INSIDE THE FIVE RING CIRCUS
BY OLLAN CASSELL
Inside the Five Ring Circus is a compelling, first-hand account of the personalities and processes that allowed the Olympic Games and international sports to continue as the ultimate meeting-place for athletes from all nations on the “Fields of Friendly Strife.”
Ollan understood the meaning of this phrase during the 1964 Olympic, living in the village where all was treated as one with athletes from all countries of the world living, visiting and eating together. This created an understanding different from his recent military training even while representing, The US Army, as a Lieutenant, at these Olympics. This experience helped promote bringing countries together for international competitions could relive tension between people. Which is what he did for the next 35 years.
Ollan, as an Olympian and gold medal winner at the 1964 Games in the 4x400 meter relay, helped begin the overhaul of the Amateur athlete definition. In 1965 he became a staff member of the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), the most powerful sports national governing body in the world, and in 1971 became the AAU’s executive director, providing more authority to carry out the changes that were needed. The US Congress created the Amateur Sports Act in 1978 after many attempts to reel-in the AAU and the NCAA over control of selection for the Olympics and international competition. Ollan then became Executive Director of The Athletics Congress (TAC), which is now USA Track & Field (USATF). He was also elected to the IAAF council in 1976 and then subsequently became a Vice President of that organization for his entire tenure as an international sports executive.
His motive – to change the misunderstood and outdated Amateur concept – pushed him to lead sports forward over a period of more than 32 years and resulted in the freedom for athletes to realize the fruits of their hard labors. He understood as an athlete the hardships created by the Amateur definition, and more importantly, the impossible task of enforcing it.
He expanded commercialism with television and sponsors for each sport in the AAU/TAC/USATF/IAAF arsenal and grew that effort when elected to the IAAF council in 1976. He arranged all competitions with the USSR from 1969 to 1997. He developed key, trusted relationships with Soviet sports executives during his tenure, and personally traveled to the USSR over 100 times to maintain these relationships for the benefit of world sports competition. The concept of dual, and individual competition with our natural enemy, in sports, military and in theories of government between democracy and communism, free enterprise and socialism. These were the “Cold War” years in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.
The concept of a negotiated Olympic Games at the ’84 Games in Los Angeles fit perfectly into Ollan’s concept of opening international competition and the Olympic Games to a modern world. The LOOAC and Peter Ueberroth demonstrated to the IOC that television and commercialism can go hand-in-hand with the Olympics and become the most sought –after sporting event in the world.
An individual trust fund concept was introduced by him to the IAAF. It allowed athletes to accept prize money from competitions and be placed in a ‘trust account.’ The International Olympic Committee (IOC) had no choice but to eventually accept full professionals into the Games since all track and field athletes were, for the most part, professionals. Butch Reynolds, an American athlete, was suspended for a positive drug test, and subsequently filed a lawsuit against the IAAF which resulted in the Supreme Court involvement in the US Olympic Trials.
Fear of the US justice system brought two of the most powerful individuals in the sports world to make offers of $250,000 to $2 million to withdraw the lawsuit. The offers from Primo Niebolo, President of the IAAF, and Juan Antonio Samaranch, President of the IOC, are being made public for the first time.
Ollan tells the inside stories of the protest and boycott periods in Olympic history which saw black gloves appear on the victory stand of Mexico City ‘68 and vicious murders in the village in Munich ’72, followed by boycotts for a twenty year period.
He battled the pressure of Jimmy Carter’s efforts to keep Americans out of the Moscow Olympics and felt the threat of the White House for not supporting the boycott. Lloyd Cutler, Carter’s chief counsel, threatened to investigate him for carrying out his job of creating international sports competition with the USSR, Eastern bloc Countries and the Cubans.
Performance enhancing drugs, like death, have been around since the ancient Olympics and remain with us today. The inside story of how we got to where we are is being brought to light for the first time. The attitude of many top officials to turn a blind eye only made the situation worse.
Unafraid of the wrath of the IOC, USOC or International Federations, Ollan took on the task of coordinating the USA team for the Goodwill Games, founded by Ted Turner. The highly-successful competitions provided new avenues of promotion used today by all international sports. Ted was a visionary and backed it up with his money and television network.
Finally, in a ‘retrospective’ chapter, he reviews all the accomplishments during his time as a top sports executive on the national and international sports scene.
https://www.amazon.com/Inside-Five-Ring-Circus-Changing/dp/0692496408
