A New Day for USOC: Woman Wins Top Post

WASHINGTON —  In a historic first for one of America’s most traditional institutions, Arizona businesswoman Sandra Baldwin was elected Sunday as chair of the United States Olympic Committee.

Under the 115-member USOC board of director’s complicated weighted voting system, Baldwin defeated Boston attorney Paul George, 108-96. She will serve as USOC chair until 2004.

Baldwin, 61, is the first woman in the USOC’s 106-year history to hold the top rung in its complex organizational structure. Of the 21 prior presidents--the title was recently renamed “chair”--one was African American. The others were white men.

Her election, Baldwin said immediately after the votes were tabulated, is a “very, very positive statement to come out of an organization that has been considered very, very conservative.”

George, 59, a study in class in defeat, said he was “very proud we have opened up to diversity and have a woman in the role. I think it’s a great step forward.”

Baldwin’s resume and reputation are formidable: Mother of two, grandmother of six. Real estate executive. Holder of a Ph.D. in English (her thesis was titled, “Neoclassical Background of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Aesthetics”). Longtime USOC official acclaimed for her knowledge of its structure and widely perceived as bold, decisive and a quick study.

She spun stories Sunday of the thrill of being in the arena in 1980 when the U.S. hockey team beat the Russians. She also recounted her service as the first female president of USA Swimming, in the mid-1980s, and recalled how when the votes were being counted then someone said to her, “I don’t know if swimming is ready for a woman.”

“I don’t know either,” she recalled saying. “But they’re ready for me.” She paused, then--speaking of the USOC--added, “I don’t know if this organization is ready for a woman. But I think this organization is more ready than swimming was.”

Later Sunday, George, who served as chief of the U.S. delegation at the 1998 Nagano Winter Games, was reelected to a vice chair.

Two other vice chairs were also elected: Herman Frazier of Birmingham, Ala., a 1976 Olympic gold-medal winner in track who has long been a fixture in USOC circles, and Bill Stapleton of Austin, Texas, chairman of the USOC’s Athletes’ Advisory Council and a sports agent whose clients include cycling champion Lance Armstrong.

Frank Marshall of Los Angeles was elected treasurer and Marty Mankamyer of Colorado Springs, Colo., was elected secretary. A new 22-member Executive Committee, which serves as the USOC’s policy-making board, was also picked.

Outgoing USOC chair Bill Hybl on Sunday was named president emeritus. He had been elected in September to the International Olympic Committee, in a slot designated for the head of the USOC, and the USOC board on Saturday unanimously confirmed its intent that he keep his IOC job.

Minutes after she was elected on Sunday, however, Baldwin took a phone call from Anita DeFrantz of Los Angeles, currently the ranking IOC vice president. DeFrantz said it is her belief that the USOC chair--meaning Baldwin--should hold the IOC seat.

“I think it’s absolutely appropriate that the first woman in the history of the USOC to be our [chair] should also be eligible for election to the IOC,” DeFrantz said later by phone in an interview with The Times from Lausanne, Switzerland.

The IOC Executive Board, which meets Dec. 12-13 in Lausanne, may consider the issue.

“Today I just don’t want to make any comment on it,” Baldwin said. Earlier Sunday, she had said she intended to focus on the many “challenges we have on the domestic front.”

The new USOC leadership takes over at a key moment in the history of Olympic sports in the United States.

The USOC indisputably remains the most important national Olympic committee of the 199 now in the Olympic movement, and U.S. athletes won the medal count--with 97--at the recently concluded Sydney Games, just as they did in Atlanta in 1996.

But the USOC has been embroiled in management turmoil, must confront a budget that right now threatens to leave it with no better than a break-even position at the end of 2004 and stands accused of ignoring drug use by U.S. athletes--all as it readies for the Salt Lake Winter Games of 2002, which are likely to be the last Olympics on U.S. soil for at least a decade.

Stapleton had emerged over the past few weeks as a severe critic of Norm Blake, the corporate turnaround artist who abruptly quit in late October after only nine months as the USOC’s chief executive officer, in charge of day-to-day operations.

For her part, Baldwin--who was chief of the U.S. delegation in Sydney and stayed there in the athletes’ village--helped spur Blake’s departure by writing at the end of the Sydney Games to other board members, questioning his ability to run the USOC and raising concerns about the 2001-2004 budget plan.