The Real Olympic Contest: The Haves vs. the Have-Nots

Some nights when Sidney Guzman comes home from wrestling practice, he has only bread and tea for dinner, maybe a bit of chicken left over from lunch. Other nights he gets a handout--a package of spaghetti.

Sports officials in Peru began doling out pasta when they discovered signs of malnutrition among their best amateur athletes, many poor like Guzman.

Too often, the athletes sell their spaghetti to pay rent. Guzman brings his portion home to a cardboard-roofed apartment in the slums of Lima where it is gobbled up by brothers and sisters and a mother who nags him to get a job.

The 22-year-old shakes his head in frustration. He has the square-jawed, low-slung look of a wrestler and the skill to win a bronze medal at the Pan American Games last year. The sport means everything to him, but he also loves his family.

“What can I do?” he asks in Spanish.

In an era when wealthy countries train their athletes in multimillion-dollar complexes staffed by everything from nutritionists to psychologists, three-quarters of Olympic nations struggle to provide basic equipment, coaching--sometimes even food.

The International Olympic Committee, meanwhile, is richer than ever, with the movement generating more than $900 million a year in television rights, corporate sponsorships and other income.

The IOC says it is trying to help impoverished nations such as Peru. Last year, its Olympic Solidarity program spent $28.4 million for expenses such as uniforms and coaching clinics. It also covered living costs for hundreds of athletes, many of whom have run fast enough or jumped high enough to qualify for the Sydney Games in September.

After last year’s scandalous headlines from Salt Lake City, IOC members trumpet the program as a success story, their contribution to fair play and a better world through sport.

But $28.4 million--a little more than 3% of total Olympic revenue--is no match for reality in countries dogged by hunger and unemployment. Just follow the trickle of dollars to some of the movement’s poorest members:

To Laos, where a national sports administrator watches his stadium fall into ruin. To Lesotho, in southern Africa, where a coach trains his boxers in a bare room because he cannot afford a ring. To Peru, where a wrestler goes hungry and boxers spar in a gym that stinks of urine.

This is where you find the true struggle, in the shadow of the glittering Games.

Chapter I: The Administrator / No Budget, No Facilities, No Chance

Vientiane, Laos

The head of the Lao Olympic Committee faces the grim realities of running an athletic program in a country still recovering from the Vietnam War. ‘Without proper support from the IOC, we cannot move,’ one official says.

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Broken glass and dead bugs litter the dirt track at the national stadium, and water stagnates in smelly puddles. Athletes share the decrepit facility with families who live in the alcoves. Chickens cluck incessantly as a parade of children, dogs and scooter riders uses the field for a shortcut through the capital, Vientiane.

The president of the Lao Olympic Committee shows off blueprints for a $1.5-million training complex featuring a weight room, mess hall and dormitories. But it is the stuff of dreams because Phouthong Seng Akhom’s committee has no money for construction.

“We have no budget,” he said through a translator, inquiring with an embarrassed laugh whether a reporter had any ideas for raising funds.

Communist Laos is still reeling from the Vietnam War, when American warplanes turned this Southeast Asian nation into one of the most heavily bombed patches of Earth in history. Thousands of tons of unexploded ordnance still litters the ground, a menace to farmers and children.

Laos ranks among the world’s 10 poorest countries. The average worker earns $20 to $30 a month. In nations such as this, governments have only so much to spend, and sports rank well down the list of priorities. Yet there are men and women who yearn to compete.

Laotian boxers train outdoors beneath two enormous banyan trees, a flowery tablecloth covering the widest holes torn in the ring’s canvas. Leaves skitter down on the fighters’ shoulders as scooters pop-pop-pop along a street a few feet away.

Until recently, the best female distance runner in Laos, Sirivanh Ketavong, trained in the same pair of shoes she wore in the marathon at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. A sympathetic American aid worker recently presented her with a new pair. Ketavong squealed: “They fit!”

In every country, the task of assembling such athletes into an Olympic team--and preparing them for the Games--falls upon the national Olympic committee.

The one in Laos doubles as a government office for development of sports, so most of the staff is on payroll. But the reported annual budget for this year is a paltry $250,000.

Seng Akhom divides it among staff members and scores of athletes. Reserved and formal, a man who sits at his desk with a military-like bearing, he shakes his head and lowers his eyes at the thought of dividing so small a sum so many ways.

The U.S. Olympic Committee spends five times that amount on public relations alone.

Olympic Solidarity pitches in to help Laos, offering $40,000 a year for equipment, travel and coaching clinics. An annual $15,000 administrative subsidy has bought computers, a fax machine and a copier.

“Without support from the IOC, we cannot move,” said Kasem Inthara, the Laotian committee’s deputy secretary general.

Perhaps no one feels the financial pinch more than Xaygnasan Keepaseuth. Last year, the 24-year-old canoeist won a $1,200-a-month scholarship from Olympic Solidarity, a princely sum that he split with a fellow canoeist. He still had enough money for three square meals a day and, as a treat, Ovaltine at breakfast.

But he failed to earn a spot in the Summer Games, in part because he could not afford trips out of the country for qualifying meets. His scholarship has since ended.

Keepaseuth’s canoe is still stashed in a grove of banana trees near the Mekong River. During Laos’ dry season, he must carry the 40-pound boat half a mile to get to the muddy water. Keepaseuth’s shoulders are strong and the boat is little burden. But he says sadly, “No more Ovaltine.”

Olympic Solidarity will help pay for Laos to send a team to Sydney. The country expects to send only four to six athletes including Ketavong, who finished the 1996 marathon--her first--almost an hour behind the winner.

No athlete from Laos has ever won an Olympic medal. The prospects for success are not bright. Not in a country where the largest pool is 25 meters long--half the Olympic distance. Not in a country of 5.4 million where only four towns have stadiums for soccer or track and field.

Earlier this year, Chinese workers began renovating the rundown national stadium, which was built before the war. Seng Akhom says it is unclear how the remaining work will be funded.

Not Enough IOC Money

What, if anything, does the Olympic movement owe to the men and women who compete in its Games?

Olympic Solidarity can boast that its dollars helped a record 72 nations qualify athletes for the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan. Four scholarship athletes won medals.

“You should not forget that 25 years ago, only half as many countries participated,” said Jacques Rogge, an IOC member from Belgium. “The other half did not participate because they had no money.”

Another IOC member, R. Kevan Gosper of Australia, calls Solidarity “one of the best Olympic stories . . . a program that gives rather than takes.”

But IOC documents reveal that not all the money goes to those who need it most.

All 199 Olympic nations, rich and poor, are eligible to receive $40,000 to $90,000 a year for clinics, equipment and administration. Additional money is available for seminars.

Only about a quarter of the overall budget--$7.6 million--was reserved for needy countries last year. It took the form of scholarships for Olympic hopefuls, younger athletes, coaches and administrators in 154 “developing” nations.

Solidarity officials acknowledge that they do not have enough money to help impoverished athletes and build strong Olympic programs in every nation. “When you divide the money by all the countries and all the different needs they have, we cannot aspire to solve all their problems,” said Pere Miro, the program’s director. “We can contribute only a small part.”

IOC officials say most of their money must be used to stage Games involving thousands of athletes. “That’s our main responsibility,” Gosper said.

From Costa Rica to Tanzania, many sports officials say they understand--and express gratitude for any help they can get. But there is quiet grumbling among some officials and athletes who want more.

“How many millions is the business of the Olympics?” asked Francisco Boza, an Olympic trap shooter and one of four medalists in Peruvian history. “How much goes to the athletes?

“Without athletes, the Olympics would die.”

CHAPTER II: THE COACH / Fighting the Good Fight, and Losing

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Maseru, Lesotho

In Lesotho, a kingdom of lush beauty and abject poverty, the Olympic boxing team has learned how to cope with little money, volunteer coaches and no gym.

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The Lesotho coach tells his boxers to pair up, spacing them across an empty room. They begin to spar, moving to the rhythm of grunts and squeaking shoes and leather-thudded punches.

They fight until their coach orders them to stop. Then, as they gather to drink from a fire hose on the wall, he says: “The facilities we have . . . it’s absolutely nothing.”

Poverty is common in this country, a doughnut hole of a kingdom encircled by South Africa. Many of the 2.1 million people survive on vegetable gardens, a cow or two, and wages earned in mines across the border. There is beauty--lush valleys and rocky plateaus, nimbus clouds on the horizon--but life turns harsh when the rain falls.

Olympic Solidarity was created for such places. The program sent $70,000 to Lesotho last year. It seemed like less by the time it reached the next level, where coaches in dozens of sports clamored for money. Even a prized scholarship for the boxing coach brought limited results.

Teboho Mafatle is young for his job, only 30, but his wide forehead and impassive eyes give him the look of a wise elder. Not long ago, he was the best fighter his country had ever produced, good enough to qualify for the 1988 Olympic Games.

Then the boxing program slipped into decline. “There would be four pairs of boxing gloves in a gymnasium of 30 boxers,” Mafatle recalled. “There would be dust on the floor.”

By 1995, the team had no coach. Mafatle and several teammates made a tough choice--they hung up their gloves and began running the team themselves. “We all had to sacrifice,” said Monethi Monethi, who took over finances. “It was like a Chinese saying: You’d rather train many boxers than have only a few good ones.”

Mafatle had the most to lose. Still, he committed himself to the task and was eager to attend an Olympic Solidarity course for coaches at the Hungarian University of Physical Education in Budapest last winter.

His enthusiasm was soon dampened. “They actually tell you on the first day, ‘Gentlemen, you look confused. I am Professor So-and-So, and I am here to confuse you even more because the IOC does not provide us with enough funds to give you a good education,’ ” Mafatle recalled.

Sitting beside coaches from India, Syria and Uganda, he scrambled to keep pace with a curriculum he said was compressed from six months to three. The material raced from training theory to physiology to psychology. Mafatle returned to Lesotho with his head spinning.

His team trains in the capital, Maseru, where goats graze on lawns outside office buildings and vendors sell baskets of sweet oranges and pears amid rush-hour traffic.

Armed with new knowledge, Mafatle puts his boxers through specialized calisthenics. But no expertise can compensate for the lack of a gymnasium. Their “gyms” are a bare room beneath the stands of a stadium and a musty conference room at a hotel.

Mafatle still lacks the money to buy weightlifting equipment or send his best boxers to tournaments abroad.

Not that his fighters complain. “They don’t know any better,” Mafatle said. They are content to box in old sweaters and sneakers, glad to have a coach who, despite the hardships, has molded them into one of the continent’s fiercest teams.

As they train, he offers advice on footwork and defense. No shouting is necessary because they know the cost of disobedience: The team’s best welterweight was suspended for four months last year.

“Mafatle is quiet, but he will show how he feels,” said Sephula Letuka, a 19-year-old flyweight. “He comes to us seriously, telling us what we have done wrong. . . . We respect him.”

The coach has used the lessons he learned in Hungary to help at least two of his boxers qualify for Sydney. Still, his European sabbatical remains a bittersweet memory.

While he was away, Lesotho officials had a chance to nominate athletes for Solidarity scholarships. Mafatle would have nominated Sebusiso Keketsi, a flyweight as small and quiet and skilled as his coach. Keketsi probably would have been selected, but no one submitted his name. By the time Mafatle returned from Hungary, the deadline had passed.

Now, instead of using the $1,200-a-month scholarship to train with the storied Cuban team, Keketsi settles for a six-hour bus ride to a regional tournament in Johannesburg. With no equipment, he strengthens his legs by hopping on and off folding tables.

His coach forces a short, disappointed laugh. “We have good boxers who are not getting a fair chance of winning,” Mafatle said. “I’ve gotten used to it.”

‘There Is a Bit of Red Tape’

Given the size of the undertaking, some of Olympic Solidarity’s shortcomings probably are inevitable.

IOC officials in Lausanne, Switzerland, cannot possibly keep track of athletes in all 154 “developing” nations. So they award scholarships based on recommendations from each country.

Each nation’s Olympic committee--staffed by the likes of college professors, insurance salesmen and dentists--seeks advice from local organizers of tournaments and leagues.

In Lesotho, officials could have applied for six athletic scholarships but nominated only two people.

The IOC blames the Lesotho Olympic Committee for this slip-up. Lesotho officials blame local organizers.

“We ask them to submit a list of candidates, but they never do,” said Kenneth Hlasa, who manages the Lesotho committee’s finances. “They never do.”

Developing nations are prone to such missteps, according to IOC officials. Too often the countries will not, or cannot, follow even the simplest guidelines.

“We send out this information a hundred times,” said Pamela Vipond, deputy director of Olympic Solidarity. “You think, ‘What’s going on? Don’t they read this stuff?’

“We’re teaching them the really basic things, how to write minutes from meetings, things like that. In a lot of these countries, they have no idea.”

In Vanuatu, an island nation in the South Pacific, officials are only beginning to use e-mail. In Bermuda, a luger who won a scholarship had received no money a year later because the required paperwork had not been submitted.

“There is a bit of red tape,” said John Hoskins, secretary general of the Bermuda Olympic Committee. “It’s time-consuming for small committees like us with one or two people and no permanent staff.”

CHAPTER III: THE ATHLETE / A Ragtag Team on a Spaghetti Budget

Lima, Peru

Solidarity money doesn’t go far for an Olympic squad from Peru, a nation reeling from poverty. The athletes don’t care about IOC scandals, but they do worry about their pasta rations.

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Many of Peru’s best athletes train in bunker-like rooms under the stands of the national stadium. Stains mark the ceilings and walls. The odor of urine is strong enough to stop a visitor at the door.

A national Olympic official explains that the soccer fans above are known to relieve themselves right where they are sitting, saturating the concrete, which has begun to deteriorate. “The smell is worse on Monday after the games on Sunday,” said the official, Ivan Dibos.

The boxing team does not seem to notice as its fighters take turns pounding on truck tires with steel bars to strengthen their shoulders. A few doors down, in the judo room, the stench isn’t as powerful, but the team practices gingerly, avoiding pillars that run down the center of the mat.

Lima is a city of stunning hardship. Seven million people have crowded into this metropolis at the edge of the Pacific Ocean. More than half live below the poverty line, on dusty streets or in crumbling, adobe buildings.

The Olympic Solidarity money that comes here each year is quickly absorbed by teams in dozens of sports. The six scholarships the program provides don’t go far.

Not that everyone has it bad. Badminton players practice at a country club, and the women’s volleyball team--a silver medalist in 1988--is sponsored by a Spanish telephone company.

The wrestlers also got lucky, moving from the national stadium to an abandoned building at the edge of a park. It hardly matters that the weight room has few weights and the bathroom floods ankle-deep.

The team is a ragtag bunch dressed in old T-shirts and shorts, only a few wearing singlets and shoes donated by the U.S. team. These kids don’t know about the Salt Lake City scandal or IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch. They know only that their manager, Javier Leon, hands out pasta.

Leon is a short, bearded man who has grown chubby since his competitive days and is quick to laugh, despite his circumstances.

The national Olympic committee started giving his wrestlers spaghetti last year when, according to several officials, routine medical tests showed signs of malnutrition among more than half of Peru’s elite amateur athletes. Leon receives pasta for his 10 best wrestlers but splits the packages among more than 30 boys and young men on the team.

When Dibos, the Olympic official, recently found out, he confronted Leon at practice--and a loud, hand-waving dispute broke out.

“I can’t give it to some and say no to the others,” Leon argued, adding that the pasta feeds their parents and siblings, too.

“We are glad the families are eating,” the official replied. “But that is not the aim of the Olympic committee.”

Dibos is a distinguished-looking man, a championship rower and the mayor of Lima in his younger days. Now, as an IOC member, he is controversial: When Atlanta sought the Games, Dibos was accused of trying to trade his vote for a fleet of used buses for his city, an allegation he denies.

It clearly irks him to scramble for food while other Olympic committees can focus on sports. “You can see these kids and you see how sad and poor they are,” he said. “You can see how winning a medal in Peru is like winning 10 medals in a developed country.”

Ultimately, Dibos does not have the heart to make Leon stop dividing the packages.

Sitting nearby, wrestler Sidney Guzman has mixed emotions about sharing the pasta. His teammates are friends, but there is another consideration: the summertime tournaments where he must wrestle Cubans and Americans for a spot in the Olympic Games.

Guzman needs to keep strong. He takes his portion of spaghetti down avenues strewn with rubble and trash to a makeshift apartment of adobe, plywood and cardboard. The young wrestler sleeps in a room decorated with his shiny medals and posters of Jean-Claude Van Damme and Laurel and Hardy. It is small enough that he can stand in the center and touch all four walls.

Life has been tough since his father died of cancer two years ago. His mother, Azucena, worries about feeding the family on a small pension.

“I’m very proud as a mother because he’s not like the other boys, drinking and doing drugs,” she said of Sidney. “But sometimes I tell him to forget about wrestling because we need money.”

Guzman reminds her that he occasionally works part time as a delivery man, earning a few hours’ income between workouts. He reminds her that the neighborhood thieves and crack dealers leave their family alone. “Everyone knows I’m a good athlete,” he said.

When he talks like this, his dark eyes have a way of flashing. When people ask about the Olympics, he tells them: “I’m trying my best.”

But, unlike wrestlers from wealthy countries, Guzman could afford to travel to only a few qualifying tournaments. His last chance came in Cali, Colombia, several weeks ago. He failed to make the cut.

ABOUT THIS SERIES

For decades, the Olympic movement has promoted itself as the United Nations of sport, a force for fair play. Then came reports of gift-giving and other corruption in Salt Lake City’s bid for the 2002 Winter Games. As disturbing questions swirled around the International Olympic Committee, The Times embarked on a yearlong examination of the movement: Who runs the IOC? How does the organization spend its money? How does it treat athletes? Can the IOC really change its ways?

This is the first of seven weekly reports before the Sydney Games.

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Next week: Inside the Books.

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Not Much for the Needy

International Olympic Committee programs are generating an estimated $901 million in annual revenue.

Last year, just a bit more than 3% of that revenue, $28.4 million, went to the Olympic Solidarity program for distribution among all 199 member nations. Only $7.6 million was reserved for scholarships in needy countries.

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Source: IOC reports

Note: All figures, except for amount spent by Solidarity, are estimates extrapolated from the IOC’s 1997-2000 budgets. Olympic revenue does not include interest income. Expenditures do not include funds distributed to international sports federations or routed to national Olympic committees through the IOC’s corporate sponsorship program, which provides at least $10,000 each year to nations.

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Strength in Numbers

The biggest and richest countries tend to have the biggest Olympic budgets and teams. Having big teams earns them the biggest bonuses from the IOC, which will pay $1,200 for each athlete attending the Sydney Games. The neediest countries generally get the smallest bonuses.

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David Wharton reported from Peru and Lesotho, and Alan Abrahamson from Laos and IOC headquarters in Switzerland.

On the Web

This series is available on The Times’ web site: https://www.latimes.com/ioc.