Lloyd Ward Resigns:
Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Ward resigned on March 1, adding another name to list of resignations from the U.S. Olympic Committee. Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., has been urging Ward to resign for several weeks. Ward makes seven people that have resigned since early February. Campbell says “there’s still a ways to go” and “we need a clean slate down there.” Campbell wants the people hired under Ward to resign as well.
Ward became C.E.O. in November of 2001, and hired four senior level staffers from January 2002 until January of this year. He has hired several other members of the U.S.O.C., but not all are under investigation.
In the last two years, $4.7 million has been given in payments to 13 staff members in the last two years. Two months ago, there were allegations that Ward help guide another $4.6 million of business towards his brother’s company. Ward was cited for two violations of the U.S.O.C. ethics code and docked his almost $200,000 bonus. There have also been questions about over $150,000 spent last year in airfare for U.S.O.C. travel. Ward, who is also a member of Augusta National, has critics feeling it is hypocritical to be a member of an Olympic Committee that fights for women’s rights and Augusta National, which doesn’t allow female members.
Elliott Almond of the San Jose Mercury News is comparing the “leadership purges” of the U.S.O.C. to that of the former Soviet Union.
Ward is one of many that should have resigned. There is an ethical obligation to being a member of the Olympics. The Olympic Games are the greatest amateur sporting events in the world. The best young athletes in the world compete every four years for the moment of glory. To use the Olympics to become rich and powerful destroys the purpose of the games. The Olympics come once every four years because of how sacred it is. The glory of the games is far more powerful than any man’s pocketbook. To use these events for financial gain sickens me. It takes away from the 1980 Winter Olympics when a collection of 18 year olds dethroned a powerhouse in Russia. It prevents us from looking fondly on Carl Lewis or Jesse Owens’ magnificent days in August. With all the money in professional sports today, we must prevent the Olympics from being a part of that great money maker. I’m not pretending that the Olympics don’t generate billions of dollars around the world. But when those dollars land in the pockets of millionaires, the purpose of the games is lost. And when we lose that, there’s no need for gold, silver, and bronze, just green paper.