INTERVIEW: Larysa Barabash Temple on Ukraine's preparations for the Olympics
Larysa Barabash Temple is the U.S. representative to the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine. She played an integral organizational role in Ukraine's successful effort at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games and will be deeply involved in Ukraine's preparations for the Salt Lake City Games in 2002.
The Ukrainian Weekly's Kyiv Press Bureau editor Roman Woronowycz recently met with Ms. Temple in Kyiv to discuss current NOC-Ukraine preparations for the 2000 Olympic Games set for Sydney, Australia.
Ms. Temple also commented on the controversy that has developed among sports enthusiasts in the Ukrainian diaspora regarding the November 1998 signing of an agreement between the state sports committees of Russia and Ukraine to cooperate in the development of their individual Olympic programs. Following is the edited interview.
PART I
Q: Is there going to be a fund-raising effort for Sydney similar to the one organized for the Atlanta Games?
A: I have to speak in complex in terms of Sydney and Salt Lake City (the 2002 Summer Games) because you can't attempt any kind of sponsorship or even financial negotiations if you start to divide up Games.
Fund-raising efforts can't ever remain static. Fund-raising must always have its own dynamic and has to have growth. You can't maintain the status quo and do the same thing over and over again. In particular the dependence on diaspora funding has to decrease, the dependence on local funding here has to increase. Professional sponsorship and a professional financial structure has to take shape.
You can't repeat even a very successful effort.
Q: Will you then be asking the various sports organizations and affiliations of the Ukrainian diaspora in the United States and Canada to donate money?
A: Money, in terms of sports, is always a necessity. [The giving of] money for sports is done willingly by those who are very enthusiastic about sports. It is less of a patriotic duty and more about "I love sports and therefore I contribute."
Of course you try to make sure that every dollar that you can possibly raise, you raise. I really try to work with a conscience and try to make sure that my efforts are far more concentrated on corporate sponsorship than they are on community funds. But I also understand that regardless of how well you build the sponsorship system to pay for, say the training facilities that are required even a year prior to the Olympic Games, you still have to have that initial seed money. In Atlanta, just as an example, we used as a base that we could afford $25 per person per day. We simply couldn't afford any more, even though we had one of the world's best teams.
So where the costs ran upward of $70 to $120 a day that was all paid for by local sponsors, but we still had to pay the $25 per person per day, and that is where we used a lot of community funds.
That seed money is always necessary, but we have to develop the other far more, because it is absolutely unfair and unreasonable to depend on the diaspora. When you are talking about the Olympics you are talking about a multi-million dollar project, and the funding for that has to be stable and it has to be corporate.
Presidents change every four years, or five, but financial structures remain in place. Even when you look at the United States Olympic Committee, they have a vertical financial structure. They have a hired person who handles funding, and the presidents come and go, but their financial structure doesn't change.
Whereas in Ukraine when there is an election there is an absolute ruination of the entire system, and they start all over again. So they do not understand the principle of a vertical financial structure, and I think that in essence is a huge difficulty in continuing any type of work.
It's impossible for us to preach here, but it is also impossible for us not to work at our level because even though the essence of the work of the sports system is here, their competitions are abroad. In other words, they work in their own world, they compete in ours, so they have to listen to us in ours.
Q: How does Ukrainian government financing of the NOC compare to the U.S. and Poland, for example?
A: There is no government financing in the U.S. The only way you can even get to government financing in the U.S. is that there are certain government grants given to universities, and part of it goes to the sports system. But there is no government financing of the USOC.
You can't possibly compare the USOC to any other Olympic committee in the world, because their financing is so stable and it is just such a broad system that we can only dream about that [for Ukraine].
But if you consider that Ukraine's preparation costs are a million dollars and U.S. preparation costs are a billion dollars, we simply need less. We can still do it at a lower cost because the U.S. simply deals in much higher numbers [of athletes].
I really was successful at [keeping costs down] by making sure that the costs of hotel, food and other things were held to an absolute minimum. We did not spend any extra money on facilities. But training, sports equipment and anything that was required for the actual performance of athletes was at Olympic par, and I would never accept anything less.
We have to think in those terms. I am terribly careful to make sure that unessential spending is kept at a minimum.
Q: How about in comparison to Poland, or France?
A: Obviously in other countries, developed countries, their ability [to fund sports programs] is much greater. Here, even though government funding is proportional to the needs, the reality of what comes in is a tiny percent of the budgetary allotment. The financial shortfalls here also affect sports, obviously.
I don't currently have the percentages, and I don't think that the statistics are available because private funding is basically on the federation level.
The federations secure themselves. The NOC is government-funded, plus what they get from Olympic Solidarity, IOC money that goes to the various Olympic committees and then is distributed to the federations.
Adidas and Coca-Cola are currently the two big private sponsors.
Q: How much Ukrainian private funding is there in the NOC, or to the federations. Is it sufficient, or insufficient or is it simply non-existent. In other words, is there such a thing as private, charitable funding by Ukrainian firms to Ukrainian Olympic institutions?
A: Absolutely, but there is not as much funding to NOC-Ukraine as there is on the federation level. The federations that have serious presidents, who are seriously involved in searching out financing, are the ones that compete really well at the international level.
Q: Could you give some examples?
A: The ones that I can name immediately are wrestling, weightlifting, biathlon.
Look at our biathlon team. Today they are the best women's team in the world. Everybody was shocked at their performance in Norway. They have a federation president who seeks out funding.
Basketball is another one. Judo is one that has good federation people. Swimming has good people.
Q: Track and field?
A: Track and field has a world structure. There (Valerii) Borzov (IOC member, former NOC-Ukraine president, former minister of sports and youth of Ukraine) is the president.
I don't want to be exclusive here because I may have missed somebody. But as examples, those federations that have strong federation presidents are the ones that do well.
If you look at the federations, they are almost entirely self-sustaining. There is so little budgetary support given them today and it continues to be cut.
Q: Some say that the 1996 Olympics still reflected a certain amount of Soviet-era training, that a lot of the talent in these athletes was developed during that time, even though it was further nurtured during the earlier years of an independent Ukraine. Given that, the thinking is that the 2000 Olympics will be the ones in which the truly Ukrainian-developed talent will show itself.
A: I consider that mythology. In some sports you have older athletes and you can consider them Soviet-developed athletes. But when you look at gymnasts, they are 14 years old. Well, Ukraine has been an independent country now for eight years. They're not Soviet-developed athletes - that's silly. They were tiny little children. So that certainly cannot be generalized and it does not make any sense unless you look at each sport individually and say, "okay, here is a Soviet-developed athlete."
Q: Generally speaking then, is the next crop of Ukrainian Olympians going to be as good as the last crop?
A: Right now, even though all of the indicators for Ukraine are moving downwards, the indicators for sports are stable or going up, and I am speaking strictly statistically. This is in terms of medals at various international levels: junior teams, national teams and the Olympic-caliber team, which is drawn from the national teams.
If you look at the situation today, it is stable or slightly rising; and we can expect stable and slightly rising, except in a situation where individual teams are unable to complete their cycle of preparation and training as their federation sees fit.
In Atlanta we were able to secure the preparations exactly and absolutely across the board as each federation saw fit for their athletes. So if they needed 17 days (of training) and two days of swimming pool and a sauna, we had all of the elements of athletic preparation that they requested of us.
If those elements are not available to us in Sydney, that's where the final difference comes in between medals and fourth to 10th place. We are talking about world-class athletes, but they need that final element of preparation. The only place that I can see where we could have a problem in Sydney is if the financing does not become available for the final element of preparation as determined by the federations.
The one absolute constant I have found here in my work when I deal with the federations is their knowledge and their understanding of their sport - their understanding of sports education, sports medicine, sports science. I am astounded by their professionalism toward their sport in spite of the difficulties they are constantly confronted with.
Q: Could you explain the term "professionalism"?
A: When I come and I speak with the federations and ask them what they need for Salt Lake City, they say, "We have a championship in '99, we have a championship in 2001. What we need is an Olympic-level facility 10 days prior to the '99 championship. We have to have one at an elevation of 1,200 feet. We need seven days for the athletes. We have to have two days' rest."
They need a sauna, they need this, we need that. I am saying that they have the complete technical ability to predict what it will take.
Q: So they never say simply "give us the money and we will take care of it on our own"?
A: Absolutely never. What they request of me is to find the best possible facilities they are asking for. This is one place where the interaction between the diaspora and the NOC is truly positive in the sense that the athletes of the Ukrainian national team must compete in our world.
We know how to make reservations, how to make arrangements and to ensure that all of the local arrangements are taken care of. That is not cost, that is simply legwork and telephone work, and to make sure they have the best possible arrangements made to take care of their needs. So one of the things they expect from me is the best possible arrangements.
By the way, that is really where the committee in Sydney is doing such an excellent job. They are doing a superb job on the arrangements.
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, April 18, 1999, No. 16, Vol. LXVII
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