Meetings Produce Big Talk, but Little Action : Olympics: The Centennial Congress was supposed to be a think tank of new ideas. Instead, it became a series of speeches.

Turn out the lights in the City of Lights, the $16-million birthday party is over.

Also known as the Olympic Centennial Congress, it was conceived as a high-minded think tank that would bring together not only international and national Olympic officials but also academicians, historians, journalists, sponsors, marketing mavens and, yes, even athletes to discuss and debate their roles at the start of the Olympic movement’s second century.

Come together they did last week in the underground halls of a charmless convention center on the city’s outskirts, more than 3,000 strong to hear 430 three-minute speeches over a five-day period on every subject from ambush marketing to the ambush of Nancy Kerrigan.

But as for discussions and debate, there was little of that as speakers were herded to and from the stage as if they were all winners of less prestigious Oscars at the Academy Awards. John MacAloon, a respected Olympic historian and University of Chicago sociology professor, fumed at the lack of opportunity for formal give and take at the end of sessions, as is usually a feature of academic conferences. “I thought the Berlin Wall had come down,” he said.

Even informal exchanges in the lobby subsided after it was discovered that Olympia, a metallic green robot that wandered the halls, had super sensitive hearing powers. When one observer practically whispered to another that Olympia must have set the organizers back about $200,000, the robot, standing about a football field away, turned and said, in perfect English, “ That’s a lot of money!”

All of this occurred to the delight of International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain, who declared that the theme of the Congress would be unity and then gave no one a chance to disagree. That assured that the theme of the Congress for reporters would be boredom, which hardly distressed Samaranch.

About to step onto an escalator one afternoon, he spotted an Associated Press reporter in the lobby out of the corner of his eye and abruptly turned on his heels to go speak to him.

“No headlines,” Samaranch said, his eyes twinkling.

He liked that thought so much that, in his closing speech Saturday, he said, “Good news is no news.”

Most of his deputies were eager to accommodate him. In the opening speech of the first morning session, IOC Vice-President Kevan Gosper of Australia said the movement needed the courage to eliminate sports from the Olympics that are no longer popular or modern, the courage to assure that professional athletes competing in the Olympics in increasing number are true lovers of sport and not merely gladiators, the courage to insist upon the continuing participation of athletes from developing nations and the courage to open stadiums to the common man instead of reserving all the seats for corporate sponsors and VIPs.

But then Gosper, fearing that he had been too blunt, went to the press room to inform reporters that he was merely tossing out some suggestions, that he was not sure when or even whether the IOC should act upon them and that what really bothers him is “extravagant, unrelated” entertainment at sporting events. He was unable to describe what he was talking about, but he presumably knows it when he sees it. After that performance, some of his IOC colleagues began sarcastically referring to him as “Captain Courageous.”

But if speakers were somewhat circumspect because they were concerned that their words might come back to haunt them, who could blame them? At the most recent Congress in 1981, one conclusion of the final statement’s drafters was that there was “no place in the Olympic Games for professional or open competition.” Eleven years later, the Dream Team pretty much ended that notion forever.

So it was time for a new Congress, the 12th in 100 years, and Paris certainly seemed to be the place because that is where a French baron, Pierre de Coubertin, convened the first meeting of the IOC in 1894.

Participants were jolted when they arrived by a retrospective in the Saturday magazine of a French sports newspaper, L’Equipe, that described de Coubertin as racist, misogynist and anti-Semitic, and, although the writer ultimately concluded that the baron was OK for his time, many speakers in this politically correct age rushed off to delete, or at least soften, their references to him.

All they had to do was change their focus from de Coubertin to Samaranch because the movement today is much more reflective of the Spanish banker’s vision than that of de Coubertin.

In an interview before the Congress, Samaranch proudly detailed some of his accomplishments in 14 years as president: the election of women to the IOC, including two executive board members; the creation of an athletes’ commission; the opening of the Games to professionals; the development of a fund for athletes from emerging nations; the intensification of the fight against drugs and racial discrimination; the establishment of a court of arbitration for disputes between athletes and federations; the schedule change that placed the Winter and Summer Olympics in different years; the construction of new IOC facilities, including an Olympic museum, and the significant improvement in the IOC’s finances.

If all Samaranch, who will retire in 1997, wanted to do was call a Congress to celebrate his reign as president, few would have argued.

But Samaranch promised much more, including open discussion that would result in a program, particularly for the Summer Olympics, that included primarily sports that are popular today. Some, he said, would have to go. Instead, all the IOC did was add two sports, triathlon and taekwondo, for the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, Australia.

Evolution, not revolution, said IOC member Jacques Rogge of Belgium.

Not all IOC members were satisfied with that philosophy. “You might have to speculate that if the IOC doesn’t eliminate anything and adds two more sports, who’s going to take it seriously?” said Richard Pound, an executive board member from Canada.

Yet, the IOC did score some points for its overdue recognition of athletes as forces within the movement. Donna de Varona, a gold medalist swimmer from the United States, said that when she attended her first Congress in 1973, the credential was literally ripped from her neck by an IOC official because she applied for it through the organizing committee instead of the IOC. De Varona was one of many current and former athletes to participate last week. In fact, she was asked to present two speeches.

Afterward, the IOC seemed poised to give athletes more of a voice, if for no other reason, as Rogge explained, to prevent a situation in the future like the United States has now with its baseball strike.

Pleased to have been heard, de Varona said that a Congress is necessary “so that a large number of people from throughout the world can gather periodically to share their thoughts on the Olympic movement.”

But, like many others, she said that she was offended by the $16-million price tag.

With little else to report daily, reporters fixed on that figure. IOC officials were sensitive about it, choosing an alternate site for their grand gala in fear that the first choice, the Palace of Versailles, would inspire Marie Antoinette and “let them eat cake” references. They also scurried to explain that they were contributing only $6 million, while the rest came from the French and Parisian governments, perhaps as a down payment on Paris’ proposed bid for the Summer Olympics of either 2004 or ’08.

Still, the IOC, which boasts of the financial assistance it has given to athletes such as world champion runner Maria Mutola of Mozambique, should consider that $6 million would finance training for a lot of athletes for a lot of years.

Besides, it is possible that reflection upon the Olympic movement is, like prayer, best done in private.