OLYMPIC STRIVINGS

Press, 19 November 1977, Page 17

OLYMPIC STRIVINGS

Goldengirl. By Peter Lear. Cassell. 377 pp. $9.95. Striving for a gold medal at an Olympic Games makes a stirring tale of overcoming adversity and stretching physical limits beyond what seems possible. To watch co-ordinated bones and muscles, and rippling skin, can be a sensuous, exhilarating experience; when the body is that of a 19-year-old, honey-blonde female, with perfect proportions, full involvement by the public is guaranteed. Such a situation is created by Goldine Serafin, the “Golden Girl.” Her tragic past began in one of Hitler’s human stud farms where her grandmother was impregnated by one of the Master-race; it continues to her adoption by an obsessed professor of physiology who wants to prove his theories by having her take not one, but three gold medals at the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games in the 100, 200 and 400 metres.

Watching her unorthodox athletic training is a major commercial enterprise which will guarantee her backers thousandfold returns if she is victorious. Goldine is conditioned by behavioural psychological methods. Her muscular responses are conditioned by aversive shock treatment. She is trained to transmute sexual stimulation into “Olympic orgasm” and programmed with witty responses for press interviews Thus, the known training of the athletes of today is taken to its logical limits, which may well be achieved by 1980. Although lightly written, the book builds to a suitably unexpected peak, and creates the disturbing world of the super-athlete. The author, who is hiding under a pseudonym, need not have done so for the quality of writing — unless he is involved too closely in the sports he describes and fears ostracism because of what he has written. — RALF UNGER.