Colliding Myths After a Dozen Years

By William A. Henry III.

Two weeks after Claudia Losch of West Germany won a 1984 Olympic gold medal with a shot put of 67 ft. 2 1/4 in., Natalia Lisovskaya took that event at the Soviet bloc's boycott-inspired Friendship Games with a throw almost 5 ft. longer. Barred by politics in 1984 from a chance at world sport's most enduring honor, Lisovskaya began training at Moscow's Brothers Znamensky Sports School for Seoul in 1988.

In 1980, when Greg Louganis was favored to become the first man in more than 50 years to win two gold medals in diving at the same Olympics, he instead sat home with the U.S. boycott team and watched the victories go to a Soviet and an East German whom Louganis had outscored at Montreal four years before. Louganis achieved his double at Los Angeles in 1984 and hinted at retirement. But next week he too will be competing in Seoul, perhaps in part because he is one of just a handful of U.S. and Soviet athletes with a personal memory of a real Olympics -- one that transcends diplomatic chills and thaws and brings together the world's best in the 23 official sports of the Summer Games.

Four years is a long time in an athlete's career, and eight years at a world-class level of competition is almost an eternity. Yet it is a dozen years since U.S. and Soviet teams met at a Summer Olympics. Historians will long debate President Carter's 1980 decision following the invasion of Afghanistan to snub the only Olympics ever held in the Soviet Union. They will debate as well whether the Soviets avoided Los Angeles four years later out of fear about security, as claimed, or as retaliatory tit for tat. To most athletes, the underlying stratagems do not matter: to them, the very definition of an Olympics is that every Olympian talent must be there.

For nationalistic fans, boycotts brought joy. Without the U.S. and 61 other countries on hand, the Soviet gold-medal tally jumped from 49 in Montreal to 80 in Moscow, while the U.S., unhindered by the Soviets and the equally formidable East Germans, vaulted from 34 gold in Montreal to 83 gold in Los Angeles. With the sporting world reunited, Seoul may be a rude awakening for flag wavers on both sides. But the shock will likely be worse for U.S. viewers: the memory of Los Angeles is more recent, and more unrealistic. At the 1984 Friendship Games, East bloc athletes outperformed Olympic winners in 20 of 41 track-and-field events and eleven of 29 swimming events.

On both sides, the twelve-year Olympic hiatus has heightened the mystique of the competition. For American athletes -- and even more for American fans -- distance and legend have transformed the Soviets into supposed supermen and super-women, selected when barely out of the cradle and taught like emotionless automatons to excel. This exaggerated notion has some basis in fact. The Soviets have a nationwide network of specialized sports schools for even the youngest potential stars, leading to intensive adult training guided by methodical, scholarly study. High-tech training wizardry is rumored to be compounded by steroids and other chemical help: indeed, one popular explanation in the U.S. for the 1984 boycott was Soviet fear that its star performers would fail drug tests. And as for the awesome women athletes, well, are they really women at all? Skeptics recall that Tamara and Irina Press, the hulking Soviet sisters who won five Olympic gold medals in the 1960s, dropped from international competition after sex tests were introduced. In this mistrustful vision, athletes respond to the carrots of cushy jobs, fancy apartments and Western consumer goods, coupled with a fearsome stick if performance falters: the threat of losing all privileges, perhaps even of being banished to Siberia.

Soviet mythology about U.S. athletes begins with genetic theories worthy of Jimmy the Greek. Says Point Guard Olga Burakin of the Soviet women's basketball team: "American teams are so competitive because they have blacks, who are inherently more capable, whereas whites are not nearly so skillful." Then it centers on wealth: the presumed abundance of facilities at thousands of high schools and colleges.

The Soviets acknowledge their strides in technology but claim with some justice that the U.S. has even more advanced installations, although it is perhaps less effective in using them. While Soviet athletes frequently agree that they cannot be called amateurs, they contrast their salaries of a few hundred dollars a month and their state bonuses of up to $20,000 for winning even gold medals to the millions reaped by a Carl Lewis or a Mary Lou Retton. "I have no contract and cannot advertise my services for hire," notes Soviet Backstroker Sergei Zabolotnov, who earns $583 a month as a swimming- coach-in-training. The Soviets, too, mutter darkly about drugs, and with reason: some U.S. athletic officials suspect that abuse of steroids and their kin is indeed more widespread in the U.S. Says Dr. Robert Voy, chief medical officer of the U.S. Olympic Committee: "If I had to guess, I'd say we do a little worse."

In both nations, it is just as easy to find examples to debunk the stereotypes as to justify them. As for the fundamental question posed by U.S. fans -- Why do the Soviets generally perform better? -- there are some logical answers. For one thing, the Olympics are the centerpiece of Soviet athletic life and are regarded as a vital means of demonstrating Communism's moral superiority. After the triumph over the U.S. in Montreal, for example, some 347 athletes, coaches and officials were honored with such prestigious decorations as the Order of Lenin. By contrast, sporting life in the U.S. centers on professional teams, and the rewards are commensurate: Edwin Moses, the greatest hurdler who ever lived, earns through fees and endorsements about $500,000 a year, roughly the wage of a journeyman major-league baseball player. Football drains away sprinters to become pass catchers and weight throwers to play as linemen or on defense: six days after he won the 1984 Olympic silver medal in the shot put, Michael Carter was a nose tackle appearing in his first exhibition game for the San Francisco 49ers. For swimmers, divers, gymnasts and many others, there is effectively no professional life to follow except in coaching or, for an elite, in endorsements and sportscasting.

Two subtler factors also figure in. First, as a more centralized society, the Soviet Union seems to be better set up to disseminate the latest sports research and take advantage of the results nationwide. Second, Soviet schools place great emphasis on physical fitness, whereas U.S. physicians generally oppose intensive fitness programs for the very young.

Ultimately, however, the Soviets win more Olympic medals because they want them more -- or rather, their nation does. American athletes do not lack heart or soul. Too often, they lack training time and money. The Soviet system is more extensive, more orderly and more pragmatic: if an event, however obscure, is in the Olympics, the Soviets want to compete at the highest level.

Shot-Putter Lisovskaya, a prime example of the Soviet approach, began her programmed life at a "sports-oriented" school in her native Tashkent at age seven. She was spotted as a potential champion at 14. Coach Faina Melnik saw her during a scouting trip and persuaded her to move to Moscow as soon as she finished high school. A discus thrower at the time, she tried the shot at Melnik's suggestion and soon switched, a daring decision for an athlete already in her late teens. Within four years, helped by careful coaching and a training regimen of up to six hours a day for six days a week, she became the world's best. Officials made sure she and other superstars would get to Seoul. Although Soviet track trials allow hopefuls to prove themselves during five meets (vs. just one for aspirants in the U.S.), places were guaranteed in advance to some 20 top performers, including Lisovskaya. Nominally a fourth- year student in the school program that she entered eight years ago, Lisovskaya, 26, receives $670 a month and has her own apartment in crowded Moscow, something most young married couples cannot expect. She says she attends class "when I'm free," meaning not often, and has few worries about completing courses or finding a job.

At the other end of the comfort scale from Lisovskaya is Mario Martinez. He already has an Olympic medal -- the silver for super heavyweight lifting in 1984; he captured three gold medals at the 1987 Pan Am Games and placed tenth in the 1987 world championships. But Martinez gets no state subsidy, no help from a national council for his sport to pay for his San Francisco apartment. With a wife and one-year-old daughter to support -- not to mention a special diet to maintain his 318 lbs. of muscle -- Martinez, 31, cannot exercise six or seven hours a day like his Soviet rivals. He has a 40-hr.-a-week job. "I work at Budget Rent a Car," he explains, "parking autos, getting them for customers, taking them to the car wash, hanging the keys up. Then I train three or four days a week from 6 to 9 p.m. I am always sore." Martinez's coach Jim Schmitz also coaches the U.S. team. To thrive, he says, it needs Soviet-style recruitment and subsidies. "We lose most weight lifters to football scholarships."

Joe Story's name sounds like a joke, and it has given rise to a few: at 5 ft. 7 in., he is known as a short story, and at 36, he is an old story. Within the arcane world of team handball, where he was the U.S. hero at the 1987 Pan Am Games, he is a big story. A member of the squad since 1977, he played at the 1984 Olympics, when the team finished ninth, and is captain of the contingent going to Seoul. His sacrifices to keep playing would be almost incomprehensible to the average baby boomer. He lives, along with up to 600 other athletes, in U.S. Olympic Committee dorms in Colorado Springs, where he cannot cook or bring liquor into the room, and his bathroom and phone are down the hall. He must meet an 11 p.m. curfew and take a mandatory 90-min. nap at noon. Although the sport is big enough in Europe that club players can earn in excess of $50,000 a year, Story survives on $4,000 from donations and a part- time job with the U.S.O.C. ticket office, plus free room and board.

Story is far from alone. Robert Nieman, 40, is a former world champion in pentathlon, the sport that combines running, swimming, shooting, fencing and horseback riding. Jobless while training, he relies on "the fact that my wife has a very good job." Adds Nieman: "McDonald's gave us some free hamburgers. That's big time in pentathlon."

Yet if the Soviet care and feeding of athletes at times looks enviable, it is far from perfect. For one thing, it can be ruthless. After Kayaker Nikolai Oseledetz shared victory in the four-man team, 10,000-meter event at the 1986 world championships, he asked for a Moscow apartment and was told he would get one. After he was cut from the national team the next year, he was brusquely informed no more flats were available and continued to reside, apart from his wife of five years and son, in a drab room he shares with another kayaker. That separation is not uncommon, even for two-athlete couples: training is so intense that connubiality is discouraged. Officially an army officer assigned to submarine duty, Oseledetz carries an I.D. card that says his task is "to defend the honor of the Central Army Sports Club." The army sponsors one of the two biggest sports clubs; the other, Dinamo, is sponsored by the secret police.

The facilities for athletes, while excellent by Soviet standards, sometimes reflect their age and heavy communal use. At Brothers Znamensky, a complex that is nearly 20 years old, the pole-vault cushion has a large rip, many < hurdles are broken, the indoor track is bumpy; and patches of grass sprout through the outdoor track. Nor is coaching always lavish. Although the Soviets have been a world power in women's basketball for decades, Center Olessya Barel was wowed during an American tour last year. Says she: "Facilities across the U.S. are of a much higher standard than ours, and they have different coaches for offense, defense and sometimes just for conditioning."

Both the U.S. and the Soviets use electronics to study form and technique, to test aerobic capacity and to develop speed and coordination via devices much like computer games. Sometimes the results are practical: demonstrating to a runner that he is placing more stress than needed on his ankles. Other times there is apparent tech-cess: the $1 million flume built by the U.S.O.C. to study swimming has been used by only a handful of athletes since it became operational in May. Numerically, the Soviets have a seemingly huge lead in sports-science researchers, although the different systems make numbers hard to compare. For all of that, however, new theories are not necessarily any more readily accepted by leading Soviet coaches, most of them ex-athletes with fond memories of the good old days, than by their U.S. counterparts. Dr. Michael Yessis, editor of the U.S.-based Soviet Sports Review, reports, "The most significant innovation developed by Soviet sports researchers in recent years is 'speed and strength' training. Under this system, swimmers utilize heavy weights for only six to twelve weeks, then switch to lighter loads and faster movements. The result: more explosiveness in the arms and legs." But when Igor Kravtsev applied similar theories to track, he was regarded as so unorthodox that Soviet officials discouraged Long Jumper Galina Chistyakova and her husband, Triple Jumper Alexander Beskrovni, from training with him. Technological advances may not always have much effect anyway. Many athletes believe something equivalent to the credo of Soviet Cyclist Guintautas Umaras: "It is the amount of time you spend on the bike that makes the difference."

For athletes and fans from both nations, just as for any warriors facing legendary foes, the end of myth will come with the start of true competition. In 1988 in Seoul, as in 1976 in Montreal, some Soviets will do better than expected, and some Americans will surprise even themselves. Some obscure athletes will overcome a lack of support, and some highly trained ones will be off form on the fateful day. But for Lisovskaya and Louganis and all their counterparts, this time there will be no "if onlys," no implied asterisks next to their achievements. What is special for U.S. and Soviet athletes about these Games is that they are no longer special: once again they are, as they should be, for everyone.

With reporting by Brian Cazeneuve/Colorado Springs and Sally B. Donnelly/Moscow