With the Centennial Games opening on Friday, Mick Cleary and Kevin Mitchell come up with the low-down on the Olympics, alphabetically speaking, from Athens to Zero
ATHENS. Birthplace – of the Olympics (but passed over for these Centennial Games) — and birthplace, in Georgia, of Billy Payne, the real estate lawyer who brought the Games to Atlanta. “I feel sorry for Athens,” Payne said when he returned from Greece with the Olympic Flame. But with a smile.
BASKETBALL. Did you know that China has the biggest player in the women’s tournament? She is known as the Honey Monster, all 2,5m of her. The best, though, is widely regarded as the 2,3m American model Lisa Leslie. “These bones,” she says, “they kind of fool people. I’m small, but I’m going to be out there mixing it up.”
COMPLAINTS. Despite every effort, there will be plenty over the next few weeks. The heat, transport, accommodation, water, tickets … Frank Deford of Newsweek, who has just returned from covering Wimbledon, thinks the European press are spoiling for a fight. “They’re already sharpening their knives,” he told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “They’re going to rip you.”
DEFECTIONS. The two Cuban boxers, followed last Thursday by the country’s best baseball pitcher and with four more rumoured to be hovering near the wire, are the sad face of the Games. Uncle Sam seems to be revelling, as well.
ENERGY. A key factor in performances in Atlanta will be the athletes’ capacity for work. Ironically, some experts here think the track at the Olympic Stadium is a record-breaking fast one — if the athletes can stand up to the energy-sapping conditions.
FLAME. The story of the Olympic Flame really started in dubious celebration of supposed Aryan superiority at the 1936 Games in Berlin. It has come full circle for one veteran Olympian. Paul DeBruyn competed in the marathon for Germany in 1932 and 1936, even though he was then living in the United States. Hitler asked him to stay in Germany. He declined. Last week when the Flame reached Daytona Beach, DeBruyn, 88 and now an American citizen, was there to celebrate.
GAYS. Atlanta will be the first Olympic city to host a hospitality suite for homosexuals — although it took heavy lobbying to overcome earlier prejudices, as well as a few commercial truths. As the mayor’s special adviser, Phil McDonald, says: “A lot of gay tourists will be coming to the Olympics because of their disposable income.”
HEAT. The word you will be hearing more often than not over the next few weeks, apart from humidity.
INFORMATION. Another commodity of which there is no shortage. Info 96, called up on small screens all over the Olympic village, is the technological link between the eternally curious and the trivial.
JOKES. Who is going to carry the Flame into Atlanta? Anyone, as long as he’s not called Sherman. How would Michael Buffer announce the Olympics? “Let’s get ready to grumble!”
KNOWHOW. What Americans used to be known for. It will take all they have to overcome the logistical problems that Atlanta presents. Indications are they’re getting there.
LOCALS. Here is what some Atlantans are saying about the Olympics in the local paper — “The Olympics are here, and still no toilets. Visitors will remember the Atlanta smell.” “The Olympics is like a hurricane: it’s coming, we’re not ready for it and we can’t stop it.”
MONEY. After heat, the word that most concerns the organisers. Estimates that the Games would bring spin-off billions to the city were said last week to be about $1-billion short. But advertising is booming. An adland expert said the Games “could usher in the most colossal, concentrated three-week advertising blitz in Madison Avenue history”.
NIGHTMARE. They call it the Dream Team, but, for Charles Barkley, these Olympics have turned sour before they even start. The star basketball player is alleged to have assaulted 23-year-old Jeb Tyler in a Cleveland bar last weekend. Barkley says he was provoked and Tyler, who is considering later civil proceedings, says he will not press criminal charges. “I don’t want to see Charles Barkley get arrested and detained for this,” he said. “He would have to come back to Cleveland and get arraigned in two weeks. He’d miss the Olympics.” What a neat guy.
OVERKILL. If you do not know which American soft drink has its HQ in Atlanta you will soon never be allowed to forget it.
PALESTINIANS. Their last appearance was a tragic one, in 1972, when terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes. Abu Marahil, one member of their three-man team (they have two runners and a boxer), says: “We were at war then. Now is a new day and the Palestinian people and the Israeli people must learn to live together.”
QUESTIONS. What journalists were unable to ask the IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch when he arrived at the Olympic village last Thursday. Rarely can so many hacks have tried so hard to get so close to someone they distrust so much.
ROYALS. Di won’t be here (although she thought about it), but Anne will. The Princess Royal, feeding American hunger Britain’s tattered old monarchy, was the crowd-puller at a charity dinner for Georgia’s upwardly grovelling on Tuesday. Just $1 000 a ticket. It was a “frocks-and-rocks” do, as Anne’s lady-in-waiting calls it. Last week it was Prince Albert of Monaco, tres downmarket though, with tickets going for as little as $100.
SOCCER. A key organiser of the tournament will be ex-Aston Villa player Phil Woosnam (a distant cousin of golfer Ian), who is the deputy competition manager. Woosnam, who has been here since his time with the doomed North American Soccer League 13 years ago and coached the Atlanta Chiefs, will retire after seeing Atlanta through. He has picked up plenty of American. “The warmth of the people of the South,” he says, “and the beauty of all the trees — that was the first thing that impacted me when I came.” Enjoy, Phil.
TECHNOLOGY. These will be the highest of hi-tech Games. IBM has sponsored a worldwide web site — which is http://www.atlanta. olympic.org. Traffic is heavy, up from 50 000 hits a day to more than seven million. The internal TV-computer network is called Scarlet — after O’Hara. Atlanta is the home of BellSouth and Atlantans will be left a legacy of hundreds of thousands of miles of fibre-optic wiring: one of the reasons Atlanta got the Games.
UNITED STATES. If anything unites this country it is the chance to prove they can put on a show. For all the doomsaying, the Games are likely to go smoothly because of the co-ordination of services and security. “See that panhandler?” a cop pointed out the other day. “He’s security.”
VICTORY. The biggest victory of these Olympics will be an incident-free tournament. Don’t bet on it.
WOMEN. There will be 39% more women competing here than in Barcelona, the best representation at the Olympics. All first-time sports must now include both sexes. This time it is mountainbiking and beach volleyball. But Gwen Torrance, twice a gold medal winner, points out: “Oh no, when you think of sport, you think of men. We’ve come a long way, but we’ve got a long way to go.” There were no women at the 1896 Games, 1 058 by 1952 and here there will be 3 779.
X-CHROMOSOME. Not everything is as gender-specific as it might seem. Dora Ratjen, fourth in the high jump in 1936, later admitted her name was Herman. She claimed she was ordered to pose as a woman by the Nazis.
YOUTH or Yuk. The organisers hit the yuk button in a big way when they invented a wacky character called Izzy as the Games mascot, complete with imbecilic fantasy story. It has been rightly lampooned and ignored by the little folk.
ZERO. The chance most people give those playing the Dream Team. “We’ll cover them like we did in Barcelona — for the first 15 or 20 minutes,” says NBC’s sports president Dick Ebersol. “If it becomes non-competitive, we’ll return for the end of the game.”