Three Jeers for the Boss

And you thought there was trouble at Dodger Stadium . . .

Two handballers, one from Norway and one from Sweden, submitted Olympic biographies that noted their marriage.

Everything was fine until Olympic officials realized, both athletes were women.

The IOC reportedly ordered the removal of the marriage reference.

When Juan Antonio Samaranch was asked about this during a recent news briefing, he claimed he did not understand the question.

Three Scandinavian journalists--in a news conference occurrence as rare as Samaranch actually answering a question--stood up and booed.

FULL-SERVICE SECURITY

At the baseball and softball complex in suburban Blacktown, all entering vehicles are searched under the hood.

During a recent search, a security officer and former mechanic noticed something other than a bomb.

“Looks like your battery’s leaking acid,” he told the driver, who promptly did a U-turn and drove to the nearest garage.

A SHORT SHOPPING LIST

Before a recent soccer game at Canberra’s Bruce Stadium, the Cameroon men’s team showed up with dark green shorts, which too closely resembled the U.S. team’s blue shorts.

For just these occasions, teams are asked to bring both light and dark uniforms. But Cameroon had forgotten the light ones.

So officials traveled to a local sporting goods store and purchased 18 pairs of white shorts just before kickoff.

RIDING WAVE OF PUBLIC OPINION

Fans who go to the Melbourne Cricket Ground for soccer games are not averse to doing the wave. But there’s a difference.

One corner of the stadium is the hallowed territory of the Melbourne Cricket Club, whose members gain free admission to a private pavilion for all events at the stadium.

So when the wave circles the ground, fans’ cheers turn to boos when the wave passes through the pavilion and then back to cheers again immediately after.

The bizarre sound effect has a become a sporting tradition in Melbourne.

IT’S A COMPLIMENT, WE THINK

Yvette Higgins, who scored the decisive goal for Australia in the women’s water polo gold-medal match against the United States, was described by teammate Debbie Watson as “the Dennis Rodman of water polo,” for her free-spirited ways and her penchant for dying her hair unusual colors.

Higgins begged to differ. “I’m unique,” she said.

SIR YES SIR

Just call him Sir Steven Redgrave.

British newspapers began a campaign Sunday to win knighthood for the 38-year-old British rower who won a fifth consecutive Olympic gold medal Saturday in rowing’s coxless fours.

“Arise Sir Hero,” said the Sunday People tabloid.

Of Sunday’s dozen nationwide papers, every one had Redgrave on the first page.

The Independent wants the five-time Olympic champion to oversee British sports.

“Put him in the House of Lords as a sports supremo with the power to propel us in the right direction,” the paper said. “Now that he has stopped rowing the boat he may relish the chance to start rocking it on behalf of sport.”

After winning his fourth gold four years ago in Atlanta, Redgrave announced his retirement with one of the best remembered quotes of those Games: “Anyone who sees me go anywhere near a boat again, ever, you’ve got my permission to shoot me.”

But despite being diagnosed in 1997 with diabetes, he returned to make history as the only athlete in an endurance event to win five in a row.

IN THIS CASE, GOLD MEANS GREEN

Chinese athletes have won a record 18 gold medals and their overall performance has helped reaffirm China’s position as Asia’s sporting powerhouse, which could boost Beijing’s bid to host the Olympic Games in 2008.

It has also been profitable for the athletes.

The government promised gold medalists at least $9,600--more than 10 times what many Chinese earn in a year--with $6,000 for a silver medal and $3,600 for a bronze, said Chinese Olympic official Shao Shiwei.

LEAVE THE CAR IN PARK

The little driverless car that was the hit of the hammer competition is in the pits for good.

The head of competition for track and field, Bill Bailey, decided to ban the car from being used in the men’s and women’s discus.

The remote-control car with “Sydney 2000” on the side was used to fetch the hammer after each throw. It is owned by UCS Inc., the New Jersey-based company that supplies most of the track competition equipment for the Sydney Games.

Bailey said the blue car broke down in the hammer preliminaries and was unable to travel in a straight line. He also cited the car as a relatively new piece of equipment. However, the car was used in the Barcelona Games eight years ago.

Anatoly Angelov, chief engineer for UCS and the man who operated the car, was upset with the decision.

“Of course it doesn’t travel in a straight line. It’s remote control,” he said. “We used it in Barcelona with no problem.”

The car drew a huge cheer when it was shown on the big screens at Olympic Stadium during Friday’s qualifying.

“I was on television with it,” Angelov said. “This was fun for everybody, but it’s not fun for him [Bailey]. I don’t understand it.”

TASTES LIKE CHICKEN

Amid the furor caused by the banning of Fatso, the unofficial wombat mascot of the Australian Olympic team, the saga of a real, live Aussie critter has been largely ignored.

But what would anyone expect? After all, as Kermit once observed, it’s not easy being green.

Or, in this case, being a green and gold bell frog.

The green and gold bell frog is a protected species but one, obviously using seriously flawed frog judgment, showed up in a fruit bowl in the kitchen of a restaurant at Olympic Park.

Luckily for the frog, some sharp-eyed environmentalist saw him before one of the cooks did and turned him over to a SOCOG official, who guarded the amphibian in the executive chef’s office until a frog expert could be located. Once identified, by species if not name, the frog was released in the wild, with instructions to avoid kitchens.

DIDN’T GET THE POINT

The United States women’s fencing team trained together in Rochester, N.Y., for the better part of the last five years. Their dream was to make history by winning the first medal for U.S. women in fencing.

Saturday night, the team--sisters Iris and Felicia Zimmermann and Dr. Ann Marsh--were right on the verge in team foil.

Iris, a freshman at Stanford, and Felicia, a senior, had the team right in position for the bronze medal, in the match against world powerhouse Germany. The team had beaten Hungary to make the medal round and had acquitted itself well while losing to defending champion Italy in the semifinals.

So when Marsh, who has squeezed her medical residency in ER in Buffalo, N.Y., around Olympic training, was right with the German fencer near the end of their 45-point match, the opportunity was unprecedented. The closest any U.S. women’s fencer had ever come to a medal was fourth, and the closest any foil team had come was sixth.

But instead of the match ending with the athletes scoring points to the end, Marsh was penalized--red carded--for covering the target and the point awarded for that by the judge gave the German a 45-42 win, and the bronze medal for her team.

Carl Borack of Brentwood, an Olympian in 1972 and four-time team captain, said here Monday, “To call the decision controversial is fair.”

Borack said that the German coach had pressured the judge verbally from the start of the match, and that the decision could have been overturned by the president of the Fencing Jury, a man from Poland.

“He let the decision stand,” Borack said, “And my main thought was that that was a poor way to end a medal competition.”

ORIGINAL SOUND

There’s going to be lots of moaning when these Olympics are over.

That’s because so many of the tourists at the Games are leaving with didgeridoos, those long, wooden Aboriginal instruments that issue droning sounds.

Alana Rose, owner of the Gavala Aboriginal Culture Center at Darling Harbor, said didgeridoos were the souvenir of choice among visitors to her shop.

“The people . . . coming in are quite well educated on Aboriginal issues,” she said. “They don’t just want cheap boomerangs.

“Cathy [Freeman] lighting the [Olympic] caldron and the indigenous flavor of the rest of the [opening] ceremony has aroused heaps of interest.”

--From reports by Bill Dwyre, Helene Elliott, Grahame L. Jones, Mike Kupper, Bill Plaschke and Times Wire Services.

BY THE NUMBERs

36: Years since a U.S. diver had won gold in 10-meter platform.

4:50: Time U.S. men’s water polo team was ordered awake by Coach John Vargas.

30: Web sites that have been shut down by police because they where showing live Olympic coverage.

$55,000: Amount of merchandise shoplifted from Sydney’s only official Olympic store.

15.4: Nielsen rating NBC’s coverage of men’s and women’s 100-meter final drew Saturda.

19.4: Nielsen rating sasme event drew when televised live during Atlanta Games.