The Pain-Am Games

Since their inception in 1951, the quadrennial Pan-American Games have served as a kind of Olympic warmup session for strong U.S. teams. American athletes have so dominated the Pan-Am Games, in fact, that International Olympic Committee President Avery Brundage began to wonder whether they might be too good for their own good. Shortly before the opening of the sixth Pan-Am Games in Cali, Colombia, the 83-year-old Brundage observed: "It doesn't look good for the U.S. to be collaring three-quarters of the Pan-Am medals. It's not good for sports, the games or the U.S. There has to be some resentment by the other countries.''

Biggest Shocker. Avery need not have worried. The games had barely begun when it became apparent last week that the U.S. team was perhaps facing its toughest competition ever. The first surprise came in rowing, an event in which the U.S. copped six of seven first-place medals in the 1967 games. All but scuttled by crack crews from Argentina and Brazil, the U.S. oarsmen were unable to pull to a single victory. Unimpressed by Abner Doubleday's national origins, a seasoned Cuban baseball team then defeated a squad made up of U.S. collegians 4-3. The biggest shocker of all, though, happened in basketball, a sport in which the U.S. is supposedly invincible. Before a chanting, cheering crowd, the hustling, well-drilled Cubans defeated a team of U.S. college stars 73-69. In an attempt to explain away the embarrassing losses, some members of the U.S. delegation said that the Cuban team had been training for the games for at least four years under the guidance of Russian coaches. "It's obvious," said one U.S. official, "that the Communists are using Cuba as a propaganda vehicle."

The Cubans were exuberant, to the particular discomfort of the Canadian team. Billeted next door to the Cubans, the Canadians complained that they were kept awake half the night by the sound of bongo drums. "Someone told us Fidel Castro put through a phone call of congratulations," explained one Canadian athlete, "and the Cubans went wild."

Barbed Wire. The fans attending the boxing match in a Cali bull ring also went wild when U.S. Middleweight Reginald Jones was awarded a close decision over Colombia's Bonifacio Avila Jones and his handlers had to be escorted out of the arena under a barrage of rocks and bottles. Noting the crowd's partisan cheering throughout the games, U.S. Decathlon Star Russ Hodge said: "They don't like us. Even in Russia they gave us better applause than they do here for a good performance."

The complaints about mosquitoes, the altitude, faulty plumbing, dysentery and pickpockets were unending. Dubbed "Claustrophobia Manor" by the athletes, the barracks-style housing for the 4,000 competitors from 33 countries was woefully overcrowded. Wary of trouble from students who had protested the amount of money that Colombia was spending on the games, security-minded officials turned the athletes' village into a kind of jock concentration camp. "I felt uneasy at first with the barbed wire and the guards carrying rifles," said U.S. Fencer Marie Grompone, "but you get used to it after a while --almost."

For all their griping about what might be called the Pain-Am Games, the U.S. team did manage to win heavily in track and women's gymnastics. After the first of two weeks of competition, the U.S. had won 131 medals as compared to 73 for second-place Cuba. Even so, it was clear that the U.S. team could no longer regard the games as an easy warmup. "This is our strongest overall Pan-Am team," explained one U.S. official, "but the marked improvement of the other teams will probably cause us to win fewer medals."

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