Seoul ’88 / Randy Harvey : Cities Seek L.A. Blueprint, Not Montreal’s

Construction of Olympic facilities has been completed . . . for the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal.

The retractable roof over Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, home of the Expos, was retracted for the first time Friday night, more than a decade behind schedule and 10 days after the final touches were added to the facilities for the 1988 Summer Olympics at Seoul, South Korea.

Anyone speaking in 1976 of the Olympic movement had a vivid imagination. If there was movement, it was at the speed of a glacier. Or the Jamaican bobsled team.

Denver was elected as the site of the 1976 Winter Games but forfeited them when taxpayers voted down a referendum that would have required them to cover any losses. Their business acumen was confirmed when Montreal’s Summer Olympics lost $1 billion.

Twelve years later, there is a bull market for the Olympics, due in no small measure to the $222.7-million surplus of the Los Angeles Olympics.

Thirteen cities bid two years ago for the 1992 Olympics, seven for the Winter Games that were awarded to Albertville, France, and six for the Summer Games that were awarded to Barcelona, Spain.

When the U.S. Olympic Committee last year held a seminar for U.S. cities interested in bidding for the 1996 Summer Games, representatives from 14 cities attended. Atlanta eventually emerged as the USOC’s designated bid city and, according to Sports Marketing News, has a $5-million budget for its campaign.

And which city’s mayor recently announced his intention to seek the bid for the 1998 Winter Games?

Would you believe Denver?

Meantime, Anchorage, once considered no worse than the second choice behind favored Sofia, Bulgaria, appears to be losing ground in its efforts to win the bid for the 1994 Winter Games.

A referendum, similar to the one Denver taxpayers rejected in 1976, has been placed on the ballot for an Aug. 23 vote. If it fails, Anchorage Organizing Committee officials will withdraw their bid before the Sept. 15 vote in Seoul by the International Olympic Committee.

IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch said during a recent visit to Anchorage that the referendum must carry by “an important margin” if the city expects to be taken seriously by IOC members.

AOC officials are certain of the referendum’s passage, but the “important margin” stipulation concerns them.

What is an “important margin?”

AOC officials say they would like to win by the same 2-1 margin they enjoyed in a 1985 referendum supporting the Games. But Anchorage’s assembly since has learned that the IOC charter requires a city to act as guarantor for losses that might result from the Olympics.

AOC President Rick Mystrom said initially that he did not know about that requirement before the 1985 vote. But he recently was advised of the minutes from a board of directors meeting prior to the vote in which the issue was discussed.

No one who knows Mystrom believes he deliberately tried to mislead the assembly. It is more likely that he had a memory lapse. But to Anchorage voters, his credibility, and that of the AOC, will have to be re-established before the August referendum.

While others learned from Los Angeles about the advantages of bringing Olympic-related events to their cities, Los Angeles did little to capitalize on its success in playing host to the 1984 Games.

Of the national governing bodies sending teams to Seoul, only the National Rifle Assn. is returning to the site of the 1984 Olympic competition for its trials. The shooting trials are scheduled Aug. 7-20 at Chino.

But officials of the recently incorporated L.A. Sports Council say they do not plan to be left out in 1992.

David Simon, acting director, said he believes the council will be active in pursuing several trials, including cycling, swimming, diving and gymnastics.

“Any kind of sweeping analysis will wait until we have a board of directors,” said Simon, a vice president of the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce. “But in my opinion, those would be the most attractive events for our community.”

Although it has been incorporated for less than two weeks, the council is close to becoming a co-sponsor for its first event--a water polo match July 9 at Pepperdine between Yugoslavia, 1984 gold medalist, and the United States, the silver medalist.

Comment: Dick Button no doubt will disagree, but the International Skating Union scored a perfect 6.0 when it voted last week to de-emphasize compulsory school figures for the next two years and then eliminate them completely.

Don’t misunderstand. School figures are important. Without learning them, a skater does not have the foundation to become a freestyle artist. But they should not be part of a major competition any more than scales should be part of a piano concert.

More significantly, skaters no longer will feel obligated to spend the first three hours of each day practicing figures. That will save them time, which is particularly important in countries that do not have enough ice rinks to meet the demands.

In the United States, where fees for elite coaches may range from $35 to $100 an hour, the change could result in considerable savings for skaters’ parents.

The downside is that elite coaches will have to find additional means of income to compensate. Some, unfortunately, may be squeezed out of coaching. But if competitive skating becomes less expensive and, therefore, more accessible to a larger portion of the population, that is not too high a price to pay.

Speaking of which . . .

If compulsory figures had not been included in the Calgary Olympics, Canada’s Elizabeth Manley would have won the gold, East Germany’s Katarina Witt the silver and Japan’s Midori Ito the bronze. Debi Thomas would not have won a medal.

The order would not have changed for the men. Brian Boitano would have been first, Canada’s Brian Orser second and the Soviet Union’s Victor Petrenko third. But Orser would have won the gold medal in 1984 instead of Scott Hamilton.

Olympic Notes

Olympic trials end Wednesday in archery and modern pentathlon and Saturday in Greco-Roman wrestling. . . . The first phase of the selection process for the U.S. baseball team also ends Saturday in Millington, Tenn., where 41 players have gathered. . . . U.S. baseball Coach Mark Marquess, whose Stanford Cardinal won its second straight NCAA championship Saturday, does not believe his team should be the favorite in Seoul. “I think in ‘84, we probably had the best amateur team ever assembled in the history of the United States, and Cuba was not in Los Angeles,” he said. “And Japan won the gold. I talked to the coach of the Japanese team and said, ‘How’s your team going to be in ’88 compared to ‘84?’ They think it’s going to be better.”

Japan beat Cuba in four games Sunday at the NHK men’s volleyball tournament in Fujisawa, Japan. Japan won the round-robin tournament by finishing undefeated in three matches. Cuba was 2-1. The Netherlands beat only winless South Korea to finish third under Arie Selinger, who coached the U.S. women to second place in the 1984 Olympics. . . . Japan’s men’s team will compete in the USA Cup at the Forum, June 22-26, against the world’s top-ranked team, the United States, the No.2 Soviet Union and France. . . . Andy Hampsten of Columbus, Ohio, who became the first American Sunday to win the Tour of Italy cycling race, did not make the U.S. Olympic team in 1984. . . . Mary Decker Slaney was supposed to run the mile at the June 25 Michelob Invitational in San Diego, but promoter Al Franken granted her request to change the distance to 2,000 meters so she can pursue the world record of 5:28.69 held by Romania’s Maricica Puica. Slaney’s American record is 5:32.7. The meet will be at Balboa Park, the first time it has been outdoors.

Edwin Moses, who won his first 400-meter intermediate hurdles race of the year Saturday night in Tucson, said he has not determined his schedule between now and the July 15-23 Olympic trials in Indianapolis. “I’ll go back home and work hard for a couple of days and then decide when to compete again,” he said. Moses ran 48.38 seconds in Tucson, to make him the second-fastest performer in the world this year. UCLA’s Kevin Young has the fastest time at 47.85. . . . The 44.65 run by UCLA freshman Steve Lewis in the open 400 at the Pacific-10 meet probably will not be ratified as a world junior record by the International Amateur Athletic Federation because there was no drug testing at the meet.

John Thompson, the U.S. men’s basketball coach, has inquired about using a gym on the U.S. military base in Seoul for practice during the Olympics. But military officials say that the proper paperwork has not been filed. They also say that Thompson balked when informed that he would have to allow U.S. soldiers to watch the team practice. Perhaps he’s afraid there might be a reporter among them. . . . At a mini-camp last week in Raleigh, N.C., for the 19 remaining players, Kay Yow, coach of the U.S. women’s basketball team, said she was impressed with Cheryl Miller, coming off a knee injury, in addition to Cynthia Cooper of USC and Cindy Brown of Cal State Long Beach. . . . Sue Wicks of Rutgers gave no explanation for leaving the camp, but she is not expected to return to the team.

San Francisco voters overwhelmingly passed a proposition to repeal pro-gay rights conditions placed on the city’s bid for the 1996 Summer Olympics. But it was a little late. The U.S. Olympic Committee earlier selected Atlanta as the designated bid city. . . . The Korea Times criticized organizers of a recent international diving and synchronized swimming competition in Seoul, saying they had “disgraced” the world-class Olympic facilities. The newspaper cited poor interpreters, volunteers who left their posts to collect autographs and discord between the national swimming federation and the Seoul Olympic Organizing Committee. . . . Representatives from the last eight Summer Olympics host cities are in Seoul this week to discuss the impact of the Games. David Simon, a vice president of the L.A. Chamber of Commerce, and Anita DeFrantz, president of the Amateur Athletic Foundation, are speaking on behalf of Los Angeles.

The United States got no favors in the Olympic soccer draw. It is in the same group with Argentina, the Soviet Union and host South Korea. Its preliminary games are scheduled for cities more than 200 miles from Seoul, Taegu and Pusan. . . . The 20th California Special Olympics Summer Games are scheduled for UCLA’s Drake Stadium Friday through Sunday. More than 2,000 athletes are expected to participate. The Opening Ceremony begins Friday at 6 p.m. Admission is free. . . . The U.S. Senate probably will not act on a citizenship bill in time for Gagik Barseghian, who moved from Armenia to Glendale two years ago, to compete in this week’s Greco-Roman wrestling trials. Barseghian, 30, was a member of the Soviet national team. . . . Barbara Ferrell Edmonson of Inglewood was the leading vote-getter among 11 candidates for the U.S. Track and Field Hall of Fame. She won a gold medal in the 400-meter relay at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, where she also finished second in the 100 and fourth in the 200.