National Sports Festival : Baton Rouge Plans Bid for 1991 Games Despite Big Losses

The 3,000 National Sports Festival athletes had left for other cities and competitions, the 6,000 volunteers were back at their regular chores. National Sports Festival Executive Director Bill Bankhead was balancing the books and trying to figure out how to get a pole vault mat back in its desk-sized box.

“It doesn’t want to go back in,” said Bankhead. “You can’t stand on it and cram it back in.”

“We’re tying up loose ends today,” he said on Monday, the day after the games ended. “There are just a multitude of things we borrowed or purchased, and we have to get those things where they belong -- a hammer throw cage, wrestling mats, pillows, towels, sheets -- a multitude of things.”

The total attendance was about 210,000 -- around 90,000 people and $500,000 short of the break-even figure announced before the $2.5 million festival started.

Exact figures won’t be available for some time, but Joseph Toups, auditor for the city-parish council, estimates that losses will run around $1.3 million.

“From the figures we’ve seen, that’s what we’re looking at -- a $1 million shortfall in revenue plus the $300,000 the city-parish already appropriated,” Toups said.

Baton Rouge Mayor Pat Screen said the failure of the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN) and the U.S. Olympic Committee to put a local blackout on live telecasts hurt the gate. He said he’s hoping that businessmen will help defray the shortfall and that some sort of unprecedented agreement can be reached with the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) to help pick up the tab.

“We have a lot of outstanding pledges, a lot of assets to be liquidated. It would be hard to determine, right now, whether we actually have a shortfall,” Bankhead said. “If we do have a shortfall, we look at it as an investment.”

He preferred to talk about big single-event attendance at gymnastics, swimming, cycling and hockey, rather than sparse attendance at such things as basketball, boxing and track and field.

Bankhead said he will recommend that Baton Rouge bid for the 1991 festival, to be known from now on as the United States Olympic Festival. In addition, the city is now a prime candidate for national and international ice skating, swimming and cycling events, he said.

“I think where we fell down is that we just did not get the people in from the United States or the rest of Louisiana,” Bankhead said. “In ‘91, the proximity to the 1992 Olympics would heighten national interest and increase attendance from around the country”.

Whatever the questions about attendance and finances, there were none about the athletic spectacle.

Figure skaters Debi Thomas and Brian Boitano got the festival rolling in competition that began two days before the opening ceremonies. Greg Louganis, the world’s top diver won gold medals in both platform and springboard competition.

Gymnast Brian Babcock tied a festival record with seven medals. Speed skater Bonnie Blair won five medals, including a gold as a member of a men’s relay team.

Jackie Joyner fell short on her bid for United States and world records in the heptathalon, but still shattered the festival standard for the two-day track and field event. Valerie Brisco-Hooks also missed her attempts at sprint records.

There were also the local-kid-makes-good stories -- John Williams a former basketball star at Crenshaw High and presently a forward at Louisiana State being named the outstanding basketball player. Olympic weightlifter Tommy Calandro won the gold in his event on the final night of competition.

And some unsung sentimental heroes and heroines -- the South team that had to play 49 innings of women’s softball in 24 hours, including a 1-1 record in back-to-back 21-inning games. The festival’s first perfect pitching effort in men’s softball turned in by Jimmy Moore of the West.

Credentials were issued to 850 reporters and photographers, said Mike Moran, spokesman for the U.S. Olympic Committee -- down a bit from the corps that covered earlier festivals. ESPN had a crew of 300 at Baton Rouge for its unprecedented 39 hours of live coverage plus another 39 hours of taped events aired later.

Bankhead said it’s the sort of publicity that any chamber of commerce would be proud to get.

“Baton Rouge has proven it is a hospitable city that can handle a major event,” he said.

Under terms of the agreement with the USOC, the city eats any shortfall and any profit is split 50-50 between Baton Rouge and the committee.