Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 30, 1993 TAG: 9310300152
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA LENGTH: Medium
Turner, in Russia with his wife, actress Jane Fonda, to promote next summer's Games at St. Petersburg, said they offer a "psychic value" that can't be measured on a business ledger. And besides, they're fun.
"This gives me an opportunity to be around the jocks, shake a few hands, that sort of thing," Turner said. "If I go to the Olympics, I'm sitting up a hundred rows back with everybody else. At the Goodwill Games, I've got seats in the front row."
The third Goodwill Games will be held from July 23-Aug. 7. About 2,000 athletes from more than 50 countries will participate in the Olympic-style event. New York will host the 1998 Games.
Turner created the first Games in 1986 during a low-point in the Cold War. The United States had boycotted the 1980 Olympics at Moscow and the Soviets retaliated by boycotting the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984.
"The original, most important part of the Games, was to get the U.S. and the Soviet sports teams playing again after the double boycott," he said. "It didn't look like it was ever going to get broken and the Cold War got worse and worse."
The first Goodwill Games were held at Moscow in 1986. The second Games were in 1990 at Seattle. Next year's Games will be the first major international games in post-Soviet Russia.
The first two Goodwill Games lost an estimated $50 million-$60 million between them, Games president Jack Kelly said. He expressed hope that next year's Games would break even.
But Turner, chairman of Cable News Network's parent company, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., was taking a broader view.
"So far the Games have lost money," he said. "It's very hard when you're in the media business, or in any kind of show business, to know [about losses]. Sometimes you get a lot of psychic value out of doing something that doesn't show in the bottom line when that individual project is looked at.
"It's very difficult. Even I can't tell whether or not the Games have been good for us business-wise. Maybe they haven't been. But they haven't hurt us. They've helped us some."
The Games allow athletes to compete in a major international event in the years between Summer Olympics. Turner said athletes remain enthusiastic about the Games - even if Turner Broadcasting shareholders worried about the losses aren't.
Several top athletes have promised to compete next year. They include U.S. track stars Carl Lewis and Jackie Joyner-Kersee, British world champion hurdlers Colin Jackson and Sally Gunnell, and Russia's Olympic gold medal swimmer, Alexander Popov.
by CNB