Avery Brundage

Avery Brundage was an American track athlete who became the fifth president of the International Olympic Committee, serving from 1952 to 1972 as the only American and the first non-European in that office. Born in Detroit on 28 September 1887 and raised largely in Chicago, he studied engineering at the University of Illinois and became a track star. He competed in the pentathlon and decathlon at the 1912 Summer Olympics without winning a medal, both events being won by his teammate Jim Thorpe, and won three national track championships between 1914 and 1918. He later became a sports administrator, fought a US boycott of the 1936 Games, and was elected to the IOC that year. A zealous advocate of amateurism, he is also remembered for the 1972 Munich Games, where he declared that the Games must go on, a decision since harshly criticized. He died in 1975 at age 87.