USOC Notebook : American Rowers Rock Boat Over Gift to Romania

OKLAHOMA CITY —  If charity begins at home, the U.S. Rowing Assn. wants to know why the U.S. Olympic Committee has offered money to Romanian rowers, who already are among the world’s best.

After the $235-million surplus generated by the L.A. Olympics in 1984, the USOC established a friendship fund to financially aid athletic projects in other countries.

As revealed in a 1988 budget report presented Sunday on the final day of the USOC’s executive board meetings, the international relations committee has allocated money to 28 countries. That includes $45,000 for Romania to acquire boats and data processing equipment in 1987 and 1988 for its rowing and canoe/kayak teams.

That elicited an incredulous response from Carol Brown, a former rower and the sport’s representative to the USOC’s athletes advisory council. She pointed out that Romania won three gold medals in last summer’s world championships while the United States won one silver.

“I have trouble explaining to my athletes why we’re buying boats for them,” Brown said. “We shouldn’t give money to countries for a sport where they’re already the best in the world.”

Harold Henning, international relations committee chairman, defended the decision.

“Our committee felt very strongly that if the Romanians would not have come to the Games, they would not have been the success that they were,” he said.

Brown did not disagree but asked, “Why couldn’t the money have gone to a different sport?”

After several more minutes of discussion, Henry Marsh, chairman of the athletes advisory council, said, “I think we’re missing the boat on this.”

“Yeah,” USOC secretary Andras Toro agreed, “the Romanians got the boat.”

The executive board decided to consult with the U.S. Rowing Assn. before forwarding a check to the Romanian rowers.

Producer David Wolper, who orchestrated the 1984 Summer Olympics opening and closing ceremonies and the Statue of Liberty’s birthday celebration, was in New York during the weekend to discuss with television networks plans for a ceremony in Los Angeles next summer before the U.S. team leaves for the Olympics in Seoul, South Korea.

An L.A. committee has determined it needs $1.5 million to stage a large-scale ceremony, which would be held at the Coliseum, the Rose Bowl or Dodger Stadium.

One of the committee members, Chuck Cale, proposed Aug. 30 or 31 or Sept. 1 for the ceremony. The Olympic village in Seoul opens Sept. 3, two weeks before the opening ceremony.

Cale said Wolper is “personally very optimistic” that financing can be arranged.

But Cale said he was disappointed that no television contract has been signed.

“I was hoping we would already have everything in place,” he said.

USOC President Robert Helmick said Sunday all U.S. athletes will be processed in Los Angeles before they leave for Seoul even if there is no major production.

“There will be something even if it’s not a live television event, perhaps a smaller ceremony,” Helmick said.

The USOC has approved July 12-21 as the dates for the 1991 Olympic Festival in Los Angeles.

Like every other organization that had money invested in the stock market, the USOC lost heavily last week.

The Olympic Foundation, which support projects for U.S. athletes, had allocated $9.1 million for 1988. But the available funds for those projects was reduced on “Black Monday” to $3.6 million.

Helmick said Sunday that money from other sources would be shifted to the Olympic Foundation to cover any deficit that may occur at the end of the year.

“We are financially very sound,” Helmick said. “We’re not going to allow fluctuations in the stock market to jeopardize our training and preparation. Substantially, all of those projects will be realized.”

Among the anticipated USOC revenues next year are proceeds from a commemorative coin. A bill authorizing it was passed by Congress and sent to the White House Friday for President Reagan’s signature.

Helmick said he projects an $80-million windfall for the USOC.

The USOC also was presented a check Saturday for $750,000 from the North Carolina Amateur Sports Assn., which organized the Olympic Festival last summer. The North Carolina group split its $1.5-million profit with the USOC.

The largest profit from a previous Festival was $132,000 produced by Indianapolis in 1982.

But the North Carolina profit would have been reduced considerably if it had honored its contract with the USOC and built a velodrome for cycling, which would have cost about $1 million. Without a velodrome in North Carolina, U.S. cyclists were forced to move their Pan American Games trials to Colorado Springs.

Notes The executive board approved the establishment of a permanent Olympic Academy in Olympia, Wash. The Pacific Northwest Amateur Sports Foundation has guaranteed $20 million for construction and operation to be financed by various sources, including state and local governments. The state of New York also is about to break ground on a $5-million project to upgrade the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid. The state will lease the center to the USOC for 10 years at $1 a year. A training center also is under consideration in San Diego.

USOC President Robert Helmick said the United States will accept its invitation today from the International Olympic Committee to the Seoul Summer Olympics. The deadline for countries to determine whether they will attend is Jan. 17. . . . The USOC will decide next April at a House of Delegates meeting in Washington whether to designate a candidate city for the 1996 Summer Games. Cities under consideration are San Francisco, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Atlanta and Nashville. Anchorage is the United States’ candidate for the 1994 Winter Games. . . . The USOC will add a category, masking-agents, to its list of banned substances in time for the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Feb. 13-28. That is in reaction to the the use of the drug probenecid at the Pan American Games. In addition, 14 other masking-agents have been identified, Prince Alexandre de Merode of the IOC Medical Commission said.

U.S. military officials in South Korea have asked that U.S. coaches seeking facilities in that country for the Summer Olympics make their requests through the USOC, the Department of Defense or the State Department. Georgetown’s John Thompson, coach of the U.S. men’s basketball team, has been dealing with the military directly in an attempt to find housing and practice facilities for his team, even though both are provided elsewhere by the Seoul Olympic Organizing Committee. Thompson is well known in the United States for isolating his Georgetown teams in remote hotels for road games.