MONTREAL ‘ONE OF THE BEST OLYMPICS EVER’: POUND
Famed IOC figure says Games left legacy that went well beyond debt
Everything about it was absolutely first class. Drapeau spoke and did a wonderful job, the fans were gracious and polite with the Queen, Montreal was on its best behaviour … it was a great moment for the Olympics. Richard Pound
The name, after all these years, is all but synonymous with the five rings. In his 39 years as a member of the International Olympic Committee, Richard Pound — lawyer, Montrealer, and jack-of-all-tasks under the Olympic banner — has done everything but check to be sure the flame will light when the torch is applied.
Add the years before that when Pound was everything from a star swimmer to secretary and president of the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC), and he has been a continuous force within the Olympic movement since the Rome Summer Games in 1960, when he finished sixth in the men’s freestyle and fourth with the 4x100-metre relay team.
It’s an astounding achievement when you consider how much the Olympics have changed in the 56 years since Rome — change driven, to a great extent, by the 74-year-old Pound himself, in his roles as vice-president and chief negotiator for the IOC, and as a former president of the Montreal-based World Anti-Doping Agency.
In that context, it’s ironic that Canada’s most recognizable Olympic figure had so little to do with Canada’s sole Summer Olympics. In the lead-up to the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, Pound (although a member of the COC) had little to do with the planning and no role to play as a go-between or to prevent the near-catastrophe unfolding under the stewardship of former mayor Jean Drapeau.
Pound, however, was an astute observer of events at the time and his unique experience within the IOC gives him a perspective on the Montreal Games in 1976 that almost no one else can offer.
Pound’s conclusion? Taken as an event separate from the cost overruns and scandals, the Montreal Olympics were a huge success.
“For years and years,” Pound said, “I was approached by people saying the Montreal Games, from a sports perspective, were the best ever.”
The events came off so well in part, Pound believes, because of two men who were involved in the planning: Canadian Walter Sieber, director-general of sports for the Montreal Olympics, and the late Yugoslav Artur Takac, technical director for the 1972 and 1976 Olympics.
“Those two really knew what they were doing,” Pound said. “Takac and Sieber understood sport. The competition facilities were excellent and almost everything went off exactly as it should.”
Takac had been involved early on in advising Drapeau and stadium architect Roger Taillibert on the technical requirements for the Olympics, while Sieber was in charge of the overall organization, the venues, the sports competitions and the opening and closing ceremonies. Both men performed brilliantly, in Pound’s opinion.
Like most of us, Pound was a spectator the day of the opening ceremony, when Montrealers waited to see whether it was going to come off. And like so many others, Pound was stunned.
“It was the first time I had been in the stadium,” Pound said, “and it knocked me off my feet.” There were 73,000 people in the Big O that day, including Queen Elizabeth II — and for the opening ceremony, the grandeur of Taillibert’s original concept was fully on display.
“Everything about it was absolutely first class. Drapeau spoke and did a wonderful job, the fans were gracious and polite with the Queen, Montreal was on its best behaviour. Coming back from Munich, it was a great moment for the Olympics. I don’t think anyone even noticed that the tower wasn’t built and there was no roof on the stadium — the rules stipulate that the stadium has to be open-air anyway.”
After the opening ceremony, the athletes took over. “Some of the performances in Montreal were exceptional,” Pound said. “Everyone remembers Nadia (Comaneci) but I thought two of the most exciting finals were in volleyball, with the Polish men beating the Soviet Union and the Japanese women beating the Soviets. They were just stunning.”
I have covered seven Olympic Games as a journalist and lived through an eighth in this city — but one key point had eluded me until I chatted with Pound last week. That’s the fact that the heart of the Montreal Olympics was so perfectly situated around the Olympic Stadium, with so many key facilities so close to one another — and, most importantly, so close to the Athletes Village. Distant from downtown, perhaps, but convenient for the athletes, most of whom could avoid the long bus rides that are so much a part of the Olympics.
“In the sense of event delivery,” Pound said, “it was one of the best Olympics ever. It was an athlete-centred Games. You could walk across from the Athletes Village to swimming, cycling and track.”
Obviously, Pound isn’t blind to the problems, especially with the construction of the stadium and the massive debt left behind. Much of it, he said, stemmed from the fact that these were Drapeau’s Games and that he kept so much under his control.
But Pound also puts some of the blame on Pierre Trudeau’s federal government, which was temporarily weak at the worst possible time. “You had a Liberal minority government (between 1972 and 1974) in Ottawa that was afraid (to support Drapeau’s Olympics),” Pound said.
“That turned a six-year term into a three-year term to get ready. Then Drapeau hadn’t sat down with organized labour to be sure construction wouldn’t be held up with a strike.
“At that point, the unions had him over a barrel, so they walked out. The construction companies were working on cost-plus contracts, and we know where that leads.”
The revenue streams available in 1976, Pound points out, were a small fraction of what they would become. Television rights for the Montreal Olympics were sold for a total of $30 million. Twenty years later in Atlanta (thanks in large part to the negotiating abilities of Pound) they were $930 million.
Debt and cost overruns aside, the only other significant black mark against the Montreal Olympics was completely outside the control of the Montreal organizers. Although the dimensions of the problem would not become clear for years, doping within the East German team in Montreal was both the first major drug scandal at the Olympic Games and the only incident of massive, state-sponsored doping to be uncovered before the current Russian scandal.
The most significant victims of the East German doping program were the teenage female swimmers who starred in Montreal. Pound, the scourge of dopers worldwide as WADA chief, said there was little doubt at the time about what was going on even if the East German athletes weren’t tripped up by positive tests.
“It was so bad, I could stand behind (East German star) Kornelia Ender and you couldn’t see me,” Pound said. “Everyone suspected that something was going on, but they weren’t testing positive.
“Apparently there was a Polish ship with full lab facilities docked in Montreal’s harbour. They were testing all the Soviet-bloc athletes. If an athlete tested positive, that athlete would turn up sick or be scratched from the event.”
The Montreal Olympics also had to deal with the aftermath of the tragic events at the Munich Olympics in 1972, when 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team and a German policeman were killed by Palestinian terrorist group Black September. As a result, Pound said, “we had a paradigm shift in security to deal with.”
That led to one of the few complaints about the Montreal Olympics once they were in progress, the objection that the city resembled an armed camp for the duration. In our jittery world, that has become the norm but the heavy security was new in 1976.
However, the security didn’t prevent the Games from going off almost without a hitch. Despite everything, the Montreal Olympics were a success.
In hindsight, Pound said, the most important thing the Olympic movement took from the Montreal Games, Pound said, “was the importance of the backswing.” In other words, long-term planning is vital.
“You have to make sure candidates have their ducks in a row,” Pound said. “I remember at the IOC meeting in Amsterdam (in 1970 when Montreal was awarded the Games) one of the delegates was looking through the documents and he mentioned that there was no written guarantee from the city.
“Drapeau stood up and said that the word of the mayor was more important than any guarantee. He got an ovation for that statement, when the only budget he had was worked out on the back of an envelope — if that.”
Still, Drapeau brought something that is often missing from those who bid on or host the Olympics. “Drapeau really believed in the Games,” Pound said. “When the federal government was considering the boycott of Moscow in 1980, Drapeau wrote a brilliant letter in support of the Olympics.”
Pound also points out that the Montreal Games left a legacy with this city that went well beyond the debt: facilities from the Claude Robillard Centre to the Biodome, the Olympic pool and the rowing basin, and an extension of the green metro line.
On one final point, Pound and I are in complete agreement: Not only did Montreal stage an excellent Olympiad, the real Olympic failure was 20 years in the future, when Atlanta got it completely wrong.
Now, on the eve of another deeply troubled Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Montrealers can sit back and agree with Pound: We did a pretty good job.