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Former IOC president Samaranch dead at 89
(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-04-22 09:18
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 This April 17, 2001, file photo, shows Juan Antonio Samaranch, president of the International Olympic Committee, listens to the translation of a journalist's question during a news conference at the IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. Samaranch died Wednesday April 21, 2010, at a hospital in Barcelona, Spain. He was 89. [Photo/Agencies] |
His coffin will then be carried on the shoulders of a group of athletes to the funeral at the nearby city cathedral.
"He made the IOC strong, financially strong," former committee vice president Lambis Nikolaou, who has been a member since 1986, told Reuters.
"He planned its expansion and was responsible for this unprecedented growth of the movement," he added.
"The last time I saw him was in Vancouver and his assistant told me Samaranch wanted to leave after the Games were over to go on a long trip to China or somewhere far away. That was Samaranch. He was just unstoppable."
