ANALYSIS : A Winter of IOC Content After Lillehammer Games

It was a divorce of convenience. Simple as that.

The whole thing had grown so unwieldy--Winter Olympics in February, then the Summer Games only a few months later in a totally different part of the world. And then 3 1/2 years of nothing but preparation for the dreaded double all over again, in two other parts of the world.

And the bigger the Olympics got, the more difficult it was for all involved to put on Games twice in one year.

“Let’s split them up,” someone suggested, and the hush that followed was absolute, for those who run the Olympics are not used to hearing radical proposals. And this was definitely a radical proposal.

Split the Games? Disturb the Olympic cycle? Goodness, what would people think?

Still, something had to be done. And upon sober consideration, radical began sounding reasonable.

So, eventually it was decided to spin off the Winter Games from the Summer, putting them on their own four-year cycle. That meant one final Winter-Summer combination in 1992, then the Winter Games quickly again in ‘94, then four years later in ‘98, four years after that in 2002 and continuing on that schedule. Summer Games would continue in the old cycle after ‘92, again in ‘96, then 2000, and so on.

That would make things much simpler for the International Olympic Committee--and the national Olympic committees of the world, whose job it is to provide the athletes for the Games.

And there might even be a byproduct. Maybe, just maybe, the Winter Games, that scrawny little brother always standing in the shadow of the strapping Summer Games, would grow a bit, acquire an identity of its own, perhaps even develop a little muscle.

Talk about your growth spurts!

It’s not a certainty, but it’s at least even money that in years to come, when the discussion gets around to it, Lillehammer ’94 will be regarded as the Olympics in which the Winter Games came of age.

Not as a moneymaker, for these government-subsidized Games will not come close to covering expenses, but in terms of interest.

Here in Norway, and probably throughout most of Europe, the interest was enormous, as expected. But suddenly this time around, the Winter Games were boffo in the United States, too. Nobody had anticipated that. CBS might have hoped, but in previous years, hardly anybody said, “Gee, the Olympics are on tonight. Let’s catch some of that great biathlon action.”

In the past, Americans watched the women’s figure skating, the hockey, a little of the speedskating, maybe some of the Alpine skiing.

This year? Many complained about CBS not having shown much of the action, but they watched whatever CBS was showing anyway. The network dominated the ratings during the first week of the Games, more of the same is expected when the second-week ratings are in, and last Wednesday night’s showdown between Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding was the third-highest rated sporting event in U.S. television history.

All of which would have been a bit surprising, had it not been for the X factor, the Harding-Kerrigan morality play.

The attack on Kerrigan in Detroit on Jan. 6, and the subsequent involvement of Harding, her former husband and others known to her in the real-life soap opera that followed, obviously alerted viewers to the fact that, yes, we were having Olympics again, even though we’d had them only a couple of years ago.

Even speedskater Dan Jansen, who played the lead in his own little ongoing drama here, was moved to remark about the Games’ high rating. “I guess the situation with Tonya and Nancy had something to do with that. It seemed a few months before the Games that people didn’t even know they were coming.”

If “Tonyagate” piqued the interest, though, the Games themselves sustained it. The friendly Norwegians partied hearty for two weeks on the Alpine slopes, the Nordic arenas, the speedskating venues. They showed up in such great numbers for cross-country skiing and biathlon that other curious folk simply had to see what all that shouting, singing and flag waving was about.

And with audiences like that, the athletes responded like ham actors in a crowded drawing room. They showed new viewers what they, and people in so many other parts of the world, like about these winter sports. The men’s 40-kilometer relay cross-country race, for instance, was far more gripping--for its 1-hour 40-minute duration--than any Super Bowl, recent or otherwise, has ever been.

These Games, in fact, so excited the Norwegians that they are talking here about bidding again for the Winter Olympics of 2010 and getting their money’s worth out of the Olympic venues.

As for the $130-million deficit, that was part of the plan.

Said Tor Aune, press chief for the Lillehammer Olympic Organizing Committee: “The deficit is what the (Norwegian) government is paying as an investment for new (tourist) activity in this area.”

After the exposure of these Games, Norway probably won’t remain Europe’s best-kept secret. It is, in fact, every U.S. traveler’s dream--a beautiful, clean country whose people are not only warm, helpful and friendly but speak English in the bargain.

The International Olympic Committee is almost giddy.

“Wonderful,” IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch said. “Best ever.”

More expansive was Andrew Napier, the IOC’s media liaison, who said: “Lillehammer will be a golden memory. What Lillehammer has done for the Olympic movement is excellent.”

What Lillehammer did for the Olympic movement was to move the Winter Games out front and center, right there in the sunshine, next to big brother.