ANCHORAGE: ITS FIGHT FOR OLYMPICS : Anchorage, the Chosen City : Alaskan Pioneers, Blazing New Ground, Almost Carried It Off

When International Olympic Committee members selected the site for the 1992 Winter Games, only one city among the seven candidates received less votes than Anchorage. But the frontier spirit of the city’s supporters made a favorable impression. So Anchorage has received the nod to try again for ’94.

One evening before you sit down to watch television and have nothing better to do, pour yourself some champagne or beer and raise your glass in a toast to a group of Alaskans who did America proud in Lausanne, Switzerland, last fall.

There, this contingent of more than 100 men and women from Anchorage, most of whom paid their own way to Lausanne, showed the high rollers and deal makers from six other cities bidding for the 1992 Winter Olympic Games what talent, pride and courage are all about.

They brought tears to the eyes of those of us who on rare occasions think back to the noble pioneers who prevailed at Valley Forge and survived the awful trek over the desolate plains to California when America was young.

The Anchorage people are America’s present-day pioneers. Some of those who went to Lausanne were native-born Alaskans, but most originally came from Chicago, Indianapolis, Salt Lake City and countless other places in the Lower 48 to make a life for themselves on the new frontier.

For a time during the oil boom in the 1970s, Alaska was America’s most prosperous state, but in recent years, it has fallen on hard times. That is why there were many raised eyebrows when the United States Olympic Committee selected Anchorage over Lake Placid, Salt Lake City and Reno-Lake Tahoe as the United States’ representative to bid for the 1992 Winter Olympics against Albertville, France; Falun, Sweden; Cortina D’Ampezzo, Italy; Berchtesgaden, West Germany; Sofia, Bulgaria, and Lillehammer, Norway.

Brilliantly clothed in their white fur-trimmed blue parkas and seemingly everywhere, the Anchorage people were the most visible and enthusiastic group in Lausanne. They knew they were the new kid on the block, and they smiled the good smile as Gina Lollobrigida was flown in to promote Cortina’s bid and watched respectfully as Prime Minister Jacques Chirac of France joined triple gold medal winner Jean-Claude Killy in telling the world press why Albertville should have the 1992 Winter Games.

There were no front page superstars from Anchorage, but the joy and vision of the Alaska backers brought more attention to their presentation than any other city’s bid.

The Anchorage contingent knew all about the odds against a first-time candidate getting the nod from IOC members, but these are people who, for the most part, picked up stakes years ago to face odds in a new land that were far more formidable than competing against Gina Lollobrigida and Jean-Claude Killy.

Weighing even more heavily against Alaska’s bid was that Montreal and Los Angeles had been chosen as summer hosts for 1976 and 1984, respectively, and Lake Placid and Calgary, as winter hosts for 1980 and 1988. Veteran Olympic watchers knew there was no way that North America would get the Olympic bid five successive times within a 16-year period.

But for a city that had fewer than 2,000 people in 1920 and now boasts a population of 250,000, such obstacles had little meaning. Their bid for the 1992 Games was a piece of cake compared to the odds they faced in going to “the last frontier.”

The beauty of the Anchorage people was their combination of professionalism and naivete. Overcoming insurmountable odds is part of the drill when you become a pioneer.

The Anchorage people showed they were for real earlier this year in a preliminary IOC session in Seoul. They knocked the IOC members on their ears with their daring presentation, which included the delightful antics of a tap-dancing moose, the city’s mascot.

Besides the glamorous blue parkas and dancing moose, however, Anchorage has solid technical credentials. Their winter sports facilities are top drawer. Furthermore, the Olympic Games are more than facilities, transportation, housing, athletes and foreign spectators. The Olympic Games are people and not one of the candidates wanted the Games more than Anchorage, and especially all of the Alaska people.

What other bidding city could offer an untouched beautiful wilderness just half an hour’s drive from the Olympic sites, with centuries-old glaciers creating a fantasy world within sight of the magnificent Mt. McKinley, the tallest mountain in North America.

When the Candidacy Committee of Anchorage, led by Chairman Rick Mystrom, the head of the largest advertising agency in Alaska, finished its presentation in Lausanne, members were sure that they had overcome the seemingly overwhelming obstacles that had confronted them. Several IOC members promised their votes.

Almost all of the Anchorage contingent ran to the telephones to send word back home, certain they were going to pull the biggest upset in Olympic history.

For the next two days, they lobbied without really knowing how to lobby--exhibiting just sheer joyful exuberance that was contagious. They did not know or believe that those same IOC members who had promised votes had been caught up in the emotion of the moment and would later reflect that their “real world” commitments were elsewhere.

Bidding for the Olympic Games is not only big business, but the results are usually safe and traditional. One is more likely to believe the rumors that if Paris were not awarded the Summer Olympics, the IOC members would appease the French by selecting Albertville as the Winter site, or that the East European bloc would change votes after a token first-round pledge to Sofia and later vote for Paris in exchange for a 1994 Winter Games vote for Leningrad. Every day in Lausanne, there were talks of new front-runners and rumors of deals, but the Anchorage people remained enthusiastic, certain that right would win over might.

Two nights before the voting, the Alaskans held a dinner to honor their Candidacy Committee and supporters. Before the dinner, there was a cocktail party that was more like a victory rally before a Notre Dame football game. Each speaker was cheered to the rafters and the momentum of their fervor was intoxicating, and for a time, even I began to think that perhaps there might be justice in the world and God would smile down on this happy band of Alaskans.

But when the speech-making and singing were over, and this joyful group of pioneers went to their dinner, a deep sense of sadness came over me. For these good people who, more than any other contingent, fulfilled the Olympic philosophy of entering the arena, making the attempt and pursuing excellence, had not the slightest sense that in less than 40 hours their bubble would burst and they would be eliminated from contention after only two rounds.

So I asked Mystrom to invite his contingent to a screening of “16 Days of Glory,” our film on the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games that was scheduled to be shown the next morning for the world press, just a few hours before the announcement of the winning Olympic cities.

I thought this would be my contribution to their effort, to have two hours of watching the grandeur and glory of this greatest of athletic events and to perhaps reflect, win or lose, on the nobility of what they had done and what they must continue to do.

When the film was over, many came over to me, laughing and crying, and for a brief moment were sober in their thoughts. My last words to them were those that sent the ancient Greeks into the Olympic arena so many years ago, “Ask not alone for victory, ask for courage, for if you endure you bring honor to yourself, even more you bring honor to us all.”

At that point, I believe many of them for the first time realized that perhaps their time was not 1992 but 1994.

After the voting, one reporter approached Mystrom and asked what he and his Alaskans were going to do. He replied: “We’ll get back home on Sunday, take Monday off and on Tuesday start working on 1994.”

So one night when you’ve got nothing better to do, toast that happy band of Americans from Anchorage, those pioneers who dreamed a dream, entered the arena, and fought the good fight. For one week in Lausanne, they showed the world what American pioneers were like those many years ago. And because of it, they brought honor to us all.