Avery Brundage

Businessman, athletic administrator, and art collector, born in Detroit, Michigan, USA. He competed in the 1912 Olympics, and after making a fortune as a building contractor he gained the presidency of the US Olympic Committee (1929–53) and then the presidency of the International Olympic Committee (1952–72). His tenure was often marked by controversy over his strong opposition to commercialism in amateur athletics and also over his autocratic behaviour. His private passion was collecting Asian art, on which he became a respected authority, and he left his superb collection to museums in San Francisco.

Avery Brundage (September 28, 1887 – May 8, 1975) was an American athlete, sports official, art collector and philanthropist. He has been heavily criticised for decisions he took as a member of the United States Olympic Committee and as president of the International Olympic Committee.

Born in Detroit, Brundage studied civil engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, graduating in 1909.

Brundage was an all-around athlete, competing in the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm in the pentathlon and decathlon events, finishing 6th and 16th, respectively.

In 1928, Brundage became president of the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU).

As USOC president, Brundage rejected any proposals to boycott the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, where German Jews were excluded, and became a member of the International Olympic Committee after the group expelled American Ernest Lee Jahnke, who had urged athletes to boycott the Berlin games.

After the death of IOC president Henri de Baillet-Latour during World War II, Brundage became vice-president of the IOC in 1945. When IOC President Sigfrid Edström retired in 1952, Brundage was appointed as his successor.

During his tenure as IOC president, Brundage strongly opposed any form of professionalism in the Olympic Games.

He opposed the restoration of Olympic medals to Native American athlete Jim Thorpe, who had been stripped of them when it was found that he had briefly played professional baseball before taking part in the 1912 Olympic games (where he had beaten Brundage in the pentathlon and decathlon). Despite this, Brundage accepted the "shamateurism" from Eastern bloc countries, in which team members were nominally students, soldiers, or civilians working in a non-sports profession, but in reality were paid by their states to train on a full-time basis.

Brundage also opposed anything that he viewed as the politicisation of sport. Brundage expelled both men from the Olympic Village and suspended them from the US Olympic team.

He may be best remembered for his controversial decision during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, to continue the Games following the 5th September Palestinian terrorist attack which killed 11 Israeli athletes. Many criticized Brundage's decision, although few athletes withdrew from the Games. Brundage gave an address in which he stated

"(E)very civilized person recoils in horror at the barbarous criminal intrusion of terrorists into peaceful Olympic precincts. (1984))

Brundage strongly opposed the exclusion of Rhodesia from the Olympics due to its apartheid policies; after the attacks in Munich, Brundage linked the massacre of the Israeli athletes and the barring of the Rhodesian team as crimes of equal magnitude. Brundage is also remembered for his proposal of elimination of ALL team sports from the Summer Olympics.

Brundage retired as IOC president following the 1972 Summer Games and was succeeded by Lord Killanin.

In addition to his role in sports, Brundage was a noted collector of Asian art.

Brundage died in 1975, aged 87, three years after his retirement as IOC president, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, West Germany.

His grave site has been the target of recent Jewish activists who painted "The People of Israel Lives" in Hebrew on the grass in front of his tombstone apparently in protest at his perceived pro-Nazi sympathies and his attitude to the attack on Israelis during the 1972 Munich games.

Brundage's hometown, Chicago, currently is considered the frontrunner in the 2016 Summer Olympics bid.