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Sunday, February 03, 2002

By Lori Shontz, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

At the 1964 Summer Olympics, held in Tokyo, a Japanese man who was born in Hiroshima the day the atomic bomb was dropped was the final man to carry the Olympic torch.

At the 1972 Summer Olympics, held in Munich, eight Palestinian terrorists from a group called Black September stormed into the Olympic Village and eventually killed 11 Israeli athletes.

At the 2000 Summer Olympics, the nations of North and South Korea marched together behind one flag.

	A guard mans a post in downtown Salt Lake City last week. Security will be one of the biggest stories at the Olympics. (Laura Rauch, Associated Press)

So there is no doubt that the Olympic Games are often used -- to both good and evil ends -- to make a point on a world-wide stage.

Now, nearly five months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that shocked the world, the world is gathering in the United States, the country that was the target of those attacks.

Even though the Winter Olympics are being held in Salt Lake City, thousands of miles from New York City or Washington or rural Pennsylvania, for symbolic importance, it's hard to beat such a gesture.

Said Robert Barney, an Olympic historian who is founding director of the Centre for Olympic Studies in Ontario, Canada, "It's a coincidence, and it's a darn good one."

It's a circumstance that Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a wealthy Frenchman who revived the Modern Olympic Games in 1896, would appreciate.

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He would not -- and did not, during his lifetime -- approve of many of the ways in which the Olympics has evolved. He never wanted women to compete. Or athletes who weren't part of the upper class, who couldn't afford to be pure amateurs. Or the Winter Olympics, either -- the ancient Greeks didn't compete in snow sports -- and he spent only one day at the first Winter Games in 1924.

But he did want the Games to be more than an athletic event. He believed that spirit of the Olympics, known as Olympism, could bring the world together for good. And in some people's judgment, that has happened.

"It is a spiritual experience, an intellectual academic experience and it is a display of the finest athletic muscle on the planet earth," said Dr. John Lucas, a retired Penn State sport history professor, an unabashed idealist and the International Olympic Committee's Official Olympic Lecturer. "What else is a human being other than a mind and a body and a mysterious spiritual soul? That's the entirety of what it is to be human, and he introduced that to the Olympics.

"I mean no disrespect, but probably this weekend down in New Orleans, where they're having the Super Bowl, there might be a little square of patriotism, to be sure, and then a gigantic struggle between some of the most strong and talented men in the world. But de Coubertin wanted more. Much, much more."

A matter of spirit

This was obvious from the beginning. De Coubertin had intended for the first modern Olympic Games to be held in Paris, in his native France, but when the Greeks were enthusiastic about reviving the Olympics, he was thrilled to stage the 1896 Games in Athens, site of the ancient Olympics.

Athens did a good enough job with the first Games that it was proposed as the permanent site. De Coubertin refused to consider it. The Olympics, he insisted, would be held in a different place every time, enabling the ideals of Olympism to spread throughout the world.

So in 1920, the Olympic Games went to Antwerp, Belgium, because the country had been devastated in World War I. (Over the objections of de Coubertin, the IOC also banned the aggressors in that war, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey, from competing.)

The 1948 Olympic Games were held in London, which was still rebuilding after World War II. (Japan and Germany, the war's aggressors, were banned.)

The 1964 Olympic Games were awarded to Tokyo, the first to be held in Asia. "Half a generation after the Second World War left the country bombed to bits, the Japanese worked very, very hard and accepted a bid to host the Games," Lucas said, "and the new Japan rose out of the ashes."

Four years later, the Olympics were held for the first time in what was then called the Third World, to Mexico City. "It was at the end of the decade really of colonization, there were all these new countries, African and Asian countries who had just become independent, and that was very important," said Derick Hulme, a political science professor at Alma College in Michigan who studies the Olympics.

But the IOC has not had a monopoly on Olympic symbolism.

Individual countries have used the Games to make a statement. Possibly the best-known example is the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, which Adolf Hitler wanted to use to prove Aryan superiority. These Olympics marked the beginning of the torch relay, television coverage and an official film, Olympia, a propaganda piece directed by Leni Riefenstahl.

Those Olympics have become better known, however, for African-American Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals and developed a friendly rivalry with his German opponent in the long jump, Luz Long.

The boycott, too, has been popular.

The 1976 Summer Games were boycotted by black African nations protesting South Africa's policy of apartheid, the 1980 Summer Games by the United States and its allies because of the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan, and the 1984 Summer Games by the Soviet bloc in retaliation for the boycott of the 1980 Games, which were held in Moscow.

Athletes, too, have gotten into the act, with the 1968 black power salute probably the most publicized and controversial. During the medals ceremony for the 200 meters, two African-American sprinters, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, stood on the podium clad in black socks instead of shoes, bowed their heads while the national anthem was played and held a black-gloved fist into the air.

"It is a forum," Barney said. "As long as you get the focus of world attention on a certain venue, then it becomes a stage for expression."

A perfect target

The big concern with the Salt Lake Olympics, of course, is that terrorists will attempt to make another statement.

"The United States is the Great Satan, the No. 1 target," said Allen Guttmann, an Olympic historian and professor of American studies at Amherst University. "Because we're the No. 1 target, it's ideal for any terrorist to attack the Games while they're in the United States."

It has happened before, at the 1972 Munich Games, when eight Palestinian terrorists snuck into the Olympic Village, killed two Israeli athletes and took nine more hostage before killing those athletes, too.

Hulme said that technology improvements, allowing the Games to be broadcast instantaneously to millions of people, played a role -- the Olympics were more visible worldwide, and therefore a better target.

The Germans also did not want to have an Olympics that could be compared to the 1936 Games in Berlin, which were marked by a heavy Nazi presence. Security was lax -- the terrorists simply jumped over a fence and into the village. And even though a guard saw them, he thought they were athletes returning after curfew and didn't attempt to stop them.

"Those type of Games are long gone," Hulme said. "Certainly Montreal [in 1976] ushered in a new era of security, and I think Salt Lake will usher in a brand new level of security as well."

Reportedly, upwards of $300 million is being spent on security for Salt Lake; Lucas believes that when all is said and done the figure will be closer to $400 million. And while no one begrudges the amount of money spent, the experts are divided over how much a threat terrorism poses to these Games.

"I think people here have probably overestimated the threat to the Olympics right now by terrorists, simply because of the resources devoted to security and protecting the Games themselves," Hulme said. "Even though you can never be sure, given the large number of venues and the huge number of spectators, you can never absolutely guarantee security, it seems to me that the largest risk right now is not at the Games themselves, but at other high-value targets that may not be getting the attention that they need because of the diversion of resources."

For the long term ...

Whether the Olympics can have any lasting value beyond the symbolic is a matter of debate.

"There seems to be some evidence that the athletes bond despite their national differences, their racial and ethnic differences," Guttmann said. "There may be evidence that the people who go to the Games actually feel a bond, a sense of international fellowship. I don't think it spreads to the audience at the TV screen; in fact, I rather suspect the opposite, a heightened nationalism for people who are watching at home.

"But these things are hard to measure, hard to study. You can only speculate about them."

But the fact remains that the eyes of the world will be watching the Salt Lake Olympics.

"In a certain sense it does matter," Hulme said. "First of all, that the Olympics goes off without any problems. I think symbolically, that says something to the international community. The terrorist attack was so devastating and in certain ways so devastatingly effective because it affected the whole world -- the international financial community, actual citizens from so many countries.

"I think for the Olympics to go off smoothly would clearly be an affirmation that the world has gone on and is going on in somewhat of a normal fashion."