Avery Brundage

Avery Brundage (September 28 1887 – May 8 1975) was an American athlete, sports official, art collector and philanthropist. A controversial figure, he has been widely criticizedFact|date=August 2008 for attitudes expressed and decisions he made as a member of the United States Olympic Committee and as president of the International Olympic Committee.

Biography

Youth and college

Born in Detroit, Brundage studied civil engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, graduating in 1909.

Avery Brundage Company

A few years later, he founded his own company, the "Avery Brundage Company", which was active in the building business around Chicago until 1947. His personal papers are located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Archives.

As athlete

Brundage was an all-around athlete, competing in the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm in the pentathlon and decathlon events, finishing 6th and 16th, respectively. He also won the US national all-around title in 1914, 1916 and 1918. Note that these wins were after double Stockholm 1912 pentathlon and decathlon gold medallist Jim Thorpe had been banned for being a professional.

Presidency

In 1928, Brundage became president of the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU). He became the president of the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) in 1929 and gained the vice-presidency of the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) in 1930.

As USOC president, Brundage rejected any proposals to boycott the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, where German Jews were excluded, and became a member of the International Olympic Committee after the group expelled American Ernest Lee Jahnke, who had urged athletes to boycott the Berlin games.

On the morning of the 400-meter relay race, at the last moment, the only two Jews on the 1936 US track team, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, were replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. Glickman later said that that decision might have been the result of pressure from Brundage. Brundage later praised the Nazi regime at a Madison Square rally, and was expelled from the America First Committee in 1941 because of his pro-German leanings. After the 1936 Olympics, Brundage's company, the "Avery Brundage Company", was awarded a building contract by Nazi Germany in 1938 to build the German Embassy in America. Brundage was notified in a letter from Nazi authorities acknowledging Brundage's pro-Nazi sympathies. [Documentary "Hitler's Pawn: The Margeret Lambert Story", produced by HBO and Black Canyon Productions] As late as 1971, after many revelations over Nazi Germany's use of the 1936 Olympics for their own propaganda, Brundage still claimed "The Berlin Games were the finest in modern history...I will accept no dispute over that fact". ["The Olympic Story", editor James E. Churchill, Jr., published 1983 by Grolier Enterprises Inc.]

Brundage became vice-president of the IOC after IOC president Henri de Baillet-Latour's death in 1945. He was subsequently elected IOC president at the 47th IOC Session in Helsinki in 1952 [cite journal |url=http://www.aafla.org/OlympicInformationCenter/OlympicReview/1952/BDCE34/BDCE34d.pdf |title=Extract of the minutes of the 47th session — Helsinki 1952 (Palais de la Noblesse |journal=Bulletin du Comité International Olympique |author=Comité International Olympique |year=1959 |month=September |issue=34–35 |pages=pp. 22 |format=PDF |accessdate=2007-07-19] , succeeding Sigfrid Edström.

During his tenure as IOC president, Brundage strongly opposed any form of professionalism in the Olympic Games. Gradually, this opinion became less accepted by the sports world and other IOC members. It led to some embarrassing incidents, such as the exclusion of Austrian skier Karl Schranz, who was accused of being a professional, from the 1972 Winter Olympics.

He opposed the restoration of Olympic medals to Native American athlete Jim Thorpe, who had been stripped of them when it was found that he had played professional baseball before taking part in the 1912 Olympic games (where he had beaten Brundage in the pentathlon and decathlon). Despite this, Brundage accepted the "shamateurism" from Eastern bloc countries, in which team members were nominally students, soldiers, or civilians working in a non-sports profession, but in reality were paid by their states to train on a full-time basis. Brundage claimed it was "their way of life." It was revealed after his death that Brundage had been responsible for notifying the IOC of Thorpe's playing professional baseball years before.

Brundage opposed the inclusion of women as Olympic competitors; he insisted they have no role in the Olympic Games beyond the ceremonial or decorative.He was quoted in 1936: "I am fed up to the ears with women as track and field competitors... her charms sink to something less than zero. As swimmers and divers, girls are [as] beautiful and adroit as they are ineffective and unpleasing on the track." [cite book|title=The Ultimate Book of Sports Lists|first=Andrew|last=Postman|co-author=Larry Stone|date=1990|isbn= 0-553-328540-8]

Brundage also opposed anything that he viewed as the politicisation of sport. At the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, US sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists to show support for the Black Power movement during their medal ceremony. Brundage, a white American, expelled both African American men from the Olympic Village and had them suspended from the US Olympic team. Brundage had made no objections against Nazi salutes during the Berlin olympics ["The Olympic Story", editor James E. Churchill, Jr., published 1983 by Grolier Enterprises Inc.] .

He may be best remembered for his decision during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, to continue the Games following the Black September Palestinian terrorist attack which killed 11 Israeli athletes. While some criticized Brundage's decision, Fact|date=August 2008 most did not, and few athletes withdrew from the Games. The Olympic competition was suspended on September 5 for one complete day. The next day, a memorial service of eighty thousand spectators and three thousand athletes was held in the Olympic Stadium. Brundage gave an address in which he stated

The IOC has recognised this tragedy during the 1996 Summer Olympics closing ceremony. Because of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing during the 1996 Summer Olympics, Then-IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch said in his speech that both tragedies, and those affected by them wouldn't be forgotten. [ [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYPpfvoU6SQ Atlanta 1996 CC - Samaranch's Speech (1) & Stevie Wonder] ]

Brundage strongly opposed the exclusion of Rhodesia from the Olympics due to its racial policies: after the attacks in Munich, Brundage linked the massacre of the Israeli athletes and the barring of the Rhodesian team (see above). He later apologized for the comparisonFact|date=March 2008. Brundage is also remembered for proposing the elimination of "all" team sports from the Summer Olympics, he feared that the games would become too expensive for all but the wealthiest nations to host, something that now rings true, and eliminating the Winter Olympics entirely due to it's pro european ideology.

Brundage retired as IOC president following the 1972 Summer Games and was succeeded by Lord Killanin. He remains to date the only American to hold the IOC presidency.

In addition to his role in sports, Brundage was a noted collector of Asian art. During his lifetime, and by bequest on his death, he gave a massive collection of works of art to the city of San Francisco, California. This collection formed the nucleus (and, as of 2003, still accounts for over half the contents) of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, initially founded to house and display his donation.

Death

Brundage died on May 8 1975, aged 87 years, three years after his retirement as IOC president, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, West Germany. A long time Chicago resident he is buried in the well known northside Rosehill Cemetery.

His grave site has been the target of recent pro-Jewish vandals who painted "The People of Israel Live" in Hebrew on the grass in front of his tombstone, apparently in protest at his stated pro-Nazi sympathies, the exclusion of Jewish athletes from the US track team, and his attitude to the attack on Israelis during the 1972 Munich games.Fact|date=August 2007

References

Further reading

*Allen Guttmann, "The Games Must Go on: Avery Brundage and the Olympic Movement", Columbia University Press, 1984

External links

*Shirley Povich: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/longterm/general/povich/launch/olympics.htm Berlin, 1936] At the Olympics, Achievements of the Brave in a Year of Cowardice ("Washington Post", July 6th, 1996)
* [http://www.aafla.org/OlympicInformationCenter/OlympicReview/1970/ore29/ore29d.pdf The Work of the Executive Board]
*Kirsten Anderberg: [http://users.resist.ca/~kirstena/pagecarlossmith.html More Raised Black Fists at Olympics Ceremonies]
* [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2393/is_n2_v157/ai_15781093/pg_1 The Olympic Movement and the End of the Cold War World Affairs]
* [http://web.library.uiuc.edu/ahx/archon/controlcard.php?id=4719 Avery Brundage Collection at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign]