Olympic Ideal Not Living Up to Its Message

You heard it again and again during the dark days of 1999, usually from crestfallen supporters of the Olympics as the once-sterling product name got dragged through the muck of bribery and influence-peddling allegations:

It’s all about the athletes.

Let’s keep the focus on the athletes.

Most weeks, such thinking sounds like good practical advice.

This week wasn’t one of them.

* Item: Former Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding faces a maximum penalty of one year in prison and a $5,000 fine if found guilty of a misdemeanor domestic assault charge after an altercation with her live-in boyfriend, Darren Silver.

According to Silver and two witnesses, Harding repeatedly punched Silver during an argument, kneed him in the groin and threw a hubcap in his face, hitting him in the nose. Police claim Harding appeared to be intoxicated at the scene and after her arrest and release, Harding was spotted by TV crews visiting taverns close to her home in Camas, Wash.

Thursday, Harding pleaded not guilty to the charge, saying she was acting in self-defense. Clark County District Court Judge Randal Fritzler issued a no-contact order that requires Harding to stay away from Silver and ordered her to take the drug Antabase, which makes a person violently ill when mixed with alcohol.

Harding, serving a lifetime ban from international figure skating after admitting her role in the 1994 knee-clubbing attack on Olympic rival Nancy Kerrigan, recently had been trying to resurrect her skating career. But according to Harding’s agent, Michael Rosenberg, two offers to join ice-show tours this fall are now on hold, because of the assault charge.

* Item: Olympic archery gold medalist Justin Huish faces a prison sentence of up to four years if found guilty of a felony charge of possessing marijuana with intent to sell.

Huish, winner of individual and team gold medals at the 1996 Olympics, surrendered in court Friday after Simi Valley police said they confiscated 4.5 ounces of marijuana and 4.2 ounces of hashish oil--total estimated value: $2,300--along with weighing scales, packaging materials and $23,000 in cash.

Huish, like Harding, is no rookie on the police blotter. In 1993, he pleaded no contest to vandalism for spray-painting the letters “KKK” on the property of an African American couple, resulting in a penalty of three years’ probation and 120 hours of community service.

Stakes, including possible disqualification from this year’s Summer Games in Sydney, are considerably higher now.

* Item: 1992 Olympic 5,000-meter gold medalist Dieter Baumann of Germany faces a two-year ban for testing positive for nandrolone, a steroid, although Baumann claims he was framed by someone maliciously spiking his toothpaste.

After Baumann’s positive test last fall, experts detected nandrolone in Baumann’s toothpaste in December, prompting Baumann to file legal proceedings against unknown parties. Baumann, 35, is currently suspended by the German Athletics Federation, pending the federation’s final ruling due in April.

Drugs.

Domestic battery.

Cloak-and-dagger sabotage.

The “Olympic ideal?”

Sounds more like “This Week in the NFL.”

NEW TRACK FOR LOS ANGELES?

USA Track and Field CEO Craig Masback wants to bring an indoor Golden Spike tour stop to Staples Center within the next two years, but acknowledges there remains one “missing piece”--a new, and preferably portable, running surface.

“We need a world-class indoor track in order to have a meet, and we’re working on that,” Masback said. “We faced a similar problem in New York [site of the Millrose Games]. We teamed with the New York promoter and there’s a brand-new track in Madison Square Garden, which also has been so constructed that it can travel to other arenas on the East Coast.

“So the goal would be to obtain a track suitable for a major meet at the Staples Center that could also be made available to the entire L.A. community . . . from December through March. . . . “

Masback envisions a portable track “built to travel up to Portland or San Francisco or down to San Diego for a meet.”

STOKING THE RIVALRY

If you’re looking for common ground within the fractious U.S. track and field community, even a tiny patch, you will find it here:

If the sport is ever going to resurrect itself in this country, everyone agrees, it needs to develop a great rivalry.

For starters, how about Maurice Greene versus Michael Johnson?

Greene, in Birmingham, England, last weekend for an indoor meet, is doing what he can to pump some juice into the matchup that--it is hoped--will materialize in 200-meter showdowns this summer at the U.S. nationals and Sydney Olympics.

“As far as I’m concerned, Michael Johnson is just another man,” Greene told writers in Birmingham. “He is not the superman that everyone says he is. He can be beaten. He has been beaten.

“The Sydney 200 meters is not going to be extra-special because he is in the race. I respect Michael Johnson a lot and he knows I want to race him, but he hasn’t called. He knows where I am.”

Greene, the 100-meter world-record holder, won the 60-meter final in Birmingham with a time of 6.47 seconds--after the race had to be restarted four times because of false starts.

IOC VS. FIFA, ANOTHER ROUND

The never-ending joust over where Olympic soccer belongs in the sport’s international picture continues Wednesday in Lausanne, Switzerland, when International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch and FIFA President Sepp Blatter are scheduled to meet.

FIFA, intent on protecting its most important and popular property, the World Cup, has long fought for measures preventing the men’s Olympic soccer tournament from becoming a quadrennial rival. The current Olympic age-limit of 23--with three over-age exemptions--has seen to that, reducing the Olympic event to essentially a youth competition, but Samaranch wants a loosening of that restraint.

“I don’t like the idea of three over-23 players,” Samaranch was quoted as saying in several Spanish newspapers this week. “As IOC president, I’ll have to fight for there to be more, not just three. I’d like there to be five, or even seven, over-23s playing.”

Another point is the timing of this year’s Olympic soccer tournament--in late September, with the 2000-01 seasons of the top European professional leagues already underway. European clubs have complained about the prospect of having to release players then for the Olympics.

“The Olympics is a major issue,” said Gerhard Aigner, general secretary for UEFA, European soccer’s governing body. “The clubs are extremely worried about the situation.”

Six countries--Brazil, Chile, Japan, South Korea, Kuwait and host nation Australia--already have qualified for the men’s Olympic tournament. The United States will try to earn a berth during regional qualifying in April at Hershey, Pa.

ANTI-DOPING AGENCY NAMES BOARD

Former Olympic marathon champion Frank Shorter and sports agent Barry Axelrod were among the nine individuals named to the board of directors for the U.S. Olympic Committee’s newly formed anti-doping agency.

Others include Kate Borg, member of the 1992 U.S. Olympic canoe and kayak team; Peter Breen, an ice-dance competitor at the 1992 Winter Olympics and a certified athletic trainer; Dr. Richard Cohen, a member of the Doping Control Commission for USA Wrestling and the U.S. Bobsled Federation; Dr. Jean Fourcroy, a medical officer with the Food and Drug Administration regarded as a expert on anabolic steroids and androgens; Dr. Andrew Mecca, director of the California State Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs; Dr. Walter Shervington, president of the National Medical Assn.; and Dr. Ralph Hale, vice chair of the USOC Sports Medicine Committee.