V-i-c-t-o-r-y, Turin Giving Cheers a Try

With gold and orange pompoms fluttering, roving bands of young women, about 100 in all, are serving as cheerleaders here at the speedskating oval, the hockey rinks, even the mountain venues.

Two! Four! Six! Eight! Is this a turn to appreciate?

The cheerleaders, who were recruited by Turin 2006 organizers, provide a more entertainment-style experience at the Olympics, where traditionally the essence of sport has taken center stage.

The cheerleaders have drawn mixed reviews.

“Cute!” said Christian Kies, 24, of Berlin, eyeing about 20 of the cheerleaders one night last week at the speedskating oval.

“In Italy, cheerleading is not very important,” said Fabio Monicone, 22, of San Remo, Italy. Soccer “is important. Not cheerleading.”

“It could be worse,” said Clare Gover, 26, of Sydney, Australia. “At least they’re wearing lots of clothes -- considerably more than American cheerleaders.”

The cheerleaders are the first troupe of their sort to decorate a major sports event in Italy, according to Turin 2006 officials, who stressed that International Olympic Committee officials had approved a widespread plan for “sport production” here that included cheerleading.

That plan, with an overall budget of about $4 million -- the cheerleaders are volunteers and their budget is minuscule -- includes features that further Americanize the Olympic experience. Turin perhaps has Americanized the trappings of the Games even more than organizers did only four years ago in Salt Lake City. A glimpse of things to come occurred at the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, where a dance team clad in tangerine and silver bikinis pumped it up at the beach volleyball venue.

The Turin 2006 plan goes well beyond, including video boards urging fans, in English, to “make noise”; musical entertainment (led at the Palasport arena hockey venue by Dieter Ruehle, 37, of Burbank, who is working his third Olympics and supervises the music at Laker and King games); and, of course, cheerleading.

“I’m having so much fun,” said Marta Gentili, 18, of Turin, who spent last year as an exchange student at a high school in Wisconsin, where she made the “pom squad.” “Because I am a cheerleader here, I feel like I have a little bit of my home from the USA.”

Experts said they found it fascinating that Italian officials would readily embrace such a quintessential piece of American culture.

“In many ways, the role of the cheerleader as the eternally optimistic All-American girl, who leads the fans to cheer for team members even when they obviously have been beaten, represents the essence of traditional American patriotism,” said Natalie Guice Adams, a University of Alabama professor and coauthor of a 2003 book about the history of cheerleading, “Cheerleader: An American Icon.” “It seems that the Italian promoters have ... extended it to the Olympics to represent some kind of international patriotism.”

The widespread appearance of cheerleaders and other entertainment devices is even more striking at the Games because the IOC strictly prohibits any advertising at the “fields of play,” meaning the hockey rinks, ski runs and the like -- so as to keep the focus on the athletes and the sports.

The plan, according to Turin 2006 organizers, was to deploy a “team of bright, lively girls with a passionate interest in sport, trained to rouse the public to cheer on the Olympic teams.”

Giuseppe Gattino, a spokesman for the organizing committee, explained: “You consider soccer, the sport of the country. There, there is nothing,” meaning no entertainment, just the soccer on the field. “You are completely focused on sport.

“The Games are different. You can be a fan of, say, Giorgio Rocca,” a leading Italian skier. “But let’s say you go see Slovakia and Germany play hockey, two teams that are not your team. So you offer more -- sports and entertainment.”

Last fall, the call went out. About 500 young women auditioned and roughly 100 were chosen, all Italian, ranging in age from 18 to 26. But the process immediately presented organizers with a problem: Where to buy pompoms?

“It was impossible to find someone in Italy who knew of such things,” said Camilla Naretto, 20, of Turin, captain of the 2006 Turin cheerleaders.

A seller from California was located on the Internet.

The routines they developed more resemble the dance routines of the Laker Girls or Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders than the sis-boom-bah of a traditional U.S. high school or college squad, or the more gymnastics-oriented programs that have recently defined competitive cheerleading.

Olympic fans here, as at several recent editions of the Games, have hardly needed urging to cheer. At Thursday night’s speedskating team pursuit final, for instance, the echoes roared around the oval as the Italian men sped to victory: “I-tal-ia! I-tal-ia!”

In much the same manner, crowds four years ago at Salt Lake City shouted, “U-S-A! U-S-A!” And the Sydney Games in 2000 were marked time and again by this call from the locals: “Aussie-Aussie-Aussie!” Which was promptly met by the inimitable response: “Oi-oi-oi!”

Turin squad member Erika Pauselli, 21, of Orbassano, who spent a year as an exchange student at a Pennsylvania high school, stressed that the focus here was solely on cheerleading as dance.

“In the States, [cheerleaders] talk to the fans,” she said. “We just cheer and dance our steps, but we don’t talk to the fans.”

If it’s Laker Girls-style in theory, in practice there is one significant philosophical difference, a major distinction from the beach volleyball scene in Athens.

In Turin, it’s supposed to be fun, but not sexy.

At the indoor venues, the cheerleaders wear orange and yellow leotards over which fits a gold vest; white flouncy skirts flecked with gold and adorned with a faux gold belt; orange, 1980s-style leg warmers and sneakers.

Outdoors, they are even more covered up.

“We are Europeans and this is the Olympics,” said cheerleading captain Naretto. “So no skin. Just our smiles.”

“That’s amazing in itself,” said Adams’ coauthor, Pam Bettis, a Washington State University professor. “How can you import cheerleading from America without a little bit of cleavage?”