A descendant of slaves, the great-granddaughter of a Louisiana plantation owner and one of his female servants, Anita DeFrantz has become one of the most powerful women in the Olympic sports movement. She earned a bronze medal as captain of the U.S. women’s rowing team at the 1976 Games in Montreal and, after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, DeFrantz began training for a shot at a gold medal at the 1980 Games. When then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter decided to boycott the Moscow Olympics, DeFrantz led a group that filed an unsuccessful lawsuit against the U.S. Olympic Committee to allow athletes to compete. DeFrantz received the Olympic Order medal from the International Olympic Committee for her efforts. As vice president of the 1984 Los Angeles Games Organizing Committee, was instrumental in convincing 43 African nations not to boycott those Games when South African runner Zola Budd was allowed to compete for Great Britain. The L.A. Games made history by winding up with a budget surplus, which led to the formation of the Amateur Athletic Foundation. With DeFrantz at its helm, the group has given more than $160 million in grants to L.A.’s youth sports programs. In 1986, the IOC appointed DeFrantz to lifetime membership in the organization. The fifth woman ever named to hold a seat on the 93-member IOC, DeFrantz is both the first African-American and the first American woman to serve on the committee. She became the first female vice-president of the executive committee in 1997 and is considered a potential IOC president.
Question: There have been recent news reports suggesting that the biggest obstacle to the bids by L.A. and Chicago for the 2016 Summer Games is the global image of the United States, which is pretty negative in many parts of the world right now. How real is that, and can it be overcome?
Answer:
People basically like Americans as individuals; administrations come and go. By the time the election of the city for the 2016 Games comes around (in 2009), we don’t know what will be going on in the world. It’s a question of whether or not what we provide to the world is what is needed at the time. That’s a lesson I learned living in the Olympic Village you can connect with a whole world of people.
Q: Since you’re a member of the International Olympic Committee, you can’t comment directly on L.A.’s chances of landing the 2016 Games. But you must have some strong feelings?
A:
It’s very hard for me not to comment, as I feel strongly about the process. I know both cities well, though Chicago not as well as Los Angeles. Now that the U.S. has worked its choices down to two, the process begins all over again with the IOC. One thing L.A. has going for it as far as the IOC is concerned, is that there had always been a sort of informal feeling against any city hosting the Games a third time. When London was picked for the 2012 Games, it meant that precedent has been broken.
Q: You seem very much an Angeleno. How did you come to make your home here?
A:
I came to Los Angeles in 1981. Friends on the rowing team picked me up from the airport in a truck, and because there was only room for two up front, I sat in the back of the truck, on the bed. The breeze was blowing and it was beautiful out, and 10 minutes on the ride into Santa Monica I knew I was home. I was born in Pennsylvania but my parents moved to Indiana when I was young. Indiana was a great place to grow up but a terrible place to grow old. L.A. is an optimistic city. It’s a place where people come believing they can still contribute. There are so many ways to contribute, you can have a good idea here and share it.
Q: You’ve spent the past couple of decades in jobs that provide a benefit to the community. What motivates you?
A:
I am an attorney and my parents taught me to give back to the community. My parents were well-educated people my dad was the president of the NAACP in Bloomington. Somehow I got to my senior year of high school without learning how to study, I just thought learning was what went on in the classroom. Unless you already knew the answer, you didn’t raise your hand or you would be humiliated in some way. I thought this and my background was an educated one. Someone asked me if I had studied for a test and I finally realized you could study outside a classroom. It’s so important to provide resources for education and place a high value on it.
Q: The 1984 Los Angeles Games, under the leadership of Peter Ueberroth and the late Harry Usher, remain the most successful ever, at least from a financial standpoint. Beyond providing a business model, what do you see as the legacy of those Olympics?
A:
The Amateur Athletic Foundation was born out of the surplus from the 1984 Games. Our mission is to serve youth through sport and we’ve done that through grants and training community members as coaches for youth sport. Sport is so important because we are agents of change. The original surplus was $94 million, and we got to keep 40 percent of that and 60 percent went to the USOC. The surplus has grown, and we have been able to invest $160 million in the community through sport.
Q: What was it like to work with Ueberroth, not only on the 1984 Games, but today, now after he’s come on board to head the U.S. Olympic Committee?
A:
I have known and worked with him for a long time. He is such a demanding leader that a lot of people wither under his approach, but to me he was like a coach. You had to be ready because he knew where we were going. Under him we had more Olympians working, more women than ever before, and more diversity in general.
Q: Ueberroth took a brief shot at being governor of California in 2003. Have you ever considered running for political office?
A:
I’ve never been interested in putting myself through what that would take. It’s a different kind of fire in your belly that you have to feel deep down and be willing to stand up for. That process can be ugly as far as scrutiny and your reputation. For me, my reputation is the one thing I know is mine. I want to take good care of it.
Q: You spoke of sports as an agent of change, and one of the areas that has changed the most regards opportunities for women. How do you think the world of sports has changed for women since you competed as an Olympian?
A:
When (tennis pro) Jennifer Capriati said several years ago that she didn’t know what Title IX (the 1982 amendment to the Civil Rights Act that mandated equal opportunities and funding for women’s sports) was, people ridiculed her. The fact is, that’s what we want to see a generation that doesn’t have to know what Title IX is, that just has opportunities for women to participate in sport. If it doesn’t occur to them why it’s there, that’s the way it should be.
Q: Things have improved for women during your career, right?
A:
The way society views women has changed for the better. Funding for sports has changed for the better. And the potential for women to survive if not make a living in sports has increased because the USOC has been able to finance more of them.
Q: What gave you the courage the file a lawsuit against the USOC and then-President Carter’s decision to boycott the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow?
A:
I knew it was wrong to take from private citizens the decision whether we should compete. There were no public funds involved at all. Most of us were entirely self-financed; we even paid for our own uniforms. This was all way before sponsorship money became so much a part of the picture. We were not tools of the administration. The Games belong to the world, not any city or country. I was correct, but the power was not with me. Who was I? I was a bronze medalist, the seventh of eight women on the rowing team.
Q: The Olympic movement has taken a number of image hits in the past few years over payouts and doping. How well do you think the USOC has handled its ethics issues, both internally and otherwise?
A:
In 2004, the 125-member USOC voted themselves off the board and out of existence. It was a sign of the change. We didn’t have an ethics committee then, but we established one. A lot of the issues came between the volunteer staff, who were very politically minded, and the permanent staff.
Q: What’s your take on the recent spate of doping scandals in the athletic world?
A:
The IOC started testing in 1972 at the Games but we could only test at the Games, not before or after. It wasn’t until the 1999 that we got the world’s sports organizations to agree to no-notice testing outside of the Games. Still, the Olympic Committees don’t train the athletes so there’s no direct access, so we can only do so much. No-notice testing is essential. Now with all these designer things, you can’t always know exactly what it is. It’s also up to the athletes to really say something. We know as athletes when someone is not normal. Someone will always be slick enough to find another way, without the athletes policing themselves.
Anita L. DeFrantz
Titles:
President, Amateur Athletic Foundation; Vice-President, Executive Committee of the International Olympic Committee
Born:
Philadelphia, 1952
Education: B.A., Connecticut College, 1974; J.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1977
Personal:
Lives in Santa Monica
Hobbies:
Listening to kids. (“It’s staying in touch with the future.”)
