103 Facts About Avery Brundage

Avery Brundage was the fifth president of the International Olympic Committee, serving from 1952 to 1972, the only American and first non-European to attain that position.

Avery Brundage was born in Detroit in 1887 to a working-class family.

Avery Brundage competed in the 1912 Summer Olympics, where he participated in the pentathlon and decathlon, but did not win any medals; both events were won by teammate Jim Thorpe.

Avery Brundage won national championships in track three times between 1914 and 1918 and founded his own construction business.

Avery Brundage earned his wealth from this company and from investments, and never accepted pay for his involvement in sports.

Avery Brundage successfully prevented a US boycott of the Games, and he was elected to the IOC that year.

Avery Brundage quickly became a major figure in the Olympic movement and was elected IOC president in 1952.

In retirement, Avery Brundage married his second wife, a German princess.

Avery Brundage died in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1975 at age 87.

Avery Brundage was born in Detroit, Michigan, on September 28,1887, the son of Charles and Minnie Brundage.

The Brundages moved to Chicago when Avery was five, and Charles soon thereafter abandoned his family.

Avery Brundage wrote for various campus publications and continued his involvement in sports.

Avery Brundage played basketball and ran track for Illinois, and participated in several intramural sports.

Avery Brundage disliked the corruption of the Chicago building trades.

Avery Brundage had been successful in several track and field events while at Illinois.

At Stockholm, Avery Brundage finished sixth in the pentathlon and 16th in the decathlon.

Avery Brundage later moved up one spot in the standings in each event when his fellow American, Jim Thorpe, who had won both events, was disqualified after it was shown that he had played semi-professional baseball: this meant Thorpe was considered a professional athlete, not an amateur as was required for Olympic participation.

Avery Brundage's refusal led to charges that he held a grudge for being beaten in Stockholm.

In 1915, he struck out on his own in construction, founding the Avery Brundage Company, of which his uncle Edward was a director.

Avery Brundage was US all-around champion in 1914,1916, and 1918.

In 1928, on the resignation of then-AOA president General Douglas MacArthur, Avery Brundage was elected president of the AOA; he was elected president of the AOC, a post he held for over 20 years.

In 1925 Avery Brundage became vice-president of the AAU, and chairman of its Handball Committee.

Avery Brundage quickly displayed what writer Roger Butterfield termed "a dictatorial temperament" in a 1948 article for Life magazine.

In 1932, soon after winning three medals at the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, track star Mildred "Babe" Didrikson appeared in an automobile advertisement, and the Avery Brundage-led AAU quickly suspended her amateur status.

The foundation of Avery Brundage's political world view was the proposition that communism was an evil before which all other evils were insignificant.

Nazi pledges of non-discrimination in sports proved inconsistent with their actions, such as the expulsion of Jews from sports clubs, and in September 1934, Avery Brundage sailed for Germany to see for himself.

Avery Brundage met with government officials and others, although he was not allowed to meet with Jewish sports leaders alone.

Avery Brundage took the position that as the Germans had reported non-discrimination to the IOC, and the IOC had accepted that report, US Olympic authorities were bound by that determination.

Those who had advocated a boycott were foiled by the AOC, and they turned to the Amateur Athletic Union, hoping that the organization, though led by Avery Brundage, would refuse to certify American athletes for the 1936 Olympics.

Avery Brundage's forces won the key votes, and the AAU approved sending a team to Berlin, specifying that this did not mean it supported the Nazis.

Avery Brundage was not magnanimous in victory, demanding the resignation of opponents.

Immediately upon arrival in Germany, Avery Brundage became headline news when he and the AOC dismissed American swimmer Eleanor Holm, who was a gold medalist in 1932 and expected to repeat, for allegedly getting drunk at late-night parties and missing her curfew.

Avery Brundage discussed the matter with fellow AOC members, then met with Holm.

Decades later, Holm told Olympic sprinter Dave Sime that Avery Brundage had held a grudge against her, having propositioned her, and she turned him down.

Avery Brundage denied any involvement in the decision, which remains controversial.

Avery Brundage was selected to fill Edstrom's place on the executive board.

Avery Brundage wrote to a German correspondent regretting that Leni Riefenstahl's film about the Berlin Olympics, Olympia, could not be commercially shown in the United States, as "unfortunately the theaters and moving picture companies are almost all owned by Jews".

Avery Brundage joined the Keep America Out of War Committee and became a member of America First.

Avery Brundage was the subject of an FBI investigation in 1942, following allegations of pro-Nazi sympathies.

Avery Brundage was one of the leaders in the founding of the Pan-American Games, participating in the initial discussions in August 1940 in Buenos Aires.

Avery Brundage became an early member of the international Pan-American Games Commission, although the inaugural event in Buenos Aires was postponed because of the war and was eventually held in 1951, with Avery Brundage present.

Edstrom and Avery Brundage did not await the end of war to rebuild the Olympic movement; Avery Brundage even sent parcels to Europe in aid of IOC members and others in places where food was scarce.

When Edstrom was made president by the first postwar IOC session at Lausanne in September 1946, Avery Brundage was elected first vice-president.

All three members of what came to be known as the Avery Brundage Commission were from the Western Hemisphere and met in New Orleans in January 1949.

Amateurism, to Avery Brundage, expressed the concept of the Renaissance man, with abilities in many fields, yet a specialist in none.

Enforcement of these rules often fell to National Olympic Committees, and Avery Brundage found them less than enthusiastic about rules which hampered their own athletes in the pursuit of medals.

The decision was reversed in January 1970 after Avery Brundage said that ice hockey's status as an Olympic sport would be in jeopardy if the change was made.

Gunther Sabetzki became president of the IIHF in 1975, after Avery Brundage had left the post of IOC president, and helped to resolve the dispute with the CAHA.

In 1972, Avery Brundage called for the elimination of the Winter Olympics after 1976, finding them hopelessly polluted by rampant commercialism, especially in alpine skiing.

Avery Brundage was anxious to reintegrate Germany into the Olympic movement once the Federal Republic of Germany was formed in 1949.

Avery Brundage was impressed by the progress which had been made there since a visit he had made in 1912 after competing in Stockholm.

Avery Brundage wanted the Russians [sic] in the Olympics, communists or not.

Avery Brundage visited the USSR at Soviet invitation in 1954.

Avery Brundage deemed the nation's physical education program as "creating the greatest army of athletes the world has ever seen," warning that Americans were by comparison soft and unfit.

Avery Brundage found his view, often expressed in the press, that physical education and competitive sports made for better citizens, especially in the event of war, more enthusiastically embraced in the Soviet Union than in the United States.

In 1954, the Avery Brundage-headed IOC, in a narrow vote, recognized both committees, thus allowing both states to participate at Melbourne.

Avery Brundage took the position that despite similar concerns about state sponsorship as with the USSR, once the PRC's committee was recognized and reported to the IOC that all eligibility rules were observed, the international committee had to accept that unless it had evidence to the contrary.

Avery Brundage was frustrated by the continuing controversy, considering the squabble a distraction from the goal of advancing the Olympic movement.

The press interpreted the ruling to mean that Nationalist China had been expelled from the Olympic movement, and for the next year, the anti-communist Avery Brundage found himself under attack in the press as a communist sympathizer.

Avery Brundage initially took the word of South African sport leaders that all citizens were able to compete for a place on the Olympic team, and that non-white South Africans simply were not good enough.

Avery Brundage was livid at the decision, believing that the IOC had yielded to blackmail.

In 1974, after Avery Brundage left office, the IOC found evidence of segregated facilities in Rhodesia, and it subsequently withdrew recognition from its NOC.

Unpaid as IOC president, even for his expenses, Avery Brundage sometimes spent $50,000 per year to finance his role.

Avery Brundage had been initially elected in 1952 for an eight-year term; he was re-elected unanimously in 1960 for an additional four years.

Avery Brundage was re-elected in 1964 by an announced unanimous vote, though Guttmann records that Avery Brundage actually only narrowly turned back a challenge by Exeter.

Avery Brundage did not recognize the PGA-NOC, but did establish joint IOC-NOC committees to address NOC concerns.

Avery Brundage came to consider Meyer too impetuous, and dismissed him in 1964, abolishing the office.

Avery Brundage deemed it to be a domestic political statement unfit for the apolitical, international forum the Olympic Games were intended to be.

Avery Brundage, who termed the incident "the nasty demonstration against the American flag by negroes", objected in vain to its inclusion.

Avery Brundage cast a blank ballot in the vote which selected the Irishman, considering him an intellectual lightweight without the force of character needed to hold the Olympic movement together.

Avery Brundage hoped that the Munich Games would take the sting out of his defeat over the Rhodesian issue.

Avery Brundage, once informed, rushed to the Olympic Village, where he conferred with German and Bavarian state officials through the day, playing what Guttmann describes as a modest role in the discussions.

Killanin, after his own retirement as IOC president, stated that "I believe Avery Brundage was right to continue and that his stubborn determination saved the Olympic Movement one more time" but that Avery Brundage's mention of the Rhodesian question was, while not inappropriate, at least better left for another time.

IOC director Berlioux stated that Avery Brundage would come to the Chateau de Vidy and take telephone calls or look at correspondence while he waited for Lord Killanin to turn to him for help.

Avery Brundage had once jested that his ambition was to wed a German princess.

In January 1974, Avery Brundage underwent surgery for cataracts and glaucoma.

Avery Brundage died there on May 8,1975, of heart failure, and was buried at Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago.

Avery Brundage left his papers and memorabilia to the University of Illinois; he had already given it $350,000 to fund scholarships for students interested in competing in sports who do not receive an athletic scholarship.

In 1927, at the age of 40, Avery Brundage married Elizabeth Dunlap, who was the daughter of a Chicago banker.

Avery Brundage was a trained soprano, which was a talent that she exhibited to people who visited the Brundage home.

In 1973, Avery Brundage married Princess Mariann Charlotte Katharina Stefanie von Reuss.

Avery Brundage had no children with either of his two wives.

However, during his first marriage Avery Brundage fathered two sons out of wedlock with his Finnish mistress, Lilian Dresden.

The children were born in 1951 and 1952, at precisely the time that Avery Brundage was being considered for the presidency of the IOC.

Avery Brundage requested that his name be kept off the birth certificates.

Avery Brundage visited his two sons periodically in the 1950s, visits that tailed off to telephone calls in the 1960s and nothing in his final years.

Avery Brundage did establish a trust fund for the boys' education and start in life, but after his death, unnamed in his will, they sued and won a small settlement of $62,500 each out of his $19 million estate.

Avery Brundage, who applied for a commission in the Army Ordnance Corps but was rejected, in the postwar period became a member of the Construction Division Association, composed of men who had built facilities for the military, and later became its president from 1926 to 1928.

In 1923, Avery Brundage constructed a massive assembly plant on Torrence Avenue on Chicago's South Side for the Ford Motor Company.

Avery Brundage's foresight resulted in a fortune which by 1960 was estimated at $25,000,000.

Avery Brundage sold the hotel in 1970, but later reclaimed it when the purchaser failed to make required payments.

On his return to the United States after the June 1939 IOC session in London, Avery Brundage systematically set about becoming a major collector of Asian art.

Avery Brundage bought many books on Asian art, stating in an interview that a "major library is an indispensable tool".

Avery Brundage rarely was fooled by forgeries, and was undeterred by the few he did buy, noting that in Asian art, fake pieces were often a thousand years old.

Avery Brundage engaged the French scholar, then teaching at the University of California, as full-time curator of his collection and advisor on acquisitions.

The painter whom Avery Brundage admired the most was, 12th-century Chinese emperor of the Song dynasty; the collector never was able to obtain any of his work.

In 1959, Avery Brundage agreed to give part of his collection to the city of San Francisco.

Avery Brundage made another major donation in 1969, and left the remainder of his collection to the museum in his will.

Avery Brundage connected the world of art and that of amateur sports in his own mind.

Avery Brundage owned several thousand, and held two in his hands as he spoke.

In 2021, San Francisco's Asian Art Museum removed a bust of Avery Brundage that had sat prominently in its foyer for five decades, which had been dedicated to him for his donating his sizable collection.

Museum director Jay Xu wrote that Avery Brundage "espoused racist and anti-Semitic views".

Alfred Senn suggests that Avery Brundage remained too long as IOC president:.