Sport, science, and sss

Press, 27 April 1984, Page 12

Sport, science, and sss

By

George Orwell’s trenchant remark that international sport is “war without shooting” has an emphatic echo round Colorado Springs. Here, in an unprecedented unification of sport, science, and dollars, the United States prepares to show the world that Capitalism beats Communism. The sort of technology that took Neil Armstrong to the moon is now being applied to ■ give Carl Lewis, Edwin Moses, and Mary Decker a place in the sun in July. The cost of maintaining the Olympic training centre and equipping the United States team is easily met from the astonishing sBs-million that has already been

Alan Hubbard

raised. The dimes and dollars have been dredged from the coffers of corporate America and the pockets of the citizenry. Not a cent has come from Washington and that is the way America wants it. Theirs is the only Olympic body in the world to spurn government aid. Every day the training centre accommodates about 325 aspirants from more than 30 sports. Some are just passing through, but 100 virtually live there and will be in residence until the Olympics. It is here that Carl Lewis, the modern Jesse Owens, relentlessly pursues the prodigious long jump mark of 8.90 m set 15 years ago by Bob Beamon in Mexico City’s identical altitude of 2134 m. It is here that the technocrats love to

in Colorado Springs

talk with Moses, for the world 400 m hurdles record-holder is their idea of the perfect specimen — the athlete who holds a degree in physics. As I drove through the gates of this remarkable Olympic Academy, glancing up towards the marble plaque that commemorates every American Olympic goldmedallist (and there have been exactly 999 to date), my taxidriver pushed back his stetson and spoke for middle-class America. “Some place, eh? Jeez. I just hope those Russkis come to Los Angeles. I wanna see us give them hell. We’re going kick their red asses all the way back to Moscow.” Copyright — London Observer Service.