Sport: Eve of a New Olympics

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Except for the shooting area, finally settled in San Bernardino County, every venue has been set up on schedule and under budget. Several have staged dress rehearsals and checked out smartly. The Atlantic Richfield Co. funded $5 million in improvements to the 60-year-old Coliseum (Olympic capacity: 92,516), including a state-of-the-art synthetic track of German-made red Rekortan. Lacking the three to five years for the soft surface to shake down, the committee has been vacuuming up excess granules.

As to the two new venues, both outdoor $3 million facilities, neither the swimming pool on the U.S.C. campus two miles from downtown nor the velodrome at Cal State-Dominguez Hills 17 miles away could be called opulent. Both are handsome. "It's for the athletes," says Aquatics Commissioner Jay Flood. "It isn't for the architects." This seems a perfect motto for the Games.

Flood is one of 34 commissioners, basically troubleshooters and budget overseers, Ueberroth's invention. Most are experienced entrepreneurs with conservative views about finances. "You know what team handball is, don't you?" Ueberroth asked Tom Megonigal before appointing Megonigal commissioner of team handball. "Sure," Megonigal replied, "four guys in a room hitting a ball off a wall." Actually, seven-man teams rampage up and down an indoor court larger than a basketball floor mistreating a leather ball about the size of a cantaloupe. Having seen it now, Megonigal and Ueberroth are both convinced that team handball is going to sweep the country next summer.

It is understandable that, given his preference, Ueberroth would choose team handball as the most provocative event of the summer. "Games get labels," he says. "Munich." Murder. "The Pan American Games in Caracas." Steroids. For all the planning preceding an Olympics, it is still a dice game: one throw. This is not an altogether unappealing feature.

Come July, 10,000 athletes and 2,000 coaches from 150 nations are expected in Los Angeles, along with 8,200 accredited members of the media, the largest force that has ever covered anything. If anyone needs a sheaf of copy paper, two freight-carfuls are ordered. Ueberroth's staff, which began as one, then became three, will have swelled to perhaps 45,000. A Los Angeles research firm estimates the Games will mean almost $4 billion to the state and local economy. The L.A.O.O.C. will have generated another billion in commerce and, while accepting no charity, will have promoted millions for youth organizations. If the most joyful ambition of the Games is realized, a 10,000-man-woman-and-child relay team of torchbearers will connect the country—from 1912 Olympian Abel Kiviat to retired Baseball Star Johnny Bench to the ordinary jogger in the street—and along the way $30 million could be the gain for youth.

Forty-three independent but "tasteful" licensees, peddling all manner of Olympic-embossed merchandise, are expected to return $20 million to the committee. If there is a profit on the Games, and the jauntiest guesses run to $50 million, the money will be shared by the U.S.O.C., youth groups and amateur sports federations.