Samaranch arrives tonight

International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch arrives tonight on board a private jet from Palau Island for a one-day official visit to the Philippines.

Samaranch and his party of five are scheduled to have breakfast with Philippine Olympic Committee officials, led by chairman Robert Aventajado and president Celso Dayrit, IOC representative to the Philippines Francisco Elizalde, NSA (national sports association) presidents and the media tomorrow before calling on President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo at 10 a.m. in Malacañang.

Samaranch is scheduled to leave shortly after lunch tomorrow.

Samaranch’s brief visit is considered memorable because it is one of his final official functions as outgoing (IOC) president.

The 81-year-old Samaranch is retiring this year after succeeding Lord Killanin as IOC president immediately prior to the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow.

It will be the third visit of Samaranch here. He first came to Manila in the early ’80s when Michael Keon was still POC president and returned in 1980 during Gov. Jose Sering’s watch at the POC.

Among others, Samaranch is credited with having strengthened the IOC Executive Board management through the reorganization of its administrative setup, expanding the Olympic body’s income, especially through sponsorships under exclusivity of the Olympic Partners Program and the shift to an "open" eligibility rule in 1987.

In the autumn-winter months of 1995-96, Samaranch was able to oversee the signing of three contracts, two with NBC and another with the European Broadcasting Union, that brought into the coffers of the Olympic Movement an astonishing collective total of more than $5 billion to be paid over a succession of Summer and Winter Games up to the year 2008.

This was an overwhelming improvement from the $15.5 million ABC paid for the rights to cover the Winter Games in Lake Placid, New York in 1980 and the $87 million paid by NBC for the US television rights to the Moscow Olympics.

When Samaranch was invited to address the 50th UN General Assembly on the subject "Buildng a peaceful and better world through sport and the Olympic ideal," he said: "To change the world, one first has to change people, and it is probably in this respect that the role of sport as a philosophy comes into play, by promoting an ideal of overall personal development whose paragon is Olympism."