Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 13, 1993 TAG: 9302150260
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRISTINE BRENNAN THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
OLYMPICS CYCLE DOESN'T MAKE SENSE
BY HAVING the Winter and Summer Games alternating every two years, a potential for overkill may dampen both. \If there was one thing you could count on in the sports world, it was the scheduling of the Olympic Games. Every four years, the Winter Olympics appeared in February and the Summer Games followed five or six months later.
But, a few years ago, the International Olympic Committee decided it was time to change. Salivating at the thought of dozens of new marketing and licensing possibilities, it created an alternating two-year cycle for the Olympics, which would allow each Games to stand - and to be sold to advertisers - alone. The older, larger and more-lucrative Summer Games remained in the traditional Olympic year. The Winter Games had to move.
One year ago Friday, the Winter Olympics were going on, spread out in full glory across the French Alps. One year from Friday, the Winter Games will begin again, this time in Lillehammer, Norway.
That's too soon.
The problem is this: Sports fans actually could get sick of the Olympics.
The issue is not the Winter Games themselves. They're terrific. Quaint and snow-capped, they are just about as perfect as a sporting event can be.
The issue is bigger than the winter athletes, who certainly deserve a chance to grab the spotlight for themselves and not have to share it with a group of better-known Summer Olympians, including 12 really rich guys who play basketball.
The issue is potential overkill. Right now, the Games are appealing because they aren't in our consciousness every hour of every day, like just about every other American sport. Fans love Olympians because, for the most part, they compete and then they go away.
Under the new Olympic rotation, there's a danger the allure of the Games could change. The schedule will go like this: 1994, Winter Olympics in Lillehammer; 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta; 1998, Winter Games in Nagano, Japan; 2000, Summer Games at a site to be determined later this year; and so on.
Every time you look up, there will be another Olympic Games on the horizon. There is a danger in this: too much exposure. The Olympics might become simply another American sports TV production.
Juan Antonio Samaranch, the IOC president, isn't worried. He thinks it's great to alternate Games.
"The Winter Games have been the not-so-important games," he said the other day. "Maybe being alone, they will get more attention than before."
Samaranch, by making this point, is missing the point. The very attraction of the Winter Games is its obscurity. But, after all, Samaranch is the man who brought us the Dream Team, as well as the almost-entirely professional Olympic movement. He doesn't frame his argument that way, of course. He says he wants the world's best athletes competing in the Olympics, and if they are professionals, so be it.
This is not all bad.
By allowing athletes to earn money and still compete in the Olympics, Samaranch, the IOC, the U.S. Olympic Committee and various national Olympic committees and sports federations have made it possible for an entire generation of athletes to remain in their sports well beyond their college days.
If this were the 1950s, Carl Lewis and Jackie Joyner-Kersee would have been long gone; they would have had to find regular jobs to pay the bills. But because they came of age in the '80s and '90s, they get to make and keep hundreds of thousands of dollars in endorsements and earnings, allowing the public to watch the greatest male and female track and field athletes of all time compete beyond the age of 30.
Or take Bonnie Blair. She will be 29 next month, and would be selling insurance or trading stocks back in Illinois were she not the best speed skater in U.S. history. Her income is well into six figures because she has won three gold medals over two Olympics, and will get a chance for more next year in Norway.
Blair likely would have retired if she had to wait four years until the next Games. But it's easy to stick around now, made easier still by the fact that a handful of her sponsors who would have gone elsewhere in the four-year Olympic vacuum have signed her up again for 1994.
The two-year wait is enticing many 1992 Olympians to return, making their names familiar to many American sports fans. Figure skater Nancy Kerrigan, bobsled driver Brian Shimer, luger Duncan Kennedy and speed skater Dan Jansen all are expected back. And, because professional figure skaters can be reinstated, Brian Boitano almost certainly is coming back, and Kristi Yamaguchi might too.
No one yet knows exactly which hockey players will play in Norway, but once again there is the likelihood that professional players will be involved for all the wrong reasons. Samaranch and NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman were meeting this week to discuss the prospect of having NHL players participate in a "Dream Competition." The pros could stock the rosters of their native Canada, United States, Russia, Sweden and Finland, but NHL owners aren't keen on shutting down their league for three weeks in midseason.
Another idea has NHL players shuttling into the Olympics, playing a couple of games, then rejoining their NHL teams.
Just what the Olympics need. Hired weekend guns.
There was a time, 13 years ago now, when 20 college hockey players came together to produce what for many of us is the greatest moment in sports history. The U.S. Olympic hockey team's upset of the Soviet Union's crusty professionals was a precious moment, aptly played out on the Olympic stage.
Some have called it a once-in-a-lifetime event. The way the Olympics are headed, there is little doubt that's exactly what it will become.
\ LILLEHAMMER\ YEAR TO GO
WHERE: Lillehammer, 110 miles north of Oslo, with other small towns around Norway's largest lake, Mjosa. Lillehammer, population 23,000, is the second smallest Olympic host city. Lake Placid, N.Y., 1980 Winter Games host, was smaller.
HOW FAR: All venues within 37 miles of Lillehammer.
WHY: The Winter Games are being held in 1994, only two years after the last Winter Olympics in Albertville, because the IOC decided to start alternating summer and winter Games. The next Summer Games will be held in 1996, followed by Winter Olympics in 1998.
WHAT'S NEW: All venues; qualifying; stone medals; moguls medals; children's tickets; about 20 countries from the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.
WHAT'S OLD: Symbols based on an ancient rock carving of a skier; 1952 Oslo Games' flag; lighting the flame in the fireplace used by "the father of modern skiing," 1800s skier Sondre Nordheim.
HOW MANY: About 1,800 athletes and 1,200 officials from 75-80 countries; 57 gold medals; 7,000 journalists; 8,000 volunteers; 3,000 police; 100,000 spectators; and 2 billion television viewers.
HOW MUCH: The Winter Games are projected to cost about $1.05 billion, plus spending on regional infrastructure. Revenues: $357 million. The difference: $670 million paid by the state and seen as long-term investment.