WINTER OLYMPICS : Notes : In This Case, Bronze Medal Is Really Silver--or Maybe It’s Still Bronze

It’s 24 years later, and Debbi Wilkes still doesn’t know if she won a bronze medal or a silver medal.

A Canadian television commentator now, Wilkes was a figure skater in the 1964 Winter Olympics at Innsbruck, Austria. She and her partner, the late Guy Revell, placed third behind a Soviet pair and a West German pair.

Two years later, the Germans were disqualified by the International Skating Union and the International Olympic Committee for having performed in a professional ice revue. Wilkes got a silver medal, stashed it in a safe-deposit box and that was that.

Recently, though, Wilkes was leafing through a magazine article when she read that Marika Killius and Hans Jurgen Baumler had been re-instated to second place. It was the first she’d heard of it.

Inquiries to the IOC have given Wilkes conflicting reports, so she still doesn’t know how she did in the 1964 Olympics.

Alberto Tomba knows what color his medals are--gold--and he doesn’t mind who wears them.

After winning the first of his two skiing gold meals, Italy’s man-about-town went to a dinner honoring him at Calgary’s Italian Club. He wore his medal to the affair, and passed it around the hall for the 500 guests to photograph or admire.

Americans want the bronze.

Canada’s new $1 coin, bronze in color and referred to by locals as “loonies,” are as unpopular with Canadians as Susan B. Anthony $1 coins were in the United States a few years ago.

But it seems that American tourists in Calgary are loony for the loonies, buying them up as fast as possible, even requesting them with their change after purchases. “They like the color, or something,” one shopkeeper told the Calgary Herald.

Calgary Herald publisher Kevin Peterson, quoted in the Soviet newspaper Pravda, sounded like a one-man United Nations.

“The Olympic Games in Calgary is a special phenomenon. In Los Angeles, the organizers did everything to put the U.S. team in the spotlight. We try to show the teams of all the participating countries. So look what an atmosphere prevails at the Games, what friendly relations are being established between sportsmen and the population.”

You’ve heard of World Series shares? Super Bowl shares? In the Soviet Union, members of the winning team get Olympic shares.

Sources told the Calgary Sun that the Soviet Union’s victory in hockey will be worth $25,000 a man, Canadian ($18,750 U.S.)

No comment from the Soviets, but Coach Viktor Tikhonov said: “If I get nothing at all, gold medal is enough.”

Introducing Gord Scott, the Robin Hood of scalpers.

Scott, 31, of Calgary, got busted the other day for scalping tickets. Thirty-six tickets were confiscated by police.

Through his lawyer, Scott wrote a letter to the Crown, asking that the tickets be given to a children’s charity.

Eighteen already were outdated, but the other 18--most of them hotly sought after tickets for hockey, figure skating and the Closing Ceremony--went to the Big Brothers organization, to be distributed to kids.

They do, evidently, always get their man up here--and sometimes their woman. A raid on a downtown hotel led to the recovery of about 100 Olympic tickets and the arrest of a Dallas woman for scalping.

Debra Lynn Andrews, 36, alias Debbie Simpson, representing a brokerage called Executive Sports Promotions, Inc., of Dallas, allegedly hired as many as 80 Calgary citizens to buy Olympic tickets at face value. The tickets then were resold, at higher prices, through newspaper ads.

An undercover officer paid $550 for four tickets with a total face value of $170. More tickets, money and documents reportedly detailing the operation were later recovered in the hotel raid.

The 80 Calgary citizens involved were not charged, because there is no law against buying tickets at face value.

Karen (the Klutz) Percy, who won two skiing bronze medals for Canada but is famed in her own household for being as accident-prone and clumsy as Gerald Ford, lived up to her reputation on her last day of competition.

On her final slalom run Friday, Percy hooked a ski tip and missed a gate. Then, while trying to get off the mountain, she took a wrong path and wound up on a side without snow.

“And everybody was there,” Percy said, blushing. “I said, ‘Good one, Karen.’ ”

Rain-check tickets--make that snow-check--were to be honored today for the Nordic combined spectators, but some bobsled ticket-holders were not so lucky Saturday.

Their $30 tickets listed a 10 a.m. starting time, but because conditions forced the start to be moved up two hours early, many spectators showed up around 9:45, only to find out that the event was almost over.

Comedian Garry Shandling said he really enjoyed watching the Olympic ice-dancing, particularly when the skaters’ performance was so romantic, you just knew they must be lovers.

“Then you find out that they’re really brother and sister,” Shandling said. “And you go, ‘Ooooh. Get me out of here.’ I think one Hungarian couple turned out to be twins. I kept waiting for the police to skate right out there on the ice and take them away.”

Times Assistant Sports Editor Mike Kupper and staff writer Randy Harvey contributed to this story.