Generation gap exposed

On the second day they took away all those nasty people from the real world and the sports politicians got back to being themselves. It was a lot more congenial.

"Well. That's the last time we invite them around," the sports polls said to each other as they cosied down.

Yesterday began with a splendid breakfast at the Lausanne Palace, the spartan youth hostel in which Juan Antonio Samaranch resides along with all the gifts he receives as tributes from around the world. Fifty or so members of the IOC cooled their early morning porridge with their gripes.

The bribes scandal still needles them more than any drugs crisis. They stated the stark facts. Taking away the right to vote on the cities bidding to host Olympic Games would make the IOC members look bad and untrustworthy.

See it our way, Juan Antonio, they said. Give us back the right to vote, our first class tickets, our permissible gifts to the value of $200 a throw, our luxury hotels, our expense allowances and . . . well, we will look more trustworthy. In exchange, Juan Antonio, you can once again sup from the pool of our expertise on the complicated logistics of these gargantuan events.

Then the minor royals, bloated business retirees and tanned old buddies of Juan Antonio filed out into the fleet of silver mercs and were whisked to the Palais de Beaulieu, there to sit through another day's debate on the tedious side issue of doping in sport. In convoy, they look like the denizens of a south Florida retirement village.

Perspective was dawning on the old codgers, though. If IOC members don't get free luxury trips to bidding cities, what is the point of sport anyway?

During the conference, few IOC members actually speak. They sit and smile like the Queen Mother watching a rock band at the Royal Variety Show. The young, vibrant rump of the Olympic movement have lots to say, but it doesn't translate across the generations.

Yesterday the conference was wrestling with the intricate problem of how to impose internationally uniform sanctions when each country has its own laws which might leave sport vulnerable to being sued for loss of earnings by aggrieved athletes. The paralysing fear of being sued is a trump card for the more infirm IOC members.

An exasperated young Dane finally spoke. In Denmark, if a taxi driver is caught drunk while driving and he loses his licence for two years, he doesn't sue for loss of earnings. Does this happen elsewhere?

There was silence in the face of Scandinavian logic. Minutes later a Finnish delegate got up and announced, vis-a-vis volleyball, soccer and tennis (who have been cutting up rough about drugs), that if they didn't want to have strong sanctions there was no need for them to be in the Olympic Games at all. He didn't care.

It was all so sensible and bracing that Samaranch called lunch recess early in case the elderly delegates lost that nice woolly feeling which informs most of their decision making.

For his part, Juan Antonio has had it up to the gills with listening to people bellyaching. In adversity comes growth, though. Yesterday it was being whispered that the Olympic president has apparently made an independent decision to have nothing to do with the new independent doping agency.

So there. Having made an Olympic career out of denying himself nothing, his willingness to forego the prestige of being Elliot Ness for a day is a departure.

There appears to be consensus now that the new doping body will be launched later this year and will be run in some way by the UN. As with all things in sport, it will not just be clean but will have every appearance of being clean.

Only one man has the name, the stature and the lifelong experience of taking the pee to be the new Samples Czar. Europe's loss will be sport's gain. Arise Pee Flynn.