‘94 Winter Olympic Games / Lillehammer : When Disputes Arise

A look at some celebrated cases involving U.S. Olympians:

1936: Backstroke champion Eleanor Holm was kicked off the U.S. team for drinking and shooting craps on the ship as it carried the American contingent toward Berlin. Holm, preparing to compete in her third consecutive Olympics, was married to Hollywood composer Art Jarrett, and enjoyed a lavish life style. So, she ignored warnings to moderate her behavior. After Holm had attended an afternoon-evening champagne party in Cherbourg, France, where the ship had a stopover, the U.S. Olympic Committee disqualified her because of what it said was uproarious behavior. The next day, she went to the stateroom of Avery Brundage, committee president, to plead her case. Brundage refused to change the decision. More than half the U.S. team signed a petition asking for Holm’s reinstatement, but she never swam in the Olympics again.

1968: John Carlos and Tommie Smith were expelled from the U.S. Olympic team after their black-power salute during the U.S. national anthem in Mexico City. The sprinters, who had won the gold and bronze medals in the 200 meters, were protesting the plight of African Americans. No record was kept on how officials handled the matter.

1980: A group of U.S. athletes, bitterly charging that the U.S. Olympic Committee had overstepped its authority in ruling against U.S. participation in the Moscow Games, sued to have the decision overturned. Twenty athletes, led by rower Anita DeFrantz, filed a class-action suit in U.S. District Court in Washington. The court ruled the athletes had no Constitutional grounds to sue the USOC.

1988: Bruce Kimball, charged with vehicular manslaughter, competed in the U.S. Olympic diving trials. He came within two dives of making the team. At the time, Kimball was awaiting trial on charges of driving while drunk and running into a group of teen-agers, killing two and seriously injuring three. Bob Helmick, then-USOC president, said officials discussed the use of the code-of-conduct guideline to disqualify Kimball had he made the team. The USOC had no jurisdiction over the Olympic trials, run by the U.S. diving federation, and could not block him from competing until he made the U.S. team. Kimball was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to a Florida prison. He recently was paroled.

1988: Troy Dalbey and Doug Gjertsen were confined to the Olympic village after stealing a 60-pound stone mask from a hotel wall, adding to U.S.-Korean tensions at the time. Although they were not charged with a crime, the gold-medal winning swimmers were disciplined by the Games Administration Board, an arm of the U.S. Olympic Committee.

1992: U.S. Olympic officials learned that Olympic shotputter Jim Doehring had been convicted of a felony six months before qualifying for the Barcelona Games. Doehring had pleaded guilty to conspiring to possess methamphetamine with intent to distribute, and was put on five years’ probation by a U.S. District judge. He also was sentenced to spend five months at a halfway house and ordered to perform 125 hours of community service and to participate in a drug-treatment program. Still, Doehring was not disqualified because the USOC does not have a provision to bar an athlete from competing because of a criminal record. “We don’t have anything in our constitution that says we can kick him off the team,” Mike Moran, USOC spokesman, said at the time. Moran said once an athlete is selected to the Olympic team, he or she must adhere to a code of conduct or risk expulsion. But because Doehring’s conviction occurred before he qualified, that rule did not apply. Doehring won a silver medal at Barcelona.

1992: Sprinter Butch Reynolds was disqualified from competition by the International Amateur Athletics Federation, the governing body of track and field, after failing a drug test in France. He challenged the test results and the case eventually landed in U.S. courts, Reynolds fighting to compete at the U.S. Olympic trials. His dispute did not involve the USOC. Reynolds won a $27-million judgment against the IAAF, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that he was eligible to compete at the trials, where he qualified for the 1,600-meter relay team. But he lost appeals to the IAAF to have his suspension lifted in time to compete in the Barcelona Games. “(Butch) would give up his judgment and all the money for the chance to compete in 1992,” said Reynolds’ attorney, John Gall.