A Few Games Names

(Editor’s note: Mike Downey’s column for the next two weeks of Olympic excitement will be pay-per-read. You must pay 25 cents on weekdays, maybe more, and fork over at least $1 on Sundays for the exciting triple-write. Hey, the Summer Olympics begin this weekend, so be sure to order today. Sorry, no refunds when the column stinks or is about soccer. Thank you.)

You will be kept informed.

Television will bring you variations of “Up Close and Personal,” the old ABC-TV technique of zooming a lens up somebody’s nostril or taking you to some Burmese llama ranch for an interview with Katrinka, a 99-ounce gymnast.

Newspapers will inundate you with coverage, coverage, coverage--like the sports pages of the 1984 Los Angeles Times, which were so comprehensive that there was one sportswriter to cover Greco and another to cover Roman.

Magazines will razzle you and dazzle you with full-color Kodachrome sports illustrations taken from hundreds of feet in the sky by high-technology cameras strapped to the wings of specially trained Spanish pigeons.

Welcome back to Olympia.

Welcome back to an enchanted forest in which 7-foot 1-inch, 235-pound David Robinson of San Antonio and 4-foot 6-inch, 69-pound Shannon Miller can frolic together and belong to the same team, if not in the same game.

Welcome back to a world of equal opportunity in which 367-pound Mark Henry of Silsbee, Tex., can pump iron in the weightlifting while 106-pound Valerie Ann Lafon of San Diego can toss people like salads in the judo.

Welcome to the double-mint gold-prospecting prospects of identical sisters Karen and Sarah Josephson of America and Penny and Vicky Vilagos of Canada, in a synchronized swimming war that could turn out to be the most effective use of twins since Minnesota’s.

Welcome to the ultimate domestic disturbance, the anybody-you-can-throw, I-can-throw-better judo involvement of San Jose’s Mike Swain and his wife, Chie--the catch being that they are fighting for different countries, Mike for the United States, Chie for Brazil. “How was your day, honey?” “Flipped somebody on his head, dear. And you?”

Welcome to the athletic life of Nashville cat Connie Petracek, who is every bit as much an Olympian as, oh, Magic Johnson or Carl Lewis or Michael Chang, the only actual difference being that she shoots an air pistol and is 44 years old.

Welcome to the that’s-entertainment background of Lynn Roethke, 31, of Fond du Lac, Wis., who practices judo when she’s not playing guitar in a country-rock band--with her parents --and that of Diane Murray of Citrus Heights, Calif., 35, who wants to open her own taekwondo school after the Olympics and quit her current job as a belly dancer.

Welcome to the magnificent moonlighting of PattiSue Plumer, who somehow found time to become an Olympic middle-distance runner while graduating from Stanford law school, and Mary Jane O’Neill, who somehow found time to become an Olympic fencer while graduating from Harvard medical school.

Three cheers for the names of the games, including Westlake Village soccer player Cobi Jones, whose name appears in thousands of places all over Spain because “Cobi” the hound happens to be the official Olympic mascot; and Whittier baseball player Nomar Garciaparra, whose first name happens to be his father’s name spelled backward. (Wait until he finds out that his ancestral surname is actually Arrapaicrag.)

How about a big Barcelona hello for Melvin Stewart, a swimmer whose father worked for Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker; and for Felipe de Borbon, a yachtsman whose father, Juan Carlos, is more or less self-employed, being king of Spain and all.

And a big Olympic howdy to Mike Herbert, a kayaker from Arkansas who used to kill time rasslin’ bears; and to Gordy Morgan of Minneapolis, a wrestler whose uncle, Red Bastien, was once one of professional wrestling’s sneakiest, cheatingest, dirty, lousy rats.

Bravo to Greg Barton, the Michigan boy living in Newport Beach whose clubbed feet didn’t keep him from winning two gold medals in a kayak in Korea; and to Jim Pollack of St. Louis, whose degenerative hip disease and two years in a leg brace and on crutches didn’t keep him from cycling his way to Barcelona.

So, strike up that “Chariots of Fire” torch-song thing again.

Play it again, Uncle Sam.

Those are our Americans out there, remember. So, let’s get behind them. Operation Mediterranean Storm.