Eastern Bloc Finding Sports Success Costly

As Eastern Bloc governments wrestle with political and economic reforms, some are determining that Olympic medals--particularly when they come at the expense of physical fitness for the masses--cost too much.

Reacting to recent statements by officials in the Soviet Union, East Germany and Hungary, Colin Moynihan, Great Britain’s sports minister, predicted this week that Eastern Bloc athletes no longer will dominate, beginning with the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France, and the Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.

“Because they have invested disproportionately in compulsory sport as a propaganda tool for political recognition and international status in the past, they now have to change their priorities,” he said.

While that possibility encourages athletes in other parts of the world, including the United States, it clearly concerns Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain. As president of the International Olympic Committee, he views the de-emphasis of sports in those countries as an attempt to douse the Olympic flame.

As a result, he has called sports officials from the Soviet Union, East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania to IOC headquarters on April 21.

In a preview of his message, he said this week that he will tell them it is a mistake for governments to dismantle their medal machines.

“They are telling their people that many things must be changed, and we agree,” he said. “At the same time, sports traditions in those countries are much older than 40 years.

“They must be very careful not to destroy the sports of high competition. To build those teams is very, very difficult. We agree they must work for sports for all (people). But there is nothing against working in these two fields at the same time.”

One obstacle, the officials are expected to tell Samaranch, is money. As Eastern Bloc governments reconstruct their economies in an attempt to raise standards of living, sports federations have been told that they have to become financially self-sufficient.

“For the top sports in our country, there has always been enough money,” Pal Schmitt, Hungary’s Olympic Committee president and an IOC member, said last week in Budapest.

Yet, he said the government has discontinued physical education classes in schools.

“With so little money, that has led to a neglect of sports for all, which has had a very, very negative effect on the average health standards,” he said.

Sports for all also is the expressed goal of officials representing both the government and sports organizations in the Soviet Union and East Germany.

The Soviet Union has won more medals than any other country since joining the Olympic movement in 1952, and the East Germans finished second to the Soviets in the medal count at both the 1988 Winter and Summer Olympics.

“The best way for one to develop sports for all in a country is to have a very important percentage of victories in high-competition sports,” Samaranch said. “If you get a gold medal in one sport, you have tens of thousands of youngsters trying to follow this example.

“It is very easy to say there is no money for high-competition sports, but this is not the solution. When the results don’t come, the people in these countries will accuse the governments. They will not be very happy if the results in Barcelona and Albertville are bad.”

East Germans, however, were hardly pleased when they learned how much Olympic success has cost the government.

While the country’s former government under Communist leader Erich Honecker failed to deliver on its promise of housing for all citizens, it revealed last year that it spent $590 million on sports in 1988. Two-thirds of that went to athletes in training for the Olympics.

When it became apparent that many citizens resented elite athletes because of their relatively privileged lifestyles, former Prime Minister Hans Modrow accused the sports ministry of losing “control of the oars and rudder,” and committed more money to sports for the general population.

On Sunday, East German voters elected a new government, which has not announced a sports policy. Since it appears committed to reunification with West Germany, the issue might become irrelevant.

The International Amateur Athletic Federation, which governs track and field, is meeting with officials of that sport from both countries today to discuss a unified German team entering the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo.

Asked whether the IOC would approve of one German team in the 1992 Olympics, Samaranch said: “Why not? But after the political solution. We must be very careful not to go before the political solution.”

That is just one example of the IOC’s rapidly changing map. There are 167 member nations today, but Samaranch said there might be as many as 180 when he retires in 1993. Namibia, an African nation that celebrated its independence Wednesday, was the latest to apply.

Namibia is a former colony of South Africa, which was ousted from the IOC because of its policies of racial separation. Samaranch met with South African sports officials last fall, but he said the IOC will not act on their application for readmission unless other African countries approve.

“There must be an African solution,” Samaranch said.

He also said representatives from the Soviet Union’s three Baltic republics--Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia--visited IOC headquarters last month to inquire about membership, should they gain independence.

He was out of the city, but he said the representatives were told by Director General Francois Carrard that the IOC requires countries to have official recognition from five international sports federations before applying for membership.

Samaranch, a former Spanish ambassador to the Soviet Union, would not speculate about Soviet reaction to an attempt by the three republics to join the IOC as independent nations.

“At this moment, I would not say yes, no or perhaps,” he said. “All that is going on is so provisional that the best thing is to wait and see.”