Ross Marowits

MONTREAL (CP) - The embattled main organizer of Montreal's failed effort to host the 2005 world aquatic championships was found dead Wednesday, a spokesman for the organizing committee said after several media reported his suicide.

Marc Belanger, vice-president of the committee, said the organization offered its condolences to Yvon DesRochers' wife and two children. "We want to underline all the dedication Mr. DesRochers gave as head of the championships," he said in a statement. FINA, the world governing body for aquatic sports, recently withdrew the aquatic championships from Montreal due to a multi-million-dollar funding shortfall.

Several media reported the body of DesRochers, 59, was found inside a grey Mercedes outside Molson Breweries near downtown. Television news footage showed tarps laid over a grey Mercedes as police investigated.

Radio-Canada said the corpse was found beside a gun.

Police said they were investigating the death of a man in his 50s as a suicide. They wouldn't identify the victim.

DesRochers' leadership has been called into question in recent weeks as the games slipped away from Montreal and government officials raised questions about broken promises to raise sponsorship money.

Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay, who travelled to Paris on the weekend in a bid to recapture the championships, has said he was considering leadership changes at the organizing committee.

"There are very good people in the organization," Tremblay told Radio-Canada on Monday.

"But it's true - there have been certain difficult (matters). That being said, I intend to make the necessary adjustments in the best interests of the organization."

Several former employees called last month for DesRochers' resignation, telling Montreal La Presse he was an unpleasant, secretive and authoritarian manager.

The eight ex-employees, speaking on condition of anonymity to protect their current jobs, told the newspaper DesRochers clashed with FINA officials, Quebec government representatives and his own staffers.

But Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, said Wednesday it would be premature to suggest DesRochers' death was related to the event's difficulties.

"This is something dramatic that affects us all, of course," he told reporters in Vancouver.

"But it wouldn't be right to connect this to the organization (of the event) or other circumstances."

Colleagues at the organizing committee had not seen him for two days, although one person spoke with DesRochers on Tuesday.

DesRochers has been the head of the aquatics championships committee since the fall of 2002.

Michel Larouche, head coach at the CAMO diving club that features several medal-winning athletes, said news of DesRochers' death came as a surprise.

"I was in a state of shock," Larouche told all-news channel RDI.

The athletes here were extremely surprised as well. So all that we can do is to wish his family good luck and we will support them in their grief."

DesRochers was recruited to the job by his good friend Francis Fox, an adviser to Prime Minister Paul Martin and a former cabinet minister under Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

Trained as a lawyer, DesRochers headed the National Arts Centre between 1988 and 1994.

Before that, he worked on the Montreal Olympics organizing committee as director of arts and culture programming.

The organizing committee was left with an $18-million shortfall after private-sector donations totalled just $4 million.

Linda Cuthbert, persident of the Aquatic Federation of Canada, said Wednesday she last met with DesRochers in early January before FINA pulled the event from Montreal. She said it's too early to tell if his death would have any impact on these efforts.

The event includes swimming, diving, water polo, synchronized swimming and endurance swimming.

Organizers had made a last-ditch bid to prevent the championships from being pulled by requesting more money from the municipal, provincial and federal governments.

At the time, DesRochers said: "If the response is negative, there's no doubt that it's a catastrophe."

Billed as the largest sporting event in Montreal since the 1976 Olympics, the championships had already received $38 million in public money out of a $60-million budget.

The event was to be held July 17-31 on Ste-Helene's Island across from downtown, where a swimming and diving complex is near completion.

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