Golden 25 - #14 - IOC Doyen Richard Pound

(ATR) Through the years as an IOC member Richard Pound of Canada has led the IOC through some significant moments.

He was the chair of the Ethics Commission formed in 1998 to deal with the vote buying scandal around the Salt Lake City Olympic bid. He then became the founding president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, serving for six years.

In 2015 he chaired the initial independent commission for WADA on the allegations of systemic doping involving Russian track and field athletes. The reverberations of that report are still rumbling through the Olympic world that’s in a dither about what needs to be done next to guard against future attempts to hijack anti-doping procedures.

Pound, 74, was elected to the IOC in 1978. An accomplished tax lawyer, he was chairman of the IOC Marketing Commission for more than a decade, negotiating major sponsorships and TV rights deals.

As one of the experts in the business of Olympic television, Pound was a natural choice to chair the board of the IOC-owned Olympic Broadcasting Services that produces the host broadcast feed and Olympic Channel. Pound is also a member of the board for the Olympic Channel.

Always quotable, sometimes with candor uncharacteristic of IOC-speak, Pound is a go-to source of comment from journalists around the world on nearly any matter of IOC business.

Written by Ed Hula.