Feb. 17: IOC Remains Insulated From Real World

By Sylvia Gurinsky


It takes a special kind of tackiness to come out and blame an athlete for his own death less than 24 hours after he dies. Tackiness that can only be exhibited by the International Olympic Committee.

That's the same IOC that decided to continue with the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich after the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes; the same IOC that managed to get wound up in a scandal over the selection of Olympic host cities.

Avery Brundage, the dictatorial, racist hypocrite who led the IOC for 20 years (and who made the decision to continue those Munich games), may be dead. But his spirit was well evident on Saturday, when the organization backed up the International Luge Federation's report blaming Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili's actions for his death on the luge track last Friday. This, of course, while officials were tweaking the track and changing the start positions of the men's and women's competitions.

When Jacques Rogge became the head of the IOC and managed to persuade the International Skating Union to clean up its judging mess at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, there was hope that real reform was coming. With the "investigation" of Kumaritashvili's tragic accident, all that's been shown is that the International Olympic Committee is as insulated from the real world as ever.