Juan Antonio Samaranch

Juan Antonio Samaranch, born in 1920, Spanish sports administrator, politician, ambassador, and economist, who served as president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) from 1980 to 2001. Considered a strong and forceful leader, Samaranch helped initiate a period of worldwide growth in the Olympic movement and of innovation to the Olympic Games.

Born in Barcelona, Samaranch was educated at the Higher Institute of Business Studies there. He then became a businessman. In the 1950s and 1960s he held important offices for athletic associations such as the Spanish Olympic Committee and the International Committee for the Mediterranean Games. He also rose through the ranks of Spanish politics, moving from municipal positions in Barcelona in the 1950s to a post as the Spanish ambassador to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in the late 1970s.

Samaranch became a representative of the IOC in 1966. Selected to the executive board in 1970, he served as vice president from 1974 to 1978. In 1980 he was elected president of the organization. Samaranch assumed the presidency at a difficult time for the IOC, as the athletic achievements of the previous few Olympiads had been accompanied by political controversies, violence, and boycotts.

The 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles were affected by a boycott by the USSR and several of its allies, but they were generally considered a success, in part because of increased corporate sponsorship of the games. These sponsorships, nurtured by Samaranch during his tenure, led over the next few Olympiads to impressive growth in the scope and popularity of the games, with more events being contested and more countries participating. Samaranch also presided over an innovation in the scheduling of the Olympics. Until 1994, the Summer and Winter Olympics were held during the same year, at four-year intervals. Beginning in 1994, however, the Summer and Winter games began to be held two years apart, so that four years pass between each Summer and Winter Olympics individually, but only two years between Olympic activity of either type.

Under Samaranch's guidance the IOC also relaxed its policy toward accepting the Olympic eligibility of professional athletes. The most notable example of this was the 1992 United States men's basketball team, known as the Dream Team, which included National Basketball Association players such as Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird. As president of the IOC, Samaranch also desired to broaden international understanding of the Olympic movement. In 1993, after many years of development and construction, he presided over the inauguration of the Olympic Museum, located in Lausanne, Switzerland.

In 1998 a bribery scandal broke out involving the selection of sites for future Olympic Games, specifically the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, Utah. Samaranch weathered the controversy, however, and held his post until he reached the mandatory retirement age of 80.