THE 1987 PAN AMERICAN GAMES : PAN AM PARANOIA : One Way or Another, Americans Come Off Looking Like Village Idiots

In the Pan American Games, the United States just can’t win. We’re not talking about medals. The United States always wins the most medals.

Here’s what we’re talking about: When things go wrong, who gets the blame?

In 1983, when many U.S. athletes bailed out of the Pan American Games village 25 miles outside of Caracas, Venezuela, because it was still under construction, the Venezuelans weren’t blamed. They, after all, were experiencing an economic crisis. Blamed were the U.S. athletes. “Ugly Americans,” they were called.

Four years later, when the Games are being hosted for only the second time in 36 years by the United States, the village again has come under criticism. The problem this time is opposite of the one in Caracas. It’s not that people are trying to get out. It’s that too many are trying to get in.

Again, the United States, or, more specifically, the Pan American Games organizing committee (PAX-I), has taken the rap. The charge is that PAX-I officials weren’t prepared, although there is considerable evidence that their primary shortcoming is that they’re not clairvoyant.

When they originally asked the 38 North American, South American, Central American and Caribbean nations to estimate their number of participants, including athletes, coaches and trainers, the total was about 6,000.

But when PAX-I officials later called each country’s Olympic committee to confirm the numbers, the total fell to about 5,000. Since countries are allowed to subtract athletes from their original list but not add, many of them admitted they purposely overestimated.

So what happened?

PAX-I acquired space in the village at Ft. Benjamin Harrison for a maximum of 5,200 people and 5,744 had arrived by Friday night. There are not more athletes than expected. That number has remained unchanged at about 3,900. The difference is in the number of officials that countries sent.

“We must recognize that many of our Olympic committees are not as organized as they should be,” said Mexico’s Mario Vazquez Rana, president of the Pan American Sports Organization.

On Saturday, a PAX-I spokesperson said hotel rooms have been provided for 570 people, including 240 from the U.S. team.

That presumably has allowed athletes from Aruba and Colombia to move into the village. When last spotted Friday afternoon, they were sitting in tents, waiting for their rooms.

Hail Colombians.

In 1983, they registered at the village, were handed keys and then discovered their rooms had no doors.

That was just one of the inconveniencies athletes faced in Guarenes, the site of the village.

“I asked (synchronized swimmer) Tracie Ruiz to tell me what we could do different from what they did in Caracas,” PAX-I official Jack Swarbrick said. “She said pillows and toilet paper would be a start.”

Toilets would be a start.

When athletes arrived in Venezuela begin their three-week stay, they found a village that was at least one week from being completed. Two of the eight dormitories were not completed until the last week.

It looked like any new construction project. There were thousands of square feet of concrete, none of it covered with carpet or linoleum. There was dust everywhere, continually stirred by the virtual around-the-clock work by construction crews.

Who could sleep anyway? There were 10 people per suite--one large room, three smaller bedrooms and one bathroom. Since two of every three bathrooms weren’t in working order, there usually were about 30 people sharing one bathroom. By comparison, the eight to a bathroom here seems almost civilized.

“It’s worse than living in the ghetto in New York or Detroit,” said U.S. boxer Steve McCrory, a Detroit native. “You can’t drink the water, you’re scared to take a shower, and it’s dirty.”

There also were cockroaches, but he didn’t mention them. His mother taught him if you can’t say something nice . . .

William Simon, USOC president at the time, tried to say something nice, but it came out something like Richard Nixon’s, “I am not a crook.”

Simon said: “It’s not a ghetto.”

“It’s got problems, but it’s not a ghetto,” he added. “We’d prefer to have running water and electricity, but you do the best you can. It’s gotten a lot better here.”

Another USOC official, Dr. Irving Dardik, also noted improvement during the first week.

“The smell was overpowering, the sewage was very bad, and the rooms were all empty,” he said. “But they worked hard cleaning up and hired somebody to clean up the place, and now it’s getting in order. The running water is starting today, for instance.”

The water eventually did run, although it usually was cold or lukewarm; the toilets eventually did arrive, although they often didn’t flush; and the electricity eventually began to turn off and on when someone wanted it to and not by whim.

One of the most memorable comments came from the village governor, Col. Rafael Enrique Pena Pereira, who gave “no particular importance” to a pre-dawn blackout the night before the opening ceremony that left athletes without water or electricity.

That was easy for Col. Pereira to say. He didn’t have to live there.

As it turned out, neither did many American and Canadian athletes, whose Olympic committee officials found hotel space for them, particularly on the nights before their competitions.

For some odd reason, many U.S. journalists chose to criticize the American athletes for complaining about the village. Of course, the media didn’t have to stay there, either, having been housed in luxury hotels downtown.

One thing many journalists failed to report is that of all the Venezuelan athletes who entered the Games, only the rowers stayed in the village.

Two of them, Jorge Delgado and Nilo Diaz, said the athletes were right to complain about the village.

“Things are not completed,” one of them said.

Asked if the Americans were spoiled, the other said, “On the contrary.”

Then again, perhaps the rowers were just being polite, something that must have been contagious among Venezuelans during the Games. Everyone seemed eager to please, with the possible exception of the military. It supplied the young security guards, who kept their fingers on the triggers of their submachine guns and seemed eager to squeeze.

One reporter, not minding his manners, put his feet on the back of the empty chair in front of him during a basketball game. His mother taught him better, but she never waved a submachine gun at him when he forgot. A Caracas soldier, who appeared to be about 16 years old, did.

If the soldiers wanted to shoot, they could have started with the tarantula that parked himself next to a San Diego Union reporter one night in the press center.

Security in Indianapolis has been prominent only by its lack of prominence. There are guards, but they’re not carrying guns. The armed guards, supplied by the city and state law enforcement agencies, must be around somewhere, but they’re keeping a low profile.

As in Caracas, the natives here have been extremely hospitable. Maybe they’re too nice. If PAX-I officials had been strict in enforcing their deadlines, they could have told the officials who came to the village without registering in advance to sleep on the streets.

“There were all sorts of deadlines (for registration),” said Ted Boehm, PAX-I chairman. “But we’re trying to be reasonable. If we wanted to play the deadline game, we’d allow only those into the village who were pre-registered. That would take care of our housing problems.”

Instead, PAX-I is spending about $200,000 it didn’t have in its $33 million budget to put people in hotels.

Still, officials from some countries have complained. The Venezuelans, of all people, have been among the most vocal, threatening to pull out of Saturday’s opening ceremony because of conditions in the village. It’s been suggested that they recall the times U.S. athletes have complained about the accommodations in other countries and are trying to even the score.

But all it proves is that you don’t have to be a North American to act ugly.