WINTER OLYMPICS : COMMENTARY : If It Seems Silly, It Must Be the U.S. Bobsled Team

So what’s going on here in Calgary?

Well, if it’s Olympic time, it must be the silly season.

Sure enough, even before the lighting of the Olympic flame, it has begun. It wouldn’t be the Olympics, otherwise.

Going into Saturday’s Opening Ceremony, the leading candidate for the foolishness gold medal is the United States bobsled team. This is in the best traditions of the bobsy boys, for whom controversy seems a way of life.

In 1980 at Lake Placid, for instance, former Olympic hurdler Willie Davenport was a late addition to the team, despite protests that he was not qualified, that he joined the team too late and that better sliders were left off the team to make room for him.

In what surely must rank as one of the most bizarre press conferences of all time, Gary Sheffield, then the coach of the U.S. team, told how he failed to talk No. 1 driver Bob Hickey out of using Davenport. Hickey, Davenport and the rest of the No. 1 crew, incidentally, skipped that press conference, apparently in protest.

It was among other incredible things Sheffield said on that day, when he added that, although Davenport was a talented athlete, it really took no particular athletic talent to be a bobsledder and that there were probably lots of people throughout the country who would be better sliders than the guys sitting there, who happened to be two-thirds of the U.S. team.

So now it’s 1988 and Willie Gault, sometime bobsledder and full-time Chicago Bears’ wide receiver, has been added to the Olympic bobsled team, despite protests that he joined the team too late, taking someone else’s spot. Gault, however, qualified on the third sled and only the first two are allowed to compete, so if Gault were to ride here, it would be strictly as an alternate.

Both U.S. drivers, Brent Rushlaw and Matt Roy, have said any number of times that they have no intention of making room for Gault on their sleds.

Even so, Don LaVigne of Albany, N.Y., the young man who was bumped to make room for Gault after having been in training since October, took such exception to the whole business that he did the American thing. He hired a lawyer.

All week long, the controversy raged. First, LaVigne’s lawyer asked for binding arbitration. Gault, meanwhile, said that he was a bona fide member of the team, duly elected and sworn, and that the kind of resentment he was feeling from his teammates was nothing compared with the kind of tension he is accustomed to living with as a Chicago Bear.

The United States Olympic Committee and the American bobsled federation, finally agreed to “pursue a course of action” to get LaVigne back on the team without disturbing Gault’s place. Thursday, they announced that the international bobsledding federation and International Olympic Committee had given the U.S. team special permission to use an extra slider, 13 instead of the usual 12.

What apparently has been going on here is that the U.S. federation, given a chance to promote itself through a pro athlete of Gault’s stature, chose to make the most of it. Bobsledding, after all, gets precious little publicity. This time, it got a little more than it had bargained for.

It’s understandable that LaVigne would be upset but the fact is that he wasn’t going to ride, either, since he was only an alternate. So this whole silly business was about two guys who will get a chance not to compete in the Olympics.

Then there was a silver medal silly observation by Prince Alexandre de Merode, the Belgian who rules the medical end of the IOC.

In Los Angeles, there was a recent nurses’ walkout. Here in Calgary, the nurses are now on strike.

De Merode has taken great offense at that.

“I consider it--I don’t say criminal--but very, very bad,” he said. “It shows these people don’t have the interests of the athletes (at heart). . . . In my mind, it is crazy to have a (strike) at the moment of the Games. It is unacceptable because they are using the Olympic Games to pressure.”

Come on, Princey, get real. The athletes are probably the healthiest people here. What about the folks who live here who really need medical help?

Besides, people have been using the Games to their own ends for some time now. It’s sort of the accepted thing. Or if not quite accepted, at least expected.

And--it would be nice to say, finally, although everybody knows better--commercial excesses have also reached the silly stage. How silly?

Wednesday night, reporters returned to the media village and discovered that press releases had been left in their rooms.

What could be this important message?

How about this? “Looking for the scoop on Calgary behind the scenes? Take a lead from John Lavender, the Garbage Man of the Olympics. Lavender has spent the last two years coordinating the hows, wheres and whens of Olympic garbage. . . . Give us a call if you’d like to talk with Lavender. Besides being a garbage pro, he’s also an articulate, humorous interview.”

Just what the world has been waiting for--an articulate, humorous garbage pro.

Let the Games begin!