Los Angeles, June 25, 1996
Vol. 08, No. 03

Special Olympic Issue

Dear Readers:

America's game? . . . Although it's been nearly 50 years since Jackie Robinson walked onto Ebbets Field, U.S. baseball still hasn't achieved full integration. As of June 11, 1996, USA Baseball had 40 prospective Olympians in its Millington, Tenn. training camp. Of this number, only one player, Jacque Jones, is African-American, and there is only one player of Hispanic descent, Augustine Ojeda. Ken Lee, USA Baseball's team media coordinator, claims the national team reflects the composition of college baseball from which the Olympic team is selected. He's basically right. Figures from the NCAA, based on 1994 enrollment, show that roughly 87% of Division I scholarship players were Caucasian, 7% were African-American while 3.5% were of Hispanic origin. Lee hypothesizes that most 17- or 18-year-old minority players faced with the choice of playing college ball or drawing a salary as a professional in the minor leagues, choose the latter.

Aside from a few tumbles, the Olympic torch relay continues its 84-day, 15,000-mile journey to the Atlanta Games. Ten thousand people will carry the torch to Atlanta but, that figure doesn't even approach the record for the largest number of relay runners. That distinction belongs to the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games torch relay which included 101,473 participants.

The Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games' claim that the 1996 Games will be the only ever "privately-financed" Olympic Games isn't quite correct. According to Vice President Al Gore the price to U.S. taxpayers will be at least $227 million. According to some estimates, that figure includes as many as 14,000 military personnel, 2,500 federal law enforcement agents and 1,000 Atlanta-area federal workers. Not exactly privately-financed.

Call in the infantry . . . Whether it's the FBI calling Atlanta the U.S.'s most dangerous city or the continued threat of terrorism, more than 30,000 security personnel (including military personnel, federal agents, state and local police, and private security agents) will watch over the Games. That 30,000-plus number, roughly the size of two U.S. Army infantry divisions, is enough to supply each Olympic athlete with a couple of personal bodyguards.

The more things change . . . "[B]etween 20,000 and 35,000 police have been brought in . . . There has also been a crackdown on prostitution and black marketeering." -- From a 1980 Los Angeles Times story on Moscow's preparation for the Olympic Games. "A pre-Olympic sweep to clear the streets of career criminals before the Olympics resulted in 765 arrests in Atlanta and elsewhere . . . carried out by 22 law enforcement agencies." -- From a 1996 Associated Press story on preparations for the Atlanta Games.

Who will take away the most "gold" from the Atlanta Olympic Games? . . . Well, although the gold won't be in the form of Olympic medals, media mogul Ted Turner, owner of the Atlanta Braves, stands to reap the largest financial windfall of the Games. Although the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games itself might not break even, the value of Turner's Braves, according to Financial World's Sportsvalue newsletter, will increase over $100 million dollars once they move into the new Olympic Stadium. Such an increase would put the Braves' value over $225 million, easily making them the most valuable baseball franchise and the second most valuable franchise in professional sports behind the Dallas Cowboys.

ADD Braves . . . Not only do the Braves get a new stadium, they even convinced the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games to pay for the conversion of the stadium into a baseball venue. In fact, the Braves have dictated much of the stadium's design from the start, including special features such as Southern porch chairs and special tinted glass in the luxury skyboxes.

Something other than the septic tank stinks at Atlanta Beach, the site of Olympic beach volleyball. Former "King of the Beach" Sinjin Smith and partner Carl Henkel, of the United States, have received rather generous seeding in the Olympic men's tournament. The International Volleyball Federation has decided that the "top-ranked team from the host country" will receive, on the basis of FIVB tour points, a guaranteed entry into the Games and the second seed in the Olympic tourney as well. Not bad considering that Smith/Henkel ranked fourth on last year's FIVB tour behind two teams from Brazil and one from Norway. They also are seeded above the two other U.S. teams, Karch Kiraly/Kent Steffes and Mike Dodd/Mike Whitmarsh, that play on the Association of Volleyball Professionals Tour rather than the FIVB tour. The "Killer K's" and "Mike and Mike," together, have won more than 70 AVP tournaments. Smith and Henkel have never won an AVP or FIVB event together. In other words, the sixth-best team in the tournament gets seeded above four demonstrably better teams.

The seeding of the tournament doesn't appear to have precedent in recent Olympic history either. The indoor volleyball tournament is a seeded draw into two pools. Teams determine their seeds in the finals by performance in pool play. In Olympic tennis, the tournament with the format most closely resembling beach volleyball, seeding is determined according to International Tennis Federation rankings. At the 1992 Barcelona Games, for example, the men's tournament featured Jim Courier and Stephan Edberg as the first and second seeds. The top-ranked Spanish player, Sergi Bruguera, was seeded 11th.

Emmitt Smith's Reebok fantasy commercial notwithstanding, don't look for American-style football to grace the Olympic Games anytime in the foreseeable future. The Olympic Charter mandates that "only sports widely practised by men in at least seventy-five countries . . . and by women in at least forty . . . may be included in the programme of the Games of the Olympiad." Football did make an appearance, however, as a demonstration sport at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games. USC's Gaius Shaver led the West team to a narrow victory over the East, 7-6.

ADD Olympic participation . . . Of course, few Olympic sports events actually include competitors from 75 nations. Time, space, cost limitations and qualifying standards restrict the number of participants. Volleyball and water polo, for example, have tournaments of 12 teams each. Most sports involving individual events don't include athletes from at least 75 countries, either. Modern pentathlon and equestrian, in 1992, featured athletes from only 30 and 32 countries, respectively, mostly from Europe. Women's artistic gymnastics, one of the Games' most popular television attractions, had athletes from only 24 nations.

SECOND ADD Olympic participation . . . Track and field, despite the sport's woes in the United States, remains the centerpiece of the Olympic Games for good reason. Olympic track and field features athletes from far more countries than any other sport. Athletes from 159 of the 172 countries present at the 1992 Barcelona Games competed in track and field. That number likely will increase this year as athletes from the former Soviet Union compete under the banners of their homelands.

THIRD ADD Olympic participation . . . Three other sports that also include competitors from a wide range of nations are boxing (75 nations represented in 1992), cycling (86), and swimming (89).

LAST ADD Olympic participation . . . Another measure of Olympic participation is the number of countries whose athletes actually win medals at the Games. At Barcelona, athletes from 64 countries won medals. The greatest diversity among medal winners came in track and field with athletes from 35 countries taking home hardware. Second was boxing, in which athletes from 25 of the 75 national Olympic committees in attendance won medals. Boxing, despite its critics, gets credit for having the largest percentage of medals won by athletes from different countries. Exactly one-third (33 1/3%) of the nations represented had athletes win Olympic medals. On the low end, modern pentathlon, with only one individual event and one team event, yielded medalists from only four of the 30 countries represented (13%).

All that glitters is not gold . . . More than 62% of respondents, according to a recent Showdown Poll conducted by ESPNET SportsZone, feel that the Olympic Games are losing their ideals to "big money and sponsors." A number of those polled fingered the Dream Team as a primary example of the Games' demise. Larry Everling, of Alexandria, Va., had this to say: "Ask yourself one question: What was more thrilling: the U.S. Hockey team's gold medal in 1980 or the Dream Team gold medal in 1992?"

An insert in the May 1996 issue of Rolling Stone features the latest in Nike's oh-so-rebelliously-hip advertising with a first person reminder that "I am not a target market. I am an athlete." The ad postures: "We don't sell dreams. We sell shoes. We sell shoes to athletes. Not just the ones whose events have been sanctioned by some committee." For the record, one estimate puts some 3,500 Olympic athletes in Nike shoes at this summer's Games. Oh you rebels.

ADD Nike . . . The same advert includes a photo of Nike-backed Michael Johnson who many expect to win unprecedented individual golds in the men's 200 and 400 meters. Next to his photo the Swooshmeisters growl, "If a pair of Nike shoes falls apart in the middle of a race, you can't just return the unused portion for a refund or an exchange." Nike certainly speaks from experience since that's exactly what happened to Nike-shod Olympic champ Quincy Watts when he blew a shoe during the 400-meter final at the 1993 World Track and Field Championships. He finished fourth.

While the Dream Team certainly has enriched the coffers of USA Basketball, how has having professional players in the Olympic Games affected the NBA? Well, prior to the 1992 Games the NBA had only a handful of employees working on international matters. Four years later, the NBA has a separate international department of 65 employees with offices in Geneva, Toronto, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Miami, London, Mexico City and Tokyo. International retail sales of NBA-licensed products have grown, according to the NBA, from $56 million in 1991 to an estimated $400 million in 1995.

This should drive 'em nuts . . . While the USOC and Atlanta Centennial Olympic Properties have busied themselves with threatening ambush marketeers and forcing Greek restaurants to change names, they may have overlooked new Teenbeat Records recording artists, Olympic Death Squad.

If you thought Izzy was inexplicable, time for you to meet some of his official "friends."

Somehow, we doubt this is what Pierre de Coubertin had in mind when he coined the motto for the Olympic Movement.

The AAF Paul Ziffren Sports Resource Center

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