August 4, 1996
Why I won't be at the closing ceremonies
By TERRY JONES -- Team Sun
ATLANTA - You won't see me at the closing ceremonies tonight. I won't be there.
Oh, I have a press ticket. But I also have this rule. I only go to closing ceremonies of Olympic Games I loved.
I was there four years ago in Barcelona and four years before that in Seoul. I wasn't there in Albertville. And I won't be there tonight.
These were an Olympic Games I hated. Detested.
You go to closing ceremonies for that fuzzy feeling, the sharing of warmth involved in an international experience full of fond memories. If a Games have been great, you want - need - the fond farewell.
When they've been like these Games, you just want to get out of here.
And I know it's not just me.
I wrote an Olympic e-mail note to a highly placed Canadian Olympic official the other day asking for an appointment "before these #$%^&* Games are over.''
The response from the Canadian official - and this is quote-unquote - follows:
"I think you left out @#$%& *(!@ #$%^& @#$% ^&*( @#!%$# *&^%$ #$%^& when you were talking about these particular Games.''
THE WORST
There's no need to detail everything that went wrong. Over the past 17 days, the documented evidence of every incredible foul-up has been reported everywhere in the world. Put it all together and it would rival the Encyclopedia Britannica for volume.
I've only covered nine Olympics, but I leave here believing I attended the worst-organized Olympics in the 100-year history of the event.
But it wasn't just the organization - or even the bomb.
It's that there was no joy here.
I love covering Games. And it's not because I have an affinity for rowing, softball, cycling, volleyball, wrestling, sailing, canoeing, diving, swimming, fencing, judo, gymnastics, shooting and such.
I love the joy.
And it just wasn't here.
It wasn't the athletes. They were wonderful. At the venues, this was as good as an Olympics gets. There were four world records at the pool. And Donovan Bailey's 9.84 in the 100 metres and Michael Johnson's 19.32 in the 200 metres might rank in the top 10 Olympic moments of all time.
And for Canada, you could make a case that these were our greatest Olympics ever. We won more medals here than at any other Olympics, other than the boycotted Los Angeles Olympics of 1984.
Unfortunately they won all those medals here. The Excited States of America, on TV and in person, had eyes only for their own.
To this day Canadians will rattle off the names Nadia Comaneci, Lasse Viren, Bruce Jenner, Dwight Stones, Alberto Juantorena, Sugar Ray Leonard, John Naber and Kornelia Enders, the international memory makers from the 1976 Montreal Olympics.
That was 20 years ago.
I don't think most Americans will remember the internationals from these Olympics 20 days from now. Fu Ming Xia of China, who won two gold medals in diving. Michelle Smith of Ireland and her three golds in the pool, Mari Jose Perec of France and her golds in both the 100 and 200-metre events on the track, Felix Savon of Cuba and his third straight Olympic heavyweight gold. Mention most of their names in Centennial Park and you'll get a blank look in return.
It wasn't just NBC.
There has never been an Olympic Games so well attended. But there was no appreciation of athletes who weren't American. It was like the spectators dialled out and just sat there, staring into space, when a non-American was having his or her Olympic moment.
That, I must point out, wasn't totally true at most venues outside of Atlanta where the Olympics were warmer and where they did appreciate some of what they saw. But not inside the Olympic ring. They had the blinders on.
MAYBE, SOME DAY ...
Olympic Games, when you work them, tend to be like pregnancies. You'd never go back and cover another one, even the great Games, if you didn't forget much of the pain.
Maybe, eventually, I'll manage to forget the feeling I have today.
Maybe some day I'll be thumbing through an Olympic book and see the pictures of Muhammad Ali lighting the flame, Donovan Bailey and Michael Johnson, Marie McBean and Kathleen Heddle and think back and say, ``I was there and it was wonderful.''
But I doubt it.
One thing I know for sure. I won't be able to look back and remember the closing ceremonies.
