IOC May Shift Position on DeMont Too

Congratulatory phone calls poured into the Tucson office of Rick DeMont on the day the United States Olympic Committee cleared his name, but one in particular left him “speechless.” An advisor told him there’s a sense of a shift within the International Olympic Committee, that it might look at his case next week at its executive board meeting in Dakar, Senegal.

DeMont, the swimmer who was stripped of his Olympic gold medal in 1972 at age 16 for using an asthma medication containing the banned substance ephedrine, will be recognized by the USOC at its board meeting in April. Still, there is a long way from the USOC’s move to DeMont’s final goal, the reinstatement of his gold medal.

“Now that the IOC has perked up and said some positive things, that’s a huge change,” DeMont said Wednesday. “It’s happening right now and I don’t even believe it. This has floored me because we’ve been vetoed two times at their [IOC] meeting, man, the tide is changing.”

The USOC statement, while not an apology, provides DeMont a sense of closure and welcomes him back into the Olympic family. It was a recognition that DeMont did nothing wrong, considering he made the proper disclosures of the asthma medication.

“It’s more than humanity,” USOC spokesman Mike Moran said. “It’s recognition of a good spirit and an honest person. He needed someone to say, ‘You were a kid and it wasn’t your fault.’ ”