U.S. OLYMPIC FESTIVAL : COMMENTARY : Festival Likely to Be a Hard Sell in Los Angeles

Alongside gold medalists in slow-pitch softball and record setters in roller speedskating, confusion reigns at the U.S. Olympic Festival.

A year ago, after the Festival in Oklahoma City, an exit poll showed that 20% of the locals believed they had just witnessed the Olympic Games. Minnesotans, of course, are more sophisticated. Do the same poll here and you’d probably come in at 15%, tops.

Next year, the Not-The-Olympics come to Los Angeles, which had the real ones six summers ago, which raises a quandary of a different kind.

Once you’ve sat behind home plate at the World Series, who’s going to want a bleacher seat in the Florida State League?

Since festival organizers continue to grouse about the misrepresentation of their event, we’ll give them their say now: “The Olympic Festival is developmental,” says Eli Primrose-Smith, executive director for the 1991 festival. “It’s about getting young athletes to a better level. . . . We are creating the heroes of tomorrow.”

This played well in the Twin Cities, but then, what wearing sweat socks doesn’t? Minneapolis and St. Paul are the new kids on the national sports block, and now that they’ve got a Metrodome, they’re busy wooing Super Bowls and Final Fours and Pan-American Games--basically, anything that moves quickly. Minnesota put on its best face--and, most important, bodies in the seats--for the Olympic Festival.

Synchronized swimming sold out. Kayaking and taekwondo drew record crowds. Overall, nearly half a million people bought tickets for everything from boxing to rhythmic gymnastics.

And this was without Carl Lewis on the track, Christopher Bowman on the ice and Janet Evans in the pool.

You want marquee names, try the Goodwill Games.

But what about L.A., where spectators walk out of Fernando Valenzuela no-hitters in the ninth inning? Who’s going to brave the mid-day 405 Freeway for a glimpse at a junior swimmer from River Edge, N.J.? Or a gold-medal ice hockey game between 18-year-old players from Duluth and Ann Arbor?

No Gretzky, no way.

“We in L.A. have a slightly different task,” Primrose-Smith says. “We do have a job ahead of us. It’s going to be a real challenge to grab the interest of the sophisticated Southern California sports fan.”

Primrose-Smith will start by borrowing a few pages from the Twin Cities’ handbook. With five major venues on the University of Minnesota campus and 15 others within a 10-mile radius, the Minnesota festival was a model of logistical efficiency. Through planning alone, traffic jams were defused before they could begin.

Los Angeles needs all of that planning it can get. Unlike 1984, motorists aren’t going to leave their cars at home and scarf up bus schedules to accommodate the Olympic Festival. Congestion as usual is the early forecast.

Thus, Primrose-Smith is thinking small, a good start. Venues for the 1991 festival will be centered around the dual hubs of USC and UCLA, with USC hosting badminton, baseball, diving, racquetball and swimming; UCLA, track and field, gymnastics, team handball, tennis and volleyball. Basketball will be held at the Sports Arena, boxing and hockey at the Forum, rowing and kayaking at Marina del Rey.

“There’s going to be more concentration in L.A. than there was with the Olympics,” Primrose-Smith says. “And we’re going for smaller venues, for more of an intimate feel and to fill them up. Track, for instance, will be held at Drake Stadium, which seats 12,000, as opposed to the Coliseum, which seats 90,000.

“We think 12,000 is more realistic.”

As the USOC has reluctantly admitted, something has to be done about the festival field. Partly because of the Goodwill Games and partly because of the timing, much of the 1990 Olympic Festival resembled a glorified juniors meet. There will be no Goodwill Games in 1991, but already, USOC president Robert Helmick has appointed a task force to find a better way to stock the festival rosters.

Among the suggestions:

--Hold the festivals less frequently, perhaps every pre-Olympic year.

--Invite a team of international athletes.

--Have the national governing bodies of all 37 sports schedule their national championships within the format of the festival.

--And, the big one: Link an athlete’s financial training support to his or her participation in the festival. No play, no pay.

“The Olympic Festival is at kind of a crossroads,” says Sheila Walker, USOC director of festivals and competitions. “We have to determine what is still valuable about it, what is unique about it. And at the heart of it is the athletes. What is their motivation for competing here or elsewhere?”

One more idea: The USOC task force is looking into scrapping the four compass points that currently pass for team designations. The North beat the South in the Civil War, which was a biggie, but in the Olympic Festival, where hockey players from Minnesota are allowed to compete for the South, who really cares?

“The North, South, East, West designations--nobody implements them very much,” Walker says. So the teams dress in the three primary colors, plus green, and the spectator gets to root for his favorite hue.

Go Red?

In Los Angeles in 1991, the great Olympic Festival hope is to stay out of it.