Jacques Rogge of Belgium has been a delegate of the International Olympic Committee for a mere decade -- the shortest term of the five members that competed for the vacancy left by departing President Juan Antonio Samaranch. How, then, was Rogge elected the eighth IOC President on Monday in Moscow?
|  | | Dr. Jacques Rogge, right, was selected as the eighth IOC president on Monday. |
Because he is both a skillful surgeon and an intuitive operator who is able to dissect diverse personalties with charm and dry wit. Seeing 5,000 patients and performing 500 operations a year will do wonders for your bedside manner. And when you can converse in five languages -- his native Dutch, plus French, Belgium's other chief language, English, Spanish and German -- there isn't a cocktail party in the world you can't conquer.
"My profession has taught me a lot in terms of a sense of responsibility, being humble and calm and cool," Rogge told The Associated Press. "A good surgeon is cool, and I am cool. Ultimately, it has taught me a lot about human relations. You must gain the confidence of your patient, you must be very honest with him. It's a great school in life."
Rogge won in the second round with 59 votes over South Korea's Un Yong Kim (21) and Canada's Richard Pound (20). Anita DeFrantz of the United States was eliminated in the first round after receiving only 9 votes in the secret ballot. Hungary's Pal Schmitt made it to the second round, where he received 6 votes.
Rogge, 59, was the moderate choice, between the progressive Pound and Kim, who at 70 is more old-world philosophically in line with the Samaranch.
Technically speaking, the charismatic Pound might well have been the best choice to carry the IOC forward. He is the chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency, he has negotiated most of the IOC's recent television and sponsorship deals and was the point man in the reforms that followed the Salt Lake City bribery scandal. But his bluntness and sheer ambition -- he is a tax lawyer, after all -- clearly cost him votes.
The well-connected Kim had baggage of the opposite kind. To many, he represented the old, archaic IOC; he was issued a "most serious warning" in the wake of the Salt Lake City scandal when it was discovered that at least part of the salary of Kim's son, John Kim, when he worked for a U.S. company was paid for by Salt Lake City organizers. Kim denied all knowledge and held onto his IOC position. The taint, however, cost him the support of Samaranch, who was said to be grooming him for the presidency.
This election, clearly, was about trust.
"I think the five candidates all have the necessary experience and leadership skills," Rogge said before the election. "It's going to be a matter of the members saying, 'I trust this person more than the others.' "
Not only is Rogge polished, professional and equipped with the diplomacy the presidency demands but also he had two other major factors in his favor. First, Rogge is the head of the association of national Olympic committees of Europe, the continent that has now produced seven of the eight IOC presidents and casts 58 of the 122 votes. Second, Rogge has actively campaigned for a down-sized Olympic Games, which would make hosting more realistic for less wealthy nations, which brought him support from Africa and Latin America.
"I will dedicate the next eight years to the promotion of the Olympic movement and the IOC. It is not to be an easy task, but I believe there is such strength that the IOC and the Olympic movement will remain strong in the future," Rogge said after the election.
Serving the movement
Rogge's grandfather was a professional cyclist at the turn of the century. His father was a track-and-field man and a rower. He was sailing a boat at the age of 4. For Rogge, it was a most natural transition to the Olympics.
He competed in the Finn class in three Olympics, Mexico (1968), Munich (1972) and Montreal (1976), placing as high as 14th in Germany. He was a two-time world champion. He also was an open-side flanker for Belgium's modestly skilled rugby team, earning 10 international caps.
Rogge's real talent, it turned out, was in administration. After the 1976 Games, at the age of 34, the Belgium Olympic Committee asked him to serve as an athletes' representative.
"I thought, 'What am I going to do with these gray old people?' " Rogge has said. "But I discovered a fascinating world and I stayed."
His first real dose of politics came in 1980, when U.S. President Jimmy Carter was pressuring allies to boycott the Moscow Games after the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. Rogge, who believed that Carter was using sport as a weapon against the athletes, resisted. Against popular and government sentiment, Belgium's athletes competed under the Olympic flag and Rogge came to be regarded as a champion of athlete's rights.
"Fundamentally, this was something I could not accept. It was playing with the lives of the athletes and it was hypocritical," Rogge said recently. "They still kept an ambassador, made money out of the trade. If it is so unacceptable you call back your ambassador, you cut your commercial links. You don't go for the weakest point for whom you don't do enough, you don't go there for the media exposure and say, 'Hey, athletes, don't go.' "
Rogge became an IOC delegate in 1991 and joined the influential executive board in 1998. His first important assignment was coordinating the 2000 Sydney Games, for which he drew universal kudos. His handling of the 2004 Athens effort, however, has been criticized. There have been numerous logistical problems in Greece, and some argue that Rogge has not been demanding enough on the host committee.
Heading into the election, a lack of experience was the only significant factor against him. Seemingly, the one thing that remains unimpeachable is his code of ethics.
"I can only offer a total clean slate," Rogge said.
And in the political thicket that is the IOC, that's saying something. Rogge proudly proclaims that he has never visited a city that was bidding for the Olympics. He promises to carry this strong sense of fair play into the biggest battle confronting the Olympic movement.
"The No. 1 challenge is doping," Rogge said. "Doping has reached an unacceptable level. We must do more than we have done in the past. We have to fight on all fronts and I'm not so naïve to think it will disappear altogether, but we have to reduce it to lower levels.
"I am very interested in scientific research because of my profession as well as my sport. We must research better and faster."
The other Rogge platform that seemed to resonate with members was the concept of scaling back the Olympics. The 1996 Olympics in Atlanta featured 29 sports and cost approximately $1.7 billion. The 2002 Salt Lake City Games only have eight sports and drastically fewer events, but will cost a similar $1.4 billion.
"We must look at the size of the Games," he said. "It is at the limit of what we can organize. De-scaling is, in my opinion, not too difficult. Trimming down the budget, it's too expensive. Trim down the technology; don't build huge venues with no after-use for the city. We must trim down the number of accreditations -- 140,000 to 190,000 in Sydney -- the number of athletes, at between 10,000 and 11,000 is OK."
Rogge said he will quit his medical practice in Brussels and move to the IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, for his eight-year term.
For all his triumphs in sport, Rogge's most profound Olympic moment was the brutal slaying of Israeli coaches and athletes in Munich in 1972.
"Munich," Rogge said, "has given me a sense of relativity. Sport is important and I have a passion for sport, but there are far more important things in life. I am reminded of that every day as a surgeon. I tend to always have an arm's-length distance with big emotions."
Greg Garber is a senior writer for ESPN.com.
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