Usoc Search For Director Cut Down To 12 Candidates

A dozen contenders, including representatives from women and minority groups, have survived the first phase of the drawn-out selection process to fill the top job in the U.S. Olympic Committee.

USOC president LeRoy T. Walker said Friday that a search committee had winnowed the group of candidates to succeed Harvey Schiller as executive director from 150 down to 12, who will be interviewed over the coming weeks.

No time frame was set for filling the vacancy, which is now nearly a year old, but Walker said the new director would be named well before the Atlanta Olympics next year.

He and other USOC officials refused to reveal names of those who are left in the hunt, to protect their confidentiality.

But in conversations at the committee’s executive board meeting, two names predominated, one still in the race and one apparently out of it.

Dick Schultz, the former executive director of the NCAA, has emerged as the top contender, despite his age (he’s in his 60s) and questions that surrounded his departure from the collegiate association’s top job more than a year ago. That situation involved allegations of improper payments to athletes at the University of Virginia while Schultz was athletic director.

Apparently out of contention, meanwhile, was John Krimsky, the USOC’s chief fund-raiser and deputy director.