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Cuban diver sees stars and stripes
Posted: Tuesday May 02, 2000 08:42 AM
All eyes are on Moroccan-born marathoner Khalid Khannouchi, but another foreign-born, U.S.-trained Sydney hopeful is looking for a political reprieve in time to compete at a U.S. Olympic trials. Diver Rio Ramirez was 16 years old when he won a gold medal for Cuba on the 10-meter platform at the 1991 Pan-Am Games in Havana. Two years later Ramirez defected by sneaking away from his coaches at a competition in Puerto Rico. He arrived in the U.S. with $30, landed work in a clothing store in Miami and began learning English by listening to Madonna. After picking up the language, he won four NCAA titles for the University of Miami. Ramirez received his U.S. citizenship in April 1999, less than three years after defecting -- which means the Cubans have the right to forbid him from competing for his new country. So far they haven't budged, and Ramirez feels the Elian Gonzalez controversy isn't helping his cause. Without giving specifics, U.S. Diving president Bill Walker said last week that his federation was "doing everything possible to assist any eligible citizen." Walker said it was up to the USOC whether Ramirez would be allowed to compete at the U.S. Olympic trials in June if he has not yet been granted the right to represent the United States in international competition. If Ramirez were to earn one of the two berths in either the three-meter springboard or 10-meter platform event, the USOC could petition the IOC to allow him to represent the U.S. Ramirez placed fifth on the platform and eighth on the springboard at the U.S. indoor nationals in Minneapolis last weekend, so his odds of making it to Sydney may be long. "When I came over here, I thought diving was in my past," Ramirez said. "To maybe dive as an American citizen in the Olympics ... I mean, how did this life happen to me?" Athens needs new leadershipSome thoughts about the difficulties Athens is having as it prepares for the 2004 Olympics: This is not the first time a southern European city has had trouble getting its act together for the Games. A year before the 1992 Games, the Spanish, Catalonian and Greater Barcelona governments (national, regional and city) still could not decide which body would oversee and pay for certain responsibilities (i.e., security, transportation, facility upgrades); each wanted to make decisions, while one of the other governments paid the bills. So nothing got done until the three bodies were shamed into sorting out their differences in September 1989 -- after Barcelona hosted a disastrous World Cup of Track and Field. (Athletes arrived late to the newly opened Olympic Stadium, which sustained three severe floods during competition and was damaged by errant fireworks from the opening ceremonies.) Now that the Athens organizing committee is facing many of the same snafus, it can't wait for the Olympic test events to kick in at some of its venues before it takes a vital first step toward righting its sinking Olympics. The organizing committee must bring back Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, who ran the bid committee so professionally. When Athens originally bid for the 1996 Games (eventually awarded to Atlanta), its committee conducted a presumptive campaign that offered few specifics and arrogantly believed that hosting the modern Games' centennial celebration was the city's birthright. Eight years later, Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, a Harvard-educated lawyer who divides her time between Athens and Chelsea, England, directed a savvier bid that was so understated, organized and detailed that many felt it was a successful audition for high political office. While Angelopoulos-Daskalaki insists she does not want to be the Games' chief organizer, she recently offered her services to the organizing committee, which is behind schedule in revamping its metro system, completing five of its venues, constructing new roadways, upgrading its hotels and keeping the city's pollution under control. IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch has been uncharacteristically vocal about the shortcomings of the committee, another reason it is time to hand over the committee's reigns to the woman who helped bring the Games to Athens in the first place. Lost in spaceThe Sydney organizers are planning to send an Olympic torch into orbit on the shuttle Atlantis. Nice touch, but it isn't, as the Aussies claim, the first time an Olympic item has flown into space. U.S. astronaut Jack Swaggart, a Colorado native, brought a Denver bid pin on board Apollo 13 during its ill-fated attempt to land on the moon in April 1972 -- two years after the IOC had selected Denver to host the 1976 Winter Olympics. The Denver Games were ill-fated, too. Later that year, after Israeli athletes were taken hostage at the Munich Summer Olympics and Colorado residents began to sour on committing public funds to run the '76 Games, the state legislature gave the Olympics back to the IOC. Innsbruck, Austria --which had hosted the 1964 Winter Games -- stepped in as substitute host. Sports Illustrated writer-reporter Brian Cazeneuve covers Olympic sports for the magazine. Be sure to submit a question to his Sydney 2000 Mailbag.
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