Olympics: Colliding Myths After a Dozen Years

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On both sides, the twelve-year Olympic hiatus has heightened the mystique of the competition. For American athletes -- and even more for American fans -- distance and legend have transformed the Soviets into supposed supermen and super-women, selected when barely out of the cradle and taught like emotionless automatons to excel. This exaggerated notion has some basis in fact. The Soviets have a nationwide network of specialized sports schools for even the youngest potential stars, leading to intensive adult training guided by methodical, scholarly study. High-tech training wizardry is rumored to be compounded by steroids and other chemical help: indeed, one popular explanation in the U.S. for the 1984 boycott was Soviet fear that its star performers would fail drug tests. And as for the awesome women athletes, well, are they really women at all? Skeptics recall that Tamara and Irina Press, the hulking Soviet sisters who won five Olympic gold medals in the 1960s, dropped from international competition after sex tests were introduced. In this mistrustful vision, athletes respond to the carrots of cushy jobs, fancy apartments and Western consumer goods, coupled with a fearsome stick if performance falters: the threat of losing all privileges, perhaps even of being banished to Siberia.

Soviet mythology about U.S. athletes begins with genetic theories worthy of Jimmy the Greek. Says Point Guard Olga Burakin of the Soviet women's basketball team: "American teams are so competitive because they have blacks, who are inherently more capable, whereas whites are not nearly so skillful." Then it centers on wealth: the presumed abundance of facilities at thousands of high schools and colleges.

The Soviets acknowledge their strides in technology but claim with some justice that the U.S. has even more advanced installations, although it is perhaps less effective in using them. While Soviet athletes frequently agree that they cannot be called amateurs, they contrast their salaries of a few hundred dollars a month and their state bonuses of up to $20,000 for winning even gold medals to the millions reaped by a Carl Lewis or a Mary Lou Retton. "I have no contract and cannot advertise my services for hire," notes Soviet Backstroker Sergei Zabolotnov, who earns $583 a month as a swimming- coach-in-training. The Soviets, too, mutter darkly about drugs, and with reason: some U.S. athletic officials suspect that abuse of steroids and their kin is indeed more widespread in the U.S. Says Dr. Robert Voy, chief medical officer of the U.S. Olympic Committee: "If I had to guess, I'd say we do a little worse."