Is track`s Operation Seoul program a good idea going bad?
The program was designed to provide needed financial support to U.S. athletes who are potential medalists at the upcoming Olympics. Instead it has become a case of the rich getting richer.
Under Operation Seoul, 28 athletes selected by The Athletics Congress, track`s governing body in the U.S., will get a minimum of $10,500 (and $14,000 if they make the U.S. Olympic team). The problem is the athletes selected include the likes of Carl Lewis, Edwin Moses and Mary Decker Slaney, who make six-figure annual incomes from the sport.
At least one of the recipients, Jim Spivey of Glen Ellyn, is willing to admit others need the money more.
”If I can run a 3:49 mile, people are going to pay me enough (in race appearance fees) so I can live and train,” said Spivey, the top-ranked U.S. miler. ”The money isn`t going to mean as much to me as $1,000 a year would to the guys ranked 10th to 30th.”
Spivey said there had been a proposal for athletes to submit their tax returns so the money would be given only to those making less than $25,000 a year.
Operation Seoul overlooked needier athletes such as Chicago native Mark Witherspoon, 1987 national champion in the 100 meters, and Antonio McKay, a member of the gold medal 4×400-meter relay team at the 1987 World
Championships. It strangely included Mark Nenow, the top-ranked U.S. 10,000-meter runner, who decided not even to try out for last year`s World Championship team and skipped the national championship meet.
Joan Benoit Samuelson, the 1984 Olympic marathon gold medalist trying to come back from injuries, turned down the Operation Seoul money. According to her agent, Ed Whittemore, the decision was based on not wanting to make commitments she might be unable to fulfill and a feeling that the money would be better spent on someone else.
– The International Olympic Committee is considering a joint negotiation for 1992 Olympic TV rights, giving a U.S. network the chance to bid on a winter-summer package.
”The whole may be bigger than the sum of the parts,” said IOC Vice President Dick Pound, the Canadian attorney who handles TV negotiations for the IOC.
U.S. rights are expected to be substantially lower than the $309 million ABC-TV paid for the 1988 Winter Games and the $300 million NBC-TV is said to have paid for the 1988 Summer Games.
A drop in rights fees, which has never occurred before, is expected because of changes in TV economics and the fact that both 1992 Games are in Europe-the Winter Games in Albertville, France, and the Summer in Barcelona, Spain-where the time difference makes it impossible to have live prime-time telecasts in the U.S.
The IOC hopes to make up some of the difference by getting substantially larger payments from European broadcasters, particularly since independent owners (including Rupert Murdoch) have emerged as rivals to the state-owned networks. The IOC`s condition that the Games be made available on TV to most of a country`s homes no longer excludes the private networks, because their saturation in Europe is now substantial.
Another possibility would be for a U.S. network to bid for rights and sell some of the events off to a cable company, which might resell to its subscribers by charging separately for the Olympics.
”At a certain point, though, upping the ante is no longer relevant,”
Pound said. ”We don`t want to squeeze the last penny out of the Games and leave the broadcasters angry and losing money.
– America`s Marathon/Chicago is expected to announce April 6 that it will have G. Heileman & Sons as its new sponsor.
Although the scheduled 1988 running of the race, Oct. 30, is less than a month after the Olympic men`s marathon, race director Bob Bright remains convinced that he can still put together a strong men`s field.
Bright said some agents have talked to him about having their clients run Chicago (for money) rather than run the Olympics (for free) with no real chance at a medal.
