A New Olympic Order
Geopolitical upheaval is mellowing the mood of the Albertville games
It was the best of times (1:50.37 won the men's downhill). It was the worst of times (1:53.40 finished a distant 31st). But what time is the bus coming?
At the Winter Olympics, a tale of 13 remote villages and 6,000 lost sportswriters, the French Alps began humming last week (mostly to the Austrian anthem) and ought to be singing by now if this frozen celebration of human excellence runs as close to form as Bonnie Blair.
The world has changed so much since its sporting children (not a few of them 30 years old) last convened four years ago. Only because anything else would have sent an embarrassing message, the former Soviets continue to wear CCCP on their playsuits. But they have been clumsily reclassified "the Unified Team of the National Olympic Committees of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan," and their beautiful theme song, so familiar at Olympics past, has given way to a neutral melody. The old lyric just didn't work anymore: "Unbreakable union of freeborn republics, great Russia has welded forever to stand. . . ."
The new candor. Could the withering of old geopolitical rivalries have loosened Olympic inhibitions? From the opening ceremonies' first note, candor seemed to be the leading qualifier down every Olympic mountain. Throbbing with human mobiles and stilt walkers portraying spermatozoa, the overture owed much to Cirque de Soleil. It was mildly wonderful, stupendously weird and--how you say?--unrelievedly French. The kids of the Savoie were left out entirely except for Francois-Cyrille Grange, 8, who took the hand of French soccer god Michel Platini and jogged to the peak of Albertville's stadium to fire the Olympic wick. "Platini is more impressive on television," the boy said, setting off an avalanche of deflating honesty.
Normally, the winners schuss and the losers sheesh, but downhill ski champion Patrick Ortlieb of Austria yawned after his success and announced: "I hope I don't have to race anymore on this track. It's not spectacular enough. Too slow."
La Face de Bellevarde at Val-d'Isere, the molehill under discussion, was technically designed for Frenchman Franck Piccard, who finished second and seemed disappointed only in Ortlieb's mood. "Live this moment to the fullest," Piccard advised him aside. Thereafter, at least, Ortlieb smiled.
Noting the winner was born in Alsace, and perhaps mindful of the current fluidity of national borders, both the French and the Germans thought about claiming him. But Ortlieb cut them all off at the pass. "I consider myself 100 percent Austrian," he said, adding in a gentle tone the interpreter relayed just as softly: "I hope my life will not change much. I hope I keep my old friends. The new friends who spontaneously surface will be the first to disappear from the scene."
When American Cammy Myler took fifth in the women's luge, the best mark a U.S. sledder had ever achieved in the Olympic Games, two television interviewers proposed in swift succession: "You must be ecstatic!" She replied to both with a sigh: "Not really."
Then there was Bonnie Blair, an Illinois speed skater with a work ethic that impresses even the Japanese. She said: "I didn't skate as well as I would have liked. But it was good enough. I'll take it." The 500-meter gold medal was spinning about her neck, and gold for the 1,000 was yet to come.
At 27, Blair looks as girlish as ever either in skating skin or snowsuit, but the bedsheet banners of her private cheering section had to be updated from Calgary. "Dear Aunt Bonnie," one read. "Go fast. Love, Brittany."
Four years ago, Blair's single gold medal represented half the American yield. Considering that nothing weighs more than nationalism, she was asked how her diminutive shoulders were holding up. "I skate for myself to begin with," Blair answered with no edge in her voice. "I have to please and satisfy myself before I can do anything else." After doubling in the 1,000, she said: "I guess I'm glad that I was able to bring some more gold medals back to the United States."
Flags are still flapping in the grandstands, but jingoism on the playing fields is down. When American goalie Ray LeBlanc, 27, of Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Flint and Saginaw, deflected 46 shots while shutting out Germany, 2-0, it was Vladislav Tretiak who exclaimed, "That's my boy." A lamppost and a spaniel have been drinking tea.
The great Soviet goalie Tretiak was yanked by a panicky coach in Lake Placid, or the Americans may never have danced in the streets 12 years ago. Now a consultant to the Chicago Black Hawks, LeBlanc's ultimate employers, Tretiak has actually tutored the American goalie.
Communist confession. If Tretiak is king of the new order and new frankness, retired East German figure skater Katarina Witt is the queen. She is a television commentator now and a favorite of Madison Avenue. Her country has also retired, and she is free to confess that every possession and privilege she won eight years ago in Sarajevo was riding on a second-straight gold medal in Calgary. "It was gold or nothing," she said. "Win or I don't know what."
The contests themselves and possibly some of the playground directors are losing their rigidity. Mogul skiing, which doesn't like to be called "hot-dog skiing"--or thought of as rhythmic gymnastics--debuted as a medal sport on a corrugated course that resembled the bottom of an egg carton. Favorite and admitted ski bum Donna Weinbrecht of the United States took the first women's gold by "banging the bumps," "shredding the narl" and generally impersonating a loco helicopter.
Even figure skating, the Winter Olympics' marquee event, is loosening up. The classical school figures that sedated viewers in the past have been discontinued. And judges are turning away from stylists toward jumpers--a shift that may be significant in one of the few events remaining with political stakes. While interest in the women's figure skating is perennially high, special attention has been focused this time on Japanese-American stylist Kristi Yamaguchi of California and Japanese-Japanese leaper Midori Ito of Nagoya. Ah, a grudge match.
Sociologists in woolly caps have been making quite a lot--though nobody can say exactly what--of the fact Yamaguchi's mother was born in a World War II detention camp. But that misery, like so much trouble, seems quite far away.
This story appears in the February 24, 1992 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.