Into thick air, Day 2

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This is the press conference phase of the Olympics. Nothing is going on, so there is nothing else to do. The Games start Friday, so this is the only game in town.

Athletes and officials parade into big rooms and face rows and rows of people with cameras and notepads. They say stuff they don’t mean or they think they should say. Cameras click on, reporters write it down and type it later, and somehow the world is a better place.

Besides, it fills the day until it is time for expense-account dinners.

The best press confab Wednesday was when the United States Olympic Committee hierarchy, Chairman Peter Ueberroth and some other guys, had to tap dance around a lot of stuff and did so with incredible skill. It was like watching Sammy Davis Jr. do ‘Mr. Bojangles.’ A Rat-ta-tat-tat. Bing.

They had to answer for the four U.S. cyclists who got off the plane here wearing surgical masks. They had to answer questions about heat and humidity and smog, about the host country allegedly changing birth certificates so that pre-pubescence pixies can somersault and vault. They had to address China’s human rights issues in Darfur and Tibet.

‘We aren’t anybody’s State Department,’ Ueberroth said.

Rat-ta-tat-tat. Bing.

But most interesting to somebody from Los Angeles was the manner in which Ueberroth lit up, and understandably so, when the subject arose about China showing up in Los Angeles for his ’84 Olympics, and the impact that had.

The U.S. had boycotted the Moscow Games in 1980 over Soviet aggression in Afghanistan, and payback was likely, come ’84. Ueberroth was ready. He had sent emissaries to many of the countries believed to be in line with the Soviets, and when Moscow announced it was staying home, those emissaries went to work again.

Any breakthrough would put a crack in the boycott. But China? That was a huge gash.

‘When China sent their team, it surprised the world,’ Ueberroth said. ‘Then Romania followed. Game over.’

To which he added, with some measure of emotion, ‘China came, and we’ll never forget it.’

So he should be forgiven if he is a bit impartial about the Games being here, even if some of his athletes have trouble masking their dislike for the place.

-- Bill Dwyre