This Is No Greek Tragedy

John-Andrew Kambanis and John Livaditis won’t be pictured on cereal boxes before the Olympics. No TV network has asked them to appear in commercials to promote the Games. No pot of gold awaits them at the end of the bobsled track at Salt Lake City.

As the driver and brakemen, respectively, for the Greek two-man bobsled team, they have little hope of winning a medal. The two Chicagoans, sons of Greek-born parents, are perhaps two seconds slower than the top combinations. In a sport measured in thousandths of a second, that gap might as well be two hours.

Yet, their Olympic reveries are as vivid as those of any world champion, and their motives refreshingly pure. They’re authorized to compete for Greece but get no financial support from the country and figure they’ll have to work two years to pay off their credit card debt. They don’t mind.

“Greece started the Olympics, and there’s a tremendous amount of pride for us in being able to compete for Greece,” said Kambanis, who took a year’s leave of absence from his job as a financial analyst to train for the Games

. “And in Europe, bobsled is a very prestigious sport. What you call the power teams, the Swiss, Germans, French and Italians, all won medals at the last Games. I think it’s important for Greece to be participating.

“A big part of it is the pride of participating and pride in our heritage. The further you are from your native country, the more you want to hold onto your traditions.”

Kambanis, who ran track at Chicago’s Loyola University, got into the sport by chance in 1993.

“My coach got a letter saying Greece was looking to put together a bobsled team, and being the only Greek on the team, he passed it to me,” Kambanis said.

“I had never thought about it, but I decided, having grown up and always dreamed of going to the Olympics, it would be a unique opportunity and I should make a call and find out more.”

Greek-Americans inspired by the unlikely story of the Jamaican bobsled team at the 1988 Calgary Games helped get the team up and running. Kambanis was an alternate on Greece’s inaugural bobsled team in 1994, “and just the taste of it fueled me enough to go for it again in ’98.”

With Kambanis as the brakeman, the Greek sled finished 30th among 39 teams at Nagano.

“But we accomplished our goal of finishing first among the new teams in the sport,” Kambanis said. Afterward, he switched to the pilot’s seat, attending driving schools in Calgary and Austria. He also bought his old teammate’s interest in their sled and two years ago recruited Livaditis, a former college lacrosse player.

“Last year was the first full season we competed together,” Kambanis said. “That helped us put together a lot of things and trust each other.”

Hooking up with a knowledgeable coach also helped. They hired Patrick Brown, who’d competed in the U.S. program before coaching the 1988 Jamaican team. When they found him, he was giving tourists rides down the Olympic track.

“We’re just thrilled to have him as a coach,” Kambanis said. “Last year, when we were in Salt Lake City and couldn’t afford to have a coach, we paid him to coach us before a race, knowing he had a lot of experience on the track.... This season it’s more expensive, but it’s money well spent.”

Their expenses run about $80,000 a year. Kambanis and Livaditis couldn’t afford $3,000 to ship their sled to Europe for World Cup races, so they competed only in North America and qualified for the Games on Dec. 10. They raised money by selling T-shirts at a Greek festival in Salt Lake City and set up a nonprofit fund and a Web site, www.olympicdream.net. Sending a photo and a donation of $20 will get your picture in a collage on their sled.

“My savings have all gone,” Kambanis said, “but 20 years from now, I’ll be looking back and saying it was well worth it.”

Thanks, Coach

Becoming a coach has given former pairs figure skater Jill Watson a new respect for the sport.

“It’s made me really appreciate the coaches that I had,” said Watson, who won three U.S. championships and the 1988 Olympic bronze medal with Peter Oppegard. “It’s not just the on-the-ice work of coaching. It’s the detailed, organizational work. As the director of a team of coaches, because you have other coaches assisting you, there’s a lot of responsibility.

“For example, I set up exhibitions, I do travel plans and arrange for designers and music. I enjoy it because it’s such a developmental process and I’m very involved with my teams and spend a lot of time with them on the technical side.”

Watson, who lives in Laguna Niguel, coached in Irvine for two years and moved to the Ice Palace in Aliso Viejo when the Irvine rink closed. John Nicks, one of Watson and Oppegard’s coaches, also works at Aliso Viejo.

Watson will guide two pairs at next week’s U.S. championships at Staples Center and the Sports Arena: Rena Inoue and John Baldwin in the senior competition, and Jacqueline Matson and Johnnie Bevan in the junior event. She engineered both matchups, putting singles skaters Bevan and Matson together in April and former singles skater Baldwin with Inoue, who had represented Japan in singles and pairs. Both duos are scheduled to perform in an exhibition at the Ice Palace today at 1 p.m. Admission is free, but donations will be accepted for skaters’ training expenses.

The U.S. senior pairs field is weak after the top-ranked duo of Kyoko Ina and John Zimmerman, giving Watson hope that Inoue and Baldwin could do well next week. Novice events begin Sunday at the Sports Arena, junior events start Monday at Staples and senior competition begins Tuesday at Staples.

“There are some openings at the top of senior pairs,” Watson said. “They’ve trained very hard all year long and made a lot of improvement. Last year they had quite a few injuries and they were trying to acquire a lot of technical moves. My goal is for them to do a clean short [program] and we’ll see where they are.”

L.A. Meet Still Running

Middle distance runner Bernard Lagat of Kenya is expected to compete in the Los Angeles Invitational indoor track meet Feb. 23 at the Sports Arena. Lagat won the bronze in the 1,500 at the Sydney Olympics and was second to Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco at last year’s World Championships.

The Invitational will go on for the 42nd time, despite a lack of major sponsorship and the discontinuation of a $20,000 grant it had received each of the last four years from the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles. Father-son meet promoters Al and Don Franken protested the AAF’s decision, but to no avail.

“At this point, there’s no indication they’re going to change their mind, so we’re moving on,” Don Franken said. “We’ve been getting a few sponsors here and there. It’s actually better than last year.”

Here and There

Preparations for the U.S. Figure Skating championships began after Wednesday’s King game at Staples Center. Crews moved in to shave down the ice, paint it light blue for TV, stencil in new logos and build it back up to 11/2 inches. It was then covered for Friday’s Laker game and Saturday’s Clipper game. The ice-level temperature will be 24-26 degrees, compared to 21-22 degrees for hockey.

“That allows the skaters to do their jumps and dig in and not chip up the ice,” said Lee Zeidman, senior vice president of operations for Staples Center.

Three people who lost relatives in the Sept. 11 tragedies will join an assortment of celebrities, Olympians and Olympic hopefuls as torchbearers when the Olympic flame arrives in Southern California Jan. 14.

Among the winter sports athletes scheduled to run a leg of the relay here are figure skaters Michelle Kwan, Sasha Cohen, Angela Nikodinov and Tim Goebel, and speedskater Maria Garcia. The list of other Olympic athletes features gold medal decathlete Bruce Jenner, 1968 200-meter gold medalist Tommie Smith, water polo player Chuck Bittick, sailor J.J. Isler, swimmer John Naber, pole vaulter Bob Seagren, and soccer player Cobi Jones. Where and when they will run has not been set.

Zachary Stone, Nicholas Mayer and Sheila Ornedo, who lost relatives on Sept. 11, will take turns with the torch. Among the celebrities scheduled to run two-tenths of a mile are TV host Larry King, activist Erin Brockovich, producer Lauren Shuler Donner and director Richard Donner.

Russian gymnast Maria Zasypkina, who broke her neck six weeks ago and was temporarily paralyzed, left a Moscow hospital last week. She underwent two operations and is expected to soon walk on her own.