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Tuesday In the Park
Among tomorrow's events are the gold medal game in women's softball, quarterfinal matches in boxing, a crackerjack men's soccer semifinal between Argentina and Portugal, and one park reopening that might overshadow them all. ACOG announced yesterday that Centennial Olympic Park will once again become part of the Olympic experience, albeit with extra security. The hundreds of thousands who walk through it over the final days of the Olympics will never forget the terrible events of Saturday morning. Nor should they. As a result of the bomb blast, two people died and 112 others were injured, 16 of whom, as of last night, were still hospitalized. "The park will be left behind as a legacy of what it was intended to be," says A.D. Frazier, chief operating officer of ACOG. "A celebration of the Olympic Games." We can only hope so. Echoes from the Centennial Olympic Park bombing continue to resound, and for too many Olympians, especially the seven-member contingent from Burundi, such reverberations are all too familiar. On July 20, 300 Burundians were killed in a retaliatory attack by Hutu rebels in a Tutsi refugee camp; it was the latest massacre in a war between those ethnic groups that began in 1993 and has taken 150,000 lives. "Now we want to bring some good news from our country, some news from the heart," says Dieudonne Kwizera, Burundi's flagbearer. Kwizera, who will run in a 1,500-meter heat this morning, led the years-long campaign that brought Burundi to Atlanta for its Olympic debut. Burundi's best medal hope is Venuste Niyongabo, the most formidable threat to Algeria's Noureddine Morceli in Saturday's 1,500 final. Niyongabo, like all of Burundi's Olympians, is of Tutsi descent. Though they make up just 15% of the population (Hutus make up the rest), Tutsis have a stranglehold on the educational and military institutions where top runners are discovered and trained. Yet Kwizera feels the team in Atlanta represents both ethnic groups. "We are running under one flag," he says. "If Niyongabo wins, great. But the big victory was to give the Olympics to Burundi."
Mike Strange is not only a Canadian lightweight boxer but also the owner of the Iron Tap, a tavern in Niagara Falls, Ont., where he's known as the Battlin' Barkeep. Before heading to Atlanta, Strange promised his customers an hour's worth of 50-cent drinks for every bout he won. But after beating Armenia's Mikhak Ghazaryan 16-7 on Friday to reach tomorrow's quarterfinals against Tontcho Tontchev of Bulgaria, Strange decided to amend his offer. "From now on, it's only 50-cent mixed drinks," he said. "Everyone was ordering Smithwicks and Guinness at $4.80 a pint. Also, I have to ask someone from CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] to stop replaying the fight. People keep thinking I've won again."
Veteran Argentine reporter Osvaldo Rubelo Castro-Riveras stopped by our offices yesterday with some mementos of a long career. He proudly displayed a photo of himself interviewing Diego Maradona and also one of himself standing alongside the Pope—in that order.
The Cal Ripken Jr. of these Games is a 53-year-old grandfather from St. Wolfgang, Austria. His name is Hubert Raudaschl, and he's competing in his 10th consecutive Olympics—a record for any athlete in any sport. "I'm lucky I wasn't born an American," says Raudaschl, a Star class yachtsman whose teammates have nicknamed him the Old Man of the Sea. "There's a lot more competition in America. Making the Austrian team is easier." Since his first Olympics, the 1960 Rome Games, Raudaschl, who earns his living as a sailmaker, has competed in four different Olympic yachting events, winning silver medals in Finn in 1968 and Star in '80. He has grown accustomed to competing far from the Olympic host city—yachting is being held in Savannah at these Games—and refers to past Olympics by the name of the city at which yachting took place. He speaks of the '68 Mexico City Olympics as the Acapulco Games and the '80 Moscow Olympics as the Tallinn Games. Raudaschl is unlikely to win a medal in Savannah, but he still cuts a dashing figure. When an Austrian magazine recently asked its female readers if they thought Raudaschl was sexy, the answer was an overwhelming Ja!
Italian archer Paola Fantato A stadium ramp would hardly seem a challenge to an Olympic athlete. But in the Parade of Nations on opening night, Italian archer Paola Fantato—who is wheelchair-bound as a result of polio—needed teammates to help hold her back on the steep slope. Little else has held her back. Fantato, 36 (above), who drew her first bow in the team event yesterday, is the only Olympian competing in a wheelchair. "I am just another competitor," she says. "This is the greatest feeling, that the others respect me as an athlete." Fantato has noticed that one significant Olympic structure is not wheelchair-accessible: the victory podium. "Of course," she says, "I can be helped onto it if we win a medal."
Facing possible elimination from future Olympics, modern pentathlon has done the right things to stay alive. The sport's officials have condensed the competition from five days to one day to make it more fan friendly. (Modern pentathlon's events—shooting, fencing, swimming, riding and running—will be held tomorrow at the Georgia World Congress Center, the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center and the Georgia International Horse Park.) They have responded to criticism that it is too costly for the Games' organizers by paying the cost of shipping horses for the riding part of the event. And in the name of fairness they have crusaded for the inclusion of the women's version, an effort that has thus far failed even though there has been a women's world championship in modern pentathlon every year since 1981. Modern pentathlon is on the calendar for the 2000 Sydney Games, but the calendar can still be changed. And as the Olympics grow more crowded, and sports with more sex (i.e., TV) appeal are added—beach volleyball and mountain biking this year, triathlon in 2000—modern pentathlon could very well be cut. That would be a shame. It's a sport with a rich 84-year Olympic history and one that has made changes to stay alive. It deserves to go on. Info '96, the computer system that provides results, stats, quotes and other nuggets of information for the Games, seems to be ironing out its glitches. Still, as with any computer system, what you get out is only as good as what you—or some other knucklehead with access to the system—put in. After Saturday's shooting events, reporters seeking quotes from the winners were treated by Info '96 to the following show of Olympic spirit, presumably typed into the system by ACOG volunteers at the Wolf Creek venue: "Today's events were won by a bunch of funny talking shooters that no one in the press conference could understand. Nobody cared, we are gone." Not soon enough. |
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SI Olympic Dailies
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