O.C.-Long Beach Alliance Mulls Goodwill Games

An Orange County-Long Beach alliance has joined 17 cities in expressing interest in hosting the 1998 Goodwill Games, which will return to the United States after being held in Leningrad and Moscow in 1994.

Richard Foster, an Irvine attorney who is the president of U.S. Water Polo, that sport’s governing body, said he is heading a group that has sought and received letters of support from the cities of Anaheim, Irvine and Long Beach as well as the Orange County Board of Supervisors.

The group, which has formed a corporation called the Southern California Organizing Committee for the Goodwill Games, will attend a June meeting in Atlanta at which bid requirements will be specified.

Jack Kelly, Goodwill Games president, said the Orange County-Long Beach area was among 30 locales approached to see if there was interest in information on bidding.

Los Angeles and San Diego are also among the cities that will be represented at the June meeting. David Simon, president of the Los Angeles Sports Council, said he had merely responded to a letter inquiring whether Los Angeles might be interested, and that there has not been a commitment to bid for the games.

Other cities expected to have representatives at the meeting are Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Raleigh-Durham, N.C., St. Louis, San Antonio and Washington, D.C.

The future of the Goodwill Games, which have been held twice, seemed in doubt after the Seattle games last summer. But the board of directors of Turner Broadcasting System Inc. gave chairman Ted Turner its support to continue, despite learning that the 1990 games lost $44 million.

In addition to having at least two sizable arenas, a host city must have a major stadium, a major track facility, an Olympic-size pool and a velodrome.

There is no velodrome in Orange County, and no track with the capacity to meet requirements. But Foster suggested the Orange County-Long Beach group could coordinate with Los Angeles, which has such facilities.

“It’s an exciting event to think about. Of course, we have seven years to think about it,” said Foster, who believes the lure of top athletes would draw fans in an area where competition for entertainment dollars is so keen that promoters struggle to draw crowds for most events, with the exception of Ram and Angel games.

“Southern California is a sophisticated sports clientele,” Foster said. “The Goodwill Games are an international competition with the finest athletes in the world. World records will be broken. People in Orange County would go see USA vs. USSR basketball or USA vs. Yugoslavia water polo.”