Avery Brundage
Encyclopedia
Avery Brundage (ˈeɪvri ˈbrʌndɨdʒ; 1887–1975) was an American amateur athlete, sports official, art collector, and philanthropist. Brundage competed in the 1912 Olympics and was the US national all-around athlete in 1914, 1916 and 1918. Rising to president of the Amateur Athletic Union
Amateur Athletic Union
The Amateur Athletic Union is one of the largest non-profit volunteer sports organizations in the United States. A multi-sport organization, the AAU is dedicated exclusively to the promotion and development of amateur sports and physical fitness programs.-History:The AAU was founded in 1888 to...

, he subsequently served as the fifth president of the International Olympic Committee
International Olympic Committee
The International Olympic Committee is an international corporation based in Lausanne, Switzerland, created by Pierre de Coubertin on 23 June 1894 with Demetrios Vikelas as its first president...

 from 1952 to 1972 - the only American to hold the post.

An outspoken crusader for the unique significance of the Olympic Games, Brundage has been called “a high priest at the altar of Olympism.” An opponent of professional athletes in the Olympics and pioneer in gender verification in sports, Brundage has been criticized for controversial decisions and statements relating to women and Jews in sports, primarily made during his earlier tenure as president of the United States Olympic Committee
United States Olympic Committee
The United States Olympic Committee is a non-profit organization that serves as the National Olympic Committee and National Paralympic Committee for the United States and coordinates the relationship between the United States Anti-Doping Agency and the World Anti-Doping Agency and various...

 during the 1936 Summer Olympics
1936 Summer Olympics
The 1936 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event which was held in 1936 in Berlin, Germany. Berlin won the bid to host the Games over Barcelona, Spain on April 26, 1931, at the 29th IOC Session in Barcelona...

 in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. He is likely best remembered for his insistence that the Games of the 1972 Summer Olympics
1972 Summer Olympics
The 1972 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XX Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event held in Munich, West Germany, from August 26 to September 11, 1972....

 in Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

 continue following the terrorist massacre
Munich massacre
The Munich massacre is an informal name for events that occurred during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Bavaria in southern West Germany, when members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage and eventually killed by the Palestinian group Black September. Members of Black September...

 of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

i athletes there - a decision for which he was both praised and criticized.

Early life

The son of a stonecutter, Brundage was born in Detroit, Michigan
Detroit, Michigan
Detroit is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people. As the seat of Wayne County, the city of Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and serves as a major port on the Detroit River...

. The family moved to Chicago when he was five (shortly after which his father abandoned the family). He attended the R. T. Crane Manual Training School, where he excelled. He later studied civil engineering
Civil engineering
Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including works like roads, bridges, canals, dams, and buildings...

 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...

, graduating in 1909.

During his time at Illinois, Brundage played varsity basketball for the Fighting Illini
Illinois Fighting Illini men's basketball
The Illinois Fighting Illini men's basketball team is an NCAA Division I college basketball team competing in the Big Ten Conference. Home games are played at Assembly Hall, located on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's campus in Champaign....

 from 1906 - 1909
1906–07 Illinois Fighting Illini men's basketball team
The 1906–07 Illinois Fighting Illini men's basketball team represented the University of Illinois.-Regular season:F.L. Pinckney took over the coaching reins from Elwood Brown for the 1906–1907 season. After a very promising start to the season, where more than 100 student athletes tried out for the...

, and excelled at track and field, the sporting events which were also at the core of the newly reinvigorated Olympic games. He also lobbied the school to prohibit the wearing of the school’s colors by any student who had not earned that privilege on the athletic field - an early foray into the rigidity and concern with symbolism and sportsmanship that would define his career in international sport.

Brundage was an all-around athlete himself, competing in the 1912 Summer Olympics
1912 Summer Olympics
The 1912 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the V Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event held in Stockholm, Sweden, between 5 May and 27 July 1912. Twenty-eight nations and 2,407 competitors, including 48 women, competed in 102 events in 14 sports...

 in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

 in the pentathlon
Pentathlon
A pentathlon is a contest featuring five different events. The name is derived from Greek: combining the words pente and -athlon . The first pentathlon was documented in Ancient Greece and was part of the Ancient Olympic Games...

 and decathlon
Decathlon
The decathlon is a combined event in athletics consisting of ten track and field events. The word decathlon is of Greek origin . Events are held over two consecutive days and the winners are determined by the combined performance in all. Performance is judged on a points system in each event, not...

 events, finishing 6th and 16th, respectively, placing behind teammate Jim Thorpe
Jim Thorpe
Jacobus Franciscus "Jim" Thorpe * Gerasimo and Whiteley. pg. 28 * americaslibrary.gov, accessed April 23, 2007. was an American athlete of mixed ancestry...

. He also won the US national all-around title in 1914, 1916 and 1918. A few years after graduation from college, he founded the Avery Brundage Company, a construction business which would earn him his first fortune and pave the way for a life committed to Olympic service and sport.

Leadership in sport

In 1928, Brundage became president of the Amateur Athletic Union
Amateur Athletic Union
The Amateur Athletic Union is one of the largest non-profit volunteer sports organizations in the United States. A multi-sport organization, the AAU is dedicated exclusively to the promotion and development of amateur sports and physical fitness programs.-History:The AAU was founded in 1888 to...

 (AAU). He became the president of the United States Olympic Committee
United States Olympic Committee
The United States Olympic Committee is a non-profit organization that serves as the National Olympic Committee and National Paralympic Committee for the United States and coordinates the relationship between the United States Anti-Doping Agency and the World Anti-Doping Agency and various...

 (USOC) in 1929 and gained the vice-presidency of the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) in 1930.

1936 Olympics

As USOC president, Brundage became entangled in the complex debate over whether the U.S. team should boycott the 1936 Summer Olympics
1936 Summer Olympics
The 1936 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event which was held in 1936 in Berlin, Germany. Berlin won the bid to host the Games over Barcelona, Spain on April 26, 1931, at the 29th IOC Session in Barcelona...

, which were to be held in Berlin, the capital of Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

 (the Games had been awarded to Germany before Hitler's rise to power). Some voices in the sporting world had begun to suggest boycotting the Games in protest of the exclusion of German Jews from sporting events by the policies of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

 and the Third Reich. Jews were unquestionably being excluded, though the method was usually indirect: they were barred from membership in the sporting associations - membership which was one requirement to qualify for the Olympic trials.

Brundage himself, an ardent supporter of the principles of fair play, originally showed some concern about the conditions in Germany. In 1934, he traveled to Europe to conduct an "official" investigation of the allegations of excluding Jews. Much of his investigation consisted of speaking with his close friends among Germany's Olympic officials, although he did interview Jewish athletic organizers - but only while their government counterparts were standing by and listening. After he reported back to his U.S. colleagues that unfair exclusion was not taking place, Brundage's position hardened. He became an implacable opponent of any boycott, insisting that the Games belonged to the athletes, and not to politicians. He insisted that the Olympics should not become mixed up in the "Jew-Nazi altercation."

The most strident voice in favor of a boycott among International Olympic Committee
International Olympic Committee
The International Olympic Committee is an international corporation based in Lausanne, Switzerland, created by Pierre de Coubertin on 23 June 1894 with Demetrios Vikelas as its first president...

 insiders was American Ernest Lee Jahncke. Eventually, Jahncke became so outspoken about a boycott that he was expelled from the IOC, the only Committee member ever to suffer this punishment. His place on the Committee was pointedly given to Brundage himself.

At the Berlin Games themselves, racial controversy continued to dog the Americans. On the morning that the 400-meter relay race competition began, at the last moment, the only two Jews on the 1936 US track team, Marty Glickman
Marty Glickman
Martin "Marty" Glickman was a Jewish American track and field athlete and sports announcer, born in The Bronx, New York. His parents, Harry and Molly Glickmann, immigrated to the United States from Jassy, Romania....

 and Sam Stoller
Sam Stoller
Sam Stoller was an American sprinter and long jumper who tied the world record in the 60-yard dash in 1936. He is best known for his exclusion from the American 4 × 100 relay team at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, triggering widespread speculation that he and Marty Glickman,...

, were replaced by Jesse Owens
Jesse Owens
James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens was an American track and field athlete who specialized in the sprints and the long jump. He participated in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, where he achieved international fame by winning four gold medals: one each in the 100 meters, the 200 meters, the...

 and Ralph Metcalfe
Ralph Metcalfe
Ralph Harold Metcalfe was an African-American athlete and politician who came second to Jesse Owens in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Metcalfe jointly held the world record for the 100 meter sprint. Metcalfe was known as the world’s fastest human from 1932 through 1934...

. The public rationale was that the German coaches were "hiding" first-class athletes with the intention of substituting them into their relay team at the last moment; Owens and Metcalfe, it was argued, were better runners than Stoller and Glickman, and would stand the best chance of foiling this German ploy. Even on the day of the substitution, however, this justification met with skepticism, and another explanation has long been held up as more credible: that Brundage, whose sympathies toward the German government were not hidden, had pressured the American coaches to remove the only two Jews on the track team at the last moment, so as not to embarrass Hitler and the Nazis with Jews on the medals podium if the Americans won. As it happened, no hidden German "ringers" ever materialized to join the German squad at the last moment. Stoller and Glickman were the only athletes pulled from the U.S. rosters during the Games. The newly reconstituted American team did win easily, and set a new world record in the process.

In the end, one Jewish athlete was permitted to compete on the German team - fencing medalist Helene Mayer
Helene Mayer
Helene Mayer was a world champion Olympic fencer who competed for Nazi Germany in the 1936 Summer Olympics, despite having been forced to leave Germany and resettle in the United States because she was of Jewish family background.She was Jewish, and was born in Offenbach am Main.-Fencing...

. Mayer had already been forced to leave Germany and settle in the U.S. because of the Nazis' purge of Jews from the German athletic scene - but, as a patriotic German, she hoped that her representation of her country might facilitate a re-entry into German society; it did not.

After the games, Brundage made no secret of his admiration for the Nazi regime and his distrust of Jews. He praised the Nazi regime at a Madison Square
Madison Square
Madison Square is formed by the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Broadway at 23rd Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The square was named for James Madison, fourth President of the United States and the principal author of the United States Constitution.The focus of the square is...

 rally. He privately arranged for American showings of Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia, a film about the 1936 games, complaining that the film wasn't receiving wider distribution because the movie industry was controlled by Jews. And after the 1936 Olympics, Brundage's construction company was awarded a building contract to build the German Embassy in Washington, D.C. Brundage was notified in a letter from Nazi authorities acknowledging Brundage's pro-Nazi sympathies. Eventually, he was expelled from the America First Committee
America First Committee
The America First Committee was the foremost non-interventionist pressure group against the American entry into World War II. Peaking at 800,000 members, it was likely the largest anti-war organization in American history. Started in 1940, it became defunct after the attack on Pearl Harbor in...

 in 1941 because of his pro-German leanings.

As late as 1971, Brundage still claimed, "The Berlin Games were the finest in modern history...I will accept no dispute over that fact". And indeed, the lavish ceremonial excesses of the Berlin games have become the standard for modern Olympiads, and many of the grand flourishes invented for the 1936 games - like the torch relay bringing the Olympic Flame from Mount Olympus - have now come to be accepted as critical ingredients of Olympic magic, and their Nazi-era origins have been largely forgotten.

Gender and Gender Verification

Brundage opposed the inclusion of women as Olympic competitors; he insisted they have no role in the Olympic Games beyond the ceremonial or decorative. He was quoted in 1936: "I am fed up to the ears with women as track and field competitors... her charms sink to something less than zero. As swimmers and divers, girls are [as] beautiful and adroit as they are ineffective and unpleasing on the track." (Brundage also suspended Eleanor Holm
Eleanor Holm
Eleanor G. Holm was an American swimmer. An Olympic champion, she is best known for having been suspended from the 1936 Summer Olympics team, after she had attended a cocktail party on the transatlantic cruise ship taking her to Germany...

 from the 1936 Olympic Games) Brundage, at the time of the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, called for a system to be established to examine female athletes for "sex ambiguities", according to a contemporary article in Time devoted to what it called "hermaphrodite
Hermaphrodite
In biology, a hermaphrodite is an organism that has reproductive organs normally associated with both male and female sexes.Many taxonomic groups of animals do not have separate sexes. In these groups, hermaphroditism is a normal condition, enabling a form of sexual reproduction in which both...

s". He made this request after observing Czechoslovak runner and jumper Zdenka Koubkova and English shot-putter and javelin-thrower Mary Edith Louise Weston. Both individuals had sex change surgery
Sex reassignment surgery
Sex reassignment surgery is a term for the surgical procedures by which a person's physical appearance and function of their existing sexual characteristics are altered to resemble...

 and legally changed their names, to Zdenek Koubek and Mark Weston, respectively. Gender verification in sports did not exist at that time, but it began during his tenure as president of the IOC.

IOC

Brundage became vice-president of the IOC after the death of its president, Henri de Baillet-Latour
Henri de Baillet-Latour
Count Henri de Baillet-Latour was a Belgian aristocrat and the third president of the International Olympic Committee....

, in 1942. He was subsequently elected president at the 47th IOC Session in Helsinki
Helsinki
Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...

 in 1952, succeeding Sigfrid Edström
Sigfrid Edström
Johannes Sigfrid Edström was a Swedish industrialist, chairman of the Sweden-America Foundation, and an official with the International Olympic Committee.-Early life:...

.

Opposition to professionalism

During his tenure as IOC president, Brundage strongly opposed any form of professionalism
Professional sports
Professional sports, as opposed to amateur sports, are sports in which athletes receive payment for their performance. Professional athleticism has come to the fore through a combination of developments. Mass media and increased leisure have brought larger audiences, so that sports organizations...

 in the Olympic Games
Olympic Games
The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...

. Gradually, this opinion became less accepted by the sports world and other IOC members, but his opinions led to some embarrassing incidents, such as the exclusion of Austrian skier Karl Schranz
Karl Schranz
Karl Schranz is a former champion alpine ski racer, one of the best in the 1960s.During his lengthy career , Schranz won twenty major downhills, many major giant slalom races and several major slaloms...

 from the 1972 Winter Olympics
1972 Winter Olympics
The 1972 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XI Olympic Winter Games, were a winter multi-sport event which was celebrated from February 3 to February 13, 1972 in Sapporo, Hokkaidō, Japan...

. Likewise, he opposed the restoration of Olympic medals to Native American
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...

 athlete Jim Thorpe
Jim Thorpe
Jacobus Franciscus "Jim" Thorpe * Gerasimo and Whiteley. pg. 28 * americaslibrary.gov, accessed April 23, 2007. was an American athlete of mixed ancestry...

, who had been stripped of them when it was found that he had played professional baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...

 before taking part in the 1912 Olympic games
1912 Summer Olympics
The 1912 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the V Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event held in Stockholm, Sweden, between 5 May and 27 July 1912. Twenty-eight nations and 2,407 competitors, including 48 women, competed in 102 events in 14 sports...

 (where he had beaten Brundage in the pentathlon and decathlon). Despite this, Brundage accepted the "shamateurism" from Eastern bloc
Eastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...

 countries, in which team members were nominally students, soldiers, or civilians working in a non-sports profession, but in reality were paid by their states to train on a full-time basis. Brundage claimed it was "their way of life
Cultural relativism
Cultural relativism is the principle that an individual human's beliefs and activities should be understood by others in terms of that individual's own culture. This principle was established as axiomatic in anthropological research by Franz Boas in the first few decades of the 20th century and...

." It was revealed after his death that Brundage had been responsible for notifying the IOC of Thorpe's playing professional baseball years before. Following Brundage's retirement in 1972, Thorpe was reinstated as an amateur by the Amateur Athletic Union
Amateur Athletic Union
The Amateur Athletic Union is one of the largest non-profit volunteer sports organizations in the United States. A multi-sport organization, the AAU is dedicated exclusively to the promotion and development of amateur sports and physical fitness programs.-History:The AAU was founded in 1888 to...

 the next year. The IOC officially pardoned him in 1982 and ordered that his medals be presented to his family.

Politicization of sport

Brundage also opposed anything that he viewed as the politicization of sport. At the 1968 Summer Olympics
1968 Summer Olympics
The 1968 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XIX Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event held in Mexico City, Mexico in October 1968. The 1968 Games were the first Olympic Games hosted by a developing country, and the first Games hosted by a Spanish-speaking country...

 in Mexico City, US sprinters Tommie Smith
Tommie Smith
Tommie Smith is an African American former track & field athlete and wide receiver in the American Football League. At the 1968 Summer Olympics, Smith won the 200-meter dash finals in 19.83 seconds – the first time the 20 second barrier was broken...

 and John Carlos
John Carlos
John Wesley Carlos is a Cuban American former track and field athlete and professional football player. He was the bronze-medal winner in the 200 meters at the 1968 Summer Olympics and his black power salute on the podium with Tommie Smith caused much political controversy...

 raised their fists
1968 Olympics Black Power salute
The 1968 Olympics Black Power salute involved the African American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos giving the Black power salute at the Olympic Stadium in Mexico City...

 to show support for the Black Power
Black Power
Black Power is a political slogan and a name for various associated ideologies. It is used in the movement among people of Black African descent throughout the world, though primarily by African Americans in the United States...

 movement during their medal ceremony. Brundage expelled both African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 men from the Olympic Village
Olympic Village
An Olympic Village is an accommodation centre built for an Olympic Games, usually within an Olympic Park or elsewhere in a host city. Olympic Villages are built to house all participating athletes, as well as officials, athletic trainers, and other staff. Since the Munich Massacre at the 1972...

 and had them suspended from the US Olympic team. Brundage had made no objections against Nazi salute
Hitler salute
The Nazi salute, or Hitler salute , was a gesture of greeting in Nazi Germany usually accompanied by saying, Heil Hitler! ["Hail Hitler!"], Heil, mein Führer ["Hail, my leader!"], or Sieg Heil! ["Hail victory!"]...

s during the Berlin Olympics.

Brundage strongly opposed the exclusion of Rhodesia
Rhodesia
Rhodesia , officially the Republic of Rhodesia from 1970, was an unrecognised state located in southern Africa that existed between 1965 and 1979 following its Unilateral Declaration of Independence from the United Kingdom on 11 November 1965...

 from the Olympics due to the nation's oppressive racial policies. He was bitterly resentful that Rhodesia was prevented from competing in the 1972 Summer Olympics
1972 Summer Olympics
The 1972 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XX Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event held in Munich, West Germany, from August 26 to September 11, 1972....

 in Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

, West Germany, (the last Games of his tenure as IOC president). That controversy was soon overshadowed by the events now known as the "Munich Massacre
Munich massacre
The Munich massacre is an informal name for events that occurred during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Bavaria in southern West Germany, when members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage and eventually killed by the Palestinian group Black September. Members of Black September...

," although Brundage famously equated both events as attacks on Olympic integrity.

Munich massacre

Brundage may be best remembered for his decision during the Munich Olympics to continue the Games following the Black September
Black September (group)
The Black September Organization was a Palestinian paramilitary group, founded in 1970. It was responsible for the kidnapping and murder of eleven Israeli athletes and officials, and fatal shooting of a West German policeman, during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, their most publicized event...

 Palestinian terrorist attack
Munich massacre
The Munich massacre is an informal name for events that occurred during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Bavaria in southern West Germany, when members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage and eventually killed by the Palestinian group Black September. Members of Black September...

 which killed 11 Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

i athletes. While some criticized Brundage's decision, most did not, and few athletes withdrew from the Games. The Olympic competitions were suspended on the afternoon of September 5 (about 11 hours after the terrorists killed two Israeli sports people and took 9 hostages) for one complete day. The next day, a memorial service of eighty thousand spectators and three thousand athletes was held in the Olympic Stadium. Brundage gave an address in which he stated

Retirement

Brundage retired as IOC president following the 1972 Summer Games, having had the job for 20 years, and was succeeded by Lord Killanin
Michael Morris, 3rd Baron Killanin
Michael Morris, 3rd Baron Killanin, MBE, TD was an Irish journalist, author, sports official, the sixth president of the International Olympic Committee...

. He is the only Non-European to hold the IOC presidency.

Philanthropy

In addition to his role in sports, Brundage was a noted collector of Asian art
Asian art
Asian art can refer to art amongst many cultures in Asia.-Various types of Asian art:*Afghan art*Azerbaijanian art*Balinese art*Bhutanese art*Buddhist art*Burmese contemporary art*Chinese art*Eastern art*Indian art*Iranian art*Islamic art...

. During his lifetime, and by bequest on his death, he gave much of his collection to the city of San Francisco, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

. This formed the nucleus (and, as of 2003, still accounts for over half the contents) of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco
Asian Art Museum of San Francisco
The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco is a museum in San Francisco, California, United States. It has one of the most comprehensive collections of Asian art in the world....

, initially founded to house and display his donation.

Private life

In 1927, when he was 40, Brundage married Elizabeth Dunlap, the daughter of a Chicago banker. The marriage produced no children.

During his marriage, however, Brundage fathered two sons out of wedlock with his Finnish mistress, Lillian Linea Dresden. His affair with Dresden was one of many. The children were born in 1951 and 1952, at precisely the time that Brundage was being considered for the presidency of the IOC. Though he privately acknowledged paternity, Brundage took great pains to conceal the existence of these children, concerned that the truth about his extra-marital relationships would take a toll on on his prestige as a sports figure. In order to avoid a political scandal, he requested that his name be kept off the birth certificates.

Elizabeth Brundage suffered a stroke in 1964 and died in 1971.

The following year, when Brundage was 85, he met and quickly married a 36-year-old German, Marianne Charlotte Katharina Stefanie Princess Reuss.
Brundage died on May 8, 1975, aged 87 years, three years after his retirement as IOC president, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen
Garmisch-Partenkirchen
Garmisch-Partenkirchen is a mountain resort town in Bavaria, southern Germany. It is the administrative centre of the district of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in the Oberbayern region, and the district is on the border with Austria...

, West Germany. A long time Chicago resident, he is buried in the Rosehill Cemetery
Rosehill Cemetery, Chicago
Rosehill Cemetery is a Victorian era cemetery on the North Side of Chicago, Illinois, USA, and at , is the largest cemetery in the City of Chicago. The name "Rosehill" resulted from a City Clerk's error – the area was previously called "Roe's Hill", named for nearby farmer Hiram Roe...

. He donated his personal papers to the archives at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.

Brundage's dalliances may have influenced his policy decisions at times. He refused to allow Eleanor Holm to compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympics because of supposed misbehavior; but decades later, Holm confided in fellow Olympian Dave Sime that Brundage's grudge stemmed from an incident in which he propositioned her sexually and she turned him down.

External links

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