If the news of Charles J Haughey being kicked to death by an unruly bunch of moralisers reached Rome it is bound to have sent a shiver scurrying down the spine of Primo Nebiolo. After all, the media despise Primo for his preening vulgarity, his relentless self-aggrandisement, his quick hand with a stroke, his dictatorial style of leadership, his arbitrary vindictiveness, his opulent lifestyle, his ability to survive. Eerie. When the end comes it will surely be as unseemly as CJ's.
The God of Athletics knows a thing or two about lavish lifestyle. He lives in a large and lavish estate home in Rome. He travels first class or by private jet with a small retinue which includes his wife, a press attache and a personal assistant. He never rides in anything smaller than a limo or stays anywhere less than the most prestigious hotel in any city. He lives a life which creates resentments. Yes, when the end comes it will be messy, messy messy.
First, however, to the business at hand. The next few weeks promise to be among the most interesting of Nebiolo's life. The 74-year-old head of the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF), leading member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and campaigner for Rome's right to host the 2004 Olympics, will be at the centre of things, sucking the limelight, claiming the expenses and swaying the votes.
Today the World Athletics championships begin in Athens. Nebiolo personally chose the Greek capital as the site for the championships, which are of course his creation and plaything. Early in September, Nebiolo will be one of the most influential members of the 110-strong IOC when it sits in conclave and decides whether Athens, Rome or any one of three other cities shall host the 2004 Olympic Games. Athens is currently neck and neck with Rome in the race to host the Games. This week's athletics championships will be make-or-break time for the Greeks. The city which considers itself the home of Olympianism has installed many splendid facilities, but suffers from a traffic system which seldom rises above the level of utter chaos. With the Olympic vote just weeks away, the organisers have broken their necks to ensure the smooth running of the events themselves, while the Greek government has promised a streamlined transportation plan in time for 2004. Still, a year after the Atlanta traffic debacle, this week the Greeks will introduce the sports administrators of the world to the greatest traffic jam in the world.
Nebiolo's decision to award Athens this year's World Athletics Championships might have looked like risky politics a couple of years ago, but, as usual, Primo knew the terrain. The nabobs of sports politics will be in Athens for a week, sitting in stalled traffic and their own sweat for 50 per cent of that time. At the end of the week, with a clear conscience, Nebiolo will pronounce the championships a great success. The sports administrators will come away remembering the chaos off the streets. Greeks should be wary of Italians bearing gifts.
As usual, this week, controversy surrounds Nebiolo as he attempts to crudely reconcile modern commercial imperatives with sporting tradition. Primo Nebiolo has been fixing and stroking again.
This week's headache began when the trials system employed by US Track and Field deprived the Athens World Championships of the lucrative presence of Michael Johnson, among others. Without Johnson the TV ratings were going to suffer and Primo Nebiolo was going to have to negotiate harder next time out.
Nebiolo, whose job is to ensure that once athletics was bought it stayed bought, responded by inviting all the winners from the Gothenburg World Championships to attend Athens to defend their titles. The gesture was an imperious slap in the face to conscientious track and field officials. It also kept the cash tills clanging merrily. And that's the point. More than the soft sound of spikes on track, the sound of cash tills is what Primo Nebiolo is all about. A former construction tycoon from Turin, he has transformed world athletics into a terrible beauty. In doing so, he has earned the enmity of traditionalists, sentimentalists, moralists and journalists, but secured a niche as one of the three most powerful men in world sport. Nebiolo became chief of the IAAF 16 years ago at a time when the sport was dying as it dithered fatally at the crossroads between amateurism and professionalism. The IAAF was run out of the London suburb of Putney, had less than $150,000 to its name and no championship to call its own.
Nebiolo brought the virtue of certainty to his new task and athletics was soon hurtling towards professionalism. The World Championships this week will be broadcast in Europe courtesy of a $100-million, six-year European Broadcasting Union (EBU) deal, a handsome contributor to the IAAF's $50 million a year revenue take. The athletes will be rewarded with cars and cash for their success and will then return to the grand prix circuit where they will receive fully-sanctioned appearance fees and massive bonuses for world records.
The basis for all this change was effected within one year of Nebiolo taking office at the IAAF. The manoeuvring which preceded the decision-making provided an early glimpse of Nebiolo's political nous. His modus operandi for jettisoning the amateur regulations, which meant that an athlete could be suspended for receiving payment of over $100, was to lobby relentlessly amongst his old friends in the eastern European nations. The carrot of appearance fees eventually swung the argument.
Nebiolo has always acknowledged that money is the master of sport. Before the 1988 Olympic Games, in Seoul, he hung tough with the Korean organisers until he secured a $20 million payment for athletics in exchange for altering the timetable of the athletics finals to accommodate NBC television. The cash from the Seoul sting went towards the establishment of Nebiolo's controversial International Athletic Foundation, a private and unaccountable war chest which is used to buy influence and opulence.
Nebiolo has poured cash-intensive programmes towards third world athletics, giving himself some political leverage beyond the borders of Europe (In 1987 he copperfastened his position by changing IAAF voting rules to a one country, one vote system, thus eliminating the weighted power base of the old colonial nations). He used the interest from the foundation's money to move the IAAF's headquarters from London to a couple of expensively-refurbished villas in Monte Carlo. The IAAF also maintains a $400,000-a-year office in Rome where Nebiolo lives.
Nebiolo's influence spills over into other areas. Since 1992 Nebiolo has been a member of the IOC and he is also head of the body which represents all the summer Olympic sports federations (ASOIF). His ascent to the inner sanctum of the world's most influential sports body surprised many. The story of Nebiolo's Olympic involvement neatly illustrates once more his genius for survival, his flair for the deal.
In 1987, Nebiolo ran into the most serious trouble of his career at the World Athletics Championships in Rome. One of Italy's favourite sons, Giovanni Evangelista, was competing in the long jump on the final day of competition. Evangelista also happened to be one of Nebiolo's favourite sons, a close friend who spent much time in Nebiolo's home.
On his last jump of six Evangelista surprised everyone by jumping into bronze medal position. Observers noted that Evangelisti had walked away dejected and that the jump didn't look nearly as long as the official measurement for it. Videotape evidence later showed Italian officials placing a measuring marker in the sand before Evangelisti's jump.
The scandal lead to the banning of three officials and the resignation of Nebiolo's personal assistant. Two years later, still under pressure after a full investigation, Nebiolo resigned as head of the Italian Athletics Federation. He had saved his IAAF position a year earlier in an uncontested election and moved quickly to preserve his post as head of ASOIF when he offered unilaterally to split Olympic TV revenue evenly between all Summer Olympic federations, reducing his own sports share from 20 per cent to four per cent. Three years later, when the Evangelisti storm had abated, Nebiolo began to feel that his magnanimity deserved something more than mere survival. It began to rankle with him that his Olympian generosity to other federations had not been rewarded with a place on the IOC. Having failed to inveigle his way into the IOC by the customary route, Nebiolo sought to barge through the doors. He brought extraordinary pressure to bear on the Olympic movement, threatening initially to restrict track and field in the Olympics to athletes under the age of 23, then seeing his main chance when South Africa was re-admitted to the IOC in 1991 after a 21-year ban. Knowing that IOC president Juan Samaranch was anxious for his hometown of Barcelona to enjoy the symbolism of South African participation, and knowing also that such participation depended on the IAAF also re-admitting South Africa, Nebiolo played hardball.
Samaranch made him a personal appointee to the IOC. Shortly after Nebiolo trumpeted the re-admission of South Africa to the world athletics family.
So it goes for the most irrepressible man in world sport. Nothing sticks. Nebiolo has been accused of rigging the vote for world athlete of the year, investigated for fraud (and cleared) and conflicts of interests (cleared), prosecuted for theft from the Italian football pools (charges dismissed), accused of suppressing positive drug tests of athletes, and charged with demanding honorary degrees from the host colleges of the World University Games. This week his diminutive figure will be borne around Athens at the head of a royal procession. The man who once beckoned the King of Norway to come and sit at his right hand will be in his element. From the bleachers and the press box, people will gaze at the selfstyled God of Athletics and laugh at his comical pomposity. Primo will smile back because if asked to choose two gifts from a basket of three he would always have taken power and influence and left respect for those unfortunates whose hides aren't made from triple brass.
