The L.A. Times is running a mammoth seven-part series on the Olympics in anticipation of the Sydney Games. The installment this past week, by Alan Abrahamson, is about the International Olympic Committee's Juan Antonio Samaranch.

While this notion vaguely rested in the back of my brain, Abrahamson's article brought front and center the reality of how obviously Les McDonald—the International Triathlon Union's head—has patterned his entire "Olympic career" after that of Samaranch. I was struck by the parallels.

Perhaps it was not this article specifically, but a pair of articles that highlighted the strident similarities. How fitting that perhaps the most penetrating stories ever written about each man were published with 24 hours of each other. The article on McDonald—written by Andrew Kennedy—appeared in Australia's Inside Sport Magazine. (Go to the home page, then click "Features.")

Neither man takes a salary, yet both articles point to the "expenses" that both men take, or appear to take. Loyalty and patronage seem to be the virtue, and operating principle, respectively, that both hold in highest regard. One might say that a hallmark of both men is not that loyalty is rewarded, but that it is over-rewarded. Likewise there seems to be an equally ardent response by both to opposition, and it is perceived by both not as disagreement, but as disloyalty.

Neither man seems to be much of a believer in the electoral process. It is understandable that his belief in his own intrinsic value might lead Samaranch to tend toward a role as benevolent dictator, since he did spend 37 years as a mid-level bureaucrat in Franco's Fascist government. I can only assume that McDonald's excuse is that he's just following Samaranch's example.

The one difference, to me, is that Samaranch seems wholly taken by surprise by the rampant corruption in his organization, the degree to which no one will ever know. McDonald seems much shrewder to me. While Samaranch doesn't see—or does a very good job of hiding his knowledge of—the superficiality of the IOC's "democracy," McDonald carefully "monitors" the ITU's voting process.

One might almost imagine that Samaranch has written a manual entitled, "How I Did It," which McDonald keeps at his bedside. While I might criticize the tactics, I can't fault the strategy. It worked for Samaranch, and it's working for McDonald as well. But I wonder if the Samaranch example would've been followed entirely by McDonald if, a decade ago, when Samaranch was riding a wave of adulation, McDonald could've fast-forwarded ten years and seen what has befallen Samaranch now that the IOC's corruption has caught up to him. Samaranch constructed an engine that powered him, and his organization, to unimaginable heights. McDonald followed the blueprint. Both engines left a trail of pollution, and now both men are breathing the exhaust.

For every one of each man's failings, you've got to acknowledge an accomplishment if you want to be fair. And there is one more parallel. Neither man has the remotest intention of stepping down, and each believes in his heart of hearts that there is no one else capable of holding his organization together. Therefore, although everyone inside and out of the ITU believes McDonald will step down within a year of the Sydney Olympics—and although he has given his inner circle assurances this will be so—the smart money says McDonald is here to stay for awhile, barring a palace coup.

The finale is yet to be written for either man. Both probably believe they will rehabilitate their own, and their organizations', reputations. But neither is equipped to because of the moral failings of both.

But the measure of success is going to be whether each man's organization "wins"—not how it "played the game"—so both men may yet have monuments erected to them.