Organizers of the 1998 Winter Games announced Tuesday that snow-boarding will debut as an Olympic sport in Nagano - as long as someone else picks up most of the $13 million tab.
Nagano organizers made a presentation on the progress of their preparations Tuesday to the International Olympic Committee Executive Board, which is meeting this week in Karuizawa, a mountain resort in the Nagano prefecture.The Salt Lake Olympic Organizing Committee is scheduled to give its first progress report to the IOC members on Wednesday. But unlike Nagano, the Utah delegation won't be asking for money.
Tom Welch, president of Salt Lake's Olympic committee, said Utah's capital is ready to handle snowboarding as well as other changes in the program that might be suggested for the 2002 Winter Games.
"We welcome all of the opportunities," Welch said. "We anticipate that our revenue-generating program will (cover) any other requirements for hosting the Games."
Salt Lake already has planned for snowboarding, organizing committee vice president Dave Johnson said. Park City, the slalom ski venue, has agreed to build a snowboarding halfpipe and host all snowboarding events, he said.
The reportedly financially strapped Nagano Organizing Committee (NAOC) wants the International Ski Federation and the IOC to help pay for the unplanned new events.
But it wasn't clear Tuesday just how helpful either organization will be.
"It's not that we will blindly ask them for their assistance. We want to cooperate," NAOC Director General Makoto Kobayashi said at a press conference held just after Nagano's presentation to the IOC Executive Board.
After Nagano was asked to add the sport last year, organizers rounded up $5 million from the town of Yamanouchi, which is building a snowboarding park for the event at the Shiga Kogen ski area, already the site of alpine events.
Kobayashi said NAOC has been guaranteed it will receive 90 percent, "more or less," of the rest of the money needed to boost the number of events during the 1998 Winter Games from 64 to 68.
That's not how Marc Hodler, an IOC vice president from Switzerland, the president of the International Ski Federation and chairman of the IOC coordination commission for the Nagano Games, understood the negotiations.
Hodler told reporters no amount has been agreed upon. The International Ski Federation has agreed, however, to cover the cost of any snowboarding athletes who can't be accommodated in the Olympic Village.
NAOC is reported to be millions of dollars in the red. The organizing committee's first operations budget, funded mainly through Olympic revenues rather than government subsidies, won't be released until next spring.
Earlier this year, NAOC asked the IOC to take a smaller share of Olympic revenues to help offset huge losses in the $375 million contract with CBS caused by the declining value of the U.S. dollar.
The IOC isn't ready to give up its share of Olympic revenues anytime soon.
"The IOC believes it's best to try to help organizing committees, but at this stage, slightly two years before the Games, it's premature," IOC Director General Francois Carrard said.
Dick Pound, an IOC member from Canada and the head of the IOC commission on marketing, said Nagano will get help with the snowboarding costs - if needed.
"I don't think the cost will be that significant. If there are increased costs, we will discuss . . . what they are and how best they can be covered," Pound said.
The International Ski Federation would be expected to come up with most of any additional expense, he said. And the IOC could supplement that with a grant but not through a change in the revenue share.