Updated -- IOC Members Remember Monique Berlioux, Former IOC Director General

(ATR) She was once the most powerful woman in the Olympic Movement, years before the first female member of the IOC was named.

Monique Berlioux was 91 when she died in Paris August 27. She was buried August 31.

After a career in swimming that included a spot at the 1948 Olympics, Berlioux landed at the IOC in 1967 where she was press chief for president Avery Brundage. In 1971, she became executive director of the IOC, working with Brundage and his successors Lord Killanin and Juan Antonio Samaranch.

Berlioux was one of the last individuals alive with connections that date back to an IOC that is much different than it is today.

"She was the most powerful woman in sport on the face of the planet," recalls IOC member Richard Pound who became an IOC member in 1978.

"She was a major force," Pound tells Around the Rings.

Remembered as an authoritarian, efficient administrator, Berlioux for a time perhaps wielded more power than the IOC presidents with whom she worked. Berlioux negotiated TV contracts and handled other important business of the IOC in her position.

While she proved of value to Brundage and Killanin, her relationship with Juan Antonio Samaranch was a difficult one from the time he took office in 1980. The forces of their personalities clashed often.

"Her wish to control the IOC collided with his," Pound says. The differences between Berlioux and Samaranch led to Pound taking over TV negotiations in 1983.

The tensions grew through the Los Angeles Olympics with Samaranch bypassing Berlioux in communicating with LA 84 chief Peter Ueberroth in the lead up to the Games.

Anita DeFrantz, now senior IOC member in the U.S., organized the Olympic Village for Los Angeles and dealt often with Berlioux.

"I met her in Baden Baden during the 1981 Olympic Congress. Madame Berlioux was the primary representative of the IOC to the Los Angeles Organizing Committee which is how I came to know and respect her work," writes DeFrantz from Aigebullet, France at the World Rowing Championships.

"She impressed me with her clear concern that the athletes be treated well. She also insisted on respecting the ideals of the Olympic Movement.

"She kept the organization running during the cold war when the IOC had few financial resources. She also helped to expand opportunities for women to compete at the Olympic Games. She was a courageous woman. I respect her contribution to the Olympic Movement as an athlete and as an administrator," DeFrantz tells ATR.

The tensions between Samaranch and Berlioux never abated. In 1985, she was dismissed from the IOC, receiving what Pound terms "a generous settlement." From Lausanne she moved back to Paris where she worked for Jacques Chirac when he was mayor of Paris and president of France.

Written by EdHula

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