Juan Antonio Samaranch became President of the Olympic Committee in 1980. He took charge of a movement that was on the edge of collapse. The combined effects of terrorism, financial mismanagement and international boycotts, which had characterised the Games at Munich, Montreal and Moscow, had severely damaged the credibility of the Olympics. Twelve years later Samaranch presides over a highly successful organization, whose future is secure, and whose gross revenue between 1989 and 1992 will exceed $1.8 billion. David Miller has maintained close links with Samaranch throughout his IOC presidency, and with the help of many of Samaranch's colleagues and advisers, has produced a portrait of a man who has, in the course of his presidency, had to travel nearly two hundred million miles, meeting with many of the world's top political leaders, forging compromise and contributing to the stabilization of East-West sporting relations that ultimately produced a virtually boycott-free Seoul Olympics. This book takes the reader through the early days of deep and bitter internal political wrangling where Samaranch's diplomacy was tested to the limit - often reading like the machinations of a spy novel - the controversy surrounding the intense commercialism of the Los Angeles Olympics and the Ben Johnson drug incident.