Biography

Avery Brundage competed in the pentathlon and decathlon at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm and was the U.S. champion in the all-around, which is similar to the decathlon, in 1914, 1916, and 1918. In the meantime, he had founded his own construction company and eventually became a multimillionaire. His interest in amateur sports, however, never abated. He served seven years (1928-33, 1935) as president of the Amateur Athletic Union and was president of the U.S. Olympic Association and Committee from 1929 to 1953. In 1936 he was elected to the International Olympic Committee and served as vice president 1945-1952 and president 1952-1972).

Brundage was so convinced of the need to preserve amateur competition in all its purity that he threatened or punished athletes for even relatively minor infractions of his stringent rules. In addition, he created a furor more than once by dismissing highly significant political events as unrelated to Olympic competition. He refused to boycott the 1936 Games in Nazi Germany and insisted, in the face of heavy criticism, that the 1972 Olympics in Munich, West Germany, be continued despite the murders of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian militants. During his tenure as International Olympic Committee president, Brundage oversaw a period of significant growth in the size and commercialism of the Games, in part a consequence of their worldwide exposure through television broadcasting.
- IMDb mini biography by: Robert Riley

The Olympic Games belong to all the world, not the part of it at sea level.

When I'm gone, there's nobody rich enough, thick-skinned enough and smart enough to take my place, and the Games will be in tremendous trouble.

The professional athlete must always win if he is to be successful and he must perform and win in the way that the public, who pays the bills, wants him to perform and win. He is a paid worker and not a free agent. It is the same with a commercial artist. To be successful he must make or paint things that can be sold. It is not his taste but the taste of the purchaser which governs. No true artist or true amateur will submit to such dictation. An amateur artist creates -- he does not accept the standards of the mass -- he refuses to follow the crowd. He is not primarily interested in dollars.

We live in a world that is sick socially, politically and economically. It is sick for only one reason -- lack of fair play and good sportsmanship in human relations. We must keep the Olympic movement on Olympic heights of idealism, for it will surely die if it is permitted to descend to more sordid levels.

In an imperfect world, if participation in sport is to be stopped every time the politicians violate the laws of humanity, there will never be any international contests. Is it not better to try to expand the sportsmanship of the athletic field into other areas?