No matter what they say, these Winter Olympics aren’t going exactly as the Norwegians and IOC had planned. Take the Olympic flame. After settling an earlier dispute over which country, Norway or Greece, uses its fire to ignite the official torch (the Greeks won), the Lillehammer organizing committee has a new problem.
Now there are reports that revelers are using the flame in Olympia Park for late-night barbecueing for wieners, marshmallows, reindeer, etc. Local police have promised a crackdown.
Times change: Ulf Sorem is operations manager in Lillehammer for IBM, which provides instant athletic results for thousands of outlets. When the Winter Olympics were last here, in Oslo in 1952, he communicated results in a less sophisticated manner. As a part-time employee of an Oslo newspaper, he would be told the results on a telephone in the paper’s office and jot them on a board in the office window, where hundreds of Norwegians would gather to read the results.
“It was six flights of stairs,” Sorem said. “That meant a lot of running. That was the most common way then for people to learn quickly. I felt a little bit like a shopkeeper. There was very little attention paid to radio, except, of course, when there was news of someone from Norway. This was a very big thing for us at the time because it was soon after the war.”
Sorem came out of retirement to assist his company with the Lillehammer effort. He has been involved ever since there was interest in making a bid and, as a result, visited IBM operations at Calgary, Albertville and Barcelona. He worked at the newspaper in 1952 while going to school and intended to become a journalist. But in ’55, he started with IBM. More money.
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Scalping: The official ticket sales office is in the basement of a downtown Lillehammer bank. Long lines form each day to buy tickets that have been returned by federations. It’s also a gathering spot for scalpers, many of whom are British. Though reselling tickets is not strictly forbidden, police are upset that scalpers have been intimidating official sales clerks for not giving them as many tickets as they want. Their tactic: In addition to out-and-out threats, they also bring cameras into the office and take pictures of the clerks.
Looking ahead: Women’s hockey, with a six-team field, will be a new medal sport along with curling in the ’98 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. The U.S. has finished as runner-up to Canada in the last two-and only-world hockey championships for women in ’90 and ’92. The next world meet is next month in Lake Placid. Chicago’s Cammi Granato, sister of the Los Angeles Kings’ Tony Granato, was voted top forward in the ’92 competition.
IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch reaffirmed in Lillehammer that no sports would be trimmed from the Summer Games, such as gymnastics or volleyball, and shifted to the Winter Games. “They (Winter Games) are only for sports on snow and ice,” he said.
Anything else new for ’98? There’s a chance for snowboarding and skeleton, which is luge upside down and backward. The athletes lie chest down and face first on the sleds. Bobsled and luge federations have backed the addition of the sport, which is seen as a way to get more Olympic use from the expensive runs constructed for the Games.
Crowning glory: No matter how the U.S. hockey team fares, coach Tim Taylor and his players-plus the Swedish players-may have the record for playing in front of the most royalty in these Winter Games. Sweden’s King Carl Gustav and Queen Sylvia were joined by Norwegian King Harald and Queen Sonja Saturday night.
Name game: When Italian skiing star Alberto Tomba, whose sense of humor is as nimble as his abilities on the slopes, won two gold medals in Calgary in ’88, he said the province of Alberta would have to be renamed Alberto. When he won another gold in ’92 in Albertville, he said the town would have to be renamed Albertoville. What if he wins a gold or two in Lillehammer? “I’ll work on it,” he said. “Maybe `Lilletomba.’ “
And finally: Many U.S. pins being traded and sold here were made in Taiwan. However, let it be noted that Russia’s official Olympic pin was made in China.