ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, August 4, 1996 TAG: 9608050088
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Our Eyes in Atlanta
DATELINE: ATLANTA
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
NOTE: Above
MOVING THE MEDIA around in designated buses almost became an Olympic event, in and of itself.
Come Monday, it'll be all right...
No, I'm not Jimmy Buffett, but yes, I had a morning margarita at the beach volleyball venue. So, call me irresponsible, call me unreliable...
Call me tired. But whatever you do, don't call me a bus.
The men's marathon is scheduled this morning on closing day at the Atlanta Games, but I feel like I've been running it for more than two weeks.
If this is Tuesday, it must be Belgium in the women's team epee. I would have liked to see that, but I was foiled by the Olympic media bus system.
Just a little fencing humor there, and it's stuff like that that helps you get through the Olympics, which isn't as much wonderful as it is a wonder that it all works so well.
Then, there's the bus system.
Do you see a traffic pattern forming here?
Here's the thing about covering the Olympics. You really can't. Covering the Olympics is like going on a picnic and killing one fly. There are 20 others still buzzing around all of this luscious food.
And as Walter Cronkite probably said at an Olympics once, that's the way it is. I'm out at Stone Mountain Park at a terrific tennis match, and the U.S. is playing Cuba in women's volleyball at the Omni, and five sports are going on at the same time in the Georgia World Congress Center.
The other day, someone on the phone from the big office at the corner of Second and Campbell asked, ``Have you been to any good places to eat?''
Does Morrison's Cafeteria count?
Actually, the experience and entrees there reminded me of the Games. You get in line. You pick what you think looks good. You consume it - and sometimes you wish you'd picked something else.
The Olympics start somewhere each day about 9 a.m. The Games don't end until about midnight. A $3.50 hot dog, $2 pretzel and $2.75 bottle of water taste pretty good about 6p.m.
The crowds are unbelievable, in some places almost as unmovable as the traffic. You cannot cover the Olympics like Michael Johnson. The buses don't run that fast.
The Olympics is best looked on as a smorgasbord to be savored, and getting to as many venues as possible in one day, while still finding time to write and eat, is a worthy goal.
It's also frustrating. Any good journalist wants to know as much as possible about what's going on. At the Super Bowl, it's pretty easy. At the Olympics, you can't humanly do it.
One writer boasted the other day that he'd been to see the Dream Team play four times. Why didn't he just go to the NBA playoffs? There are many other teams of dreamers here that are more interesting.
Another frustration is that some newspapers can't get seats at the marquee events in some venues, either because of their size or the fact they weren't at the Olympic Trials or a recent Pan American Games. I've been part of that large group.
All U.S. journalists are sanctioned and accredited - and get seats, where available - through the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC). Each foreign journalist goes through his national organizing committee (NOC), too.
Yes, we get in free, but there are tough tickets, just as paying spectators have found. There are 17,500 journalists in Atlanta, or 1.7 for every Olympic athlete. That's double the number of press that covered the Montreal Games 20 years.
And only about half of those 17,500 seemed to be in front of Richard Jewell's apartment the other night. That has been a media circus, an embarrassing one.
I drove by there - it's close to my hotel, which ranks 110th among 155 Atlanta hotels in one listing. I stopped only briefly to view the bizarre atmosphere.
There's probably a reason more media didn't go to Jewell's place. It wasn't a stop on the Olympic transportation system, which has improved much since the Games began but is still unreliable at best.
Trying to ride the MARTA rail system isn't much better. As one woman in a humanity sandwich said on a train the other day, ``I haven't been this close to another human being since I gave birth.''
Which brings us to the MTM. If you're going to cover the Olympics, you have to learn your alphabet. There's the IOC, the USOC, the MPC, the IBC, the GWGC, and the MTM - the dreaded MTM.
That's short for ``Media Transportation Mall.'' It's a parking lot across from the Atlanta Civic Center that for three weeks has been turned into a bus station. It's where the press comes and goes to and from hotels, venues and the press and broadcast centers.
I can't count the hours I've spent in the MTM waiting for a bus when I'd have rather been watching someone play something.
I was there one morning to catch a 4:55 a.m. - that's not a typo - bus to Columbus, Ga., with six other writers for the first softball game in Olympic history.
The bus didn't show. Fifty minutes later, a van was called and we rode the 105 miles to see Dr. Dot Richardson hit the first Olympic softball home run. It was worth it, but the MTM isn't a place in which you'd want to spend much time.
To the media, whose favorite Olympic disciplines are synchronized swearing and rhythmic complaining, MTM is a four-letter word. Unfortunately, I'll probably remember it just like I'll remember Muhammad Ali, Kerri Strug, Michael Johnson, Michelle Smith and Bruce Baumgartner.
I enjoy the variety in sport, and maybe that's why the Atlanta Games have seemed shorter than 17 days. I have learned more about shooting, field hockey, synchronized swimming, and how to put a new spin on a pingpong - sorry, table tennis - ball.
I never covered an Olympics before, and I may never cover one again. Whether it happens or not, I have managed to see and write what the Olympics are about, those once-in-a-lifetime experiences.
A week ago, I was in the Georgia World Congress Center, watching weightlifting and handball. I decided to check out the table tennis, which I had seen and been amazed by two days earlier.
I started watching a men's singles match. The names didn't mean much. When I checked the schedule, the nations did.
It was South Korea against North Korea.
They were standing at the same table. Their Demilitarized Zone was a cloth net only a few inches high.
The South Korean won, but it didn't matter. I thought that match, that competition between nations that don't even speak, is what the Olympics are about.
I felt better about the world.
Then, I had to catch a bus.
LENGTH: Long : 123 linesby CNB