Former IOC President Samaranch dies

Juan Antonio Samaranch, the 89-year-old former International Olympic Committee (IOC) President, has died.

Samaranch, who stepped down as IOC President in 2001 after 21 years in the post, died in a Barcelona hospital after suffering from heart problems.

Following his death, tributes to the "man who saved the Olympics" and who famously proclaimed the Sydney 2000 Games as the "best Games ever" have been received from around the world.

Michael Payne, who worked closely with Samaranch from 1983 to 2001 as IOC Marketing and Broadcast Director from 1988 to 2004, said "no individual has had a great impact on the modern sports movement than Samaranch."

Australian Olympic Committee President Joan Coates described Samaranch as "dear friend" to Australian sport.

During his time as president from 1980 to 2001, the Spaniard helped usher the Olympic movement into a professional era, restoring financial health through lucrative broadcast deals and sponsorships as well as transforming the IOC into a powerful universal body.

Coates stated â\"his single greatest achievement was to unify the Olympic movement.

"Instead of having an IOC and having national Olympic committees, international federations and athletes as the stakeholders, he certainly brought us all together.

"He recognised that together we can be stronger and recognised the importance of us being independent of government funding.

"He could look into future, he knew that the Olympic movement wasn't going to survive and he was able to work with the broadcasters, work with the sponsors and work with the stakeholders.

"We are deeply saddened by the news... we've lost a dear friend."

Payne went on to recall "Samaranch took over the IOC in 1980, following the US led boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games. At the time, the IOC was bankrupt; no city wanted to come forward to host the Games; there were no real sources of revenue and the Olympic Games were becoming a political pawn between the super powers with a series of retaliatory boycotts.

"Most commentators at the time were writing the obituary of the Olympics - saying that they had become too political, too costly and too out of touch to survive. So great did the problems look, that Samaranch himself was pessimistic about the future and within weeks of taking on the presidency thought about resigning.

"When Samaranch retired in 2001, as the second longest serving IOC President after the founder, Pierre de Coubertin, the IOC was generating billions (of dollars) from broadcasting and sponsorship revenues, allowing the IOC to properly fund the Games and support all the National Olympic Committees and Sports Federations around the world. Cities were queuing up for the privilege of hosting the Games, and the term boycott had been banished from the Olympic lexicon.

"Samaranch's leadership - patient, long term and strategic - was fundamental to saving the Games. He seized the agenda. Instead of being constantly on the back foot, he looked to the future and the IOC began to dictate terms. He offered a clear vision; wanting to modernise the Games while remaining true to the Olympic ideal; commercialising them without compromising the principles of the Movement. The standing joke was that Samaranch had the strategic skills to play chess in three dimensions.

"Yet, he was not afraid to act quickly and decisively when the situation called for it. Following the Salt Lake bidding scandal in 1999, which came close to bringing down the IOC, Samaranch drove through a series of reforms in just six months, which, under any normal circumstances, would have taken decades to achieve."

Image courtesy of the Chinese Olympic Committee.