{"id":107313,"date":"2014-02-03T20:55:00","date_gmt":"2014-02-03T20:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/muckraker-gg.blogspot.com\/2014\/02\/chaos-in-competition-zone.html"},"modified":"2014-02-03T20:55:00","modified_gmt":"2014-02-03T20:55:00","slug":"chaos-in-the-competition-zone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/chaos-in-the-competition-zone\/","title":{"rendered":"Chaos in the Competition Zone"},"content":{"rendered":"

Olympic
\nExcess from Lake Placid to Sochi<\/i><\/span><\/span>

<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\nWhat\u2019s it like these days in
\nSochi, the Black Sea resort about to host the Winter Olympics? That depends on
\nwho you ask, or if you live there. Sochi is widely known as \u201cPutin\u2019s town,\u201d and,
\nin the run-up to the Games, it has become a boomtown where gleaming residential
\nand office complexes dot a city filled with Stalin-Gothic architecture.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\nBut for the average Sochi
\nresident the Games are largely an inconvenience \u2014 in danger of becoming a
\ndisaster. Long power and water outages and colossal traffic jams have been caused
\nby Olympic construction. Some residents have been evicted, especially if their
\nhomes were in the path of a planned venue. There have also been multiple violations
\nof labor law, along with widespread corruption in the course of Olympic construction,
\nincluding illegal permission for the building of large private homes and
\nshopping malls unrelated to the Games. And that doesn\u2019t cover the
\nsecurity threats or overkill response.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nYet this is not the first Olympic
\ncommunity to be shortchanged, disrupted, and abused. Take the 1980 Winter
\nGames, which happened shortly after the US and USSR began their face off in
\nAfghanistan. In fact, the Lake Placid Games could easily have become a $150
\nmillion disaster movie. But like most of the media gathering in Sochi, ABC, the
\nnetwork with the exclusive US rights to cover the 1980 Winter Olympics, ignored
\nmuch of the news unfolding outside the official sites. For example, the fact
\nthat thousands of spectators missed events they paid premium prices to attend,
\nor were left out in the cold after the athletes were done. <\/span><\/div>\n
\nOn opening night, to keep from
\nfreezing spectators and New York state troopers broke into the VIP lounge near
\nthe luge run. The next morning then-Gov. Hugh Carey said that no one would be
\nprosecuted.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nBy the first weekend, amidst US
\nhopes that the US hockey team would prevail in a finals battle with the Soviets,
\nand that speed skater Eric Heiden might win as many as five gold medals,
\nOlympic officials were on the verge of banning more visitors \u2014 for their own
\nprotection. \u201cI don\u2019t want to endanger people,\u201d admitted Rev. Bernard Fell,
\npresident of the Lake Placid Olympic Organizing Committee (LPOOC).<\/span><\/div>\n
\nA tiny upstate New York community,
\none that had fought hard for the right to host these Games, was instead hosting
\na regional emergency. And it took even more unpleasant turns over the first few
\ndays. Fights broke out over bus rides; to get on an \u201cofficial\u201d bus you needed
\nthe right color ID. People fumed as half-empty vans left them at roadside. Attending
\nas a journalist I watched entire families hitchhike through the snow.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nOne crowd, catching sight of a
\nvan downtown, was refused entry when they tried to board. Surrounding the
\nvehicle, they ended up rocking it angrily. After that a new order went out from
\nthe top: drivers should not travel on Main Street in Lake Placid during midday.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nIn some accounts the sense was
\nconveyed that thousands were stranded on the streets, many on the verge of
\nsevere frostbite. But only about ten frostbite cases were reported during Week
\nOne, and a mere 4,000 people were kept waiting in the freezing cold at Mt. van
\nHoevenberg after bobsled and luge events. Some accounts claimed it was 15,000. One
\ndriver explained that the real problem was the LPOOC. \u201cThey had six years and
\nstill couldn\u2019t get it straight,\u201d he said. \u201cAfter one ski jump there were
\nthousands of people waiting. They sent three buses.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
\nGov. Carey authorized a
\nDepartment of Transportation contract with Greyhound for added services just in
\ntime. But then over 30 Canadian drivers expectedly walked off their jobs. They
\njust locked their buses and left. And if any remaining drivers needed some wiper
\nfluid, forget it. Not even local gas stations had any left after the first day
\nof bad weather.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nRelations between bus drivers and
\nState Police deteriorated along with the transportation system. When 15
\ntroopers asked to hitch a ride on an \u201cofficial\u201d van, approval was denied by the
\nLPOOC\u2019s director of operations. With two hours drivers were being ticketed for
\nminor infractions. About 40 drivers got tickets over the next few days.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nIf the Winter Games were proving
\nnothing else they were confirming widespread suspicions that although the US
\ncould certainly put a man on the moon, it had no idea how to run a mass transit
\nsystem.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nBy the second week war stories
\nabout LPOOC incompetence had become a new fad \u2014 almost as popular as mixing
\npolitics with sports. There was little hope that the US would attend the upcoming
\nSummer Games in Moscow. President Carter, who didn\u2019t attend the opening
\nceremonies in upstate New York, was taking a hard line on withdrawal of Soviet troops
\nfrom Afghanistan. But what about the 1984 Winter Games, scheduled for Sarajevo?
\nAfter Tito\u2019s death there was no telling what political earthquakes might rock
\nYugoslavia by then. <\/span><\/div>\n
\n\u201cSarajevo is next.\u201d So said a
\nbutton circulating in what Olympic officials took to calling the \u201ccompetition
\nzone.\u201d Maybe so, but \u201cnext\u201d could mean anything from another boycott to World
\nWar III.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nA political subtext emerged in
\nthe competition for medals: the US was the underdog, perhaps no longer number
\none. In fact, the USSR and East Germany were establishing a dominance close to
\ndevastating. In the first week each country won 16 medals. The only US wins at
\nthat point were men\u2019s and women\u2019s speed skating, including three medals for
\nHeiden.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nThe Competition Zone was a new
\nconcept, a temporary nation, and a virtual police state with its own hierarchy,
\nbuilt to accommodate 1,400 athletes and up to 30,000 spectators a day, plus a
\nmedia crew of thousands more.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nAt the low end of the ladder were
\nthe ticketholders, enthusiasts who paid $60 per event only to wait hours for a
\nbus. Next were the holders of temporary passes, people like bus drivers and
\nlower-level staff. Some of them had been told they could attend indoor events.
\nBut once the Games began the offer was withdrawn.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nAthletes had obvious status and
\nvalue. Yet many were nevertheless lodged in claustrophobic cubicles at the
\nOlympic Village. Their rooms were actually cells for a future youth prison; the
\nbars would be added once the Games were over. Saunas and other recreation
\nfacilities would be ripped out. Sometimes even athletes were victims of the transportation
\nsystem. Take the Soviet team that missed an awards ceremony when they weren\u2019t
\npicked up on time.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nEven in the press contingent
\nthere were levels of privilege. But most journalists and photographers did find
\na comfortable home in the Press Center, a converted high school where free
\ndrinks flowed and huge TV screens captured the action. Texas Instruments
\nproduced summary printouts within minutes of every event. A reporter would have
\nto be blind and illiterate not to fill a newscast or column.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nBy midday the gym would fill up
\nwith writers, who eventually went to work on typewriters provided by Olympia. Upper
\nlevels classrooms housed various wire service offices, temporary corporate lounges
\nand Olympic administrative suites. Where were the students? At the Coca-Cola
\nOlympic School learning about metrics, sports medicine and athletic competition.
\n\u00a0The 200 students displaced for the Games
\nalso studied Olympic history and heard lectures from veterans of past competitions.<\/span><\/div>\n
\n\u201cIt\u2019s an ideal solution,\u201d crowed
\nProject Coordinator Don Morrison, who normally ran the local elementary school.
\n\u201cWe don\u2019t make it as rigidly formal as our regular classes.\u201d That turned out to
\nbe an understatement. Students mainly attended events and exhibits, while their
\nless-fortunate peers worked as part of the \u201cOlympic family\u201d in jobs ranging for
\nticket-handling to food service.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nNo sacrifice seemed too great.
\nResidents of Lake Placid and surrounding towns had their lives seriously disrupted,
\nand saw staggering price hikes and traffic snarls in which a trip to the
\ngrocery could take hours. Store owners initially expected to clean up during
\nthe mass confusion by hiking their prices. But customers balked at the
\nsystematic scalping and sales ended up being more modest than projected. <\/span><\/div>\n
\nA new awareness gradually crept
\ninto local consciousness. Residents began to feel they were really hostages in
\ntheir home towns, captives of the LPOOC, a new, un-elected and almost
\ncriminally incompetent government.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nWhen the planning for the 1980 Winter
\nGames began, organizers called it \u201cthe Olympics in perspective.\u201d This was
\nsupposed to be the time when the needs of athletes finally came first. But that
\npromise evaporated once the Games were politicized by the start of Cold War II.
\nWhen Secretary of State Cyrus Vance urged the International Olympic Committee
\nto move or cancel the Summer Games \u2014 only four days before the opening
\nceremonies \u2014 sports lovers rightly began to fear that the competition itself
\nwould ultimately be eclipsed. Subsequent events confirmed those fears.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nIn the end, the LPOOC could not even
\ndeliver on its most basic pledge. The 1980 Games were not just out of
\nperspective, they were buried in an avalanche of corporate huckstering,
\nopportunistic politics, and logistical confusion. Should anything different be
\nexpected in Sochi?<\/span><\/div>\n
\nGreg Guma\u00a0has been a writer,
\neditor, historian, activist and progressive manager for over four decades. His
\nlatest book,\u00a0<\/i>Dons of Time<\/a>, is a sci-fi look at the control of history as
\npower.<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Olympic
\nExcess from Lake Placid to Sochi<\/i><\/span><\/span>

<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\nWhat’s it like these days in
\nSochi, the Black Sea resort about to host the Winter Olympics? That depends on
\nwho you ask, or if you live there. Sochi is widely known as “Putin’s town,” and,
\nin the run-up to the Games, it has become a boomtown where gleaming residential
\nand office complexes dot a city filled with Stalin-Gothic architecture. <\/span><\/div>\n
\nBut for the average Sochi
\nresident the Games are largely an inconvenience – in danger of becoming a
\ndisaster. Long power and water outages and colossal traffic jams have been caused
\nby Olympic construction. Some residents have been evicted, especially if their
\nhomes were in the path of a planned venue. There have also been multiple violations
\nof labor law, along with widespread corruption in the course of Olympic construction,
\nincluding illegal permission for the building of large private homes and
\nshopping malls unrelated to the Games.  And that doesn’t cover the
\nsecurity threats or overkill response.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nYet this is not the first Olympic
\ncommunity to be shortchanged, disrupted, and abused. Take the 1980 Winter
\nGames, which happened shortly after the US and USSR began their face off in
\nAfghanistan. In fact, the Lake Placid Games could easily have become a $150
\nmillion disaster movie. But like most of the media gathering in Sochi, ABC, the
\nnetwork with the exclusive US rights to cover the 1980 Winter Olympics, ignored
\nmuch of the news unfolding outside the official sites. For example, the fact
\nthat thousands of spectators missed events they paid premium prices to attend,
\nor were left out in the cold after the athletes were done. <\/span><\/div>\n
\nOn opening night, to keep from
\nfreezing spectators and New York state troopers broke into the VIP lounge near
\nthe luge run. The next morning then-Gov. Hugh Carey said that no one would be
\nprosecuted.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nBy the first weekend, amidst US
\nhopes that the US hockey team would prevail in a finals battle with the Soviets,
\nand that speed skater Eric Heiden might win as many as five gold medals,
\nOlympic officials were on the verge of banning more visitors – for their own
\nprotection. “I don’t want to endanger people,” admitted Rev. Bernard Fell,
\npresident of the Lake Placid Olympic Organizing Committee (LPOOC).<\/span><\/div>\n
\nA tiny upstate New York community,
\none that had fought hard for the right to host these Games, was instead hosting
\na regional emergency. And it took even more unpleasant turns over the first few
\ndays. Fights broke out over bus rides; to get on an “official” bus you needed
\nthe right color ID. People fumed as half-empty vans left them at roadside. Attending
\nas a journalist I watched entire families hitchhike through the snow.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nOne crowd, catching sight of a
\nvan downtown, was refused entry when they tried to board. Surrounding the
\nvehicle, they ended up rocking it angrily. After that a new order went out from
\nthe top: drivers should not travel on Main Street in Lake Placid during midday.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nIn some accounts the sense was
\nconveyed that thousands were stranded on the streets, many on the verge of
\nsevere frostbite. But only about ten frostbite cases were reported during Week
\nOne, and a mere 4,000 people were kept waiting in the freezing cold at Mt. van
\nHoevenberg after bobsled and luge events. Some accounts claimed it was 15,000. One
\ndriver explained that the real problem was the LPOOC. “They had six years and
\nstill couldn’t get it straight,” he said. “After one ski jump there were
\nthousands of people waiting. They sent three buses.”<\/span><\/div>\n
\nGov. Carey authorized a
\nDepartment of Transportation contract with Greyhound for added services just in
\ntime. But then over 30 Canadian drivers expectedly walked off their jobs. They
\njust locked their buses and left. And if any remaining drivers needed some wiper
\nfluid, forget it. Not even local gas stations had any left after the first day
\nof bad weather.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nRelations between bus drivers and
\nState Police deteriorated along with the transportation system. When 15
\ntroopers asked to hitch a ride on an “official” van, approval was denied by the
\nLPOOC’s director of operations. With two hours drivers were being ticketed for
\nminor infractions. About 40 drivers got tickets over the next few days.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nIf the Winter Games were proving
\nnothing else they were confirming widespread suspicions that although the US
\ncould certainly put a man on the moon, it had no idea how to run a mass transit
\nsystem.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nBy the second week war stories
\nabout LPOOC incompetence had become a new fad – almost as popular as mixing
\npolitics with sports. There was little hope that the US would attend the upcoming
\nSummer Games in Moscow. President Carter, who didn’t attend the opening
\nceremonies in upstate New York, was taking a hard line on withdrawal of Soviet troops
\nfrom Afghanistan. But what about the 1984 Winter Games, scheduled for Sarajevo?
\nAfter Tito’s death there was no telling what political earthquakes might rock
\nYugoslavia by then. <\/span><\/div>\n
\n“Sarajevo is next.” So said a
\nbutton circulating in what Olympic officials took to calling the “competition
\nzone.” Maybe so, but “next” could mean anything from another boycott to World
\nWar III.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nA political subtext emerged in
\nthe competition for medals: the US was the underdog, perhaps no longer number
\none. In fact, the USSR and East Germany were establishing a dominance close to
\ndevastating. In the first week each country won 16 medals. The only US wins at
\nthat point were men’s and women’s speed skating, including three medals for
\nHeiden.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nThe Competition Zone was a new
\nconcept, a temporary nation, and a virtual police state with its own hierarchy,
\nbuilt to accommodate 1,400 athletes and up to 30,000 spectators a day, plus a
\nmedia crew of thousands more.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nAt the low end of the ladder were
\nthe ticketholders, enthusiasts who paid $60 per event only to wait hours for a
\nbus. Next were the holders of temporary passes, people like bus drivers and
\nlower-level staff. Some of them had been told they could attend indoor events.
\nBut once the Games began the offer was withdrawn.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nAthletes had obvious status and
\nvalue. Yet many were nevertheless lodged in claustrophobic cubicles at the
\nOlympic Village. Their rooms were actually cells for a future youth prison; the
\nbars would be added once the Games were over. Saunas and other recreation
\nfacilities would be ripped out. Sometimes even athletes were victims of the transportation
\nsystem. Take the Soviet team that missed an awards ceremony when they weren’t
\npicked up on time.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nEven in the press contingent
\nthere were levels of privilege. But most journalists and photographers did find
\na comfortable home in the Press Center, a converted high school where free
\ndrinks flowed and huge TV screens captured the action. Texas Instruments
\nproduced summary printouts within minutes of every event. A reporter would have
\nto be blind and illiterate not to fill a newscast or column.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nBy midday the gym would fill up
\nwith writers, who eventually went to work on typewriters provided by Olympia. Upper
\nlevels classrooms housed various wire service offices, temporary corporate lounges
\nand Olympic administrative suites. Where were the students? At the Coca-Cola
\nOlympic School learning about metrics, sports medicine and athletic competition.
\n The 200 students displaced for the Games
\nalso studied Olympic history and heard lectures from veterans of past competitions.<\/span><\/div>\n
\n“It’s an ideal solution,” crowed
\nProject Coordinator Don Morrison, who normally ran the local elementary school.
\n“We don’t make it as rigidly formal as our regular classes.” That turned out to
\nbe an understatement. Students mainly attended events and exhibits, while their
\nless-fortunate peers worked as part of the “Olympic family” in jobs ranging for
\nticket-handling to food service.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nNo sacrifice seemed too great.
\nResidents of Lake Placid and surrounding towns had their lives seriously disrupted,
\nand saw staggering price hikes and traffic snarls in which a trip to the
\ngrocery could take hours. Store owners initially expected to clean up during
\nthe mass confusion by hiking their prices. But customers balked at the
\nsystematic scalping and sales ended up being more modest than projected. <\/span><\/div>\n
\nA new awareness gradually crept
\ninto local consciousness. Residents began to feel they were really hostages in
\ntheir home towns, captives of the LPOOC, a new, un-elected and almost
\ncriminally incompetent government.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nWhen the planning for the 1980 Winter
\nGames began, organizers called it “the Olympics in perspective.” This was
\nsupposed to be the time when the needs of athletes finally came first. But that
\npromise evaporated once the Games were politicized by the start of Cold War II.
\nWhen Secretary of State Cyrus Vance urged the International Olympic Committee
\nto move or cancel the Summer Games – only four days before the opening
\nceremonies – sports lovers rightly began to fear that the competition itself
\nwould ultimately be eclipsed. Subsequent events confirmed those fears.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nIn the end, the LPOOC could not even
\ndeliver on its most basic pledge. The 1980 Games were not just out of
\nperspective, they were buried in an avalanche of corporate huckstering,
\nopportunistic politics, and logistical confusion. Should anything different be
\nexpected in Sochi?<\/span><\/div>\n
\nGreg Guma has been a writer,
\neditor, historian, activist and progressive manager for over four decades. His
\nlatest book, <\/i>Dons of Time<\/a>, is a sci-fi look at the control of history as
\npower.<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1241,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-107313","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-editorials"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1241"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}