Is L.A. the Place? : Wolper Leads City’s Bid for 1990 or ’91 U.S. Olympic Festival

When you call David Wolper’s office at Warner Bros. and ask for an appointment, he has to work you in around the dailies of his latest miniseries, “Napoleon and Josephine.” The little general waits for no one.

Napoleon, however, could probably not have chosen a better producer than Wolper to bring his story to television. Wolper was the man behind two of the most successful miniseries of all time, “Roots” and “The Thorn Birds.”

But he is better known on the sports pages as the man who produced the Opening and Closing Ceremonies for the 1984 Olympic Games at the Coliseum.

The man does not think small.

So what is he doing leading a 12-member delegation to Colorado Springs today in an effort to bring to Los Angeles the 1990 or 1991 U.S. Olympic Festival, which is not to be confused with the Olympics? It is to be confused with the National Sports Festival, which is what it was called before a name change two years ago.

“It’s not as big as the Olympics,” Wolper acknowledged. “But you can’t always say, ‘Let’s go get the Olympics.’ We’ll wait 30 years before we get another one of those.

“But do we always have to go for that ? Can’t we just have a nice, fun event, where everybody’s going to have a good time and kids are going to be around, and we’re going to have a little action in the town?”

Whether the action will be in this town will be determined today by the United States Olympic Committee’s site selection committee after it hears presentations from six cities.

Besides Wolper, the chairman of the bid committee, the Los Angeles delegation includes Mayor Tom Bradley; Councilman John Ferraro; Harry Usher, general manager of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee; Anita DeFrantz, a member of the International Olympic Committee, and former Olympian Rafer Johnson.

The USOC’s executive board will be asked to approve the site selection committee’s decision in June, but that is considered a formality.

Minneapolis is a prohibitive favorite for the 1990 festival, which is fine with the other cities because they all are pointing toward 1991. Los Angeles, San Antonio and Orlando, Fla., are considered the strongest contenders. Detroit and Washington also have submitted bids.

“With a city like this, they don’t doubt we can hold it,” Wolper said. “Other cities try to tell them how many hotel rooms they have, how to get there, the transportation, the venues. We don’t have to go through that. We have all that. We have the organization to do it. It’s just a question of whether they want to do it in a big city or a small city.”

The USOC has leaned toward smaller cities. Of the eight festivals since the original one in 1978, Colorado Springs has played host to three. It got the first two when no other cities bid. Raleigh-Durham, N.C., has been awarded the festival in 1987, Oklahoma City in 1989. There is no festival in an Olympic year.

But after the success of the festival last summer in Houston, where records were established for attendance and ticket sales, USOC officials have reason to believe the event will not be lost in a larger city.

“I think the athletes like the idea that they are going to have a big-city experience the year before the (1992 Olympic Games at Barcelona, Spain),” Wolper said. “You should experience the media crush that you have in a big city, experience the surroundings of a big city.

“It’s a similar experience to the Games. You shouldn’t just go over to Barcelona cold. A lot of those kids never have any big-city experience before the Olympics.”

Wolper can list other reasons for the committee to select Los Angeles, nine others to be exact. Foremost among them are the weather and the facilities.

But why does he think that Los Angeles, a city that has had Olympics, Super Bowls and World Series, would even notice the Olympic Festival?

“First of all, we’re not asking the city to respond into the Coliseum,” he said. “The events are going to be held in arenas that aren’t difficult to fill. If you asked me why we (might) hold track and field at the Coliseum, I couldn’t give you an answer. I don’t think I could fill the Coliseum. But I’m only trying to fill Drake Stadium, which holds between 10,000 and 15,000 people. We’re not overestimating our ability.

“It’s the year before the Olympics, too, which means the athletes will be better known. If it was four years before the next Games, there would be all new athletes. But by the time you get to the year before the Olympic Games, the athletes will have built a reputation.

“Also, you can draw in L.A. because it’s a very unusual city. It has the largest ethnic population of anywhere on earth. Because of that, there is a sports club for every 1 of the 34 sports we have. There is even a tae kwon do club in Los Angeles. You couldn’t have a tae kwon do club in five cities in America.”

According to the bid committee’s tentative $8.34-million budget, only 41% of the tickets, priced at $6 each, will have to be sold to break even. Wolper said that the festival, using the LAOOC model, would be financed by the private sector. If there are profits, they would go to the USOC.

“Basically, I think it’s going to rekindle the spirit of the Olympics in the young people here,” Wolper said. “We have a lot of programs to bring young kids to these games. We couldn’t afford to do that at the Olympic Games. We can afford to do it here. We can bring them to some of the minor sports and show them these young athletes and get that spirit going.”

That is a spirit that Wolper obviously has not lost since 1984.

“I’m not making a buck out of any of this,” said Wolper, who also is trying to put together a extravaganza in Los Angeles to send off the U.S. 1988 Summer Olympic team to Seoul, South Korea. “I feed my family with my shows, not this.”

That may have been a subtle hint that it was time for him to get back to Napoleon, who knew nothing of tae kwon do but was proficient in the modern pentathlon.