Los Angeles, August 16, 1996
Vol. 08, No. 04

Dear Reader:

American Olympic medal winners came from 40 states plus the District of Columbia. California, with about 12% of the nation's population, produced 28.5% of the U.S.A.'s medalists. Of the 228 American medal winners, 65 cited California as their place of residence. Other top states included Texas (16), Florida (15) and Pennsylvania (11). No other state was in double figures.

The Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games and several news organizations have published misinformation about Atlanta's 8.6 million ticket sales and how that figure compares to sales in other Olympic cities. ACOG's home page maintains that 8.6 million "topped the sales of the Los Angeles and Barcelona Games combined." The Wall Street Journal (August 4) reports that Atlanta's ticket sales "exceeded Barcelona, Spain and Los Angeles combined." The Los Angeles Daily News (August 6) makes the same claim. A recent AP story (August 4) offers a different twist, stating that Atlanta sold "more than twice the number sold at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics." None of these sources has it right. The official reports of the 1984 and 1992 Games show that 5,720,000 tickets were sold at Los Angeles and 3,021,740 at Barcelona. You can do the arithmetic.

Many nations promised lucrative bonuses to 1996 Olympic medalists. Some of the biggest winners in the bonus sweepstakes include Indonesia's men's badminton champions, Ricky Subagja and Rexy Mainaky, who will split $422,000 (U.S.). Filipino light flyweight boxer Mansueto Velasco will receive nearly $100,000 plus a car and a $300/month lifetime pension, all supplied by private funding sources, for his silver medal. Boxer Somluck Kamsing of Thailand will get a reported $1.73 million tax-free after winning his country's first gold medal. The average annual per capita income is $689 in Indonesia, $791 in the Philippines and $2,077 in Thailand.

Tongan super heavyweight boxer, 309-pound Paea Wolfgramm, became a crowd favorite in Atlanta after defeating Cuba's Alexis Rubalcaba in the quarterfinals. Wolfgramm fought the gold-medal bout with a broken wrist and nose. Although he lost in the final, Wolfgramm became Tonga's first Olympic medal winner, taking home a silver. A number of press reports referred to Wolfgramm as a "clerk" in real life, but on the information form Wolfgramm completed during accreditation in Atlanta he listed "house husband" as his occupation and "art sketching and reading" as his hobbies.

Speaking of firsts . . . Fourteen National Olympic Committees saw their athletes win gold medals at the summer Games for the first time: Armenia, Belarus, Burundi, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Hong Kong, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Slovakia, Syria, Thailand and Ukraine. Fifteen countries had athletes winning their first Olympic medals of any kind in the summer Games: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Burundi, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Georgia, Hong Kong, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Mozambique, Slovakia, Tonga, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Still, 86 of the 197 NOC's represented in Atlanta have never had an Olympic medalist, summer or winter.

Attesting to the increasing globalization of the Olympic Movement, athletes from a record 79 countries won medals at the Games. Competitors from 53 nations won gold medals, another record.

Cold War redux . . . The breakup of the Soviet Union accounted for 11 nations making first time appearances at the summer Games. Athletes from eight of those countries -- Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Ukraine and Uzbekistan -- went home with medals: Competitors from three other former Soviet republics with previous summer Games appearances -- Russia, Latvia and Lithuania -- also won medals.

Cold War add . . . Overall, athletes from countries of the former Soviet Union won 123 medals compared to 101 medals captured by U.S. athletes. In 1996, there were several instances of two competitors from the former Soviet Union winning medals in an event (e.g., 112-pound boxing) in which previously the U.S.S.R. could have entered only one athlete. However, even if you subtract a medal in each of those cases, residents of the former U.S.S.R. still collected 111 medals. As for golds, the U.S. came out ahead, 44 to 40.

India, with a population of 937 million, produced only one 1996 medalist, Leander Paes, who took a bronze in men's tennis. That was India's first medal in anything, except field hockey, since 1952. You have to go back to 1900 to find another non-field hockey medal won by an athlete from India. In men's field hockey, however, the Indians put together one of the most impressive dynasties in Olympic history, winning eight gold medals, a silver and two bronzes in the 12 Games held from 1928 to 1980.

Sports Illustrated predicted 98 of the 271 event winners in its Olympic Preview Issue, giving SI a 36% success rate.

ACOG claims to have issued approximately 15,000 press credentials. That's a far cry from earlier Games. Organizers of the 1912 Stockholm Games reserved 500 seats and 30 telephones at the Olympic Stadium for reporters and photographers. Thirty seats were set aside at the yachting venue and 150 at swimming. In 1952 at Helsinki 1,848 passes were issued to press and radio personnel. At Los Angeles in 1984 organizers accredited 9,150 media representatives.

Take a close look at the results from this year's Games and you will notice that every winning weightlifter set an Olympic record. That's because the International Weightlifting Federation eliminated every weight class in December 1992 and established 10 new ones to offset criticism that existing records were tainted by widespread drug use in the sport.

Weightlifter Mark Henry, at 407 lbs. the heaviest lifter ever to compete in the Olympic Games, recently announced a "multi-million dollar" deal with pro wrestling's WWF. Henry joins a long line of more than 40 Olympic wrestlers, weightlifters, judokas, boxers and one bobsledder, dating back to 1924, who have joined the ranks of professional grapplers. Among them are 1956 weightlifting gold medalist Paul Anderson; 1964 judo gold medalist and current IOC member Anton Geesink of the Netherlands; 1994 U.S. bobsledder Nathan "Chip" Minton III. Boxing champs Leon Spinks and Muhammad Ali also performed with pro wrestlers in several shows.

NBC's total audience of 209 million viewers makes the Atlanta Games the most watched event in U.S. television history. NBC with 171.5 broadcast hours drew 5 million more viewers than CBS achieved with its 164.33-hour broadcast of the 1994 Lillehammer Olympic Winter Games. CBS's Lillehammer coverage drew a greater percentage of all U.S. television households than NBC's Atlanta coverage, 92.5% to 91.7%. CBS's February 23, 1994 broadcast of women's figure skating remains the single most-watched Olympic broadcast in history with a 48.5 rating (64% share).

Add NBC . . . While NBC's 17-day average rating of 21.6 (41% share) represented a 26% increase over the network's Barcelona numbers, it did not match ABC's average of a 23.2 rating (44% share) for its coverage of the 1984 Los Angeles Games, nor CBS's 27.8 rating (42% share) in 1994. Now maybe if they'd shown just a little more women's soccer and softball . . . .

Last add NBC . . . Have you had your break today? During the Games, NBC aired an "Olympic Moment" profile of gold-medalist Russian weightlifter Andrei Chemerkin. Part of the piece showed Chemerkin chowing down at McDonald's in Moscow. The narrator did not provide a translation of what Chemerkin said as he bit into his burger, but Robert Edelman, author of Serious Fun, A History of Spectator Sport in the U.S.S.R., tells SportsLetter that the Russian strongman took one bite and uttered "Uzhasno!" Translation: "This is terrible!"

On the fast track . . . Just how speedy was Atlanta's Olympic Stadium track? Well, if Michael Johnson's melt-the-rubber 19.32, 200 meters isn't proof enough, try this one. Athletes from 80 different countries set an amazing 187 national records or bests in the track and field competition (185 in events utilizing Mondo's speedy surface). In addition, runners set Olympic records in 13 events, all conducted on the track surface.

With her three medals from Atlanta, Jamaican sprinter Merlene Ottey, a competitor in five Olympic Games, joins the company of legends Irena Szewinska, of Poland, and Australian Shirley Strickland de la Hunty as owners of the most Olympic medals in women's track and field, with seven. Although "the bronze queen" has never won an Olympic gold medal, she holds the distinction of having qualified for an amazing 13 Olympic sprint finals, more than the 10 finals achieved by the venerable Carl Lewis.

Just boo it . . . Winner of this month's obnoxious Nike advertisement award is the print, broadcast and billboard portrait of Jackie Joyner-Kersee accompanied by the declaration, "You don't win silver. You lose gold." This affront to thousands of Olympic athletes has been roundly criticized. Seems JJK herself doesn't necessarily agree with her corporate sponsors about her own performance. After struggling through injury to place third in the Olympic women's long jump, Joyner-Kersee said "This bronze medal, it really means a lot." . . . "[A]ll in all, I was extremely happy." For its part, Nike argues that the ad simply conveys the sentiment, expressed by many athletes, that second best isn't winning. The company plans to carry the ad campaign indefinitely according to Nike spokesman Keith Peters.

Bet she can kick Izzy's butt . . . One mascot you probably didn't see at the Olympic Games was the fire-engine red 6'5" 250-pound self-proclaimed "half-sister of Izzy," SpoilSport. The creation of a group of Atlanta social activists and homeless advocates going by the same name, SpoilSport claims to have been evicted by her landlord, who "realized that he could make a lot more money by renting to Olympic visitors."

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