U.S. OLYMPIC FESTIVAL : Event’s Real Value is 2 Years Away

Promoting the U.S. Olympic Festival has been a tough fight this year.

Consider the manner in which a Las Vegas hotel hyped last month’s Goodwill Games boxoffs: “The winners go to the Goodwill Games. The losers go to the Olympic Festival.”

The festival begins today at 33 sites in the Twin Cities area. It ends July 15, only five days before the opening ceremony of the more prestigious international Goodwill Games in Seattle.

Can the two events harmoniously coexist?

Jack Kelly, executive director of the 1990 festival and president of the 1994 and ’98 Goodwill Games, says they can, as long as a distinction is made.

“We’re looking to prepare the best ’92 (Olympic) team, whereas the Goodwill Games has the best athletes that are here now,” he says.

Indeed, many top athletes are skipping the festival, among them national team members from sports such as baseball, boxing, gymnastics, swimming and volleyball.

Although festival organizers have fought long and hard against the image of being an also-ran, ESPN has a cast of commentators with greater marquee value than the sum of the festival competitors.

Bart Conner, John Naber, Tracy Caulkins and Candy Costie-Burke, all of whom will do either play-by-play or provide analysis for ESPN, have won 10 Olympic gold medals among them.

Gold-medal count for the festival participants: Three. And that includes two by Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who is scheduled to appear for little more than a workout when track and field events begin next week.

Joyner-Kersee will skip the heptathlon and long jump, her specialties, in favor of running legs on two relay teams. She will also take part in the high jump and javelin as a non-scoring athlete.

Sheila Echols, a member of the U.S. 400-meter relay team in Seoul, is the only other gold-medal winner scheduled to appear. Echols will compete in the long jump, along with former Olympians Wendy Brown and Carol Lewis.

That is not to say that other festival participants are void of Olympic credentials.

High jumper Hollis Conway, archer Rick McKinney, weightlifter Mario Martinez and the synchronized swimming duo of Sarah and Karen Josephson, identical twins, all have won Olympic silver. The field also includes diver Wendy Williams, archer Debra Ochs, and judo champion Eddie Liddie, all Olympic bronze-medal winners.

“The festival tends to be a real mixture of experience and young athletes just rising into prominence,” said Mike Moran, a U.S. Olympic Committee spokesman. “This year, like last year, is a time to identify the athletes of the future. By the traditional festival blueprint, at next summer’s festival in L.A., we’ll have some strong names emerging.”

USOC officials estimate that nearly 90% of 1988 U.S. Olympians participated in Olympic festivals during the three previous years.

One of the emerging talents could be Jenny Ester, a 16-year-old gymnast who is all of 5-feet-1 and 80 pounds. But Ester will have to contend with Brandy Johnson, 17, a 10th-place finisher at Seoul.

No, the festival won’t be like Seoul, or even the Goodwill Games. But that’s not necessarily bad, according to Conner, a two-time Olympic gold-medal winner who will do television commentary in men’s gymnastics.

“The festival always turns out to be a good event because there’s always a little bit of an attitude of ‘Let’s experiment a little,’ ” he said. “There’s nothing to lose and plenty to gain.”

Greg Louganis, whose 12 festival gold medals in diving is a record, agreed.

“You’re not going to do your first ‘reverse three’ (somersaults) on (the) 10-meter platform in competition at the Olympics,” Louganis said. “In diving, there were times when the Olympic Festival was trials for the World Championships or Pan American Games. Other times it was more of an exercise.

“Sometimes the exercises turned out to be more exciting. When you try something new, the results can be spectacular.”

Natasha Kuchiki and Todd Sand offer a new look in U.S. pairs figure skating. Kuchiki, 13, from Canoga Park, and Sand, 26, from Thousand Oaks, trained together for only eight months before placing second in the U.S. Championships. Since then, the national champions, Kristi Yamaguchi and Rudi Galindo, announced in May that they will not compete in pairs to pursue singles careers.

In men’s basketball, Damon Bailey is expected to follow in the tradition of Georgia Tech’s Kenny Anderson as the festival’s most-watched player.

Bailey, a 6-foot-3 guard, was twice named Indiana’s Mr. Basketball, and he has been in the spotlight since 13 when he received unusually high praise from Indiana Coach Bob Knight, who saw him play in a junior high school game.

Bailey, who will be a freshman at Indiana in the fall, will play for the North team along with Eric Montross, a 7-footer signed by North Carolina.

The South has 7-1 Shaquille O’Neal of Louisiana State, an All-Southeastern Conference selection as a freshman last season.

The East is led by 6-11 David Hinton of Boston College and 6-10 Anthony Peele, a Villanova recruit.

At 6-9, UCLA-bound Rodney Zimmerman is the tallest player on a West squad that includes six players from Pacific 10 teams and four from the Big West.

No matter the sport, the emphasis will be on discovering talent.

“You’re going to see most of the (1992) Olympic team here,” Kelly said. “We just don’t know who they are.”