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Fade Away
One of the most enduring images of the 1992 Barcelona Games is that of the Lithuanian men's basketball players holding their bronze medals while clad in the tie-dyed dunking-skullman T-shirts that symbolized the sense of freedom they felt competing as an independent nation. The shirts were a gift from the Grateful Dead, a gesture of international friendship that was widely celebrated. The skullman shirt was mass-produced and sold to the public, quickly becoming the hottest item of those Games. They're still hot, and the controversy surrounding them is heating up as well. On the sprawling Olympic midway, at least three companies are trying to exploit the market created by the first shirt. And as you might expect, lawyers have joined the fray. Greg Speirs, who designed the '92 shirt and whose company, Slow Leak Apparel Inc., is now selling it as a commemorative model, got an injunction that prevents Not Fade Away Graphics, Inc., the Dead's marketing company, from selling shirts with the dunking-skullman design. But Not Fade Away has evidently gotten around the injunction with a series of different designs, all of which echo the psychedelic style of the original but none of which includes the skullman. Vendors report brisk sales in Atlanta. Meanwhile, a third company, Liquid Blue, to which Not Fade Away farmed out some of the T-shirt production after the '92 Games, is also busily selling Lithuanian T-shirts in Atlanta that do include the skeleton. At press time, Speirs's lawyers were considering getting an injunction against Liquid Blue. Stay tuned. However, true Dead fans—and you, Jerry, wherever you are—might want to tune out. A few days ago we told you about the Canadian swim team's pledge of sexual abstinence during the Games. A recent note in Journal Canada, the official daily newsletter of the Canadian Olympic team, would seem to suggest that the country's table tennis players are approaching things a little differently. Under the heading found at last, the journal reported: "The rubbers have arrived, much to the relief of the table tennis athletes. They've been without since the bag of rubbers was reported lost four days ago. Team leader Mariann Domonkos said the five-member table tennis team could go through as many as 10 rubbers a day once competition starts." For those not familiar with the lingo of the sport, a rubber is the facing on a table tennis paddle.
Where's Ralph Kramden when you need him? The ACOG—or should we say ACLOG?—bus system could use some pros like Ralphie boy behind the wheel of its shuttles. As a New Yorker, he would be at home among the 400 or so out-of-town drivers (of 3,600 total) hired for the Games, and his Matt Ghaffari-like physique would help him thwart further attempts by stranded athletes to commandeer buses (there have been three such hijackings so far). Unlike current ACOG drivers, he wouldn't steer his shuttle onto the cycling road-race course, injure an athlete on board by driving into a concrete barrier or refuse to open the doors for 15 minutes with the bus stuck a block from its destination. And maybe he could bring his pal Norton along to fix the toilets at the tennis venue.
Say this for the Atlanta Olympics: At least they're true Summer Games. Of the 23 previous Summer Olympics, only 11 were held entirely in summertime. The other 12 either started in the spring or ended in the fall—or both, in the case of the 1908 London Games, which stretched from April 27 to Oct. 31. Even the inaugural 1896 Athens Games took place not during the summer but between April 6 and April 15, a time of year, it should be noted, when the average high temperature in Atlanta is a relatively comfortable 73°. As for the next Summer Games, in ever-balmy Sydney, they'll start on Sept. 15, when it's winter Down Under.
If celebrity-spotting were an Olympic event, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution would win a gold medal every day. Amid a long list of glitterati sightings yesterday, the newspaper breathlessly mentioned "a party at the 1848 House on Monday night with Mark Spitz and Peter Fonda as guests." Sounds more like the 1968 House, man.
Costa Rica's Claudia Poll One refreshing story that has emerged from the Olympic pool is the success of the world's smaller countries—success based largely on the spread of training methods from swimming superpowers such as the U.S., Germany and Russia. Through last night, swimmers from Belgium and South Africa had set two of the three world records, and small nations (Belgium, Costa Rica, Hungary, Ireland, New Zealand and South Africa) had won 11 of 22 individual events. The triumphs have caused no small stir back home. After Claudia Poll (above) won the 200 freestyle for Costa Rica's first-ever gold medal, thousands flooded the streets of San Jose to revel, and Costa Rican TV replayed the race over and over, accompanied by the country's national anthem.
The International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) has warned one of its judges—none other than Lyudmila Turischeva, who in 1972 won a gold medal in the all-around for the Soviet Union—for letting her attention wander during the competition. "She [Turischeva] was spoken to," says Jackie Fie, FIG women's technical committee president. During women's team compulsories and optionals, several observers noticed that Turischeva, who is from Ukraine, seemed to be more interested in watching what the Ukrainian athletes were doing than in evaluating the competition in front of her. At Tuesday's optionals she was actually bobbing her head in rhythm with the Ukrainians' swings on the uneven bars. What the distracted jurist did not realize was that her actions had been caught on videotape, according to a source within FIG. Turischeva had no comment about the warning. But she knows that her attentiveness will be monitored carefully from now on and that further lapses could result in her expulsion. Info '96, the IBM system providing results and stats for the Games, has had more than its share of glitches—chronic delays have earned it the nickname Info '97. It's hard to say whether the fault lies with IBM, a series of companies that have provided parts of the system, the inaccuracy of keyboard inputting by ACOG people or some combination of all the above. But look at the bright side—crossed wires can actually help bring about the Olympic ideal of uniting the world's nations. On Monday the computer at the weightlifting venue spit out results sheets that credited all 36 entrants in the 141-pound class with having broken Asian records. Among the proud new "record holders" were lifters from Africa, Europe, North America and South America—not to mention Tony Analau of the Solomon Islands, who had not recorded a lift.
Guinea-Bissau, the 197th and last nation to be accepted into these Olympics, emerged as the journalists' favorite yesterday when, during a press conference, its six athletes began peppering reporters with questions like "What is your publication?"; "How do you make your report?"; and most endearingly, "Do you also practice sports?"
Naoya Tsukahara Japanese gymnast, whose father, Mitsuo, was the originator of the Tsukahara vault, on what any move he might invent should be called: ("Tsukahara Junior.") |
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SI Olympic Dailies
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