Puerto Rican Is Hurricane of Olympic Activity : At 74, Rieckehoff Remains Dogged in His Pursuit of 2004 Summer Games

Puerto Ricans who can afford to travel often do so during August, when the temperature and the humidity here are both measured in the 90s.

So why did the International Olympic Committee, many of whose members think discomfort is a five-minute wait for their limousines, come to Puerto Rico now for their annual session?

“A lot of our members have never seen a hurricane,” said the IOC’s glib vice president, Richard Pound of Canada.

Actually, there have been no hurricanes sighted within the last few days in this part of the Caribbean, unless one counts the tireless IOC member from Puerto Rico, German Rieckehoff.

Out of respect for Rieckehoff, the IOC scheduled its 95th session in San Juan. He will reach the mandatory retirement age of 75 next February, which will be the IOC’s loss more than his because he appears more active than many of his younger colleagues.

Forget the cane; he sometimes does as he charges from one area to another in the Caribe Hilton Hotel, the IOC headquarters, his walkie-talkie in hand, as he seeks solutions to problems that arise in the organization of the session.

By the time the session ends Saturday, Rieckehoff wants each of the 85 visiting IOC members here to go home believing that San Juan is capable of also organizing the Summer Olympics. The year he has in mind, 2004, is posted on billboards, bumper stickers and posters throughout the city.

The IOC has not voted on a city for the 1996 Summer Olympics. That will be determined next summer in the session at Tokyo. The vote for the 2000 Summer Olympics will not occur until 1993. But Rieckehoff wanted San Juan to be first in line for 2004. That vote is scheduled for 1997.

“I think Puerto Rico has a much stronger position than anyone else, probably because of its weakness,” he said Sunday. “We are the only small country in the world that has said, ‘We can do it, we want to do it.’ ”

Officially, Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory. The island’s 3.3 million are U.S. citizens, although they cannot vote in federal elections. Nor do they have a voting member in Congress. On the other hand, they do not pay income taxes.

Puerto Rico’s Olympic Committee, however, is independent, the same as those of other U.S. territories such as Guam, American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Make that independent with a capital I. When the United States boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics, Puerto Rico resisted pressure from Washington and sent its athletes to Moscow.

Rieckehoff also has been critical of the U.S. State Department because of its occasional denials of visas for athletes, officials and journalists who are supposed to participate in sporting events in Puerto Rico and the United States.

Only last week, the baseball team from the Dominican Republic was not allowed to attend a tournament in Puerto Rico because several Dominican athletes did not return home the last time they came here. At the same time, four Cuban journalists were denied visas. In their case, the State Department did not elaborate.

“Does the State Department think that Puerto Ricans are so weak that four journalists are going to take over the whole situation, and we are going to become Communists?” Rieckehoff said. “There are not enough real Communists in Puerto Rico to fill a bus.”

But although he is not one to avoid an issue, Rieckehoff would not comment on one of the most important questions in the island’s history, whether Puerto Rico should become the 51st state. There is a possibility that its citizens could be asked to vote in a plebiscite within the next two years that would allow them to choose from among statehood, independence or commonwealth status.

Rieckehoff, however, is preparing a position paper to be delivered next month that will inform the people of the potential impact of their choice on Puerto Rico’s Olympic Committee and its bid for the 2004 Summer Games.

If Puerto Rico becomes a state, precedent suggests that its Olympic committee will cease to exist.

Rieckehoff, however, believes it should be permitted to maintain an independent Olympic committee--which would keep the dream for 2004 alive.

IOC Notes

On its first day of meetings Sunday, the IOC executive board voted to recommend to the membership that it encourage national Olympic committees to prohibit athletes who have competed in South Africa since 1988 from competing in the 1992 Olympics. According to the IOC’s anti-apartheid commission, that would include U.S. tennis pros Brad Gilbert and Scott Davis. . . . The executive board has given its blessing to the participation of tennis pros in the Olympics. They played last year at Seoul as an experiment, which apparently was considered successful.

The executive board also will ask the membership to eliminate demonstration and exhibition sports from the Olympics after 1992. The demonstration sports at Seoul were baseball and taekwondo. Bowling was an exhibition. Demonstration sports on the program for the Summer Olympics in 1992 at Barcelona are taekwondo, pelota basque and roller hockey.