Interview with Richard Palmer

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RICHARD PALMER
an administrator’s tale

My name is Richard Palmer. I was born in London in 1933. In 1939, at the outbreak of war, we moved to Llangwm, where I live today. I became a teacher, in Pembrokeshire. I did a three-year physical education diploma and I taught down here in the local secondary modern school for six years. Then, I became head of the PE department in Windsor Grammar School and taught there for three years. A job came up as secretary of the University Athletic Union, the UAU, after which I then moved on to become secretary of the British University Sports Federation and then –because the British University Sports Federation was responsible for taking teams to the World University Games – I had the experience of being the organising secretary for that delegation of about 120 athletes and officials. I applied for the job of Deputy General Secretary of the British Olympic Association (BOA) in 1975. Two years later, I became General Secretary. This entailed being the Chief Executive Officer of the organisation. You had to run all the meetings and take the decisions of the governing body and implement them. And it was traditional that the Secretary General was appointed Chef de Mission of the Olympic delegations. I see that practice has continued right through to the new BOA CEO, Andy Hunt being Chef de Mission for London 2012.

Chef de Mission is head of the delegation. He’s where the buck stops. He lives in the village with the athletes together with the headquarter staff, a transport officer, a medical staff, a press officer and a quartermaster, and really runs the team from there. You’re the man that the IOC and the organising committee rely on to relate to your team. So, if there’s any good news you get the good news but if there’s bad news you get the bad news, as well.

budgets and boycotts

My first Games as Deputy General Secretary was in 1976 in Innsbruck, my first Winter Games, and then Montreal for the Summer Games. It was a slightly problematic Games. The mayor – I think his name was Drapeaux – had built all these magnificent facilities but had left Montreal in total penury, so there was much criticism. The Canadians didn’t do particularly well, and there were one or two organisational difficulties. We did reasonably well. There was a boycott of the Games by the African nations and we had some problems over that, particularly for our hockey team who waited at Heathrow airport for word to come through that they were to replace the Kenyan team, but the word never did come through, and so I had some very angry hockey players to confront, not being able to participate.

letters of protest

After Montreal, we came back and we started being bombarded by letters from the religious community and human rights campaigners, because they suddenly realised that the next Games were in Moscow. Our chairman, Sir Denis Follows – who was one of my guiding lights, I must say – came back from holiday in 1978 and said, “My boy, while I’ve been on holiday, I thought that the BOA ought to pass the resolution so that we can reply to these people who have been protesting about us going to Moscow”. And the essence of that resolution was that the BOA would go to Moscow because the Games is about individuals. If we decided to go, that would give the individuals, particularly the individual athletes, the right to decide whether they went or not. It would be up to individual consciences. That was our standard response to the letters of protest, which by this time were increasing in fury; more and more of them were piling through the letterbox, everyday. At the same time, I think the religious lobby in America was also hammering at the door of the President.
Afghanistan

I was down in Llangwm, on 29 December 1979 – that’s eight months before the Games took place – when the news came through that the Russians had invaded Afghanistan. Led by the United States president, Jimmy Carter, this sparked off a campaign to stop people going to Moscow and sure enough Margaret Thatcher took up the cause and wrote to Chairman Denis Follows and urged him to stop the team going. They wanted to stop us going, yet there was no let-up in trade between America and Britain and the Soviet Union, so we didn’t think this fair. We decided that we’d go, and to stick with Sir Denis’ original resolution.

There were five National Federations that decided not to go. One of the wise old guys on our Committee – he was a Major General – he said, “I’m for you going, but I’ll tell you that any people connected to the armed services will feel that you should not go, because to go against the wishes of a government is totally alien to their whole background and training”. And so, indeed, the five National Federations that had strong connections with the services voted not to go.

magna carta not jimmy carter

The news reporters understand little about the Olympic Movement, and so you had to keep answering that phone, keep repeating the same thing about our status, whether we had the right or not to go. Lloyd Cutler, Jimmy Carter’s legal advisor, came over with a delegation of people to persuade Dennis and myself not to send the team. He went to Downing Street. He went everywhere. One meeting he had was with Denis Howell, the old Sports Minister, and Denis said, “Listen here, my man, in this country Magna Carta prevails not Jimmy Carter”. That was a significant statement because Margaret Thatcher, despite not wanting us to go, could not prevent us because of the rights conferred on citizens of the UK by the Magna Carta (which says that every citizen of this country has the right to leave the country and properly return).

We had a Parliamentary debate that lasted six hours, can you believe, about going to the Games. Heseltine put the boot into everybody who decided they wanted to go; the Labour Party disappeared up their own wotsits, inclined to argue both sides of the question and didn’t really come to any conclusion; and just one or two people were firmly for it. In the end, Parliament passed the resolution urging us not to go but it carried no real weight – so we went.

flying the flag

It was absolutely right, absolutely right to have gone! I mean there’s still ex-athletes in America, still very angry about the role that Jimmy Carter played in all of this. There were the meetings of the Western European National Olympic Committees. Sir Denis Follows came back from one and said, “We’ve decided to go, but the Western countries have decided not to parade the team at the Opening Ceremony. They will just parade one person and they won’t parade under the national flag but under the five rings and white flag of the International Olympic Committee”. Just before we went to Moscow, I asked, “Who is going to carry the flag?”. They said, “We don’t know. We hadn’t thought about that. Who do you think should go?”. And I said, “If you leave it to the Russians, you’ll have a Russian soldier carrying it … or we can send an athlete out”. “No, we don’t want to send an athlete out”. ”Well, who are you going to send, then?”, and they said, “You!”. So, I got the job of carrying the flag at the Opening and Closing Ceremonies! I didn’t feel particularly happy about it. It was a job for an athlete to do. It’s an honour for athletes, the distinguished athletes in the team, people like Sir Steve Redgrave.

getting kicked around by the press

During the months leading up to the Games, I used to meet with Denis Follows every day. He was convinced that his phone was bugged and that there was underhand business going on. We used to talk in the Range Rover, and I said to him, “We’re getting kicked around the park by the press”. The press were very, very negative.

And he said, “What shall we do about it?” When I was with the British University Sports Federation, my predecessor was a distinguished journalist, a swimming correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, Pat Besford. I contacted her and she got some of her friends around to her flat: David Chip who was Editor in Chief of the Press Association; Ian Wooldridge from The Daily Mail; she had David Miller who was then, I think, on The Times; Neil Wilson, who I think is still writing; and a number of other distinguished sports journalists, and we said, “Look, we’ve got a problem. We’re being torn to pieces in the press. What can we do about it?”. And David Chip said, “I don’t agree with you going. You shouldn’t go but I’ll give you a bit of advice. Get yourselves out of the limelight, keep out of the way, let the athletes and the coaches do the talking and you’ll find that the press will be far more favourable to you. I’m sure that there’s so many stories that are going on all the time which could be used to your benefit”. So we said, “Yes, there are, you know. Let’s see what we can do”.

In the build up, in ’79, when we went out there to recce the place, Denis Follows and myself stayed in the British Embassy in Moscow. We had excellent relationships with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and one of their staff was going to be our attaché, the man in Moscow who would deal with business before we came out there. Suddenly, we had a telephone call, followed by a letter from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office saying that they couldn’t continue to support us and they were withdrawing their attaché from the team. So, I phoned Pat Besford and told her: big headlines, front pages of the newspapers. Then, when my counterpart in Ireland read this, he rang me and said, “We’ve got an excellent attaché, a really good guy, doing great work for us. Why don’t you share him?”. I said, “Yes, let’s do that”. I then rang Pat Besford and I said, “The southern Irish attaché is going to act for the British Olympic Association”. You can imagine the headlines. Then, the Chief Constable withdrew the benefits from Geoff Capes, a shot-putter; one of the Civil Services withdrew the leave from a civil servant working in the Midlands; and so, these stories started feeding through. The little team that we’d got together were publishing these and writing articles, and, suddenly, in the opinion polls, instead of 70:30 against us going it became 70:30 for us going. So, using, not exactly manipulating the media, but allowing the media access to what was actually going on, really was very important for us, to change people’s perceptions about our participation in the Games.

the white envelope

At the next Games, in Los Angeles, there was a mini boycott, but that was a really interesting Games. We were in with almost the Hollywood set. We had a very good supportive British community out in California, many in the film industry. They raised half a million dollars to support us, and they were really very, very supportive of the team. So, we had a good Games. But, funnily enough, the first sniff of problems started in Los Angeles. I received, as Chef de Mission, the dreaded white envelope which came up from the IOC to say that two weightlifters had produced unsatisfactory samples and would I appear in front of the IOC Medical Commission in two days time. Fortunately, we had a treasurer who was a criminal lawyer and he sat the two athletes down, interrogated them – and I have to say, it was a pretty robust interrogation – and really developed a case to take to the IOC, and they were let off. They didn’t receive any penalty. It was just a small minor drug offence and they claimed it was because they had put some stuff on their arms which had been absorbed into their bodies. How true that was I don’t know, but nevertheless, it was accepted by the IOC Medical Commission and their experts.

The next Games was in Seoul in ’88. I had been on the first IOC Commission, evaluating the ability of the two candidates for the Games – Japan and Seoul. Seoul had invested an immense amount of money in providing excellent facilities and an excellent village, and so the Games went on in the most elaborate and the best facilities that we’d had for many a Games. But that little whiff in the wind that we’d had with the two weightlifters in Los Angeles, it really became a massive problem in Seoul, because Ben Johnson won the 100 metres by miles and suddenly they discovered that he was full of steroids. This was a talking-point not just at the Games but worldwide. He was disqualified and sent home. It was coming towards the end of the Games and I had been invited with the headquarter staff to a BBC reception and, just as I was leaving, someone came and said, “Mr Palmer”, and I said, “Yes?”. White envelope. I opened it and what was in there? A letter saying that Linford Christie who had come third in the 100 metres had had an unsatisfactory sample. There was also another athlete, a judo player, but I won’t mention his name. He also had provided an unsatisfactory sample. From that moment on, life was hell. The press suddenly discovered that something was up. They sniffed around. We had a press officer who was the best in the business, I can tell you, a lady called Caroline Searle, and Caroline did a superb job, because it was like a scrummage. We interviewed Linford and the judo player.

We got into the IOC hotel, where the hearing was being held, and there was about a thousand press people which we had to get through. We had to have a police escort. We went up into the Chairman’s room and waited for the case to be heard, which was to be at nine o’clock at night. We went in front of the IOC Commission, and said that we felt that the judo player was guilty, and we argued Linford’s case, and because there was such a small quantity of the drug – I think it was pseudoephedrine, a stimulant in his blood which could have come from contaminated ginseng – he got away with it. He kept his medal. From then on, the BOA decided that any athlete who was convicted of a drug offence would not be eligible for the Olympic team for subsequent Games. There is an appeals process, and some athletes who have just been careless, like the skier who put something on his arm and lost a medal, he was reinstated. But, if there’s a clear case for using steroids or growth hormones or any of those serious drugs, we would not. The appeals process does not work for those people. You can imagine the state of devastation in the judo team when we went back.

The fact that he’d lost a medal. I wouldn’t want to go through it. To educate the athletes that it isn’t worth it, to educate the athletes that it’s frankly cheating and if they’re caught, the disgrace that it brings on themselves, on their coaches, on the sport and on British sport, really, is pretty fundamental.

ambushing the market

We provide the athletes with uniforms, blazers and tracksuits. Tracksuits are very significant because they’re worn on the medal podium, and the athletes wearing their Olympic badge and so on, on the tracksuit, is an iconic photograph. In Barcelona, we were supplied by Adidas, and many of the athletes had contracts with Nike and others, and there was an effort made to ambush the market. Adidas had spent a considerable amount of money to provide that clothing, free of charge, and so, when an athlete went and held a press conference wearing a Nike tracksuit, it was a significant problem for us. We’d had a few problems like this, I may say, way back as far as Moscow. So, now, when an athlete is selected for the Games, they have to sign a legally-binding contract that they will wear the kit provided on the occasions when the BOA demands it. The commercialisation of the Games and the commercialisation of the athletes has resulted in many of the athletes now being financial centres in themselves. They get help and assistance and grant aid from government sources, but they also have their own private contracts with local sponsors and some of them, the prominent athletes, have significant contracts with the clothing manufacturers.

I think that we were in danger of losing the Olympic ideal, but the ideal is always there. What fails are the people that administer it … The sport gets different but it doesn’t get lost.


no walk in the park

At the Games in Barcelona, we had another little, shall we say, technical problem … with doping, this time out of competition testing. The doping agency in the UK, instead of informing us before we left of the results of competition testing which had taken place at least six to eight weeks beforehand, sent the results of these unsatisfactory tests out to us when everyone was in the Olympic village, so the whole issue of publicity and the disgrace of it all was heaped on our heads, self-inflicted by our own doping agency. So, three athletes were sent home. The drug that they had been caught using – clenbuterol – just to show how technical it is, it was one of the drugs that was regarded as a stimulant. It didn’t come under the hammer as far as out-of-competition testing was concerned, and so, we went back to the IOC and said, “Look, this drug is on your list of stimulants and not on your list of steroids and this was not a competition test”, and overnight, at the meeting of the executive board, they changed the legislation, retrospectively.

All of this was going on when you’ve got a team of 350 athletes, all very demanding, making sure that the food was right, the transportation was right, that the training facilities were right, that the coaches had proper access to the warm-up areas, and so on. So, being Chef de Mission wasn’t a walk in the park, I can tell you. I just felt that this was a chance to be right at the sharp end of sport and so I really was thrilled to do it, but recognised that in doing it, you were facing challenges which you could not anticipate beforehand.

1996 was my last, and that was interesting. By this time, I had been appointed by the Olympic Committee to sit on their Evaluation Commission and then advise them about the arrangements that the Organising Committee were making for the Games, and so I had quite an influential position. I was representing, if you like, the National Olympic Committees worldwide, to make sure that the Games were properly organised. America, after Atlanta, has discovered it’s very difficult for a city to organise the Games. It relied upon a group of private individuals; it lacked backing from the city and lacked backing from the State and the Federal Government. There were really significant problems when we got there as far as transportation was concerned; there were issues in the village; there were a number of organisational issues; and, of course, there was the additional problem of a bomb going off and killing someone in the so-called Olympic Park downtown, echoing what happened in Munich – a terrorist, a crazy guy from the States somewhere.

driving better performances

As far as the British team was concerned, we didn’t perform particularly well. The Lottery had started to come in but the UK authorities wouldn’t use it to assist the athletes to train full-time. So, the British athletes were often having to hold down jobs, and, besides one or two athletes who were able to bring commercial money around themselves, they were having to work and to train full-time for the Games; really, that wasn’t possible.

They weren’t cutting the mustard, internationally, and so we campaigned before those Games and after to ensure that Lottery funds could be diverted to pay a stipend to allow them to train full-time. And, from then on, the British results have actually improved very significantly. So, after Atlanta, which was my last Games sadly, the performance of the British team has improved to the point where we came fourth in Beijing, which was the best result we’ve had for many a moon.

I put it down to UK Sport driving better performance from the athletes, so that if the athletes wanted the money they had to deliver and perform better; and the National Federations ensuring that the coaching teams were more professional, that they had around them scientific back-up to ensure that the athletes were properly supported. Classically, our sailing is the best in the world or has been at Olympic Games for the past two or three Games. They have a superb support team for the sailors, including a small thinktank of former gold medal winners who really set the agenda for the coaches and for the support staff and for the athletes, guiding the athletes’ preparations for the Games. In cycling, they have a superb support staff; they’re all totally focused on the performance of the athletes, getting them in the right position. Now, we’ve got to face up to the fact that we’ve got to deliver performance at London and I just hope that we will. And I just hope that it will persuade the politicians that, if they want success – and success is a pretty heady wine – they’ve really got to invest in the athletes, and in the National Federations, and the coaching staff.

putting london’s best foot forward

I was recruited to join the bid team for the 2012 Games as Technical Advisor, and I really was proud of that. That was a great, great effort on behalf of London and the UK; they really applied the best brains that they could to this bid, and the public relations, the creative side of putting London’s best foot forward. It really blew the other countries away. When the French delegation sat up and made their final presentation to the IOC, there was one athlete and the rest were apparatchiks from Paris City Council and the French Government. When we sat up there, all the people, apart from Ken Livingstone, were from sport – Stephen Redgrave, Tanni Grey-Thompson, Denise Lewis, the heptathlete, all were from sport. That resonated with the IOC members having to make the decision.

Someone was sitting next to me and before Jacques Rogge opened the envelope – it was Paris or London – they said to me, “Who’s going to win?”, and I said, “London”. I felt in my bones that London would prevail.

I honestly believe that we will bring some sense back into the Games. I think that a number of cities have spent vast sums of money building elaborate stadiums – and we’re spending a considerable amount – but I think it will be at a reasonable level. London desperately needed the upgrading of that part of the capital. The reason why Mayor Livingstone was so enthusiastic about the Games is that there was a whole area of London – you would think that London finished at Tottenham Court Road – that was neglected, run down, badly in need of upgrading, and from Canary Wharf up they are going to spread that redevelopment right up through Stratford. The city will be grateful, and generations to come, that the Games have left that legacy for them. They’ve got Twickenham, they’ve got Wembley and they’ve got some good football grounds, but the only 50 metre pool – which is now out-of-date – is in Crystal Palace. We desperately needed these facilities to upgrade what is one of the major capitals in the world.

An Olympics in fifty years time? I don’t know. I really don’t know. I mean, much of the success of the Olympic Games has been because the IOC have been able to control the finances and been able to draw lots of money in, and that’s predicated very largely on the media and particularly the television incomes. I suspect it will prevail, but I think we need to understand that changes take place. Almost in quantum leaps every Games it changes.

owning the podium

It’s the will of the legislatures to decide what they want. Do they want success or do they want more people participating? I don’t think it’s an either / or, but it may be an either / or if people are going to give a very limited amount of money towards sport. People have got to make a choice. Roger Jackson, a friend of mine, has just run a very successful programme in Canada, called ‘Own The Podium’, which brings more money to elite athletes to ensure that they perform better. The Canadian Government said, “We must win medals at the Vancouver Games. We failed in Calgary and we failed in Montreal, so we must win medals”, and they asked Roger to lead it. And, in fact, they headed the gold medal table in Vancouver in the recent Games. I brought him over to talk to the Welsh Sports Council and to the leading coaches.

It’s a painful process. You don’t win gold medals just by saying, “We’re going to win gold medals”. Everybody has got to stand up to the plate, and they’ve got to lift what they’re doing very significantly. I think the message he was putting across was that you’ve got to identify your athletes better; you’ve got to support them better. The athletes have got to train longer; they’ve got to train harder; they’ve got to go out and confront the best athletes in the world to understand where their position is, and if it’s not where it should be, they’ve got to train harder and harder and harder.