Peter Ueberroth

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Peter Ueberroth

Peter Victor Ueberroth (born September 2, 1937 in Evanston , Illinois ) is an American sports official and California politician. From 1982 to 1984 he organized the Olympic Games in Los Angeles . From 1984 to 1989 he was commissioner for Major League Baseball . From 2004 to 2007 he served as President of the National Olympic Committee of the United States of America.

Ueberroth, whose father was of German and Austrian descent, grew up in Northern California . He attended Union High School in Fremont . After graduating from high school , he began a sports scholarship as a water polo player (he was a swimmer and had a good throwing arm as a baseball and football player) to study economics at San Jose State University , which he graduated in 1959. He built a national travel agency company for which he was named Junior Manager of the Year in 1977 . After the state of California, as well as the city and county of Los Angeles, refused to invest state money in the 1984 Olympic Games in referendums, the successful young entrepreneur was appointed as the new general secretary for the games (his predecessor was a union official who averted the feared strikes should) chosen. Ueberroth organized the Olympic Games in Los Angeles , for which he was voted " Man of the Year " by Time magazine in 1984 . There, he managed to limit the Olympic boycott of the Soviet bloc to the Soviet satellite in the strict sense because it in a personal conversation with in 1982 Fidel Castro in Cuba could reach (mediated by Baseball Friends) that Castro promised, its influence in Africa is not to use against Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Olympics were the first purely privately funded games. In the end, a profit of approximately 250 million US dollars was recorded, which went to the youth sports promotion in the counties, which had provided sports facilities free of charge. The money is administered by the Amateur Sports Foundation (renamed the LA84 Foundation since 2008 ), of which IOC member Anita DeFrantz is President .

In 2003 Ueberroth ran unsuccessfully for California governor . Although he was a registered member of the Republicans , he started as an independent. With 25,134 votes, which corresponded to a share of 0.29 percent, he took sixth place, which he was between Arianna Huffington in fifth and Larry Flynt in seventh. He was elected President of the United States Olympic Committee for the 2004–2007 term .

In 2004 he was also elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . When he was awarded the Theodore Roosevelt Lifetime Achievement Prize from the NCAA in 2015 , his first reaction was: "I haven't done it yet."

literature

  • Arnd Krüger : Between politics and commerce. It happened 15 years ago. Olympic Games in Los Angeles. In: Back then. 31 (1999), 5, pp. 8-11.
  • Kenneth Reich: Making it happen. Peter Ueberroth and the 1984 Olympics. Capra P, Santa Barbara 1986, ISBN 0-88496-246-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Arnd Krüger : Between politics and commerce. It happened 15 years ago. Olympic Games in Los Angeles. In: Back then. 31 (1999), 5, pp. 8-11.
  2. ↑ http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-center/news/2016-ncaa-theodore-roosevelt-award-peter-ueberroth ; accessed on December 26, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Ueberroth, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ueberroth, Peter Victor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American sports official
DATE OF BIRTH September 2, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Evanston , Illinois