BRUNDAGE, AVERY

born Sept. 28, 1887, Detroit, Mich., U.S. died May 8, 1975, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, W.Ger. American sports administrator who from 1952 to 1972 was the controversial and domineering president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and did more to set the tone of the modern Olympic Games than any other individual. Brundage competed in the pentathlon and decathlon at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm and was the United States 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 (192833, 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 IOC, serving as vice president (194552) and president (195272). 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, despite heavy criticism, that the 1972 Olympics in Munich would continue despite the murders of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists. During his tenure as IOC president, Brundage oversaw (often to his regret) a period of significant growth in the size and commercialism of the Games, in part a consequence of their worldwide exposure through television broadcasting.