American Olympians Help Publize Turner’s ’86 Goodwill Games

Still steaming over the boycotts of the last two Olympic Games, several prominent American Olympians are taking to the road pushing television mogul Ted Turner’s alternate Olympics--the 1986 Goodwill Games.

The Goodwill Games, criticized by some U.S. Olympic Committee officials as detrimental to the Olympic movement, represent the first time since the 1976 Montreal Olympics that American and Soviet athletes will clash in summer world class competition. The United States boycotted the 1980 Moscow Games and the Soviets refused to attend the 1984 Los Angeles Games.

The inaugural edition of the Games will be held in Moscow next July 5-20 and will be televised by Turner Broadcasting System. Inc., Ted Turner’s cable television network. The Goodwill Games are Turner’s effort to “go back and undo the wrongs that occurred both ways (in the 1980 and 1984 boycotts) and start all over again,” a statement from Turner said.

Organizers say some 5,000 athletes from more than 40 nations are expected to take part in the Olympic-style games, which will feature sports ranging from basketball to boxing and track-and-field to figure skating. The Games are scheduled to be held in the United States in 1990.

The American athletes are in the midst of a 20-city international tour for the Goodwill Games, an event that many of them claim is an important first step in stripping international sports competition of politics.

Swimmers Rowdy Gaines and Nancy Hogshead, triple jumper Willie Banks, long jumper Carol Lewis and water polo captain Terry Schroeder are among the Olympians attempting to drum up publicity for the Goodwill Games.

Lewis, a member of the 1984 American track and field team and the owner of the American women’s long-jump record, said: “I’m a little bit tired of being used as a politcal pawn, definitely. I think a lot of us are. People don’t mess with a lot of the other people’s career’s--this is a career for us. A lot of us have spent more time with our amateur sport than most people have spent with their jobs. This is our job right now.”

“Everybody was ranting and raving (during the boycotts), but the only people who get hurt are the athletes,” Lewis added. “You know, they’re stabbing us in the back and we’re just trying to go out there and be the best that we can be and get the best competition. They dangle (the Olympics) in front of us and snatch it away.”

Gaines, who won three gold medals in 1984 and set three Olympic and two world records, rapped Olympic officials who argue that the Goodwill Games will undermine the Olympics.

“The Goodwill Games are not going to solve world peace and they’re not going to solve world political problems, but it’s a step in the right direction,” Gaines said. “I think all it can do is help. There is no way it can hurt. Look at the summit in Geneva (in November between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev). All it could do was help--it couldn’t hurt.”

Banks, the world record holder in the triple jump, added: “The people who are saying that are people who are worried about turf wars--’Oh, I don’t want somebody taking my responsibilities away from me.’ (But) it’s benefitting too many people for it to have a derogatory effect.”

“For example, here’s an opportunity for amateur athletes to be in the public eye more than once every quadrenniel,” said Banks, who finished a disappointing sixth in the 1984 Olympics. “It’s also a chance for sponsors who sponsor Olympic programing to get more for their dollars. They can now have athletes in lime light every two years rather than every four years.”

Just beneath the surface of the athletes’ support for the Goodwill Games lies the emotional hurt each of them sustained when former President Jimmy Carter announced the United States would not be participating in the 1980 Moscow Games in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Gaines said: “When I heard about 1980, I was very upset, very down, very angry, very mad--all of the emotions you would think came out of me did. But I didn’t realize what I missed in 1980 because I had never competed in an Olympic Games. I never really missed until I competed in 1984. I was more upset about ’80 after ’84 because I realized how much I missed in ’80.”

“Everyone’s dream is still to win an Olympic Gold medal,” Gaines said. “But everyone’s dream is also to compete against the best -- and the very best will be there next summer.”

Schroeder, a member of the 1980 water polo team and the captain of the 1984 gold medal team, reflected on the 1980 boycott.

“It was really terrible,” he said. “Ourselves, on the water polo team, we had eight guys who went through the boycott in 1980 who decided to go the four more years to make it to the next Olympic Games.

“It was real interesting, we had a tournament in Hungary in 1984 before the Olympic Games where we actually competed against the Russians,” Schroeder added.

“It was just after they announced they were going to boycott the Olympics. It was the first time (the Soviet athletes) really opened up and came to us as friends. They said, ‘We know how you felt in 1980. We feel exactly the same way. It’s the athletes who are getting burned -- it never should have happened.’ They even said, ‘We hope you guys win the gold medal because you’re the next best team to us.”

Soviet triple-jumper Viktor Saneyev, who earned gold medals in the 1968, ’72 and ’76 Games and a silver in the 1980 game, also spoke in favor of the Goodwill Games at a Washington news conference drawing a handful of American reporters as well as the Soviet news agency TASS.