Ailing Samaranch will miss ceremony

E-mail this article Print this article

GENEVA — Juan Antonio Samaranch, hospitalized for "extreme fatigue," won't attend a ceremony tomorrow at which Jacques Rogge formally will replace him as International Olympic Committee president.

"The condition is improving. We are optimistic. He needs to stay in the hospital for a few days at least," IOC director general Francois Carrard said yesterday. "He's alert, he's speaking, he's perfectly in control of what he wants and says."

Carrard said Rogge, the newly elected IOC president from Belgium, had flown to Lausanne yesterday and visited Samaranch at Lausanne's university hospital.

Samaranch was taken to the hospital on Tuesday night — his 81st birthday — shortly after returning from the IOC meeting in Moscow at which his 21-year term as IOC president ended.

Notes

• South Korea's Kim Un-yong blamed a "last-minute smear" campaign for his defeat in the IOC presidential election, accusing Samaranch of using his influence to undermine his bid.

Kim, who finished a distant second to Rogge in Monday's vote in Moscow, also claimed the result was engineered by European members in order to retain their dominance of the IOC and deny an Asian the top job.

• Organizers of Houston's bid for the 2012 Olympics made their final pitch to U.S. Olympic Committee members yesterday after a two-day tour of six proposed sites and a visit to Mission Control at NASA's Johnson Space Center.

Houston is the third of eight U.S. cities the committee will visit before selecting the one that will compete with international cities for the 2012 Olympics. The USOC will select the U.S. bid city in October 2002. The IOC will name the 2012 host city in September 2005.

• After the IOC session in Moscow in which Beijing was selected as host of the 2008 Games, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov said Russia's Olympic Committee was preparing a bid for the 2012 Games.