Seoul ’88 / Randy Harvey : Anchorage Hopes for Vote of Confidence

The Anchorage Organizing Committee was so intent upon convincing the rest of the world that the 1994 Winter Olympics should be held in Alaska that it ignored its own city.

That changed in April, when the Anchorage Assembly, upon learning that the city would have to cover any losses resulting from the Olympics, called for a referendum to be included on Tuesday’s state primary ballot.

Although a subsequent telephone poll of 250 Anchorage residents commissioned by the Anchorage Organizing Committee (AOC) revealed that 57% favored the Olympic bid to 38% opposed, the results were dramatically different when those polled were asked the question as it will appear on the ballot.

When asked whether the city should sign a contract guaranteeing losses, the Olympics lost, 47% to 46%.

Since then, Olympics Yes!, a political action committee heavily funded by the AOC, has gone on the offensive. Although the AOC contends that the referendum question is moot because there will be no losses, the Olympics Yes! campaign has attempted to shift the focus away from finances and toward the abstract benefits resulting from staging the Games.

One commercial, brilliant in its simplicity, replays the final seconds of the U.S. “Do You Believe in Miracles?” ice hockey victory over the Soviet Union at the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics. At the end, an Olympics Yes! logo appears on the screen with no accompanying sound.

The opposition is less organized and certainly not as well funded.

It has circulated bumper stickers that say, “Olympics No! We Can’t Afford Them” and “AOC: Another Olympic Casualty.” But, as one Anchorage resident said, the bumper stickers “look like they were made in somebody’s garage.”

AOC Chairman Rick Mystrom said last week that he believes the referendum will carry by at least 60-40 and might even come close to matching the 66-34 victory of another Olympic initiative in 1985, before the city was informed that it would have to guarantee losses.

More neutral observers predict 55% of the voters will support the referendum.

The next question is whether that will be enough of a victory to convince the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that the AOC has the support of its city. Organizers in Lausanne, Switzerland, IOC headquarters, lost a referendum this summer and withdrew from the bidding, leaving four cities in the running.

Of those, Anchorage is considered the second choice. But there is no consensus on whether it is trailing Sofia, Bulgaria, or Ostersund, Sweden. The feeling among AOC officials is that they will have an easier time overcoming Sofia than Ostersund. Lillehammer, Norway, is clearly the fourth choice.

IOC members will vote on Sept. 15 in Seoul.

In drug testing conducted by the United States Olympic Committee (USOC), no athlete has been discovered to have used anabolic steroids. But Dr. Robert Voy, the USOC’s outspoken chief medical officer, said that does not mean the war against steroids has been won.

“There are a few possible explanations for the lack of steroid positives,” Voytold told the Chicago Tribune. “One is that drug testing has worked as a discouragement, and the athletes are no longer using steroids. I’m dubious about that.

“Another is the possibility that the lab technology is falling short and is incapable of keeping up with what is happening. A third is that we are facing the best blocking agent we’ve ever seen, one which cannot yet be identified.”

Voy has been criticized by Olympic sports officials in the United States for his candor, some of it justified.

During a recent media seminar at USOC headquarters in Colorado Springs, he said that an unspecified number of athletes tested positive for drugs at the track and field trials last month in Indianapolis.

That was a major story in a number of newspapers the next day.

A few days later, a USOC spokesman announced that the drugs in question were not steroids but stimulants commonly found in herbal teas and cold medications. In each case, the athletes, believed to number between 6 and 10, declared their use of the drugs before the competition as required by the USOC. After hearings, none of the athletes was sanctioned.

So why did Voy make it an issue?

One USOC official, who asked to remain unidentified, said that Voy, although unfailingly honest, is an anti-drug crusader who got caught up in the media seminar and failed to clarify his comments. But it also could be that Voy is so certain of widespread drug use among track and field athletes that he wanted to make them sweat.

Voy’s comments were of interest not only to the media in this country.

When he said that U.S. athletes have become leaders in drug use, surpassing even the Eastern Bloc, his comments received prominent play on Radio Moscow.

Soviet officials are now asking how their athletes can possibly be expected to competed against the juiced-up Americans.

Political Footnote: Republican vice-presidential nominee Dan Quayle and his Indiana Senate colleague, Richard Lugar, made the sports pages last year with their criticisms of the Pan American Games organizing committee in Indianapolis for becoming too cozy with the Cubans, President Fidel Castro in particular.

Actually, the organizers, many of them steadfast Republicans, were only doing their jobs as defined by the Pan American Sports Organization in attempting to cut through the political bureaucracy and expedite the Cubans’ entrance into the country.

Aware of the controversy, Cuba’s IOC representative, Manuel Gonzalez Guerra, told U.S. reporters in Havana through an interpreter that Quayle and Lugar were “screwballs.”

That put the organizers’ damage control to a test. They passed the word along to the reporters that the interpreter had meant to say that Quayle and Lugar were “inscrutables.”

Inscrutables?

Billy Konchellah, the Kenyan runner who spent his final year of high school in 1979 at Mission Viejo and has continued to live in the United States, appeared to finally have reached his potential last year, when he won the 800 meters at the World Championships in Rome.

But Konchellah had a relapse this year of the tuberculosis from which he first suffered in 1985, one year after finishing fourth in the Olympics. He was unable to compete last week in the Kenyan trials.

“He’s not physically well,” said Ron Allice, who coached Konchellah last year in sessions at Long Beach City College. “To try to defend his No. 1 ranking was too much. I’m saddened he won’t be in Seoul, but you wouldn’t have seen the same runner you saw in Rome last year.”

Comment: In light of the tragic automobile accident involving diver Bruce Kimball, who admitted to police that he had been drinking beer before driving, friends and family members of the two persons who were killed, as well as concerned groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving, asked the USOC to prevent the 1984 platform silver medalist from competing in the Olympic trials.

That was not possible, USOC officials argued, because it would have been an infringement of Kimball’s due process rights. His preliminary hearing will be a week from today.

It also would have been hypocritical because the USOC receives a large sum of sponsorship dollars from beer companies. Miller sponsors the three USOC training centers and co-sponsors the Olympic Festivals. Anheuser-Busch is an official USOC sponsor.

Ties between beer companies and the Olympic movement are strong. Anheuser-Busch and Labatt’s were official sponsors of the Calgary Olympics. Oriental Brewery is an official sponsor of the Seoul Olympics.

The beer companies promote drinking, not drunk driving, but one thing too often leads to another. The USOC and other Olympic organizations are sending out the wrong message by continuing these relationships.

Olympic Notes

Santa Monica’s Sato family will be well-represented in Seoul. Liane Sato, 23, survived the final cut last week for the U.S. women’s volleyball team. One brother, Eric, 22, is a reserve on the men’s team, and another, Gary, 33, is an assistant coach for the men’s team. . . . The third of four pre-Olympic track and field meets in the United States is scheduled for Saturday night in Sacramento. The final one, which promises to be the best because most of the big-name U.S. athletes will have returned from the European circuit, is scheduled for Sept. 3 at UCLA’s Drake Stadium. Meet director Will Kern said Ron Brown’s agent, Jerome Stanley, has inquired about the possibility of the former Rams wide receiver entering the 100 meters. Brown quit pro football this year to resume sprinting, but he failed to make the U.S. Olympic team. The Rams reportedly are attempting to trade his rights to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Canada’s Mark McKoy, considered a medal contender in the 110-meter hurdles, pulled a leg muscle in the 100 meters Sunday in Cologne, West Germany. Initial reports indicated he might have difficulty recovering in time to be competitive in Seoul. . . . There never was a question that Carl Lewis and Russ Rogers, the U.S. track and field team’s sprint coach, would have a row. The question was when. It happened Friday in Brussels, where Rogers prevented Lewis from participating in the 400-meter relay because the sprinter missed a practice. There has been speculation since Rogers was named as the sprint coach that Lewis won’t run the relay in Seoul because of a feud between the two. U.S. Head Coach Stan Huntsman, who has Lewis’ respect, has promised to intervene.

A 189-member delegation from South Korea arrived Sunday in Greece and will travel Tuesday to Olympia for a ceremony in which a flame for the Olympic torch will be kindled from the sun’s rays. The torch will arrive Saturday on South Korea’s Cheju Island for the beginning of the 22-day torch run. . . . It is hardly surprising that IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch attempted to persuade the British to give two-time 1,500-meter gold medalist Sebastian Coe a berth on the Olympic team. Samaranch is a strong supporter of Coe to replace Great Britain’s Lord Luc of Pavenham as an IOC member when he retires. Coe would join Princess Anne as a British representative.

There has been little progress between North Korean and South Korean representatives through two days of discussions, but at least they’re still talking. Negotiations resume today. Among the issues is North Korea’s involvement in the Summer Olympics. If the North Koreans participate, it is likely that at least two of the other five boycotting nations, Cuba and Ethiopia, will follow. It is too late for those countries to enter team sports, but they have until Sept. 2 to enter individuals.

For the first time, Australia has more than one candidate bidding to become that country’s official bidder for the Olympics. Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane will try to win the Australian Olympic Committee’s stamp of approval on Nov. 17 to bid for the 1996 Summer Olympics. Melbourne was host to the 1956 Summer Olympics, although it was hardly summer in much of the world. The dates were Nov. 22-Dec. 8. Melbourne organizers believe they can stage the Olympics in late September and early October, although they say November would be ideal.

They also say that quarantine rules have been relaxed so that equestrian events could be held in Australia. In 1956, equestrian competition was held in July in Stockholm. Australia still presents travel problems because it is so remote from the rest of the world unless you are from New Zealand. But it seems considerably closer than it did in 1956, when travel posters advertised Melbourne as “a mere 93 hours by air from London.”