Holding Down The FortSoftball players were among the athletes who enjoyed the comforts at venues outside Atlantaby Peter King
It's not your typical Olympic Village, that's for sure. To get to the home of the eight Olympic softball teams, which will play their games at Golden Park in Columbus, Ga., drive 104 miles southwest of Atlanta to the U.S. Army base at Fort Benning. Proceed through one checkpoint, then take the winding road to another checkpoint 100 yards from the bachelor officers' quarters, where two military police officers with M-16s inspect your credentials and order you to zigzag around six antiterrorist concrete barricades and into a parking lot. At the officers' quarters, your belongings are inspected by more military police and your official credentials are issued. Then you walk through a metal detector and are escorted to the designated area for meeting athletes, otherwise known as the officers' mess hall. Along the way, you can't help but notice a couple of the 16 sharpshooters who are perched on parapets atop the buildings, keeping a vigil over a compound that is surrounded by barbed-wire fence.
Softball, anyone?
"At first," Australian pitcher Carolyn Crudgington says, "you're kind of nervous looking at all the security. But then you think, How could we feel any more safe? Really, we're happy to be in Columbus. It doesn't take away from our Olympic experience, even though we're not in Atlanta."
"Ssshhhh!" teammate Jenny Holliday says with a laugh. "Don't tell them how good we have it here. They'll all want to come down from Atlanta!"
What the athletes have in Columbus—and in most of the eight other venues outside of the Atlanta area—is a good deal more peace and quiet than the competitors have in the Olympic Village at Georgia Tech. The U.S. men's soccer team resides in a quiet dormitory in the athletes' village at Birmingham Southern College. Even that wasn't good enough for the Argentines, who will play the Americans tomorrow night. They are holed up in a monastery 55 miles north of Birmingham, in Cullman, Ala.
But while the accommodations at the Olympic Village in Atlanta are pretty standard college-dorm fare, athletes at the other venues have lodgings ranging from campy to suitelike. At the Ocoee Whitewater Center in the Cherokee National Forest in southern Tennessee, kayakers live in rustic dorms, two to a room in bunk beds. "The rooms are like any other rooms with bunk beds," says Michael Reys of Holland. "We're better off here than Atlanta because it's cooler and better for competing." In Miami, soccer gold medal favorite Brazil opted for the swanky Biltmore Hotel over the dorm rooms at Nova University being occupied by the seven other teams at that venue. In Savannah, 252 miles southeast of Atlanta, the waterfront Marriott Hotel serves as the home base for yachting contestants. The bad news: Athletes don't get Marriott points. The good news: Yachters will walk down cobblestoned River Road at 8 p.m. tomorrow for their own opening ceremonies.
Athletes who are disappointed about missing out on the Atlanta experience are reminded by their coaches and Olympic veterans that they don't want to blow everything they've worked for to be a medal winner in the Social Olympics. Because it has a game tomorrow night, the American soccer team will skip tonight's opening ceremonies. "Hey, it stinks," says U.S. defender Alexi Lalas. "On the one hand, we'd love to be in Atlanta. I was in Barcelona, and being an athlete in the Olympic Village is like living in New York City and going out on the town and getting everything free. But on the other hand, you have to remember why you're here—to play at your absolute best—and you don't want to throw that away because you've been out too late at night. We like it here, especially the support."
A sellout crowd of 81,085 will watch the U.S.-Argentina game at Legion Field—an amazing thing, considering the level of college football fervor in town. (On Wednesday a sports-talk station droned on about Auburn's football recruiting season.)
Canadian softball players voted on Wednesday to attend the opening ceremonies at Olympic Stadium, as will most of the seven other softball teams. "You lose some of the Olympic experience not being in Atlanta, no question," says Brenda Staniforth, a Canadian assistant coach. "That's one of the reasons we decided to go."
Despite the tight security at Fort Benning, athletes like the venue because of its quaintness. On Wednesday night the Aussies raised their national flag on the officers' club grounds, then attended an ice-cream social there.
Crudgington was so proud of her room that she wanted to show it off. It's a third-floor single with all the amenities of a luxury one-bedroom flat: bathroom with shower, large closet, air-conditioning, minirefrigerator, microwave, 19-inch color TV with remote control, queen-sized bed, artwork and cookies. The artwork, a kangaroo drawn in crayon, is courtesy of a Columbus schoolgirl. The oatmeal cookies were baked by volunteers who also delivered them to the 160 players and staffers there. "Our friends in Atlanta will be jealous when we tell them," Crudgington says.
Atlanta? How about Birmingham? "They have what?" Lalas said yesterday. "Well, we're pretty low-maintenance guys. We're two to a room. My feet hang off the end of the bed, just like in college. Is it The Four Seasons? Nope. Doesn't matter. The food's great, and people are treating us great."
The Americans bused the 21Ž2 hours from Atlanta to Birmingham on Tuesday, escorted by a SWAT team traveling in an unmarked car. In Birmingham the Americans' first stop was the Alabama Power Building. They were greeted by a band, cheerleaders and 4,000 fans who ringed the six-story atrium and showered the players with confetti. Veterans of the team say it was the warmest reception they have ever received. "Atlanta may have a better arcade," U.S. forward A.J. Wood says, "but we've got our fans here."
Fans and security. Always security.
"If not?" Juantorena says. He shrugs. "We disappear."
SI Olympic Dailies
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