Pound Takes a Long View of the Games
| MONTREAL
ON nearly every important issue facing the Olympics, Canada's Richard Pound, a member of the International Olympic Committee, has a view toward the future:
On so-called "ambush marketing":
"An `ambush' marketing campaign is essentially somebody trying to imply that they are sponsors of ... the Olympic Games, to reduce the effectiveness of the advertising by the people who are sponsors.
"American Express is not involved in the Olympics, but it has a big campaign designed to suggest that it is....
"When you ambush an Olympic sponsor [in this case, VISA], you're reducing the value of the Olympic sponsorships.
That's bad for the Olympic movement and the Olympic Games."
Phasing out many demonstration sports:
"If you add demonstration sports, you end up with another 400 or 500 athletes, and we're just bulging at the seams now"
Changes in the political climate at this summer's Barcelona Games:
"South Africa will be back for the first time since I was theresas an athlete, at least. There are no more guys in white hats and black hats anymore. The Soviet Union has collapsed, so you don't have that kind of tension. I think that's very helpful."
Olympic success or failure:
"When the Africans left Montreal on the eve of the [1976] Games, it was a huge disappointment. That shouldn't have happened. I don't think we managed it very well.
"One of the reasons [the Olympics] draw a lot of static when they don't work is that people are so disappointed. It's kind of a microcosm of the world. People think if the Olympics can work, then maybe there's a chance that the world can work."
