Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, January 29, 1994                   TAG: 9401290022
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LILLEHAMMER, NORWAY                                LENGTH: Medium

WHERE ELSE COULD YOU FIND REAL OLYMPIC GOAT CHEESE?

How about the Official Goat Cheese or the Official Pickled Herring or the Official Cheese Slicer?

For the Lillehammer Games to be held Feb. 12-27, there are about 500 official licensed products, from official T-shirts to official skis. There also are hundreds of products, from sardines to cowbells, provided by the official suppliers to the Games.

Official Olympic products are so popular that even Norwegian sheep, goats and cows are wearing them.

"One of the conditions of being allowed to make a licensed product was that the manufacturer had a national distribution network," said Judith Gloppen of the organizing committee's licensing office. "The Moen Cowbell Factory said that was no problem on the official cowbells, because it delivers bells to almost every sheep in the country."

Gloppen said the factory claims that livestock all over Norway are wearing official Lillehammer cowbells, even though there are no athletes around to cheer on.

The Lillehammer Olympic Organizing Committee has so far sold almost $17 million in licensed products, more than six times original projections, Gloppen said.

Another $11.7 million came from companies that bought the rights to be official suppliers of food, drink, cars, credit cards, televisions and just about everything else.

Most of the trinkets, products and souvenirs are of high quality, made of wool, pewter, steel, wood or other natural materials Norwegians have been using since Viking times.

"I think that is why they have sold so well. Plus that our quality control has been very strict," Gloppen said.

She said 12 million official Olympic pins have been made, or nearly three each for every man, woman and child in the country.

And things like official goat cheese - a brown cube of cheese pressed with Olympic symbols - and official canned fish seem perfectly natural to Norwegians, who love to spread either on bread, official or otherwise.

At grocery stores, there is indeed official bread, as well as milk, snacks, soft drinks, fruit juice and beer.

At the Official Store of the 1994 Winter Games, near the organizing committee headquarters in Lillehammer, there are hundreds of official products.

Outside the shop, visitors often stop to have their pictures taken with life-sized wooden statues of Haakon and Kristin, the Viking children who are the official mascots of the Games.

Smaller Haakons and Kristins are available as statues, key rings, dolls, paper cutouts, on knife and cheese-slicer handles, and T-shirts.

There also are official sweaters, jackets, hats, headbands, sunglasses and ties. No official underwear was spotted.

Around the corner, the Official Store of the 1996 Atlanta Games sells more official products.

One Lillehammer T-shirt seems to be more official than the rest: Official countdown T-shirts, one for each day starting 1,000 days before the Games, are auctioned off near the official countdown monument of the Lillehammer Games. The highest bid so far was $3,700.

One of the few things that is not official - to the intense irritation of many Norwegians - is the flame they lit in Morgedal, a valley they call "The Cradle of Modern Skiing."

The Morgedal flame, which Norwegians have been carrying in a national relay, probably will be forced off the torch when the original Olympians, the Greeks, reach Norway with the official Olympic flame next month.