An unidentified donor is pledging more than $1 million to make up part of a budget cut that threatened to “snuff” out the Olympic flame. SLOC president Mitt Romney said, “we have a number of anonymous donors we have not officially announced. I don’t know if any of them will remain anonymous for long”. The Salt Lake cauldron will sit high atop the University of Utah stadium where Olympic ceremonies will be held. It will need an expensive gas connection that has to be sturdy so it doesn’t fall, and must withstand winds of 80 mph. It should burn yellow, not blue. It also has to be a piece of bronze art. That cost is at least $2 million. Salt Lake’s cauldron design is practically a state secret. The cauldron will be sheathed in fabric as it’s erected and kept from public view until the opening ceremony on Feb. 8.
A brick at a time. Sales of bricks for the Olympic plaza in Salt Lake City are running far behind forecasts and marketers say it’s a sign of falling public support for the 2002 Winter Games. The Salt Lake Organizing Committee has sold slightly less than 11,000 bricks, about 190,000 fewer than were sold in Atlanta for a similar project at the 1996 Summer Games. For $50 participants can have a brick engraved and embedded in the floor of the Olympic Legacy Plaza. When the program was introduced last July, SLOC president Mitt Romney said Salt Lake didn’t expect to match Atlanta’s total but hoped to far outsell Sydney’s 5,000 bricks for the 2000 Games. Atlanta’s program earned organizers $10 million. So far, Salt Lake has brought in less than $500,000. While television ads promoting the bricks are working and 500 were sold in the first month, it may be too late.
Retired American athletes took part in the U.S. Olympic Committee’s (USOC) four-day athlete summit last week, giving athletes a chance to bond. The athletes hiked together, worked out, swapped stories, took part in challenges and made friends. The USOC hopes to build teamwork through the summit. Athletes gave motivational speeches and fielded questions.
Salt Lake’s organizing committee and Salt Lake City are to sign an agreement to split the cost of public services during the 2002 Winter Games. City crews plow snow, pick up trash and clean street for 500,000 downtown workers and residents each day during winter, but during the Olympics, planners expect to serve another 70,000 to 100,000 people. According to a draft agreement, SLOC will pay Salt Lake City more than $504,000 for city services during the Olympics, not including police and fire protection. The service contract is the first to be signed between a Utah venue city and Olympic organizers. The draft contract divides Salt Lake City services into two categories, “basic’ city services and “enhanced” city services that will be SLOC’s responsibility. During the Olympics, crews will sweep city streets every night, collect garbage every day and clear roads within 12 hours after a storm and haul the snow away. Forty per cent of the city’s police force will be dedicated to Olympic security, but that funding is covered by a $13 million sales-tax rebate and federal grants.
Greece has increased its budget for the 2004 Olympics by 7.6 per cent to $3.7 billion. But the increase in funds doesn’t include money being set aside for organizers, which is $1.57 billion for building a light rail system and a metro extension. Officials said money for the latter projects would come from the European Union. No figures were released, but the money should be considerable.
Greece has ironed out problems with Athens hoteliers, who were protesting plans to issue licenses for new luxury hotels in Athens. Under the new deal, new licenses will be issued, but for smaller hotels. Still unresolved is where tens of thousands of spectators will stay during the Olympics. Plans include housing them in cruise ships and cities near Athens.
Grab your bat. The Greek baseball federation announced that it will enter the European pool B championships next year in Athens, in preparation for the 2004 Olympic Games. As host of the 2004 Summer Games, Greece can enter a team in any sport without pre-qualification and the Hellenic Amateur Baseball Federation has recently been established. As there is no particular history of baseball in Greece, they’re looking for recruits. Any person of Greek descent with a least one grandparent (from either side of the family) who was born in Greece is eligible. The Baltimore Orioles have agreed to help co-ordinate the recruitment. And major league baseball will ship up to 1,000 pounds of equipment to Greece by September. It also has a full time employee in Athens to work with the federation and young people interested in learning the game.
Juan Antonio Samaranch, president of the International Olympic Committee, predicted that Athens was “certain” to host a successful Olympics in 2004. Samaranch said Athens organizers “have made significant progress”. “I consider Athens’ success certain” he was quoted as saying in the state-run Athens News Agency. Meanwhile, Jacques Rogge, a presidential candidate, was accompanying King Albert II on a tour of marble stadium that hosted the first modern Olympiad in 1896. The stadium will be used as part of the opening ceremony for the 2004 Games as well as for archery and the end of the marathon race. Rogge said, “basically, I’m satisfied with the progress, but this is not a visit for the coordination. It’s just a state visit on which I happened to be present”.
And finally, a dispute over the casual new look designed Tommy Hilfiger created for the U.S. Olympic athletes and the United States Olympic Committee, is headed for trial, tentatively set for next year. The USOC claims Hilfiger owes them $8 million for backing out of a deal to design parade outfits for the 2000, 2002, and 2004 U.S. Olympic and Paralympic teams and the 2003 Pan American Games team. In response, Hilfiger claims the two sides never signed a formal contract and that Olympic officials did not let him take free group photos of athletes for advertisements as originally agreed. According to court documents, Olympic officials had told Hilfiger they wanted a new look for the athletes, breaking from the traditional blazers, ties and slacks.
