Notes

Although Nagano’s Games are setting a record for participation with 2,339 athletes from 72 countries, the IOC has put out the word it is seeking new sports for the Winter Games as long as they meet the criteria of being contested on snow or ice.

Even so, IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch was taken aback during a news conference Friday by the suggestion that dog sledding might become an official sport in time for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

“We have not really studied the possibility of including it in the Winter Games,” Samaranch said.

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Of the 2,339 athletes here, 827 are women.

Their numbers will increase in Salt Lake City, where women for the first time are expected to compete in bobsled and women’s ski jumping. That means women would be participating in every sport that the men do in the Winter Olympics.

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During a news conference with the IOC’s executive board Friday, a reporter asked Vice President Richard Pound if the U.S. government had contacted him about the United Nations’ Olympic truce and whether it would affect planning for a possible attack on Iraq.

Pound is from Montreal.

“It’s been my experience that Canada is seldom consulted on these matters,” he said.

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The IOC this week left open the possibility that athletes who felt cheated by East Bloc athletes in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s could seek restitution if it can be proved that the athletes in question, most likely East Germans and Soviets, used performance-enhancing drugs.

But Anita DeFrantz, an IOC vice president from Los Angeles, said she will not seek a shinier medal than the one she won in rowing during the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal, even though she and her seven teammates finished third in a race won by East Germans.

“I have my bronze medal,” she said. “I raced that race. Every time I watch it, we still come in third. That’s the way it was.”