Bearish Beginning in Moscow

By Stephen Smith

The clouded Games get under way in a grand setting

Though the Moscow Olympics are not due to open until this Saturday, the refurbished Lenin Stadium was swarming with more than 15,000 people for much of last week. Gymnasts, musicians, students and some 100 truckloads of soldiers were on hand to rehearse the opening ceremony; the troops were readying flash-card routines, including a rendering of the ubiquitous Teddy-bear mascot Misha. As if to underscore the official line that all was going well, newspapers trumpeted a statement by an African sports official that "in spite of the attempts by certain circles at frustrating" the Games, "they will be a success."

Nonetheless, the 22nd Olympiad promised to be a tarnished affair. As of last week, an estimated 31 countries, including Canada, Japan, West Germany, China and Kenya, were heeding the Carter Administration's call for a boycott to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. By the host country's count, 83 nations will participate. The boycott has taken the luster off such men's sports as track, basketball, boxing and gymnastics; the competition in swimming, yachting, field hockey, archery and equestrian events has become almost meaningless. Even so, the countries coming to Moscow won about 70% of the medals handed out in Montreal four years ago.

Afghanistan aside, the Moscow spectacle is not shaping up as the kind of party that many democratic countries would feel comfortable attending. As the Soviets prepared to receive 150,000 or so visitors (about half the total expected before the boycott), Moscow resembled a giant Potemkin village being gussied up by a heavy, totalitarian hand.

A final army of cleaners swept through the capital last week, cutting grass and scooping up litter. Several main thoroughfares were repaved and public buildings were repainted. A foreign ambassador was surprised to find 20 uninvited painters at work on his residence. "The place needed it," he shrugged.

The U.S.S.R. completed 99 Olympic construction projects at a cost of more than $3 billion. Ten new sports facilities were built and eight reconstructed, including the centerpiece Lenin Stadium (capacity: 103,000). Nine hotels and an Olympic Village consisting of 18 buildings, each 16 stories high (14,000 lucky Muscovites will live there after the Games), also went up.

The city is fairly overrun with security men, including the regular militsia in their gray uniforms and the forbidding KGB in their trademark baggy business suits. The Olympic areas are also patrolled by soldiers, some carrying Kalashnikov automatic rifles. Scores of dissidents have been arrested or exiled, while others have been ordered to take vacations outside the capital. Late last week Moscow officials virtually sealed off the city; no trucks or cars are allowed to enter without a pass certifying urgent business, such as food delivery.

Despite these precautions, the Soviets remained jittery about terrorism, spying and demonstrations by Olympic visitors. Their fears, while characteristically outsized, are not entirely misplaced. Some Olympic squads, including the French and the Dutch, are known to be considering demonstrations.

The British are also planning a demonstration--and it could prove the most dazzling of the Games: the 1,500-meter race, featuring Englishmen Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett. Astonishingly, they have met only once before. In an 800-meter duel in 1978, they exhausted each other with kamikaze sprints, only to be passed by a third runner in the stretch. In Moscow, Coe is favored at 800 meters, and Ovett is given a nanosecond edge in the 1,500. Jim Tuppeny, a U.S. track official who is organizing an alternate meet in Philadelphia this month, handicaps the 1,500 this way: "Ovett is stronger, but if Coe goes out fast, lifts the times and then hangs on, he will win."

The 5,000-and 10,000-meter races also offer a classic matchup: Lasse Viren, the Finn who won both events in 1972 and 1976, and Miruts Yifter, a fast-finishing Ethiopian who missed the 1976 Olympics due to an African boycott of the Games. Viren is entered in the 10,000 but is so far undecided about whether to run the 5,000 or the marathon.

At least four U.S. men would have been favored to win gold medals in track and field: Edwin Moses (400-meter hurdles), Renaldo Nehemiah (110-meter hurdles), Larry Myricks (long jump) and Mac Wilkins (discus). In addition, Sprinters James Sanford (100 meters), LaMonte King (200) and Billy Mullins (400) have world-best times this year.

A legion of U.S. swimmers would have been top choices for gold medals. Among them: Tracy Caulkins, Mary Meagher, Cynthia Woodhead, Linda Jezek, Brian Goodell, Rowdy Gaines, Mike Bruner and Steve Lundquist. The East German women could now win as many as eleven golds. In men's swimming, the Soviets will benefit most from the American withdrawal.

The U.S. boxing team, which won five golds in Montreal, would have been potent again this year. In freestyle wrestling and men's gymnastics, the U.S. and Japan would have given the Soviets all they could handle. But now gymnastic heart throb Kurt Thomas is an ABC sports commentator, and the wrestlers are mourning their lost opportunity. Says Don Krone, staff administrator for the A.A.U.'s wrestling division: "It may set our program back two or three years." With the U.S. men's basketball team at home, the gold medal should easily revert to the towering Soviets.

The Soviets had counted on stirring competition to help carry their socialist message across the free world. In the U.S. alone, NBC had planned more than 150 hours of television coverage; now viewers will have to settle for brief reports on news programs. But the boycott fell short too, with France, Australia and other allies refusing to join. If President Carter thought the tactic would show the Soviet people the error of Afghanistan, he was mistaken. Today ordinary Soviets claim to see little connection between the invasion and the boycott. Instead, they blame "warmongering" by Carter.

After the murder of eleven Israeli athletes at Munich in 1972, the African boycott in 1976 and the current one, no one knows what problems will beset the 23rd Olympiad. But U.S. athletes, bitterly disappointed at being sidelined in 1980, are already taking aim at 1984. "Just you wait," says Tuppeny. "We've got some kids coming along who are going to be fantastic."

--By Stephen Smith. Reported by Bruce Nelan/ Moscow

With reporting by Bruce Nelan

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