Journalists have swiftly moved today to record the dramatic contributions of Juan Antonio Samaranch to the Olympic Games and the triumphs of the former IOC President who passed away this morning in Barcelona.

The enigmatic Spanish leader now stands with American Avery Brundage as an icon in global Olympic history, hailed for notable achievements - bringing life to the Games after three successive, damaging boycotts, bringing the sham of Olympic amateurism to an end and allowing professional athletes into the Games,  bringing much needed diversity to what had been for decades an all-white, old boys club, and creating a financial colossus like nothing else in sport.
 
At the same time, critics will recall the tarnished events like the 1998 Olympic bid scandals that rocked Lausanne to its foundation and led to the ouster of IOC Members and a complete revamping of how cities bid for, and win the Games.

But, make no mistake, he was the most powerful figure in Olympic lore, and his uncanny ability to take the creaky, blue-blood organization where he wanted it to go was remarkable to observe.

Samaranch visited Colorado Springs twice during my 25 years with the United States Olympic Committee as its chief spokesman, and his first appearance in the city used to be marked by a plaque, long gone now, on the wall in the entry to the old Olympic House. He also held court one day with former USOC President Bill Hybl at Penrose House for two hours with a room full of fascinated men and women, and the wristwatch he gave me that day still keeps on ticking.

I was summoned to his suite during the Olympic Winter Games in Albertville one morning in 1992, and the two hours I spent with him alone remains one of my most cherished experiences in my Olympic journey. He wanted to chat about media relations, the difficulty of the IOC’s attempts to deal with PR and getting out information, particularly in the United States, and how I might help.

He was clad in slacks and a simple red sweater and as casual as my next door neighbour. He took notes, asked questions, and let me go with another watch and an appointment to the IOC Press Commission. He called me "Mike"  and spent the last 15 minutes inquiring about baseball, my family and American food.

My memories of his time are spread across the depth and breadth of Games from Seoul to Salt Lake, and his impact on one of sport’s most compelling and controversial moments. Games’ organisers waited anxiously at Closing Ceremonies to hear him say “These are the best Games ever,” and if he did not, there was despair. He willed the world, 161 nations, to come to the Games in Seoul after the damage of the Moscow and Los Angeles Games boycotts, and he created an environment of joy, and cities suddenly falling over themselves to bid and gain the Games, and he welcomed women into the inner circles and oak-paneled rooms of the IOC.

He crated funding for the National Olympic Committees, to share in the riches garnered from the Games, and he used the power of his office to rebuild the ravaged facilities in Sarajevo, destroyed by the Balkans War in the 1984 Winter Games host city, for instance. And despite a somewhat tardy beginning, he ramped up anti-doping efforts to begin cleansing the IOC from the abhorrent legacy of the drug-enhanced East German and Soviet machines and their unforgiveable damage to athletes and sportsmanship.

When he began as IOC President in 1980, there were serious doubts about the future of the Games, but he built upon the success of the Los Angeles Games and the wealth of financial opportunities to restore the vitality of the Olympic movement.  When he left, the IOC had some $350,000,000 in available resources, and the Games were worth billions.

He was embarrassed at a Congressional hearing in Washington related to the bidding scandals, but kept his composure  The effects of this incident remain today as part of the uncomfortable relationship between the IOC and the USOC, now being aggressively addressed by Larry Probst and Scott Blackmun.

But he also was aware of the ability of the United States to present Games that enhanced the Olympic movement, and the financial clout of the USOC and American corporations and television. While he was a small man, he became a goliath in his world, a hard-to-define human being with flaws, but with skills that now will become intensely apparent to those who follow him in Lausanne, now burdened with sustaining what he built from the rubble of those boycotted Games.

Mike Moran was the chief communications officer of the USOC for nearly 25 years before retiring in 2003. In 2002 he was awarded with the USOC's highest award, the General Douglas MacArthur Award. He worked on New York's unsuccessful bid to host the 2012 Olympics and is now director of communications for the Colorado Springs Sports Corporation.