THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, June 21, 1996 TAG: 9606210537
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MYLENE MANGALINDAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 54 lines
Who says bigger is better? It didn't pay off for Hampton Roads.
The Olympic torch will travel through Richmond today, but it won't arrive in Atlanta via Norfolk or Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Suffolk, Portsmouth or even the Peninsula.
In fact, the Olympic flame will pass through pint-sized towns as torch bearers run, ride, walk and prance through the Old Dominion: Charlottesville, Petersburg, Dinwiddie, Dowitt, McKenney and South Hill.
But no Hampton Roads. Despite its 1.6 million population.
Why?
Well, no one from the region lobbied the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games. So the group, which organized the Games and handles the logistics, didn't even try to route the torch relay through Hampton Roads.
``We did not try to get that here,'' said Jeff Sias, director of sports promotion for the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce. ``We were not organized enough at that time. However, if there was a year difference, we would've been very competitive in getting that.''
In the future, Hampton Roads shouldn't lose out on opportunities like this, Sias said. The Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce is organizing a Sports Council, an organization to facilitate sports events in the area and help gain corporate and community support for various ventures.
Almost every large metropolitan area in the United States hosted or will host the Olympic torch along its journey to Atlanta.
Most of the region's biggest competitors for companies and jobs - Baltimore, Raleigh, Charlotte, Greenville, S.C., Knoxville, Tenn., Memphis, Tampa, and Atlanta - all host the torch relay. Hampton Roads, along with Pittsburgh and San Antonio, were among the largest metropolitan regions to lose out on the free public relations.
``The Olympic torch goes through very small towns, large cities, prairies,'' said Dori Wofford, spokeswoman for the Olympic Torch Relay, an arm of Atlanta Olympic committee. ``We were looking to show off the land . . . because the eyes of the world were turning to America in preparation of the Olympic Games.''
But, she added, ``We could not go to every single community.''
Although this was the longest and largest torch relay in history - covering 43 states, 15,000 miles and traveling within 2 hours of 90 percent of the U.S. population - it's bypassing a handful of the country's most populous regions. Including Hampton Roads.
The Atlanta Olympic committee fielded requests from 3,000 communities that wanted to host the torch.
``They put this route together as equitably as possible, where it was going to stop and how it was going to stop,'' said Norma Stanley, another Olympic Torch Relay spokeswoman. ``What it's trying to do is to allow a forum for each community to showcase its heritage and community.'' ILLUSTRATION: VP Map by CNB