NAGANO, Japan - The United States Olympic Committee has a $4 million budget to support its 457-member Olympic delegation during the Nagano Games. Here's a sampling of the special services the USOC is providing:
- While in Osaka, U.S. athletes received credentials, uniforms and duffel bags filled with thousands of dollars worth of corporate-donated freebies. And they can ship those freebies back to the United States via Olympic sponsor UPS at no charge.- U.S. athletes with squeamish stomachs don't have to worry about eating sushi, eel or any other ethnic food. The USOC has shipped enough food to Japan for U.S. athletes to have plenty of options.
- Each U.S. athlete can take a few days off from the Games and fly two hours south to Guam for some rest, relaxation and warmer weather.
DOWNHILL TUNEUP: While opening ceremonies were being conducted in Nagano, six members of the U.S. Women's Technical Ski Team squeezed in their final hours of training locally at Park City Mountain Resort. The women participated in the first-half of a Giant Slalom on Friday and were scheduled to compete in the second half on Saturday.
DO THEY CALL IT BILLY-BOBSLED?: Half of the 12-man U.S. Bobsled team make their homes in Georgia, which is a far cry from the European courses and the U.S. training runs at Park City and Lake Placid.
Maybe the Peach State connection serves as the American equivalent of the increased interest of warm-weather countries in the Winter Olympic sport. Jamaica's Rasta Rocket at the 1988 Calgary Games served as inspiration for the movie "Cool Runnings" and the likes of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa and Trinidad have sent their own bobsled teams this year.
"The people in Georgia are not real focused on bobsled," Georgia native and U.S. pusher Chip Minton told the Associated Press. "But really, no one is. No one does it. There are people who ski and skate. . . . But no one bobsleds, just the 12 guys who are on the U.S. team. When people do watch bobsledding on TV, they just want to see someone crash. Like NASCAR racing," he added, putting it proper perspective for fellow Southerners.
DRUG CASE DRAGS ON: One of those Georgian bobsledders, Mark Dionne, has appealed his IOC suspension after testing for an illegal substance. Dionne says the substance is part of the cold medication he was taking earlier in the fall. Meantime, he cannot participate in sanctioned events, including joining the U.S. contingent of athletes for today's opening ceremonies.
HOMEFIELD ADVANTAGE: Japan is taking a page from the Norwegians in hopes of having the host Olympic nation look good in overall medal counts.
Well in advance of the Nagano Games, the Japanese Olympic committee instituted a program called "Go Go Japan." Olympic athletes worked for a corporate sponsor, which paid living and training expenses.
Norway had a similar program going into the 1994 Lillehammer Games and finished with its best-ever 10 medals.
The Japanese have strong teams in speed skating, ski jumping and Nordic combined - the latter being the competition where Japan is the two-time defending gold-medalist in team competition. One of its weakest events will be men's ice hockey, with the national federation sending out an all-points bulletin for hockey players with any experience and some sort of Japanese ancestry.
JUMPING IN JAPAN: What is likely to be the most-covered winter event by the Japanese media during the Nagano Olympics? Believe it or not, it will be ski jumping - for two reasons.
First, the host nation's own team is a talented squad jumping on its home soil. Second, the Japanese haven't forgotten its jumping success the last time the Olympics were hosted in the Land of the Rising Sun.
Going into the 1972 Sapporo Olympics, Japan had claimed only one Winter Olympics medal.
In the normal hill (90-meter) jumping, Japan's Yukio Kasaya - who was coming off several strong pre-Olympic showings - was the hometown boy from Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido, where the Games were being held. Teammates Akisugu Konno and Seiji Aochi also hailed from Hokkaido.
Having logged some 10,000 jumps since the age of 11, Kasaya posted the best jump of each Olympic round and was joined by Konno and Aochi for a Japanese 1-2-3 sweep - the only medals earned by Japan in Sapporo.
BROKEN RECORDS: This may sound like a broken record, but Nagano already has been the site of a number of Olympic records and firsts - and the Games have yet to begin.
Among the noteworthy marks and firsts:
- 2,450 athletes will represent 72 different countries, while nearly 8,000 members of the media will outnumber athletes by more than a 3-to-1 margin.
- Three new sports have been added to the official Olympic agenda: women's hockey, snowboarding and curling.
- Considered the largest Winter Olympics, the total bill for Nagano's efforts is expected to cost $10.5 billion, about twice that of the 1996 Atlanta Summer Games.
- Of all the host cities, Nagano is geographically situated the farthest south and the closest to the equator.
- Professional players from National Hockey League will be making their debut in men's hockey.
- A 50 percent discount has been offered on all regular Olympic event tickets for schoolchildren ages 6 to 14.
- The Spiral, Nagano's bobsled and luge track, is the first of its kind throughout the world to feature not one but two uphill sections.
- Official staff uniforms are made from fully recyclable materials.
- The Nagano Olympic accreditation card is a three-in-one pass - an Olympic identification card, an event-entrance permit and a government-issued visa to enter Japan.