Sport: Eve of a New Olympics

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So he was no star, more an all-around journeyman, like his father. Victor Ueberroth (the German name means "above the red," not to mention in the black), an unschooled but well-read drummer, sold aluminum siding to farmers for their wood barns. "You don't convince farmers with charm or fast talk," says the son, the second of three Ueberroth children. "My father had a great interest in people." And in events too. "We would debate world issues at dinner. Or he would toss riddles out on the table. It was mental gymnastics." Not only at Ueberroth's own table now (he and his wife of 24 years, Ginny, have three daughters and a son), but in the offices of the L.A.O.O.C. as well, the mental gymnastics continue. Staffers call them "Peter tests." Name the president of the I.O.C., or the site of next year's Winter Games, or the capital of Yugoslavia, or ten foreign cities of more than 1 million population that start with the letter M. "Your mind is like a muscle," Ueberroth likes to say. "You have to exercise it."

He was not a renowned scholar at San Jose State but obsessive enough in side jobs (pumping gas, selling children's shoes, tending a chicken farm) so that Ueberroth's friends predicted his eventual success (in aviation, travel, hotels) and ultimate wealth. His own itinerary: from ramp agent for nonscheduled airlines to office worker to office manager to 22-year-old vice president to failure out on his own to spectacular success, heading First Travel Corp., second only to American Express among U.S. travel giants. Ueberroth's method, besides having been bred for problem solving, might be described as a kind of enlightened stinginess. At the same time that he was lowering overhead by dumping high-salaried executives at the troubled travel bureaus he acquired in bunches, Ueberroth was offering stock incentives to the real workers and rewarding talent without prejudice. He turned over the charge of one agency to a man 72 years old; they prospered. "The two major companies I competed against didn't promote women the way I did," he says, "so I was able to attract talented women."

Until a Los Angeles-based executive-search firm fingered Ueberroth five years ago as the "one good man" the Southern California Committee for the Olympic Games had been seeking, his Olympic background consisted of an unsuccessful tryout for the U.S. water polo team in 1956 (Melbourne). During the Montreal Games in 1976, nearly cornered into observing his own family decree against summer television, Ueberroth had viewed the competition nightly with the sound turned down low in the darkened room of an elderly neighbor lady who was trying to sleep. He was such an unlikely proprietor of the Games that his reaction to the first feeler was laughter. He said no.