Showdown at Sapporo

By HP-Time

Trumpets blared. Fireworks exploded. Drums and cannons thundered. A 700-voice chorus sang hallelujah. A band played The Ballad of Rainbow and Snow. Eight hundred Japanese children on ice skates released 18,000 multicolored balloons into the air. More than 1,000 athletes from 35 countries paraded in their winter finery. And right in the middle of it all was the old ringmaster himself, Avery Brundage, president of the International Olympic Committee (I.O.C.). In calling upon Emperor Hirohito officially to open the 1972 Winter Games in Sapporo, Japan, last week, Brundage said: "May the Olympic code of fair play and good sportsmanship prevail." At least one observer was unimpressed by Brundage's sentiment. Snapped Austrian Skier Karl Schranz: "That's ridiculous, coming from him."

Schranz, who watched the ceremonies on TV in a Sapporo hotel room, had good reason to be bitter. When Olympic history is written, he will be remembered as the man who was caught in the middle of a face-saving showdown between Brundage and the Federation Internationale de Ski (F.I.S.). The issue was clear-cut. For years F.I.S. skiers have been paid--either openly or under the table--for endorsing equipment. And for years Brundage has been threatening to bar the "trained seals of the merchandisers" from Olympic competition for violating the rule against professionalism. The F.I.S. hoped to call Brundage's bluff at Sapporo. The Austrian and French ski teams announced that they would withdraw from the games if "even one" of their members was disqualified. The flinty Brundage, now 84 and due to retire after the Summer Games in Munich, was determined not to fold. Rather than make a sham of the games by ousting 30 to 40 of the world's top skiers, he and the I.O.C. settled on one scapegoat. Just three days before the opening of the Sapporo games, and by a compromise vote of 28 to 14, the committee agreed to disqualify Schranz, a veteran ski idol and a favorite in the men's downhill.

Unmoved. "It's absurd!" cried Austrian Ski Federation President Karl Heinz Klee. "Schranz is being sacrificed in a highly unethical manner." Sneered Vienna's Kronen Zeitung: "Amateurs of Brundage's Olympic imagination exist only in the childhood dreams of this bad old man." The old man was unmoved. Said Klee: "Under the circumstances, there is only one road open to us--the road home." After a night of consultations, however, the Austrians decided to compete, ostensibly at the urging of Schranz.

Far from contrite, Schranz pointed out that "the Russians are subsidized by their government, and all international athletes get help from one source or another." While Brundage ignores the open professionalism of Russian and other competitors from Iron Curtain countries because he says he lacks "documentation," his case against Schranz was provoked in part by the skier's criticism of the I.O.C. for its "19th century attitudes" and for "favoring rich competitors over poor ones." Brundage in turn characterized Schranz as a "blatant and verbose offender" who is "disrespectful to the Olympic movement."

Perhaps, but Schranz is far from alone. Jean-Claude Killy, winner of three gold medals in the 1968 Olympics, says that "there are no amateurs any more. To be good, a skier must literally devote from four to six years of his life to the sport. You don't have time for school or a job, and you must travel the world. That's hard to do without compensation." Susan ChafFee, a member of the 1968 U.S. Olympics team and an outspoken critic of Brundage, likes to don her skis to demonstrate the "Hypocritical Position" --knees bent and right arm extended backward with the hand cupped to receive "the under-the-table payments."

Though Schranz was banished from the Olympic Village last week, the old problems lingered on. F.I.S. President Marc Hodler, for one, would like to amend the rules so that the promotional money of the manufacturers would be channeled through the national federations and used for training young athletes. Brundage was more pessimistic. In what sounded like his swan song, he said last week that the Winter Games "have accomplished a tremendous humanitarian service by popularizing healthy winter sport and recreation, but they have served their purpose and will find it hard to continue as an amateur event."

Meanwhile, out in the cold, the 1972 games continued apace. As expected, The Netherlands' strapping speed skater, Ard Schenk, won the 5,000 meters handily. Next day, though, the flying Dutchman fell at the start of the 500 meters and finished far back in the pack as West Germany's Erhard Keller, the gold medalist in the 1968 games, struck gold again. Switzerland's buxom Marie-Theres Nadig scored the biggest upset in the first three days of action by besting Austrian Skier Annemarie Proell by 32/100 of a second in the women's downhill. The biggest surprise of all, though, was Susan Corrock, a petite racer from Ketchum, Idaho. Going all out on the steep, twisting downhill course, she finished a close third behind the favored Austrian star. It was the first Olympic medal won by the U.S. in Alpine skiing since 1964.

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