Sandy Baldwin Admits to Misstating Credentials, May Step Down

PHOENIX, May 24. SANDY Baldwin, 62, the first woman to head the US Olympic Committee and a former president of USA Swimming, returned to her Phoenix home today amid revelations that she misrepresented her academic credentials.

Baldwin, a newly-appointed member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), had been in Malaysia for an IOC meeting.

According to a story in today's Arizona Republic by Olympic-beat writer Jeff Metcalfe, "a reporter for the University of Colorado Alumni Association who was doing a story on Baldwin because "she was listed as a 1962 Colorado graduate, discovered the inaccuracies in Baldwin's USOC biography."

Metcalfe reports that Baldwin actually completed her undergraduate degree at Arizona State University in 1962, after leaving Colorado in 1959.

"More seriously," write Metcalfe, "she admits to not having received a doctorate from ASU in 1967," as her USOC biography states. Though she earned a Masters degree from ASU, she never completed her doctoral dissertation "because of family and personal issues."

"I want to think about what's best for the Olympic movement and what's best for me," a tearful Baldwin told Metcalfe last night before attending her granddaughter's high school graduation.

The revelation may force Baldwin to step down as president of the USOC, a move that automatically would result in her forfeiting her seat on the IOC.

"I think it's my call," Baldwin said. "I love the Olympic movement, and I don't want to do anything to hurt it. I've done so much to help it, and the rest of my life I would promise everybody is such an open book. But I don't want to do one thing to take away the perfection of the Olympic ideals. So I'm not sure what I'm going to do."

The decision may not be hers. Jim Easton, a US member of the IOC, commented: "From what I've seen in the past, people who do this usually don't end up keeping the job they have."

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