Two USOC Officials Killed in Colorado Crash

After learning Sunday that a United Airlines jet had crashed as it approached the airport in Colorado Springs, Colo., Mike Moran, the U.S. Olympic Committee’s director of public information and media relations, said he was virtually certain his telephone would ring soon with tragic news about someone he worked with or knew.

“On any day, at any time of the day, on any United flight flying in or out of here, there are going to be either people from the Olympic committee or the national governing bodies aboard,” Moran said Monday from his office at USOC headquarters in Colorado Springs.

Seventeen of 40 federations that govern Olympic sports in the United States also are based in Colorado Springs. Because United is a major sponsor, Moran said USOC and federation staff members are encouraged to use that airline for business trips whenever possible.

“That particular flight has been popular with our people because they can get home early enough from business trips to spend most of their Sunday at home,” he said.

Two USOC staff members, Dr. Peter J. Van Handel and Dr. Andrzej J. Komor, and Dan Birkholz of the U.S. Cycling Federation were among 25 persons killed when United Flight 585 crashed about five miles from the Colorado Springs Municipal Airport at 9:55 a.m.

Van Handel, 45, was the USOC’s senior physiologist. A Sheboygan, Wis., native, he worked with numerous elite athletes during 10 years with the committee. He was returning from Hunt, Tex., where he had spent the previous week working with the U.S. Cycling Federation’s national team.

Komor, 39, the USOC’s biomechanist, also had been at the cycling team’s camp in Hunt before going to College Station to use Texas A&M;’s wind tunnel in cycling motion and resistance experiments. Before joining the USOC last September, the native of Warsaw, Poland, was a visiting professor in mechanical engineering at UC Davis. He also taught classes in kinesiology at UCLA.

Birkholz, 35, was a competitive cyclist until 1987. In 1989, the Laramie, Wyo., native was named to coordinate the USCF’s development program. He was returning from a development camp in Oklahoma City.

Steve Penny, the USCF’s media and public relations director, said Monday the federation is sending a psychologist to the national team’s camp in Hunt to help the cyclists deal with the deaths.

“Our cyclists down there are in a haze,” he said. “Three people they’ve worked with, two of them within the last week, are gone. It’s traumatic.”

Moran said a memorial service is scheduled for Wednesday at the USOC’s Training Center in Colorado Springs.