Winter Games

Baseball legend Willie Mays and New York Yankees manager Joe Torre were scheduled to be at New York's Battery Park, next to the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, on Tuesday for a 9 a.m. news conference announcing the participants in the Olympic torch relay that will lead up to next year's Salt Lake City Winter Games. The news conference was postponed, though, because Salt Lake Organizing Committee president Mitt Romney had extended a series of meetings in Washington with U.S. congressional leaders.

When he was just a boy, Mitt Romney would stare up at the black skeleton of the roller coaster, a swooping giant of a ride at long-gone Salt Air amusement park, adjacent to the Great Salt Lake, and think that it didn't look so scary from the ground. "But when you got to the top, it was 'Oh, boy, here we go,' " Romney said last week. "That's how it is for the Olympics. We've been cogging up to the top of the mountain, and now it's time to go. " Thursday marked the one-year-away celebration of the start of the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City.

When gold medals are handed out at the 2002 Winter Games, the ceremony will take place on a plaza built and owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. TV cameras - and thus the eyes of the world - will have little choice but to linger on the church's nearby gothic Temple, bristling with spires, and on other buildings that make up the headquarters of a rapidly growing American-born faith that claims 11 million members worldwide. Though tainted by a bidding scandal, Salt Lake City's Winter Games will certainly focus much of the world's attention on a dynamic Mormon culture, which is why the media-savvy church is gearing up to capitalize on the opportunity.

Now that another Olympics has come and gone, fortunately without any major disaster - except a controversy about doping, the protests of the Aborigines and the arrogance of a few American athletes - we can turn our thoughts to 2004 when the games return to their original locale, Athens. The International Olympic Committee's retiring (hurrah) president, Juan Antonio Samaranch, is threatening to move the games if the Greek committee doesn't get its act together. I believe we should take another look at how and where they're held.

The problem with these Summer Olympics - beyond the fact that they're being held in late September and subject to a 15-hour tape delay - is that there aren't enough trampoline events. Just the individual men's and individual women's competition. No team competition. No doubles or mixed doubles. Not even synchronized trampoline. Surely, the freeloading Burghers of the International Olympic Committee, who spent a good deal of their last site selection time accepting goodies to throw the Winter Games to Salt Lake City, can afford to spring for a few more gold, silver and bronze medals for all those budding trampoline hopefuls throughout the world.

The International Olympic Committee, which had gathered in special session to clean its scandal-ridden house, checked off its things-to-do list and declared success yesterday. If the key to a successful meeting is setting a fail-proof agenda, then the IOC knows how to run a meeting. Whether what emerged from the two-day session will provide lasting reform for the tarnished keeper of the Olympic flame could take years to determine. At least the machinery seems to be in place.

A real-life action adventure yarn starring Olympic champions should serve as a solid foundation for a successful movie. But its filmmaker, Wayne-based MegaSystems, didn't stop there. "Olympic Glory," the first-ever 70 millimeter film about the Olympics, is the new movie at the Franklin Institute Science Museum's Tuttleman Omniverse Theater. The movie is MegaSystems' first foray into what's called large format film production. Under that three-dimensional format, the audience can feel like its surrounded from top-to-bottom and side-to-side by the film.

First, it was Munich. Then, it was Atlanta. Now, it's Salt Lake City's turn on the luge ride from hell. Remember when hosting the Olympics was supposed to be a good thing? When the drama of the Olympics was confined to the playing field? When the cities and towns where the Olympics were being played served only as picturesque backdrops? Philadelphia has never hosted the Olympics. And if we play our cards right, we may never have to. If we're lucky, maybe the International Olympic Committee will just ignore us. Because any event that can make the Mormons look corrupt can leave a town like Philadelphia with a bigger public relations bruise than a Tonya Harding love tap. For some time now, hosting the Olympics has been.

It is a sadly familiar story: The Olympic contender competes for years, falling just short of the medal. Then finally come the big victory, the jubilant celebration - and the allegations of cheating. Except in this case, the story concerns not an athlete but a city. After 3 1/2 years of reveling in its selection as the site for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, Salt Lake City has seen its triumph marred. Four investigations are probing allegations that some members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC)

Stow those footballs and sharpen those skates, it's time to switch sports. No doubt the non-fans among us, beaten and battered by Super Bowl hype, were hoping they would get a break from any sport for at least a week. But time and TV ratings wait for no man; we're skiing fast into the Winter Olympics, that quadrennial attempt to persuade the American public that it cares about luge. Actually, it's the very obscurity of most Winter Olympic events, coupled with the alpine beauty of their locations, that gives the Winter Games their laid-back, small-town charm.