TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/022492/0224996.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 7.0 KB | 157 lines

                                                                                1992 WINTER OLYMPICS, Page 58

It's a Kick, But Is It Olympian?


From the acrobatic to the serene, new sports vie to prove
themselves worthy of the Games

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III -- Reported by James L. Graff/Tignes and
Joe McGowan/New York


    Sticking a ski pole into the ground for leverage and
vaulting a couple of meters forward to the accompaniment of rock
music from a boom box. Wiggling back and forth on skis around
a series of powdery bumps, periodically climbing these hillocks
to leap off, flinging one's limbs spread eagle for a nanosecond
or thrusting one's hindquarters left and right during a fleeting
free fall. Skating at breakneck pace in a roller-derby throng
around the perimeter of a hockey-size rink. Scuttling along a
sheet of ice, brushing away bumps with a broom to clear the path
of a flat, slow-moving stone. Or ducking one's head, bracing
one's break ables and trying to hurtle faster than a sports car
down a short stretch of sheer slope, sans turns, sans twists
and sans breathing.

    Hearty, vigorous, genial and suitably spandexed these
activities all are. But are they really sports worthy of the
Winter Olympics? Do ski ballet and aerials and moguls,
short-track skating, curling and speed skiing display the
requisite patina of frostbitten history and frigid heritage? Do
they evoke the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that is
Nome?

    The answer to that question is a resounding "absolutely"
from fans and a resonant harrumph from keepers of the flame.
Spectators in Albertville have been cheering for the newcomer
sports, in part because several French competitors have been
medalists or contenders. But elsewhere, TV viewers have been
granted only modest exposure and minimal instruction. What they
have been most likely to sense is an aura of novelty and
rebellion.

    The half a dozen start-up sports this year include two
debuting as medal events: free-style skiing over bumps, or
"moguls," and short-track speed skating. Four others are being
classed as "demonstration" sports -- a shadowland category,
bestowing medals that are not real medals -- that will be
dropped altogether after this year. It is up or out: they must
become medal sports or disappear from the Games.

    The decision on their fate, which will rest with the
International Olympic Committee, is of vital significance to the
pride and profit of each parvenu sport's participants,
impresarios, bureaucrats and merchandisers. Getting a sport
recognized takes years of lobbying and piles of documents.
Moments after he won the first ever moguls skiing gold medal,
Edgar Grospiron of France shifted from exultation to
exhortation. "After this," he told the press last week, "we will
have to continue to work hard so that the other free-style
skiing disciplines, ballet and aerials, also become medal
events."

    Mogul skiing, in which Donna Weinbrecht of New Jersey
earned the women's gold medal last week, is dramatic. It
involves slaloming among scores of boneshaking bumps down a
straight 820-ft. course while completing two jumps, striving for
both style and speed. Its curse, like that of so many Winter
Olympics sports old and new, is that it involves subjective
judging. That inevitably means at least a suspicion of politics
-- of favoring the stalwarts, whatever their performance on the
day, over outsiders who may rise to one particular occasion.

    Subjectivity is everything in judging ski ballet, which
resembles figure skating on skis and snow rather than skates and
ice, and aerials, a form of skiborne gymnastics. The men's
ballet winner, Fabrice Becker of France, wore a red sash around
his waist and did a dancerly tango. Lane Spina of the U.S., who
won a silver demonstration medal at Calgary in 1988 and a
bronze this year, has a more robust style and wishes his sport
would rename itself ski acrobatics. Says Spina: "It's a lot more
acrobatic than figure skating." He has the battle scars, from
five knee operations, to prove it.

    It is easy to dismiss most of the aspirant sports as
upstarts. While curling can trace its formal heritage to a club
formed near Glasgow in 1510, and speed skiers cite competitions
in late 19th century California, free-style skiing took off in
the 1960s and short-track skating in the '70s. Free-style ski
competition began to be regulated only after two U.S.
aficionados were paralyzed while attempting double backward
somersaults in 1973; the sport did not hold its first
full-fledged world championships until 1986.

    Yet in truth this arriviste nature is in keeping. Unlike
their summer counterpart, the cold-weather Games had no
classical antecedents. Moreover, some elements now considered
traditional were afterthoughts. Luge, the quintessential Winter
Olympics sport -- in what other context does it ever arise? --
entered the Games only in 1964. Ice dancing came along in 1976.

    Despite the claim of being a worldwide event, moreover,
the Winter Games reflect, far more than the Summer ones, the
Eurocentrism of the early Olympic movement. Just once has the
competition been held outside Europe or its erstwhile colonies,
the U.S. and Canada (at Sapporo, Japan, in 1972). Nations like
Norway, too small to be a dominant factor in the Summer Games,
win a fistful of medals time after time in the winter, while the
world media regularly fasten on such symbols of this imbalance
as Jamaican bobsledders and Senegalese downhillers. The formal
criteria for inclusion in the Winter Olympics specify that a
sport must be "widely practiced in at least 25 countries and on
three continents." But "widely" means having a national
governing body. Thus luge qualifies as widely practiced in the
U.S. with about 50 serious competitors and one accredited track,
at Lake Placid, in a nation of 250 million.

    Governing bodies that band together as an international
federation may then seek admission for their sport in the Winter
Olympics, but they must do so at least seven years before a
specific Games. The process can be speeded up by making a new
sport an offshoot of the old, as has happened with free-style
skiing. The disadvantage is that this parent federation may
dominate decisions about which events gain medal status. For
example, Marc Hodler, the Swiss president of the International
Ski Federation, sanctioned the rise of mogul skiing, but
reportedly opposes giving the same status to aerials or ballet.
Yet the ballet skiers are convinced that two years from now,
their sport and aerials will join mogul skiing as full medal
events. Says Conny Kiss ling of Switzerland, who won the
demonstration gold in ballet: "They've already built the sites
in Lillehammer." Purists may not like change, but Olympic
history is full of the novel becoming the venerable. By the
Games of 2022, it may be grandam Kissling who is declaring that,
say, rhythmic snow dancing does not deserve to be elevated
alongside her time-honored pursuit.