U.S. Athletes Warned Of Soviet Olympic Chances

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27643, 27 April 1955, Page 13

U.S. Athletes Warned Of Soviet Olympic Chances

(Rec. 11 p.m.) NEW YORK, April 25. Mr Avery Brundage, president of the International Olympic Committee, said today that unless Americans woke up, Soviet athletes were almost certain to dominate the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne. ■ Americans had become “a race of grandstand and bleacher sitters,” he said in an article in the latest issue of the “Saturday Evening Post.” “We think it is sport to find a good vantage point in the stands and watch professional baseball, football, boxing and horse racing,” Mr Brundage said. “It is not sport,” he said. “These events should not even be carried on the sports pages. They should be described in the amusement sections of newspapers, along with the theatre, circus and. vaudeville.” i

Mr Brundage spent three weeks looking over the Russian sports programme last year as guest of the Soviet Olympic Committee. He found that the Soviet Union was “building the greatest mass army of athletes the World has even known.” He said he went to great lengths to look into charges that the Soviet athletic programme -was State-dominated and was. in effect, professional. “There was little that could be said or done on the question of State subsidisation," he said. “In Communist countries, everything is subservient to the State.” Saying that he had been assured by ranking Soviet Olympic officials that the Olympic code was being followed, he added: “I saw nothing during my brief trip which would have made me ■ question that”