Juan Antonio Samaranch, President of the IOC from 1980 to 2000, died today of heart failure. He was 89. 

During his term, Samaranch helped to make the Olympic movement financially healthy, with big television deals and sponsorships bringing  in the money needed for evermore elaborate shows, numbers of participants and better conditions for sport and the athletes, as well as "the Olympic family". 

"I cannot find the words to express the distress of the Olympic Family" said IOC President Jacques Rogge. "I am personally deeply saddened by the death of the man who built up the Olympic Games of the modern era, a man who inspired me, and whose knowledge of sport was truly exceptional. Thanks to his extraordinary vision and talent, Samaranch was the architect of a strong and unified Olympic Movement. I can only pay tribute to his tremendous achievements and legacy, and praise his genuine devotion to the Olympic Movement and its values. We have lost a great man, a mentor and a friend who dedicated his long and fulfilled life to Olympism."

On the positive side during his time in office, women were welcomed to the IOC table, as were athlete representatives, he worked for the abolition of amateurism and played a key role in using TV rights as a way of bankrolling the Games. He also used the development of a marketing company, ISL (International Sport and Leisure), headed by Horst Dassler, head of the sports goods manufacturer Adidas, to raise many millions through marketing the IOC emblem. Samaranch will also be recalled for his part in the creation of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

Of the many obits out there marking Samaranch's passing, they come no finer than this one, penned by John Rodda, The Guardian writer in Britain before his own death last year. Back in Munich, 1972, Rodda was among the few journalists, and, it is said, the only one writing in English, who managed to get inside the Athletes Village when Arab terrorists took Israeli athletes hostage before murdering a number of them.

Rodda writes: "One of Samaranch's biggest triumphs came in 1992, when he stood in the centre of the Montjuïc stadium in the city of his birth and called upon the King of Spain to open the Games, an event that transformed Barcelona. It was really the moment to pass on the Olympic torch but, like so many, Samaranch found power hard to relinquish."

Samaranch presided over two boycotted Games, in 1980 and 1984, his intervention unable to influence world politics. Samaranch made a tradition of referring to each passing Games as "the best ever". He held back that "praise" in 1996, after the Games in Atlanta, a commercial success on several levels, were widely judged to have failed on many other levels through poor organisation, including accreditation processes and transport from airport to hotels on arrival at the Games that lasted seven and more hours in many cases, with athletes sleeping on the floor of the airport before being allowed to continue on their way.

Samaranch also came in for criticism during his term of office. The big questions included: what does the IOC do with all its money?; has over-commercialization ruined Olympic sport?; and did he do enough to stop corrupt practices?

His steepest detractor was the journalist Andrew Jennings, whose investigations and fact-finding missions are revealed through a website dealing with Samaranch's fascist past as a member of Franco's dictatorship.

During his time at the top, Samaranch displayed unpalatable tendencies when he insisted on being addressed as "Excellency", a title used for heads of state. He also insisted on a chauffeured limousine as well as a presidential suite in the finest hotel of whatever city he visited. When in Lausanne, occupied the presidential suite at the Lausanne Palace Hotel, costing US$500,000 a year, estimates suggested.

Besides his lavish lifestyle, he came in for criticism for falling short on issues of doping and corruption. A closed-door inquiry expelled several IOC members for accepting bribes but cleared Samaranch of wrongdoing. Samaranch declared that the IOC's worst crisis was over but a group of former Olympic athletes, led by Canadian swimmer Mark Tewksbury, Olympic 100m backstroke champion at Samaranch's 'home Games' in Barcelona in 1992, continued to push for his removal. There were allegations of vote buying in Salt Lake City, Utah's successful bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics. 

In 2001, Samaranch was succeeded by Jacques Rogge as president of the IOC and became Honorary President for Life of the International Olympic Committee. His son, Juan Antonio Samaranch Salisachs, is currently a member of the IOC.

The closest I came to Samaranch was through a swimmer from the German Democractic Republic, whose tale will one day be told in full. For now, suffice it to say that the swimmer visited Samaranch with her Olympic medals in tow. She placed them on the table, pushed them across his desk and said: "Take them back, I know that they were won under false pretenses." What followed left the woman in question feeling offended and betrayed all over again some years after sustaining the scars of State Plan 14:25 at a time when Samaranch's hands were on the IOC wheel.

Samaranch's wife, Maria Teresa Salisachs Rowe, died in 2000. The couple are survived by their son Juan Antonio, and daughter, Maria Teresa.