The IOC is accountable to no one -- as female ski jumpers now know

When the B.C. Court of Appeal tossed out the complaint from the female ski jumpers last week, it also clarified who actually calls the shots regarding both the 2010 Winter Games and the Olympic movement.

Not the host governments of Canada, B.C. and Vancouver. Not the Vancouver Organizing Committee or Vanoc. Not the taxpayers who are helping to underwrite the Games to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

"The ultimate governing authority of the Olympic movement," wrote the trio of appeal court judges, "is the International Olympic Committee (IOC), a non-governmental not-for-profit organization with headquarters in Switzerland."

The judges surveyed the IOC's myriad offspring. International sports federations, "which administer sports at the world level and which actually run the events at the Games." National Olympic committees, "which select and manage each national team at the Games." Organizing committees such as Vanoc, "which plan, organize, finance and stage their respective editions of the Games."

But no one should have any illusions about their role in the Olympic scheme of things. "All of these organizations are under the supreme authority of the IOC."

Under the supreme authority of the IOC. Has an unmistakably autocratic ring, doesn't it? The judges didn't coin it. The phrase is right there in the Olympic charter.

In terms of what that authority means here in B.C., a lower court found earlier this year that notwithstanding the presence of a government-appointed board, Vanoc is under the "day-to-day control" of the IOC.

"Vanoc did not make the decision to exclude women's ski jumping from the 2010 Games," a B.C. Supreme Court judge ruled. "Vanoc did not support that decision. Vanoc does not have the power to remedy it."

The court of appeal reaffirmed the finding and elaborated on it.

"Under the host city contract, the IOC is recognized as having the exclusive authority to determine what events will be staged at an Olympic Games," said the court. "Vanoc is obliged to host and stage the Games under the direction and control of the IOC."

The IOC made the final decision not to add women's ski-jumping after Vancouver was awarded the Games. Neither Vanoc nor the host governments endorsed the exclusion.

But neither did they have the power to overturn it. "Vanoc simply does not have the power to determine what events are included in the 2010 Olympic program."

That finding cleared the way for the judges to rule that the anti-discrimination provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms are not engaged by the circumstances in this case. The Charter applies to "all matters within the authority of parliament (and) to the legislature and government of each province."

The court found that the "supreme" IOC is beyond the reach of either. "The decision of the IOC not to add women's ski jumping as an event is not a policy that could be or was made by any Canadian government," wrote the judges. "The charter cannot be so broadly construed as to include policies or practices that no Canadian government has jurisdiction to enact or change."

Thus, on this matter, as on many others involving the Olympics, the IOC is answerable to no authority other than its own.

I was struck by that realization in reading the coverage from Australia last week on the report of an independent panel on the future of sport in that country.

The panel made some critical comments on what it saw as an excessive focus on training of athletes for the Olympics, to the detriment of broader, less elitist sports. It also noted the relative lack of payback to athletic training in the country from the money raised via the IOC and its subsidiaries.

"The Olympic monopoly and why it harms sport," was the headline on a commentary on the report in the Sydney Morning Herald.

"The winter and summer Games, usually thought of as the United Nations of sport, are actually the marketing face of a multinational empire," wrote columnist Malcolm Maiden.

Moreover, he went on to note, "being a private not-for-profit enterprise, the IOC publishes very little financial information" about the hundreds of millions of dollars raised and spent via the Olympic brand.

On the same theme, there was the comment last week in the Seattle Times, after that paper published a four-part series on some of the more controversial aspects of Olympic ticketing.

Favouritism for sponsors and other members of the so-called Olympic family. Tickets funnelled to an independent contractor, who makes big profits selling them through tour packages. And so on.

The two Times staffers, Ron Judd and Christine Willmsen, reported that they had difficulty getting comments and/or explanations from Vanoc for some of the more provocative points in the stories. "But that's typical of the Olympic movement, which is accountable to no one and exempt from open-records laws."

Secretive. Autocratic. Accountable to no one. Not the public image promoted by the IOC and its boosters. Nevertheless, it is one that fits the Olympic movement all too well.

vpalmer@shawlink.ca