From: clin@eng.umd.edu (Charles Lin)
Subject: Re: USA Tennis Players and the Olympic Village
Reply-To: clin@eng.umd.edu (Charles C. Lin)
Organization: College of Engineering, Maryversity of Uniland, College Park
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 21:48:58 GMT

In article <1992Aug14.194447.12864@wuecl.wustl.edu>, ac1@cec2.wustl.edu (Anuj Chandra) writes:
> The latest issue of Sports Illustrated had an article on Courier's
> Stay at the Olympic Village. Apparently, while all the American 
> tennis  players (Men & women) wimped out and checked out early into $400 hotel
> suites, Courier decided to sample the Olympic spirit. Well 2 days 
> before his upset match he decided that he too had had enough and so 
> checked out to a hotel.
> 
> The point of my article is that US tennis players and other wealthy sport-
> stars from the US are wimps, are spoiled and have no respect for the
> "Olympic Spirit". They considers themselves elite. Take the example
> of Edberg, becker, Graf, Ivanesaveic (sp ?) and other non American tennis 
> players. They ALL stayed at the village. To them the olympics meant
> alot more: essentially, to share 2 weeks with the best athletes from
> all overthe world, and  not laze around in a hotel.
> 
> US proathletes(which includes tennis players) are rich and spoiled and 
> the Olympic spirit means very little to them. Consequently
> proatheletes should be banned from the Olympics, as was the case 
> sometime ago.
> 

  The article seemed to try to make it look like Courier
was the sole person holding out while the others left quite
quickly.  It made it appear that he felt bad (whether or not
is hard to say as there is always some artistic license to
slant the story one way or the other) to have to leave, but
had to decide between facilties that seemed poor, and losing.
Turns out he lost anyway.

   The article mentions that the sites were not air-conditioned
(of course, one might consider having air-condition spoiled,
but then even moderate incomes in the US have AC.  Not to
say other countries have this luxury though) which is a little
sad since you would think that a host nation ought to provide
some level of comfort instead of making everything depend
on the Olympic spirit to get people through.   Running water
was supposedly the incident that made Chang leave.  Sampras
didn't stay long either.  My guess is that if the facilities
had been a bit more reasonable, they would have stayed since
they made some attempt to do so (unlike the basketball team,
who I think shouldn't have stayed due to their popularity).
There's leaving because a place is uncomfortable and may
lead to poor performances, and there's leaving because you
just want to avoid the other folks and be by yourself.
Of course, only the wealthier athletes could afford to leave.

   Finally, it was mentioned that some sort of internal
e-mail was being used at the Olympics, and Courier had
corresponded with some swimmer.  This was mentioned
earlier in this news group.   Seems a lot of people
were fascinated at this since it meant there was a quick
discreet way of meeting or talking to people that one
might be too shy to meet in person.

    As much as Sports Illustrated has a different style
than Tennis, they seem to go more personal than Tennis.
Tennis does player profiles, too (and is one of the
main reason I think it fared better than World Tennis/
Tennis Illustrated), but not usually in the context
of a particular tournament or some day to day event.
It's tough for Tennis to do that as it it a monthly
magazine which must have articles written a month or
two in advance (meaning most info in the magazine is usually
two months old), as opposed to Sports Illustrated,
a weekly magazine that is rarely more than a few days
old.  I would like to see a tennis magazine that
more closely emulates that style.  I.e., it should
do what Tennis does only better.

--
Charles Lin
clin@eng.umd.edu