WORLD SPORTS SCENE / RANDY HARVEY : If Appeals for Human Rights Don’t Work, Hit Them in the Wallet

Having completed a successful, albeit ill-advised and ultimately meaningless, lobbying effort in the U.S. Congress, Human Rights Watch finally hit upon the most effective method of campaigning against Beijing’s bid for the 2000 Summer Olympics.

The group wrote letters last month to 16 major corporations that do business with the International Olympic Committee, protesting China’s “egregious human rights abuses” and suggesting that a Beijing victory in the Sept. 23 voting would “seriously damage the prestige” of the Olympics.

“In that event, your company’s public image could also suffer by association,” the letters warned.

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Timed to give Beijing’s bid a boost, China’s National Games, involving 4,200 athletes, opened Saturday in the capital city. A huge banner, proclaiming “A More Open China Awaits 2000 Olympics,” was unfurled during the opening ceremony. Among invited guests was Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, the highest-ranking Vatican official to visit Communist China.

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Stoic Norwegians apparently want to remain so.

Organizers of the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer offered “The Olympic Service Course,” also known as the “smile course,” to local hotel, restaurant and store employees.

Six people signed up.

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With Olympic and World Championship gold medals, the new luxury car that accompanied the latter and three consecutive victories over Carl Lewis, what more could Great Britain’s Linford Christie want?

A share of the world record.

After studying the photo of the finish in the 100 meters at last month’s World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany, British Athletic Federation officials asked the sport’s governing body, the International Amateur Athletic Federation, to revise Christie’s time from 9.87 seconds to 9.86. That would equal Lewis’ world record.

Placing the photo under a microscope, the IAAF determined that Christie finished the race in 9.864 seconds. Because all track times are rounded up, his official time will remain 9.87.

But the BAF has asked for a second opinion by the European Athletic Assn., which already had planned a review in October as part of its ratification process for European records.

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Although Christie has won all three of his races against Lewis this summer, another Santa Monica Track Club sprinter, Leroy Burrell, has been the new world champion’s nemesis. In two meetings before last Friday night, Burrell won both. Then Christie beat Burrell at Brussels.

He now would like to even the score. The 100 meters was not on the schedule for the Mobil Grand Prix final Friday night at London’s Crystal Palace, but Christie last week appealed to the IAAF, which added the event. The only remaining question is whether Burrell can be enticed to run against him.

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Complaining of a fever after the first day of the heptathlon at the World Championships, Jackie Joyner-Kersee told reporters she was having “hot flashes.”

Naturally, that provoked questions about whether she was pregnant, which she and her husband/coach Bob Kersee denied. Rumors, however, have persisted, moving Della Gray of JJK Associates to respond via a letter to USA Track & Field.

“Jackie and Bob are very much looking forward to planning a family at the end of her career,” Gray wrote, adding that, for Joyner-Kersee, 31, that will be after the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.

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Michael Schmenken last month became the first Israeli to win a significant international figure skating title, finishing first in the individual men’s competition at St. Gervais, France. An immigrant from Ukraine, he was trained in the former Soviet system.

Second in pairs were U.S. junior champions Stephanie Stiegler and Lance Travis, who train at Lake Arrowhead’s Ice Castles under 1988 Olympic bronze medalist Peter Oppegard.

They are among the skaters who will appear in the annual Icetravaganza benefit for United Cerebral Palsy on Sept. 18 at Burbank’s Pickwick Arena. Another show the next afternoon will celebrate the L.A. Figure Skating Club’s 60th anniversary.

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Expected to arrive Saturday in Washington are 11 Bosnian tennis players, who will train in the United States as guests of the U.S. Olympic Committee while their country is under siege. Ages 13 through 19, the players will attend tennis academies in Florida and South Carolina.

Eventually, the USOC would like to play host to about 30 Bosnian athletes as part of a program partially financed with $25,000 in grants from two insurance companies.

Notes

IOC Executive Board member Anita DeFrantz of Los Angeles was elected as one of three vice presidents for the international rowing federation. She was a bronze medalist in the sport at in the 1976 Summer Olympics. . . . U.S. Skiing is expected to name a new executive director Friday. Mike Jacki, U.S. Gymnastics president, is a leading candidate. . . . Mar del Plata, Argentina, appears to be waging a losing battle in efforts to organize the 1995 Pan American Games. Eight of the sports already have been moved to Buenos Aires. . . . Still glowing from its success with this summer’s U.S. Olympic Festival, San Antonio wants to team with Austin to bid for the 2003 Pan American Games. . . . Track and field’s 1997 World Championships appear headed for Mexico City.