Torchbearer Still Has Samaranch Smoking

When International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch returned to his home here last week to meet with organizers of the July 25-Aug. 12 Summer Games, he was still perturbed about the choice of a former soccer player, Michel Platini, as the final torchbearer during the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics.

It was bad enough that the athlete was a Summer Olympian, having competed for France in 1976 at Montreal, but Samaranch probably could have overlooked that if Platini was not a soccer player who made his name in the World Cup.

Of all the sports in the Olympic movement, the one over which the IOC has the least influence is soccer.

For evidence, search no further than the decision by FIFA, the international football federation, to use this summer’s Olympic soccer tournament as a championship for players under 23 years old so that it will not threaten the prestige of the World Cup. That decision was made in defiance of Samaranch, whose goal has been to have the world’s best athletes participate in the Olympics.

The organizers of the Winter Olympics in France’s Savoy region compounded the problem by failing to consult with Samaranch. He does not like surprises, particularly unpleasant ones.

The chief executive officer of the Barcelona Olympic Organizing Committee, Josep Miguel Abad, has told associates that Samaranch will be informed of the identity of the final torchbearer for the Summer Games at least one month in advance.

The gaffe at Albertville might have cost Jean-Claude Killy, co-president of the Organizing Committee for the Winter Games, his chance of being named this summer to the IOC.

After the IOC voted last month to allow Samaranch to choose two at-large members to the 93-member committee, it was widely speculated that Killy would be one. Now, according to sources close to Samaranch, he is leaning toward the president of the International Ice Hockey Federation, Gunther Sabetzki.

The other at-large member is virtually certain to be Italy’s Primo Nebiolo, president of the International Amateur Athletic Federation, which governs track and field.

In an interview last week with a Spanish sports newspaper, El Mundo Deportivo, Nebiolo said he does not expect sprinter Katrin Krabbe to compete this summer at Barcelona after she and two other German athletes were suspended for four years by their national federation for allegedly manipulating a drug test.

The athletes have appealed, but Nebiolo said: “(German officials) are sure that they have acted correctly. They have all the proof for arriving at their decision.”

Although the three suspended athletes are former East Germans, a world champion from the country’s West side, high jumper Heike Henkel, came to their defense during a meeting last week between German athletes and officials.

“Four years, this is terrible,” she said. “Isn’t there anything that can be done to help them return earlier?”

German officials said no.

Don’t get the impression that Henkel is soft on drugs. At last year’s World Championships, she wore a T-shirt with words on the back that, in English, said, “To be top without doping.”

The organizing committee for soccer’s 1994 World Cup in the United States will announce on March 23 the cities that will stage games in the monthlong tournament. Although the committee hoped to select 12, it appears that for financial reasons the number will be eight.

Speculation is that among them will be Pasadena, Palo Alto, Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Washington, Boston and East Rutherford, N.J. It is still possible, however, that the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Conn., could be chosen if the Meadowlands in New Jersey cannot accommodate soccer games.

If Jack Kent Cooke and Washington can reach an agreement soon on the construction of a new stadium for the Redskins, it will be used for the championship game. If not, the Rose Bowl probably will be the big winner.

French figure skater Surya Bonaly, who finished fifth in the Winter Olympics, has left her coach of the last seven years.

“I’m a little bit of a mess,” she said Friday in announcing her split with Didier Gailhaguet. “I don’t know what to do.”

Bonaly, 18, said she wants to coach herself with help from her mother, but the French figure skating federation has ordered her to either find a legitimate coach or withdraw from the World Championships later this month at Oakland.

Gailhaguet and Bonaly’s mother, Suzanne, have been at odds for years because of her interference with his coaching. The break came during the final night of the women’s competition at Albertville after the International Skating Union told him that only two persons could be in the coach’s area at rink side during Bonaly’s performance.

He chose himself and his wife, who was Bonaly’s choreographer. Suzanne Bonaly was relegated to the bleachers.

The French sports newspaper, L’Equipe, commented that Bonaly’s announcement liberated Gailhaguet from a migraine.

As the story goes, headlines in Toronto on the day of Ben Johnson’s success at the 1988 Summer Olympics read, “Canadian Wins 100 Meters,” and, on the day of his disgrace, they read, “Jamaican Fails Drug Test.”

There was a similar feeling among people in France toward the brother-sister ice dancing team of Isabelle and Paul Duchesnay, who have lived most of their lives in Quebec but compete for France.

“When I thought they were going to win the gold medal, they were French,” an Olympic spectator said. “Now, they are Canadian.”

He was among many people who were aggravated when the silver-medalists failed to show for the figure skating exhibition on the final day of the Winter Games. They explained that Isabelle was ill, but their fans at least expected them--or one of them--to come to the arena and wave.

The Duchesnays appear in disarray. Disappointed in their performance at Albertville, they will decide this week whether to compete in the World Championships at Oakland. If they do, speculation is that they will bring a new free dance program to replace their subdued “West Side Story.”