Notebook : A Whole Town Is Behind Them

There was a Valentine’s Day good-luck message in the Calgary Herald Sunday from the people of Marion, Ind., to their hometown favorites, the brother-sister figure skating pairs team of Natalie (Kim) and Wayne Seybold.

It had the names of 89 individuals, families and businesses.

A town of 35,000 people, Marion contributed $38,000 to the Seybolds after they finished fourth in the 1986 national championships, costing them about $10,000 in grants from the United States Figure Skating Assn. that they would have received by finishing first or second.

The Seybolds’ parents no longer could afford to support their childrens’ skating. Fifteen years ago, when the Seybolds moved to Marion, they had to decide between buying a home or allowing Kim and Wayne to skate. They chose skating.

“With the cost of skating and the cost of a home, one had to go,” Wayne said before beginning competition Sunday night. “So they lived in a mobile home and let us skate. After 15 years, there was nothing left. We didn’t come from the most affluent part of town. I think it made us work harder because we knew what our parents were going through to keep us in skating.

“Everyone talks about what sacrifices the athletes go through, but, in our situation, I think our parents and our brothers and sisters went through more sacrifices than we did. That was a driving force in our skating all along.”

Now, Wayne said, he and his sister are skating not only for their family but for the whole town.

McDonald’s and Burger King contributed 25 cents for each large order of french fries sold; auto dealers contributed $50 for each car sold; schoolchildren gave 50 cents each.

“At nationals, there was so much pressure on us,” Wayne said. “It was like if we don’t make this team, we’re going to be letting 35,000 people down.”

The Seybolds made it, finishing third in the national championships last month in Denver.

Lyndon Johnston is receiving more attention than usual for a member of Canada’s third pairs team, but most of the questions from reporters have had nothing to do with his skating. They want to know about his politics.

“It was my mother’s idea,” said the Hamiota, Manitoba, native of his name. “She wanted to get the B in there, too, but that’s where my father drew the line. The strange thing is that she wasn’t even interested in politics.”

Snubbed by the Glenbow Museum, the site of an Olympics-related exhibit of native artifacts, Doug Pederson, who calls himself a shaman, told the Calgary Herald he is going to make it rain during the Winter Games instead of snow.

Pederson said he performed a sacred rain dance in a Banff, Canada, hotel room earlier this month because the Glenbow Museum would not accept his ancient Indian medicine stones for its exhibit.

Don’t laugh.

Two years ago, Expo ’86 officials in Vancouver refused to display his stones, which are believed by some natives to have magical and healing powers. After Pederson performed his rain dance, Vancouver not only had rain but record-low temperatures.

Having learned their lesson, contrite Expo ’86 officials agreed to accept Pederson’s stones for the exhibit. There was no more rain for 53 days.

Bruce Jenner is back in Canada for the Olympics, but not to compete this time. He is a host for ABC’s Good Morning America.

Asked by the Calgary Sun what has become of the gold medal he won for the 1976 decathlon in Montreal, Jenner said: “I’m not sure. I had it in a safety deposit box for a while. Then I let my kid take it to ‘Show and Tell’ at school. Now, I think it’s in my ex-wife’s dresser drawer in her bedroom.”

Tamara McKinney of Olympic Valley, Calif., who has missed the entire World Cup season so far, is training at Sun Valley, Ida., and won’t arrive here until Thursday.

The former World Cup overall champion, who suffered a leg injury in November, won the slalom and finished third in the giant slalom earlier this month during the National Alpine Championships at Copper Mountain, Colo.

McKinney, 25, is entered in the women’s giant slalom Feb. 24 and the women’s slalom Feb. 26.

Chip Woods, U.S. women’s coach, said: “Tamara is skiing at about 90% of her normal ability. She’s somewhat apprehensive about racing in the Olympics after being off for so long, but she’s a real competitor and wants to give it her all.”

Sweden’s Ingemar Stenmark, who will be 32 next month, is at Vail, Colo., preparing for his two Olympic races--the men’s giant slalom Feb. 25 and the men’s slalom Feb. 27.

The three-time World Cup overall champion won Olympic gold medals in both of those events at Lake Placid, N.Y., in 1980 but was unable to compete in the 1984 Games after he was temporarily declared a professional.

The men’s downhill in the 1989 World Championships next winter at Vail, Colo., shouldn’t have any problem with wind, according to press chief John Dakin.

“The start at Beaver Creek was moved recently to shelter it behind a line of trees,” Dakin said Sunday. “So, it’s no longer exposed on the top of the mountain.”

Harald Schoenhaar, U.S. Alpine program director since the fall of 1984, said he has been told that he’ll return next season, despite his injury-riddled team’s poor results this winter.

In case any Calgarians forget that the Olympics have hit town, they have a powerful reminder.

At the top of the Calgary Tower, which could be a first cousin to Seattle’s Space Needle, a huge cauldron is alight with the Olympic flame.

It’s hard to miss, even in the daytime. At night, no chance.

You’ve heard of Little League baseball and Pop Warner football, but how about Pee Wee ski jumping?

There is, or at least was, such a thing and American jumper Mark Konopacke is living proof.

“I started in Pee Wee ski jumping in Iron Mountain, Mich., when I was 5 years old,” he said. “Our jumps were about five meters, little snow bumps.”

English ski jumper Michael (Fast Eddie) Edwards, who finished last in the 70-meter competition Sunday, and makes a regular practice of that kind of thing, has a ready explanation for his lack of proficiency in the sport.

“There are no ski jumps in England,” he said.

Mayor Ralph Klein on Calgary’s cow-town image:

“Sometimes when people come here, I get the idea they’re disappointed that there aren’t dirt roads and boardwalks and horses hitched to hitching posts.

“They look around and say, “Gee, this is a city.”

Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the United States’ favorite sexual guru, told a national television audience Sunday that the world’s best athletes have the same sexual urges and frustrations as the rest of us--even during the heat of Olympic competition.

Shocked? There’s more. Apparently, those urges and frustrations are both normal and healthy--at least if the athletes handle them properly.

Westheimer, interviewed by ABC-TV from the site of the Alpine skiing at Mount Allan, said if athletes were feeling “sexual tension because it’s Valentine’s Day, they should take a shower or something to get rid of the tension. The tension will affect their performance.”

The sex therapist indicated she saw no reason for denying athletes conjugal rights. But, she said, “If there’s a new woman in his life, he shouldn’t have sex before a race because it will take all night.”

And what are Westheimer’s sexual feelings towards Olympic athletes?

In her opinion, skiers make the best lovers.

Maybe they’re just bad at arithmetic.

How else can one explain the fact the scoreboard counts of shots on goal have been inaccurate at the end of most of the Olympic hockey games played the first two days of the Games.

Organizers also have unable to provide accurate summaries of the games until as much as 45 minutes after the event.

Though Canadians are reputed to be the most avid and knowledgeable hockey fans in the world, one organizing committee official blamed the problems on incapable “volunteer” scorers.

East German Katarina Witt, 1984 Olympic and three-time world figure skating champion, and American Debi Thomas, who upset Witt at the 1986 world championships, have confirmed the media’s buildup of their Olympic competition as an East-West confrontation by admitting they have a decidedly cool relationship.

But American Brian Boitano and Canadian Brian Orser, two of three one-time world champions competing for the Olympic men’s figure skating title, have been taking turns trying to quash the media portrayal of their event as “The Battle of Two Brians.”

“Brian and I are very good friends,” Orser said Sunday. “It’s been 10 seasons that we’ve been competing together. But in the past months this big rivalry has been pushed on us. People are trying to pull us apart, make us enemies, and that’s just not the case. On the ice, we have our jobs to do and we are competitors, but off the ice, we are friends.”

Times assistant sports editors Bob Lochner and Mike Kupper and United Press International also contributed to this report.