OLYMPIC NOTES

Joe Byrd, the U.S. boxing coach, is rapidly becoming one of the most-quoted people here. Some samples:

--On amateur boxing’s new computer scoring system: “They went from a pencil to a button. What’s the big deal?”

--On U.S. medal prospects: “I see four, maybe five gold medals, and that’s my predicament.”

--On what it’s like to have his son, Chris, the team’s middleweight, on the team: “They’re all my sons, is the way I look at it. I don’t care which ones make me look good. If I have to buy them all ice cream cones, then that’s what I’ll do. Chris doesn’t get special treatment--unless he messes up, then he’ll catch hell in our basement when we get home.”

--On how his boxers are coping with jet lag: “Our kids are sleeping just fine. The reason I know that is, I’m the one who has to get ‘em up every morning for their roadwork.”

Quiz Time: Who was the only Olympic athlete to win gold medals in both the Summer and Winter Olympics?

Answer: American Eddie Eagan, who was a boxing champion at the 1920 Summer Games and a member of the gold medal-winning four-man bobsled event in the 1932 Winter Games.

Quiz Time II: What two Los Angeles boxers once met for a gold medal in the Olympics?

Answer: Jackie Fields and Joe Salas, who fought for the featherweight gold medal in 1924, when countries could enter more than one boxer in a weight class. Both learned to box at the Los Angeles Athletic Club, where they became friends. Fields won the gold on a decision. In 1987, they died within eight days of one another.

Roosevelt Sanders, assistant coach of the boxing team, is known as a finicky eater.

Thus, he was horrified to discover octopus cocktails while going through in the cafeteria line in the athletes’ village.

“He started going on and on about how he’d never eat an octopus, and he never should have said a thing,” said Larry Donald, the team’s super-heavyweight.

“We started negotiating and the way it came down was, if we win five gold medals, Coach Sanders eats the octopus.”