THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, June 8, 1996 TAG: 9606060092
SECTION: TELEVISION PAGE: 03 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LARRY BONKO, TELEVISION COLUMNIST
LENGTH: 125 lines
NEXT MONTH, all roads lead to Atlanta for the 1996 Olympics, the modern games' centennial celebration to be televised for hours and hours by NBC. Television seems impatient for the competition to begin, rushing things a bit with four specials and a film in June about superior athletes and what makes them that way.
The Discovery Channel on Sunday at 9 p.m. uses the scientific approach in analyzing what separates the world-class athlete from the rest of us duffers in ``Ultimate Athlete: Pushing the Limit.'' This is about the swiftest, highest and strongest among us.
Discovery visits sites in the United States, Kenya and China, where a marvelous scene unfolds: dozens of grade-school children practicing table tennis at a furious pace in a great hall. Even after two hours of exploring the subject, the producers cannot come up with a simple answer to the question that gave birth to this special - what makes an athlete great?
Is it the training? The coaching? An athlete's genes? His or her ability to bear pain? Or is it simply being born in the right place at the right time, as may be the case with the long-distance runners from Kenya's Rift Valley?
Children there run barefoot five to 10 miles a day to get to school. Is such a lifestyle the reason the Kenyans have produced more than a dozen champion runners? Or is it their simple diet, training and dedication?
``If there is any key ingredient in becoming the ultimate athlete, it's the understanding that if you want to be great, you have to start young and have little else on your mind,'' said producer Scott Hicks.
And practice, practice, practice.
``Carl Lewis is an eight-time gold medalist and yet he practices constantly to correct little errors,'' said Hicks.
While The Discovery Channel concentrates on the muscle and bone of championship athletics, Home Box Office on Tuesday at 3 p.m. focuses on the intangibles in ``Spirit of the Games.'' This is easier to watch than the clinical ``Ultimate Athlete: Pushing the Limit,'' principally because executive producer Ross Greenburg uses interesting old color home movies of Olympic athletes.
It gives the special a casual, intimate feel. You see the athletes when they are caught off guard, when they are loose, smiling, relaxed.
Before big business and television intruded, amateur sports as defined by the Olympics were a simple, even charming enterprise. As HBO shows here, once upon a time, Olympic athletes worked regular jobs, and trained only after they punched out on the timeclock.
No sponsors. No corporate backers. No universal training site. No nothing.
``We could not accept money from any sponsors. Not a penny. My mother read tea leaves to earn money so I could take a trolley from Long Beach to Los Angeles, where I trained,'' said Pat McCormick, an Olympian in 1952 and 1956. Later this month, on June 16 at 8 p.m., Lifetime tells the story of an Olympic athlete who achieved that razors'e edge of excellence with a terrific handicap - Graves' disease or exophthalmic goiter. Charlayne Woodward stars in ``Run for the Dream: The Gail Devers Story.'' On June 16 at 9 p.m., CNN premieres ``Guarding the Games.'' On June 30 at 9 p.m., TBS ushers in the summer games with ``America's Greatest Olympians.''
You get all of that on the tube even before the first Olympic athlete arrives in Atlanta. TV in the week ahead has more to offer than running, jumping and diving, however.
There is talking.
Rosie O'Donnell walks away from a pretty busy movie career to become a talk-show host five days a week. ``The Rosie O'Donnell Show'' premieres Monday at 11 a.m. on WAVY. Like the old Merv Griffin show, it will have music, O'Donnell's monologue and guests plugging things.
Speaking of music, if you missed the CBS miniseries about the life and times of Ol' Blue Eyes, here's your chance to catch up with it and revel in the man's 80 years of doing it his way. ``Sinatra'' runs again on WTKR Sunday at 8 p.m.
If, before that, you want to see Frank Sinatra in the flesh instead of some actor doing an impression of him, check out WHRO Saturday at 9 p.m.
Elsewhere on the tube in the week to come, A&E brings back the unlikeliest of TV heroes - he smokes, drinks, gambles hard, needs to lose 50 pounds and gets beat up a lot. Robbie Coltrane is terrific in ``Cracker: Brotherly Love'' on Tuesday at 9 p.m. . . . Oh, no. Not another awards show. Oh, yes. The Nashville Network on Monday night at 8 puts on the ``TNN Music City News Country Awards'' with three co-hosts - Lorrie Morgan, Martina McBride and Mark Miller - from Nashville. The fans voted for these awards. . . . Oh, no. Not another awards show. Oh, yes. And this one is different. It's outrageous. ``The 1996 MTV Movie Awards'' will be on cable Thursday night at 9 with Ben Stiller and Janeane Garofalo aboard as co-hosts. Would you believe that ``Clueless'' is up for best movie? And that there is an award for best fight?
With Norfolk the home of a Ford assembly plant, all eyes hereabouts should be glued to the tube Monday at 9 p.m. when PBS begins the three-part series, ``America on Wheels.'' This is a miniseries with a light touch at times, but there was nothing lighthearted about Henry Ford's dehumanizing assembly lines that turned out the Model T. PBS delves into car-happy Americans and their passion for yellow signs that say ``Mother-in-law in trunk,'' Volkswagens with big wind-up keys in the back and hula-dancing dolls in the rear windows. Return to the days of the Packard, Nash, DeSoto and Tucker Torpedo
. . . The Sci-Fi Channel, realizing that you can only pull in so many viewers with reruns, has gone lately to original programming such as ``Within the Rock,'' which premieres Saturday night at 8. It's a few years into the future when a runaway moon called Galileo's Child is about to collide with Earth. The solution is to send a crew to the moon with mega-explosives to divert its path of doom. Where is Superman when you need him?
In the midst of the rerun desert, it's nice to see the cable channels giving us fresh programs. American Movie Classics also obliges this month with four new episodes of ``Remember WENN,'' the series that revives the golden age of radio. It's on Saturdays at 9 p.m. and Wednesday at 8 p.m.
. . . If kids won't listen to their parents and teachers, will they pay attention when famous athletes speak to them? Nickelodeon thinks so. It asked pro basketball superstar Shaquille O'Neal to talk about the tough parts of growing up in ``Sports Theater'' Saturday night at 9.
. . . It's a story that could have been told in far less time. HBO devotes 2 1/2 hours to a special, ``Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills,'' which premieres Monday night at 8. It's about the kidnapping, sexual abuse and killings of three 8-year-old boys and the teens arrested for the crimes. Even if you watch for all 150 minutes, you won't learn if the boys were done in by a serial killer or three weird kids who like Satanic rituals. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
"Ultimate Athlete: Pushing the Limit" includes a look at world-class
Australian sprint cyclists, shown during practice in Adelaide. The
program airs at 9 p.m. Sunday on the Discovery Channel.
Kenyan distance runners train in the early morning hours.
AUTOMOBILE HALL OF FAME
``America on Wheels,'' a three-part series, begins Monday at 9 p.m.
on WHRO.
MTV
Janeane Garofalo co-hosts ``The 1996 MTV Movie Awards'' Thursday
night at 9. by CNB