let’s give them each an Olympics.

Simone Del Rosario:

Now, instead of a drawn-out bidding process for each Summer and Winter Olympics – one that has historically lent itself to corruption – two IOC panels are permanently open to talks with any cities open to hosting. And these panels can also make the first move and approach cities they think might be the right fit.

They’ve even floated rotating sites, though it’s not a really popular proposal.

But cities that have successfully hosted could get multiple chances.

David Wallechinsky:

Salt Lake City is going to get the Winter Olympics again. But in a more honest way.

Simone Del Rosario:

Salt Lake’s path to 2002 might have been burned by bribery and budget overages, but the city did a 180 when Mitt Romney took the reins. Yes, that Mitt Romney. The 2002 Winter Games turned a profit when all was said and done and turned Romney into the household name you know today. After snubbing him in ’94, Massachusetts voters elected him to be their governor in 2002 and the rest is history.

And though the Salt Lake City scandal forever tarnished IOC’s history, it’s now the frontrunner for the 2034 Games.

But back to this decade.

Aside from ongoing investigations into the Paris Olympic organizers, Wallechinsky, who splits his time between the south of France and the U.S., says there are other things to watch.

David Wallechinsky:

There have been some terrible terrorist attacks in France, they’ve come up with this opening ceremony, which is going to be in public with hundreds of 1000s of people.

Simone Del Rosario:

It’s an Olympic first, an opening ceremony outside of a stadium. The Paris pomp and circumstance will take place along the Seine. And while it will make for an amazing spectacle, security is top of mind.

David Wallechinsky:

The challenge that the French are facing is not just protecting the Olympic venues, but the entire city and to a certain extent the rest of the country as well, all at the same time.

Simone Del Rosario:

It’s a risk the city hopes will pay off with the entire world watching. Then again, anything you do while hosting the Olympics brings that global scrutiny.

David Wallechinsky:

I always told people from host cities, everybody’s going to criticize you before the games, because as members of the media, if we say, Oh, this is going really well, nobody’s going to follow that. They don’t want to read that. It’s not click friendly. And so we’re always looking for something that’s wrong. And you know, that’s going to be the story. And then when the competition starts, everybody forgets about that unless it’s really serious.

Simone Del Rosario:

And that’s generally the case. While the bombing at Atlanta’s Centennial Park shook the city, we still remember the Magnificent Seven taking home the gold, or Michael Johnson breaking the 200 meter world record that stood until Usain Bolt burst onto the scene.

And that’s why people like Charlie Battle still believe in the Games, despite its flaws.

Charlie Battle:

I think it’s important, I think the Olympic movement is important. I think it’s, you know, I still believe in hopefully that good athletic competition and good athletic stories can can, you know, be inspirational to young people.

Simone Del Rosario:

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