Olympic Spirit Bowed but Not Broken

The call came early one Saturday morning.

It was a social worker, asking my wife and me if we were still interested in adopting. A baby boy, she said, might be available.

“When?” we asked.

“Monday,” she said.

“You mean next Monday?” we asked.

We were more than willing. We had been waiting too long not to leap at the opportunity. But, of course, there were many obstacles to overcome within such a short time, one of which was that I was supposed to travel Sunday to Japan for the 1998 Winter Olympics.

My wife and I discussed whether I should cancel, or at least postpone, the trip. We decided that I should go as scheduled. The Olympics are important to this newspaper, and it was probably too late to acquire a replacement credential for another reporter. The Olympics also have been an important part of my career since I covered my first one in Montreal in 1976.

I also have long believed that the Olympics are important to our civilization, that they are not merely a sporting event but a celebration of our young people and their ability to come together every other year in peace. I never have been so naive as to think they were uncorrupted--above politics and greed--but I was certain that they were more good than bad and that the world was a better place because of them.

I spent the rest of the day Saturday filling out legal documents and boarded the plane as planned Sunday, although because of delays I didn’t arrive in Tokyo until much later than planned. Upon arriving, I immediately called my wife to learn that I was a father. She had David in her arms, and when she put the phone to his mouth, I could hear him gently breathing.

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I wondered then and many times since about my decision. The most recent time was Wednesday, when it was reported that a French figure skating judge might have succumbed to pressure when she gave higher marks in the pairs freestyle program to the Russians than the Canadians. If so, she violated the oath of fairness she took at the opening ceremony and conspired in a scandal that tarnishes the Russians’ gold medal, the sport of figure skating and the Olympics.

Do I sound disillusioned? I am. The only question I have for myself is what took so long.

There is evidence of corruption dating back to the ancient Games in Greece that began in 776 BC. My first experience with it occurred in the summer of 1976, when a Soviet modern pentathlete named Borys Onyshchenko (later dubbed “Disonyshchenko” by the media) used a wired epee that registered hits when there were none and East German swimmers were, as we discovered after the fall of the Berlin Wall, doped to the gills.

Steroids were not strictly an Eastern Bloc vice. In 1984 in Los Angeles, an Olympics boycotted by the Soviet Union and most of its allies, a number of drug positives never came to light because, it was revealed years later, a maid had inadvertently removed the documentation from a room in the Biltmore Hotel.

Anyone who believed attaching the word “Olympian” to an athlete implied virtue had to reconsider when Tonya Harding failed to confess that she knew associates of hers, including her husband, had planned an attack on Nancy Kerrigan in 1994.

As proved by the corruption scandal leading to Salt Lake City’s selection as host for these Games, the International Olympic Committee has been no better a caretaker of the movement’s ideals.

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I guess it is the ideals that will keep me coming back to the Olympics.

Often they are not reached. Too often they are not even reached for.

But when they are, it is truly a special thing.

I remember in particular when Elana Mayer, a white South African, and Derartu Tulu, a black Ethiopian, joined hands and circled the track for a victory lap after the women’s 10,000 meters in Barcelona in 1992, the first year South Africa was allowed to rejoin the Olympic movement after decades of banishment because of its apartheid policies.

I remember Kerri Strug vaulting with a badly sprained ankle in 1996 because her team needed her and Hermann Maier charging down the hill to win the super-G three days after a horrific crash in the downhill in 1998.

I learned something about being a father in 1992. A British quarter-miler, Derek Redmond, fell because of a torn hamstring on the final curve and began walking toward the finish line, committed to crossing it. His father, Jim, who was watching from the stands in Montjuic Stadium, ignored security, leaped over the railing and, lending a shoulder, helped his son get there. If David ever needs a shoulder, I hope I am there for him.

Among the lessons we can learn from the Olympics is about human frailties. We haven’t advanced all that far in pursuit of a more perfect civilization through the Olympics. We probably never will. But the important thing is that we have the vehicle that enables us to keep trying.

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us,” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote. “It eluded us then, but that’s no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther ... and one fine morning--

“So we beat on, boats against the current....”

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Randy Harvey can be reached at randy.harvey@latimes.com.