WINNERS ALL : Special Olympics Find Success Is Measured Mostly by Trying

“Let me win,” Rafer Johnson shouted into a microphone as he stood in the middle of Drake Stadium on the UCLA campus Friday evening. And hundreds of Special Olympians echoed the shout, “Let me win.”

“But if I cannot win . . . ,” the former Olympic gold medalist shouted, pausing while the chorus of echos caught up with him.

“Let me be brave in the attempt,” he yelled.

The athletes returned the phrase, some even shouting it a second time. A couple of them kept shouting the first line back and forth, in turn, with the emphasis on the me . “Let me win,” as many mugged for one of the parents’ video cameras.

Mostly they celebrated the end of the Special Olympics Oath by cheering and hugging everyone in sight.

There was absolutely no semblance of decorum at the opening ceremony for the 19th annual California Special Olympics. Only joy.

The athletes who compete in the Special Olympics are all mentally retarded. Some also have other handicaps. They range in age from 8 to 70. Older athletes are not that rare.

As the athletes marched into Drake Stadium, team by team, dressed in their team uniforms and bunched behind banners declaring the names of their local teams, the camaraderie encompassed kids with braces on their teeth and gray-haired ladies.

All smiling proudly.

Of course, there were celebrities on hand. KTLA sportscaster Ed Arnold mentioned most of them as they circled the track and paraded up into the stands with the athletes. The athletes didn’t seem overly impressed with the stars of television and screen.

The mere mention of the Lakers’ A.C. Green, though, sparked a hearty ovation. Unfortunately, only a handful of wide-eyed Special Olympians got to see him when he made his appearance early in the evening. He had to leave before the actual ceremony began.

One of the young athletes explained to his buddies, “The Lakers are playing this weekend, too.”

Green is an honorary chairman of the Friends of California Special Olympics. He’s back after getting involved a year ago. Before he left, Green said that he had wanted to stay with the Special Olympics because he had been touched by the athletes.

That happens.

Rafer Johnson was instrumental in getting the California program off the ground in 1969, and he’s saying nothing about getting out at this point. He’s planning for bigger and better things with every year. “Now that we know what can happen,” Johnson said, “. . . what great things can be accomplished, I think we should start thinking about what can happen in the next 20 years.”

Actually, Special Olympics started at Soldier Field in Chicago in 1968 when Eunice Kennedy Shriver conducted the first International Summer Special Olympics with 1,000 athletes from the United States, Canada and France. That competition was an outgrowth of the sports programs at a daycamp she had started for people with mental retardation.

The next year there were statewide organizations across this country, and the Special Olympics were catching on in other countries. There are now more than a million mentally retarded athletes competing in Special Olympics programs in 65 countries.

Although the Special Olympics have international competition only once every four years (the next in 1991) and the state competition takes place every year, the local programs operate all year.

The 2,500 athletes at UCLA this weekend have been training for months.

Competition began Saturday and continues today in 9 of the 10 sports. The only sport that was completed yesterday was bowling, which was held at the Little Tokyo Bowl. But there will be aquatics at the men’s pool at UCLA today; track and field at Drake Stadium; basketball at Collins Court; gymnastics at Pauley Pavilion; soccer and softball at the intramural field, tennis at the LA Tennis Center; volleyball at the men’s gym and weightlifting in the Ackerman Union Grand Ballroom.

Closing ceremonies will be today at 3:30 p.m. at Drake Stadium.