The haze that has hung over Turin for a week seemed to be thickening Friday. Local Olympic organizing committee officials swear it is nothing more than fog, but its reddish-brown cast suggests pollution and air inversion.
Whatever the source, it makes the presence of the Olympics even more of a gray area in its 2006 host city.
A trip to the nearby mountains presents a picture that looks delightfully different. The only things obscuring visibility Friday in Sestriere were floating snowflakes, and the mountainsides went from brown to a sparkling white from an overnight snowfall.
While every Winter Olympics is a half-and-half affair, split between indoor sports in city arenas and outdoor sports in the mountains, the disconnect in Turin seems especially pronounced.
As the Olympics reached the halfway point Saturday, the question of whether they are half-full or half-empty is difficult to answer, whether one is asking about the performance of the U.S. team or the 2006 Winter Games in general.
Few thought U.S. athletes would match the record 34-medal performance from the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City. After predicting its athletes would win 100 medals at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens (they won 102), the U.S. Olympic Committee notably declined to set a public goal for Turin.
“Ice is slippery,” USOC Chief Executive Jim Scherr said. “That makes it very hard to predict what happens in the Winter Olympics.”
Yet the USOC did internal projections that established 27 medals as an attainable goal, according to sources familiar with the situation. The United States had won 10 through Friday’s events.
USOC sports performance chief Steve Roush laid the groundwork for lowered expectations with frequent reminders that history shows host countries have an average 41 percent medal drop in the subsequent Winter Games.
That statistic is misleading. Over the last 10 Winter Games, the average decline has been 20 percent.
“We had the capability to take above 25 medals,” Scherr told the Tribune. “Whether we get there is difficult to tell.
“We think over the course of the four years leading up to this, judging by results in World Cups and world championships, our athletes performed extremely well–better than they did in the four years before Salt Lake City.
“I don’t think you can judge the progress we have made in winter sports by one competition, even if it is the Olympics.”
As in Salt Lake City, where 47 percent of the U.S. medals came from sports added to the Olympic program since 1992, most of the success in Turin has been in those sports, notably the six medals in snowboarding.
Alpine skiing officials set eight medals as a goal, but they have only one with seven of 10 events remaining.
Luge and skeleton finished with no medals after five in Salt Lake City. The U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton Federation trumpeted Katie Uhlaender’s having been the fastest starter in both races, but she finished sixth.
“We still have to get more competitive in the `traditional’ disciplines owned by the Central European countries,” Scherr said. “We have had a competitive advantage in some of the newer disciplines because they developed in the United States, but that will tend to be eroded over time.”
Part of the Salt Lake advantage also came from competing in front of boisterous, partisan, sellout crowds. Four years later, athletes look up to see stands that routinely have very few spectators. A typical example: The stands in Sestriere were less than one-sixth full for Friday’s runs of the women’s alpine combined slalom.
One thing is certain: Judged by crowds, the Turin 2006 slogan seems like an oxymoron. If “Passion Lives Here,” as the decorative banners suggest, it must have gone on vacation.
“I’m very disappointed,” U.S. speedskater Jennifer Rodriguez said. “I came out and it was like half-empty, or half-full, depending on how you look at it. But I feel like the Olympics should be sold out.
“I would feel very bad if I was an Italian skater. You expect to hear the roar of the crowd. It’s a little bit dead out there.”
Even that is a matter of perspective. The Torinese are serious people in a city with architecture that projects a frequently severe face while hiding elegant courtyards and striking private spaces.
“Involving all the citizens is a difficult job,” Turin resident Salvatore Raffaele said. “Winter sports are not widely practiced here, but I think the public reaction to them has been a mix of positive and curious, especially where sports like snowboard and curling are concerned.”
Unlike Americans, who get excited by big events because they think they should (witness the huge crowds at soccer’s 1994 World Cup), the Torinese are more circumspect.
“The soul of the Torinese citizens,” Raffaele said, “is summed up in an expression from our dialect that translates to, `Think long and hard before you act, and evaluate what it is you are doing.'”
The Turin Olympic Organizing Committee says more than 800,000 tickets have been sold, meeting its goal. But many, obviously, are not being used.
At the men’s figure skating short program, for which all tickets had been sold, only about 4,800 of 6,600 available seats were filled. Most of the empties were the best seats in the house, likely purchased by sponsors for clients who did not use them.
“If I buy a ticket, and Sharon Stone invites me to dinner, what do I do?” said International Skating Union President Ottavio Cinquanta.
The Turin organizing committee has attempted to solve part of that problem by a late sale of tickets previously held back for contingency purposes. Wednesday, tickets went on sale for the Thursday men’s final, all three phases of ice dancing and the women’s short program.
But they don’t come cheaply. The figure skating tickets available ran from $204 to $360.
“I want to take my son to the Olympics, but ticket prices are very high compared to the cost of living in Italy,” said Raffaele, echoing the sentiments of many in a city fraught with unemployment.
“Tickets to hockey preliminaries cost $48. A movie costs $8.50. You can hear Beethoven’s Ninth at the RAI Auditorium for between $12 and $36. I know going to the Olympics may be a once-in-a-lifetime thing, but still . . . “
His thought hung in the air, without a clear answer.
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phersh@tribune.com
