Los
Angeles, April 30, 1997 Dear Reader: The International Olympic Committee's recently-published analysis of the Atlanta Olympic Games television coverage in the U.S. indicates that women made up 52% of the American viewing audience. NBC's cumulative audience in 1996 was a whopping 222.7% higher than its Barcelona 1992 audience. Viewership rose in several categories including increases of 46% for all adults aged 50 or older, 35% for women in the 35+ age group, and 31% for women in the 18+ age group. Viewership among young people grew at a much slower rate. For all viewers in the 12- to 24-year-old group there was only a 2% increase. Different strokes for different folks . . . Gymnastics drew the highest television rating among Olympic viewers in the U.S. The top-rated sport in Spain was tennis. In Brazil it was boxing. Germans favored fencing and judo. Italians liked volleyball best. The Chinese tuned into diving. South Koreans were glued to badminton coverage and South Africans to field hockey. Track and field led the way in Canada, France, Hong Kong, Japan and Great Britain. Add Different Strokes . . . Team handball was virtually invisible during NBC's coverage of the Atlanta Olympic Games. In Norway, though, it was big stuff. Three broadcasts of women's team handball were among the 10 most-watched Norwegian sports broadcasts of 1996. The women's soccer final from Atlanta was also among the leading shows of '96. Topping the list was Norway's World Cup qualifier against Hungary in men's soccer.
Last Add Different Strokes . . . Don't expect to see much biathlon on CBS's Olympic Winter Games coverage from Nagano next February. In Europe, however, things may be different. SporTVision (March 1997) reports that two of the 10 highest-rated EuroSport broadcasts of 1996 were World Cup biathlon events. The Women's Professional Fastpitch (WPF) softball league is ready to begin play in its inaugural season. AT&T Wireless Services has signed on as the league's title sponsor with a multi-year commitment of over $1 million a year. When SportsLetter reported on the WPF about this time last year, plans called for WPF teams in six Western and Midwestern cities. That plan has been scrapped in favor of six cities in the Southeast: Atlanta, Charlotte, Durham, Orlando, Tampa and Hampton, VA. Play is scheduled to begin on June 3, 1997. Add Fastpitch . . . Happy as we are to see the formation of a professional women's league, we can't help but notice that although two women, Mitzi Swendell and Rayla Allison, serve as the league's president and its vice president/league director, all six of the league's general managers are men. Put that one in the "the more things change . . ." file.
What do a bunch of fans know anyway? The NCAA Final Four website (www.finalfour.net) lists the Fans' Choice All-Tournament teams. Notably absent as either a first or second team selection was Miles Simon, the Final Four MVP. Simon averaged 22 points per game throughout the tournament including 30 in the final game and was clearly the Wildcats' team leader. What's a guy have to do? Crossing the Color Barrier . . . As we all celebrate the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's integration of modern major league baseball, let's not forget that there were five African American men who played in the majors in 1947. Can you name them? They were Robinson, Larry Doby (Cleveland Indians), Henry Thompson and Willard Brown (St. Louis Browns) and Dan Bankhead (Brooklyn Dodgers). To find out a little more about these first African American major leaguers visit the AAF website at www.AAFla.org Our Lennox . . . Britain's 10 highest-paid sports stars of 1996 included one race car driver, two golfers, three soccer players and four boxers. WBO featherweight champ Naseem Hamed ($9.78 million U.S.) had four fights during the year and won them all. Super middleweight Nigel Benn fought three times and lost three times, including two losses within four months to Ireland's Steve Collins. For this he earned $4.7 million. Frank Bruno boxed once and made $7.3 million in a dismal outing against Mike Tyson. Fellow heavyweight Lennox Lewis won his only bout, but made most of his $6 million by agreeing not to enforce his right to fight Mike Tyson for the WBC crown. Tyson, who paid Lewis a reported $4 million to step aside, fought WBA champion Bruce Seldon instead, winning by a first round KO. Top British Sports Stars
For the first time in the history of the Amateur Athletic Foundation's World Trophy award, the winners from all six regions are women. The World Trophy awards, dating back to 1896, are given each year to the top athletes in Africa, Asia, North America, Oceania and South America/Caribbean. This year's World Trophy winners are:
Anyone ever notice that all the schools in the University of California sport the same team colors? Though some schools vary the shades, the teams at every one of the eight UC campuses wear blue and gold. Here's one for the X Files . . . The Suburban LIFE Citizen, a suburban Chicago paper, ran an April 3 photo and caption identifying a speaker at Brookfield, IL's Lincoln School as three-time Olympic medalist Wilma Rudolph. Just one problem, agent Mulder. Wilma Rudolph died in 1994. The ersatz Wilma Rudolph was in fact an actress/storyteller brought in to perform in celebration of Women's History Month. In a conversation with SportsLetter, a representative of the LIFE Citizen's Department of Understatement acknowledged that it was a "badly written caption."
As the memory of Atlanta fades, it's time for a few facts about Sydney, site of the 2000 Olympic Games. After all, there only are 1,200 days to the last Games of the millennium. * The Sydney Olympic Stadium will seat 115,000 people, more than any other previous Olympic stadium. After the Games the stadium will be reconfigured to seat 80,000. (As of this writing, there are no plans to rename the stadium after Ted Turner.) * The Sydney stadium will contain 108 corporate suites with seating for 1,500. * The Olympic Village will accommodate 15,200 athletes and officials. For the first time in Olympic history, all participants will be housed in a single village. All sport venues will be within 30 minutes travel time of the Olympic Village. * The Sydney organizing committee will meet the cost of round-trip airfare for all accredited athletes and team officials as well as all freight charges for horses, yachts, rowing shells, canoes and kayaks to be used in Olympic competition.
* Organizers anticipate 250,000 international visitors to Sydney during the Games. * The International Broadcast Centre (IBC) will host an expected 175 foreign broadcasters with 9,000 personnel plus 3,400 Sydney Olympic Broadcasting Organisation staff. * The average daytime temperatures in Sydney during the time of the Games, September 16 to October 1, range from 61-68 degrees Fahrenheit. (And no, this information does not come from Billy Payne.) A group in California calling itself the Committee for Changing the Design of the Olympic Medal (Kinda rolls off the tongue doesn't it?) has urged the International Olympic Committee to remove the depiction of the Roman Coliseum from Olympic medals. The committee claims that the Coliseum "is an abhorrent symbol of DEATH . . . a theatre of Death, the stage for four hundred years, of mass murder and blood baths under Roman Rule." The committee, which seems to be comprised only of people bearing Greek surnames, notes that the Order of Ahepa, a 30,000-member American Hellenic organization, recently passed a resolution supporting removal of the Coliseum from the medal. Oh, by the way, did we mention that Rome is one of Athen's competitors in the bid to host the 2004 Olympic Games?
Chew, chew, chew . . . You're huuuuuge! . . . Yes, it's "The World's First Muscle Building Gum" brought to you by Genetic Evolutionary Nutrition, a Los Angeles company, sellers of the most recent in a long line of body-building supplements: Creatine Gum. An advertisement in the most recent issue of Ironman Magazine touts the benefits creatine monohydrate-laced gum and its "unique creatine delivery system," a.k.a. chewing. "Creatine gum has no artificial sweeteners, colors or flavoring and the natural Spearmint Flavor tastes great and even freshens your breath!" Sooo, "Say good-bye to carrying around big containers of powder that require mixing with juice or water." Act now! Operators are standing by. Meet Hyuta, mascot of the 1997 Men's World Team Handball Championships in Kumamoto, Japan. You can visit him at the event's website. Just click on the link.
Copyright 1997, Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles. SportsLetter is published bimonthly. Reproduction is encouraged with credit to the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles.
The AAF Paul Ziffren Sports Resource Center 2141 West Adams Boulevard, Los Angeles CA 90018. E-mail: library@AAFla.org Library Staff: Wayne Wilson, Vice President Research; Edward Derse, Research Director; Shirley Ito, Librarian; Michael Salmon, Librarian; Bonita Hester Library Assistant; Carmen Rivera Research Associate. (323)730-4646. SportsLetter Editorial Staff: F. Patrick Escobar, Managing Editor; Wayne Wilson, Editor; Edward Derse, Associate Editor.
Copyright, 1997 Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles. All rights reserved.
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