Former IOC President ‘Juan Antonio Samaranch’ Dead at 89
April 21st, 2010 - 7:46 pm ICT by Angela Kaye Mason
Apr 21 (THAINDIAN NEWS) Juan Antonia Samaranch, former president of the International Olympic Committee has died at the age of 89. The Quiron Hospital in Barcelona released a statement confirming his death, which occurred after he was admitted with heart problems.
Samaranch was the president of the IOC from 1980 until 2001. When he retired he had served longer than any other IOC president, except one, ever had. His successor was the International Olympic Committee’s current president, Jacques Rogge. He was named as an “honorary lifetime president” of the IOC at that time.
Considered to be a very shrewd deal-maker, during the 21 years in which he was the president of the IOC, the Olympics grew as they never had before. He also survived through the Salt Lake City corruption scandal. During his reign as president, there were political boycotts, the end of amateurism and the advent of professionalism, the explosion of commercialization, a boom in growth and popularity of the games, the scourge of doping, and the Salt Lake crisis. Samaranch stood through it all.
The former IOC president had been plagued with heart and health problems ever since he stepped down from office nine years ago. In 2001, he was in a Swiss hospital for 11 days after he came back from an IOC session in Moscow. He was hospitalized in Barcelona for high blood pressure, received dialysis on a daily basis for kidney failure, spent two days in a Madrid hospital for a dizzy spell, and was in a Monaco hospital in October 2009 after he fell ill at a sporting event. Despite all of this he continued to travel to IOC meeting and such, looking more and more frail as of late.
Despite the different scandals which surround his name, Samaranch worked hard, and tried to never slow down. “After de Coubertin, there is no question that Samaranch stands head and shoulders above the other presidents in terms of his impact, not only on the Olympic Games but the place of the Olympic movement in the world,” Olympic historian John MacAloon said.
Samaranch himself has this to say, “You have to compare what is the Olympics today with what was the Olympics 20 years ago — that is my legacy.”
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