Tarnished Rings: The International Olympic Committee and the Salt Lake City Bid Scandal is an extensively researched, well-written, engaging, and informative book. It consists of 170 pages of text and a further 100 pages for appendices, notes, bibliography, and index. The 64 pages of notes clearly reflect the meticulous research of the three Canadian authors, Stephen Wenn, Robert Barney, and Scott Martyn. The very readable and accessible book has a clear focus and simple structure. The eight chapters offer a chronological account (commencing in November 1998) of the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) reaction to the scandal surrounding the bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics that were held in Salt Lake City, Utah. During the bidding process, several members of the IOC took bribes from the Salt Lake City Organizing Committee.

Although the modern history of the Olympics is full of conflicts, controversies, and scandals, the scope and magnitude of the corruption prior to the 2002 Winter Games took the world by surprise. The IOC's response to this crisis is the focus of this book. It reveals the halfhearted nature of the attempts of the inner circle of this NGO to reform itself against the context of Juan Antonio Samaranch's presidency and the pressures from the international media and sponsors.

The book commences with a short biography of Samaranch, president of the IOC from 1980 to 2001, and his threefold agenda for the Olympic movement. Samaranch is largely responsible for making the Olympic Games attractive to multimillion-dollar corporate sponsorship deals, turning these events into profitable financial ventures. In the aftermath of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, bidding for an Olympic mega-event has become increasingly competitive, expensive, and drawn out. Host cities started to spend millions on the tendering process and expected a large economic return and several other tangible and intangible benefits.

This first chapter sets the tone and is somehow symptomatic for the rest of the book. It paints a surprisingly positive picture of a highly controversial man. Samaranch's involvement with the fascist Franco regime in Spain (1939–1975) is mentioned but brushed aside in one short paragraph. Wenn, Barney, and Martyn offer the reader an alternative view, that is to “see him as more of a chameleon, a pragmatic and shrewd opportunist” (6), without providing any evidence for this assertion. Despite the sanitization of Samaranch's biography this kind of contextualization is certainly helpful as the former IOC president features prominently in this book. However, a second and equally important contextualization is completely missing: an outline of the development and organizational structuring of the IOC, a gated and elitist community of largely older men. After all, this organization is explicitly mentioned in the title and the focus of this book. Such an account of the way the IOC works would have helped to better understand this powerful NGO that, as the authors repeatedly mention, prefers to operate “behind closed doors” (60) and lacks transparency, accountability, and democratic structures and is therefore prone to nepotism and corruption. This certainly becomes clear throughout the book but, as the institutional arrangements of the IOC form a huge part of the actual problem, it deserves at least as much attention as the biography of Samaranch.

Instead the book contains several sections that do not appear to be so central to its main arguments. Among these are the stories about the World Conference on Doping in Sport (43–46), Sydney's ticketing fiasco (113–15), the termination of Reebok's sponsorship arrangements (115–17), and the influence and power of the IOC's European cohort (145–46), to name but a few.

Chapters 2–7 then offer a very detailed account of the development of the scandal and the IOC's multifaceted response. The authors leave no doubt that the IOC's main concerns are their reputation, brand image, and sponsorship arrangements. One does not get a sense in this vividly written and extremely detailed account that key players within the IOC are in fact concerned about fundamental human principles and desirable values, such as honesty, fairness, and integrity. The book clearly shows that the action taken by the IOC was driven by fears of losing income from sponsors as a result of negative media coverage. Wenn, Barney, and Martyn also provide compelling evidence that the IOC's relatively decisive punishment of several corrupt members was based on the selective application of principles, which other prominent Olympic scholars, such as John Lucas, emeritus professor at Penn State University, do not hesitate to describe as “a double standard” (74). The authors themselves, however, appear to lack a critical voice. Although they repeatedly display an excellent and thorough understanding of the shortcomings of both the IOC and Samaranch they hardly ever dare to identify them as such. Instead, they let others point out the obvious but simultaneously discredit these commentators. “Sport historian Douglas Booth … a critic of most things Olympic, concluded that the IOC netted members, save for Ganga, with ‘minnow status’” (75).

What this book does not do is to explore fully the roots and causes of the IOC's predisposition to corruption. On this front, it remains rather speculative. On several occasions throughout the book, the wider problem, that is the IOC's structures and composition, becomes individualized and reduced to personal weaknesses. Individual members of the Olympic family “lacked the sense of personal ethics one would desire” (21). Consequently, their “personal ethics became a matter of public disgust” (166). Therefore the only valid criticism of Samaranch was that his strategy to extend the Olympic family was carried out “without due regard to character issues” (157) of those new members that were invited to join this exclusive club.

While the degree of descriptive detail that this book offers is overwhelming, some of the more analytical parts are questionable. For the authors, the Salt Lake City scandal “exposed an understaffed and ill-prepared media communications operation in Lausanne” (166). Surely, the nature and magnitude of this crisis revealed more about the IOC than that. Furthermore, their critical evaluation in the final chapter of this book of both Samaranch's presidency (147) and the reforms the IOC implemented “to establish a meaningful brand recovery” (143) appears to be overly positive as the mere existence of an Ethics Commission, even in combination with other measures, does not root out problems such as corruption and nepotism.

In a nutshell, this book offers the most detailed account of the IOC's response to the Salt Lake City bidding scandal. It tells a fascinating story that is meticulously researched and nicely maps the development of the subsequent and modest changes the IOC implemented. Wenn, Barney, and Martyn certainly succeed in clearly illustrating the interconnections and interfaces of media responses, pressures by sponsors, and the internal workings of the IOC. This story reveals the many shortcomings of one of the most powerful and questionable international NGOs.

However, it does not attempt to theorize this story, does not draw on abstract models and concepts and does not attempt to draw general conclusions that would be useful for a better understanding of those NGOs that own the brands of megamedia sports spectacles. Wenn, Barney, and Martyn offer an overtly positive assessment of both Samaranch's presidency and the changes that were implemented in the aftermath of the Salt Lake City scandal, which many more critical Olympic scholars will not share.