MARCH 2, 1998 VOL. 151 NO. 9
	Thanks a Million and Sayonara Nagano's warm hospitality will be a tough act for Sydney to follow By BARRY HILLENBRAND ive days into the Winter Olympics, Martin Hersman, a Dutch speed skater, was taking a victory lap after his race. The crowd was cheering, and Hersman, looking up at the Japanese faces, acknowledged the applause with a series of tiny bows, not much more than head bobs. Clearly Japanese courtesy and politeness--to say nothing of bowing--had made an impression on Hersman. He was responding to the overwhelming generosity that the Japanese have heaped upon him and other athletes with an expression of gratitude that he felt they would understand. It always happens that way. Host cities put their mark on the Olympics--just as Nagano put a mark on Hersman. And the good news is that the mood coming out of Nagano is one of kindness, efficiency and confidence. The Japanese organizers of the Nagano Winter Games have rescued the Olympic spirit that was so deeply shaken after the disaster of the 1996 Atlanta Games--games notable mostly for their crass commercialism, faulty logistics and the havoc caused by a bomb which exploded in the midst of a crowd enjoying an Olympic concert. The question we were all asking when we fled Atlanta in disgust back in August of 1996 was whether the Olympic Games had become so big and so complex that they were simply unmanageable. But the Japanese, with their sense of organization and (could this be the biggest surprise of all?) their willingness to curb their usual commercial instincts, have shown that it is possible to stage this grand jamboree of sport with style and taste. In 2 1/2 years it will be Sydney's turn. Sydney's job will be much harder because the Summer Games are far bigger than their Winter cousin: nearly five times as many athletes, four times as many sports, double the number of critical journalists ready to find fault with the bus schedule. The Atlanta organizers never understood the complexity of running this vast operation. They entrusted the management of the Games to local businessmen who were not up to the task and who then recruited bus drivers and police officers from around the country who did not know Atlanta. In Japan, the best management talent was imported from around the nation, while the volunteers who earned the respect and affection of athletes, visitors and journalists were local folks eager to make the Games a success. And as if eagerness was not enough, there was their training manual: it was the size of a telephone book, and if it did not contain the answer to a question asked by a befuddled foreigner, the volunteer or staff member would not rest until a solution was found. In Atlanta, the typical answer to a question was: "Sorry, I'm from Birmingham. Ask someone else." The key tasks ahead for Sydney are transportation and crowd control. The organizers in Sydney believe they will face few problems because all 15,000 athletes and officials will be housed within the 900-hectare confines of the $1.33 billion Olympic Park being built on a landfill in Homebush Bay. Most of the main venues, including a 110,000-seat Olympic Stadium, an aquatic center and an indoor arena, will be within easy walking distance. And the journalists will be only 5 km away. Sounds ideal, but jamming hordes of fans into a limited area surrounded by security fences and checkpoints is almost as bad as dispersing the visitors around the city. The trick is to plan, plan, plan--and then, like a good general, be prepared to revise those plans once the action starts. The Japanese had meticulous flow charts covering every possibility, but after a mild touch of chaos on the first day, they hired more buses, redeployed volunteers and opened new lanes on the highways for Olympic traffic. In Atlanta, there was no way to escape the relentless commercialism of the street vendors hawking T shirts and the corporate sponsors pasting their names on every available flagpole. In Nagano, the problem was that stores had run out of stuffed replicas of the Snowlets, the overly cute Olympic mascots which bear a vague resemblance to owls made by an origami master, and it was difficult to find a place to buy Olympic memorabilia. Understatement was the order of the day. The Olympic banners were so, well, un-Olympic in scale that they looked like they were designed by a microchip technician. In the end the main thing Sydney must remember is that it is hosting the Games for the world. The job of a host is to make the guests feel comfortable without letting on that throwing a party is a lot of work. You have to miss a great deal of the fun and you can't relax until everyone has gone home. But if the job is done right--and the world certainly hopes it will be--Sydney stands to gain the sort of admiration that Nagano has attracted. Let's hope that Australia's warm and fun-loving spirit rubs off on the guests who pass its way. And perhaps some jubilant athlete will acknowledge the city with a little bow--or an Aussie "Good on ya, mate."
time-webmaster@pathfinder.com