THE SEOUL GAMES / DAY 12 : A Batch of Olympic Medals That’s Made Out of Fool’s Gold

So far, so good. Here we are, 12 days deep into the Olympic Games, which are designed to promote global peace and human understanding, and not one single country has launched a nuclear attack on another as a result of a boxing decision or a steroids test.

On behalf of those of us sitting here on ground zero, cross your fingers, just as Ben Johnson did when he took the Olympic oath.

If you’ve been asleep, here is a partial box score of the medal winners:

Clean and jerk--Gold medal to Ben Johnson, who failed the former but is certified as the latter.

Seoul is truly a shopper’s paradise. Here you can find a fake Rolex watch, fake Louis Vuitton luggage, fake Polo sportswear. You can even find a fake world’s fastest human.

How can you tell when you’ve got yourself a fake world’s fastest human? Same way you know when you’ve bought yourself a fake Rolex--it runs a little too fast.

Appropriately, Ben was last seen dashing through the Seoul airport at record speed, covering his face with a fake Gucci briefcase.

The snatch. A popular weightlifting event, in which an entire team is snatched home from the Games in a move similar to an auto recall, and any gold medals that have been won are snatched back by Olympics officials.

The Bulgarian weightlifting team was shipped home when two of its members, after winning gold medals, flunked their drug tests. This was 2 days after the team coach had told a local newspaper, “We have no secret other than training regularly.”

The lifters who flunked explained that they were so doggone busy training regularly that they didn’t have time to study for the test.

Unsynchronized marching. The United States didn’t win a gold medal for its stadium entrance in the opening ceremony, but it did receive a commendation and honorary membership certificate from the Stanford band.

Fortunately, the American stragglers, TV muggers and lollygaggers only invaded two countries during the march into the stadium, slopping over into the dignified marching ranks of athletes from Vanuatu and Bahrain. Even more fortunately, neither country has nuclear capabilities.

Small-boor coaching. John Thompson, America’s lovable basketball coach, is in the lead for the gold.

Thompson has closed practices and has limited his players’ media interaction to nervous shakes of the head as the players retreat from anyone with a pencil and pad.

Example: David Robinson, a genial and erudite young man, a Navy officer trained to lead hundreds of men in times of national crisis, is not allowed to speak with reporters lest he breach team security and say something that might wind up on the Egyptian team’s bulletin board.

Guess which basketball team allows free access to its players, has open workouts and whose coach will talk freely to everyone from Pravda to the Pasadena Star-News?

The Soviets.

I tell you, those Russkies have something up their sleeves.

Silver medal in small-boor coaching goes to the male coach of the Yugoslav women’s basketball team. Milan Vasojevic grabbed one of his players during a timeout and shook her after she committed a turnover. But she’s a tough lady and she refused to break down and confess.

Freestyle phoning. Several U.S. athletes found various creative ways to cheat the local phone company by placing free phone calls back to the USA from the Olympic Village.

Finally, all U.S. athletes had their phone privileges suspended. Harsher punishment was considered, but team officials decided to be lenient since most of the athletes were placing the calls to their bail-bondsmen and marching coaches.

Freestyle weightlifting. Two U.S. swimmers won this event by cleaning and jerking a heavy ceremonial lion’s mask off the wall of a downtown bar.

This event occurred 2 days after U.S. team managers and coaches were harangued for nearly 2 hours by the American delegation leader, regarding poor athlete behavior, in the wake of the phone scam incident.

The U.S. swimmers avoided capital punishment when tests revealed the mask was not a $1,000 work of art but a clever forgery.

The crass cash toss. Disneyland wins the gold here, offering several U.S. Olympians big bucks to shout “I’m going to Disneyland!” immediately after winning gold medals.

The East Germans protested, thus ending the commercials here and thwarting Disneyland’s master plan of cheapening every great sporting event in the world by turning the pure, spontaneous moment of victory into a schlocky, calculated TV ad.

The protest actually helped Matt Biondi and the other swimmers, since it meant they wouldn’t have to sacrifice buoyancy in the water by packing microphones in their Speedos.

Team rope hurdling. Korean boxing officials ran off with the gold after five of them vaulted over the ropes into the boxing ring and attacked the referee in protest of a controversial decision against South Korean boxer Byun Jong Il.

Byun then staged a 67-minute sit-down protest in the ring. He did not win a boxing medal, but his sit-down performance qualified him for a place on the South Korean bobsled team.

Synchronized chanting. A tie between two groups of American fans. At a rowing venue, after the East Germans won several medals, a small group of American fans chanted: “War criminals! War criminals!”

When the U.S. basketball team played sadly overmatched Egypt, an event that begged for compassion for the victims, a sizable group of American fans saluted the painful rout by singing the traditional “Na na na, hey hey, goo-ood by!”

Towel throwing. The coach of Sudan’s boxing team won the gold when he threw in the towel on his own super-heavyweight before the first punch of the fight had been thrown.

The coach said he was protesting an earlier controversial decision against one of his fighters. His petulant act cost his super-heavyweight a shot at a medal and wiped out years of dedication and training, but it put the coach in the running to win a gold medal in the mental lightweight competition.

Nit-picking. An East German woman, head of gymnastics judges, picked up the gold medal when she had the U.S. women’s team docked half a point for an unintentional violation of an obscure rule. The penalty cost the U.S. team a bronze medal, which, by some odd coincidence, went to the East Germans.

There is a chance, however, that the ruling will be reversed since the official protest form was not filled out with a regulation indigo-blue Bic ballpoint pen.

Rhonda Faehn, the team alternate who committed the unintentional violation, said of the protest: “An adult doing that! I can’t believe it.”

Her education has begun.

Rhonda, incidentally, is not going to Disneyland. Neither is Ellen Berger, the judge.

However, with a little luck, Disneyland and the rest of the world will still be standing 4 days from now when this festival of fun, games and worldwide peace and brotherhood draws to a close.