SUMMER GAMES SPOTLIGHT : BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS : IT’S JUST A MATTER OF STAYING AFLOAT

Give him a vehicle, and John Foster of the U.S. Virgin Islands will find a way to the Olympic Games.

On water, he’ll sail a boat. And on ice? A bobsled, of course.

Foster, 53, is in his fourth Summer Olympics, skippering a Star class boat with his son, John Jr. But he also appeared at the 1988 Calgary Winter Games as the driver of the U.S. Virgin Islands’ two-man bobsled.

“I took my first bobsled drive down Mt. Van Hoevenberg in Lake Placid in 1986,” he said. “I went with an Air Force captain as the passenger, and when we got to the zigzag curve, we made the zig all right, but I flipped upside down on the zag. I never heard such a noise in my life. The grinding of metal was incredible. It’s amazing how small you can make yourself going down a mountain at 60 m.p.h. flipped on your side. I figured there was only one thing to do, try again.”

He has no fear of capsizing into the polluted waters off the coast of Barcelona. After all, Foster says, “I live on a small island surrounded by a great excuse to go sailing. We’re naturals at this.”

Foster said athletes from the U.S. Virgin Islands will never be naturals on ice or snow. But as the man who founded the island’s Winter Olympic team, he is concerned that Olympic qualifying standards could prevent others from sharing in his passion for world games.

“The Olympics should be about encouraging people to compete with the best in the world,” he said. “It is supposed to rise above politics and restrictions. Who should be here and who should not? Let’s hope we find a reasonable level.”

This a daily roundup of Olympic-related items from reporters in Barcelona from the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Baltimore Sun and Hartford Courant, all Times-Mirror newspapers.