Andy Knox’s Olympic achievement
Andrew Knox at home in Palos Verdes Estates.
When Andy Knox stood before 1,200 Olympic athletes, civic leaders, officials and volunteers at a ceremonial dinner last year marking the 25th anniversary of the 1984 Games, he brought full circle his deep involvement in one of the most successful events in both Olympic and Los Angeles’ history.
Knox, whose life is closely entwined with the five rings, was happily tired that evening, and he had a right to be. He had labored in a leading role to put together the dinner at the Los Angeles Coliseum, a quarter century after he seamlessly managed perhaps one of the most successful venues in the history of the Games.
Once again he drew upon the energy, insight and organization that mark his Olympic involvement and his career as a high-level international recruiter of business executives.
“It was an amazing evening,” he said. “For me, that night, the experience of the ’84 Games had come full circle.”
Knox was a former All-American swimmer when he was tapped by Jay Flood, Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee swimming commissioner, to manage the high-profile swimming venue for the 1984 Games in Los Angeles.
Knox was asked to serve as CEO for the planning and operation of the swimming, diving and synchronized swimming portions of the Games, held at USC’s recently built aquatic complex. The swimming venue was to see competition in 13 out of the 14 days of the Games – far more than any other venue. A half million spectators would be seated, and an army of volunteers would be needed.
Beginning two and-a-half years in advance, Knox took on the jobs of recruiting a “best in class” management team, and prepared to manage and coordinate everything from the training of volunteers to the establishment of communications systems within the venue.
And then he had to synchronize the events themselves, in one of the most watched Olympic sports, a perennial cornerstone for TV ratings.
“When the time came we were so ready,” he said. “I thought we might be over-ready, like with an athlete there’s a fine line between being ready and too ready. We had thought of everything. We even had a 911 system within the venue. We had everything.”
It turned out they were ready, not over-ready. When it was all over, Knox and his team had carried off one of the most successful venue performances in one of the Olympics’ most successful Games.
Twenty-five years later, Knox saw the commemorative dinner as an important gesture for the community, and for all of those who had given so much of themselves to make the heady dreams of 1984 come true. He expresses enormous gratitude for all he got out of swimming as an athlete, an ambassador, a mover and shaker in the larger structures of amateur sports and an Olympic organizer, and he was eager to honor the efforts of others.
“It is not necessary for someone to be an Olympian or a champion on the field of play to participate in, and gain immeasurably from, amateur and Olympic sports, much less give back,” he said. “While I did have some success in the pool, the learning and benefits from my association with swimming came both in and out of the pool.”
Swimmer’s journey
Knox swam for UCLA after making the team as a walk-on in 1972.
“I worked hard, and I ended up having some talent,” said Knox, who lives in Palos Verdes Estates with his wife, Sharman, a longtime member of the Peninsula Committee for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, 16-year-old son Andrew and 13-year-old daughter Meg.
At UCLA Knox specialized in the 200-yard breaststroke, and became an NCAA and AAU All-American, and a team co-captain his senior year. He also swam his way into a scholarship for his junior and senior years.
Meanwhile he worked “the best job there was” at the on-campus “guest house,” a small hotel for university visitors.
“I lived on the campus, I worked on the campus and I was well paid,” he said.
He served as an athlete representative to the Amateur Athletic Union for swimming athletes, which was then the national governing body for 250,000 amateur swimmers, and in 1978 became chairman of athletic representatives for swimming in the not-for-profit U.S. Swimming, Inc., sitting on the initial board of the new governing body.
It was an exciting time, as Knox helped U.S. Swimming wade through issues of athletic performance, financial support for athletes and the management of the governing body itself.
“Twenty percent of the board members were athletes long before it was a requirement. No other sport had that,” he said.
“I sat at the table with extremely accomplished business people, civic leaders – it was like getting a graduate degree.”
Along the way Knox served as a U.S. Olympic Committee representative to multinational meetings at the International Olympic Academy, operated by the International Olympic Committee in Olympia, Greece.
“It was an extraordinary experience, with people from all over the world,” he said. “In my lifetime it was one the pivotal cultural experiences,” he said.
In the course of that adventure, Knox was taken to Cairo as the guest of a brigadier general in the Egyptian army and the President of that country’s national Olympic Committee.
And he was in the mix when President Jimmy Carter called for a U.S. boycott of the 1980 Soviet Olympics.
“That was a pivotal point in the history of American amateur sports,” Knox said.
“I was opposed” to the boycott, he said. “We didn’t punish the Soviet Union, they didn’t miss a beat. Our athletes were the ones who were punished.”
Knox’ heart went out to athletes who had “trained for a lifetime” for the Games, only to see the once-every-four-year window close upon their chances.
Knox had swum competitively for a time after leaving UCLA, making an unsuccessful try for a spot on the U.S. Olympic team in 1976. He had considered training for the 1980 Games but decided against it in favor of graduate business school.
Shortly after the 1980 Olympics, Knox was tapped for his role in the ’84 Games.
Ironically, he said, the 1980 boycott wound up aiding the ‘84 effort because the Soviets’ retaliatory boycott prompted organizers to send ambassadors far and wide to recruit a stunning number of nations for inclusion in the L.A. Games.
“We ended up having more countries here than any other Games in history,” Knox said.
Following the ’84 Games, he was sought out as a consultant for the 1988 Olympics in South Korea, and spent two weeks in Seoul helping organize and operate the swimming competitions.
Recruiting excellence
Knox, who holds an MBA from USC, along with his bachelor’s degree in history from UCLA, has spent 29 years as a globetrotting executive recruiter, wedding people with positions in a wide variety of businesses in a wide variety of cultures.
He spent 24 of those years with Korn/Ferry International, including five years in Tokyo, where he became a senior client partner. Knox worked extensively around the world, including this country, Canada, Latin America, Europe and Asia/Pacific. He recently joined Higdon Partners to open and build its Los Angeles Office and to expand the firm’s presence on the West Coast and into Asia/Pacific.
Knox said there is no precise formula to find the right executive for a particular business. He said it’s more art than science, and a key element is the “fit” between each person and business.
Not surprisingly, amateur sports have played a role in his recruiting life as well.
In 2003 Knox recruited the CEO of the governing body for U.S. Water Polo, Chris Ramsey, and in 1999 Knox recruited the CEO of U.S. Swimming Inc., Chuck Wieglus, to lead the operations of that 75-employee operation with a $25 million annual budget in Colorado Springs. Working pro bono, Knox recruited almost all the board members for the USA Swimming Foundation in 2003.
He also serves on the executive committee of the Southern California Committee for the Olympic Games, which tried to bring the five rings back to Los Angeles, serves on the Advisory Committee of the Asia Society/Southern California Center, and the Pacific Council on International Policy, and the Council on Foreign Relations. He sits on the board of USA Swimming Foundation, and on the board and the executive committee of the Library Foundation of Los Angeles.
Slowing down for a moment in the PVE home he and Sharman helped design, Knox spoke of making time for his family as he flies 150,000 miles a year, at times bringing his son or daughter abroad with him.
“Those are times I cherish,” he said.
Out in the back yard stands a pool, and Knox is asked if he manages to swim.
“A little,” he said. PEN