Jacques, Be Nimble

Jacques Rogge fancies himself a man of the people. "Athletes first," the president of the International Olympic Committee likes to say, and for three Games now he has lived the message by bunking in the spartan Olympic Village, with never a wistful word about the five-star accommodations enjoyed by his predecessors. Yet in Turin, Rogge could take the act only so far. He still had to stay on a floor bereft of Olympians. "I don't want to wake up the athletes," he said late last Thursday night. "I have many meetings in the evenings, and this Austrian affair is keeping me busy."

The Austrian Affair doesn't have the sexy snap of The Italian Job, but coming from a grim Belgian knee surgeon, it's not bad. And since Rogge was squarely behind the most dramatic action of the 2006 Winter Games, it's only right that he get to name it. Late on the night of Feb. 18, Italian police invaded the living quarters of 10 Austrian biathletes and cross-country skiers in the mountains west of Turin and reportedly seized dozens of syringes, various prescription drugs and a blood-transfusion machine. One athlete reportedly threw a bag of needles out a window, and two of the skiers bolted across the Austrian border. The raid followed reports that Austrian coach Walter Mayer, who has been banned from the Olympics since blood-doping equipment was found in a house rented by Austrian Nordic skiers during the 2002 Salt Lake City Games, was in the Turin area. Mayer fled over the border on Feb. 19. Doping tests performed on all 10 Austrian athletes came up negative last Friday, but Rogge insists that circumstantial evidence could well result in sanctions against them.

"The whole saga ... I mean, this is Hollywood," Rogge says. Then again, the 2004 Athens Games opened with a similar melodrama involving two Greek sprinters and continued with an almost daily series of failed doping tests and stripped medals. Since Rogge took over as IOC president in 2001, in fact, each of his Olympics has begun with athletes taking an oath against doping and then being dismayed when he actually held them to it. "They underestimated our resolve," Rogge says of the 2006 Austrian athletes. "They made a mistake."

Rogge is used to being underestimated. He has neither the political wiles of former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch nor the eloquence of the founder of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin. When Rogge beat out the bright, bombastic Dick Pound of Canada for the IOC presidency, Pound resigned from all his positions on the committee, including that of head of IOC marketing, and wrote a letter to Olympic sponsors warning of Rogge's marketing incompetence. Instead of letting Pound go, though, Rogge asked him to stay on as marketing boss, then made him head of the World Anti-Doping Agency. Pound, who has since become the world's loudest drug scold, worked with Rogge and the Italian police in targeting the Austrians. "I need people like Dick," Rogge says. "I had no doubt about myself. I knew I would succeed. And we now have 35 percent more marketing revenue than we had four years ago."

Rogge, 63, spent 30 years as a surgeon, and he has operated with great precision on the body Olympic. He repaired the wounds caused by the Salt Lake City bribery scandal, cutting out junkets and other inducements that had corrupted the IOC's site-selection process; made the committee's finances transparent; and strengthened earlier reforms by word and deed. His crusade to cap the number of Olympic sports--baseball and softball were eliminated from the 2012 Summer Games last year--is one of the few ways, he believes, that the IOC can make it feasible for a city in South America or Africa ever to host an Olympics.

Still, some IOC members see his collegial manner as a sign of weakness. "I'm soft-spoken, but I have very strong beliefs," he says. "On the principles I will never budge."

We'll see. Rogge's legacy will hinge on how things play out before the 2008 Beijing Games. In its eagerness to tap the huge Asian market, will the IOC stick to its ideals, or will it allow itself to be used to provide cover for a repressive government? Rogge says he has pressed China's leaders to improve their human rights record, but he insists it's the job of politicians and rights advocates to make the regime comply.

Rogge doesn't practice medicine anymore. "I couldn't be a good surgeon," he said, straightening his fingers. "You lose your hands." His don't move, though, not a quiver. But it's early. The Beijing Olympics will show how steady Rogge truly is.