Juan Antonio Samaranch passed away on April...
Pierre Fredy was the man responsible for the rebirth of the Olympics. Juan Antonio Samaranch Torello will go down in sports history as the IOC president who made the Olympics a commercial enterprise, enriched the committee and allowed professional athletes to compete in the Games for the first time.
Participation, not victory, had been considered the most important part of the Olympics. That all changed in the era of Samaranch.
The Olympic rings became a lucrative commodity under Samaranch"s stewardship, and athletes began to parlay their Olympic success into lucrative advertising deals.
Many opposed Samaranch"s commercialization of the Olympics. Even now, nine years after he passed the torch to Jacques Rogge, many still pine for the good old Games, free from the profit motive, the pomp, the drug abuse and the corruptible judges. However, the idealistic voices grow fainter with each new Olympics, while the role of big business grows ever stronger.