PERSPECTIVES: Memories of Montreal (08/15/04)

PERSPECTIVES

by Andrew Fedynsky

Memories of Montreal

Despite controversies, the Olympic Games are still the premier sporting event in the world. And so, like billions of others, I'll be parked in front of the TV set enjoying the spectacle and drama. As I do, my thoughts will surely go back to the Montreal Olympics, which I attended as a spectator 28 years ago. Interestingly enough, I was 28 years old back then. So from where I stand today, the summer of 1976 was the mid-point of my life. And what a grand time it was.

Earlier that spring, the renowned Ukrainian rights activist and head of Smoloskyp Publishing Osyp Zinkewycz, had called to invite me to join a group of young Ukrainian Americans and Ukrainian Canadians who were going to Montreal to focus attention on the issue of Ukraine's right to field its own Olympic team. After all, the argument went, the Ukrainian SSR was a member of the United Nations and, according to various treaties, constitutions and agreements, was at least nominally a sovereign state. So why shouldn't Ukraine have a separate Olympic team? After all, Puerto Rico had one.

The Soviets viewed that as incendiary. They feared a separate Ukrainian Olympic team would help to ignite nationalist fires they had spent half a century dousing, at the cost of millions of lives. It didn't help that a disproportionate number of Soviet athletes were Ukrainians, popularly known as "Russians." That was more reason to oppose a separate Ukrainian team. The same objection applied to an Armenian, Georgian, Estonian, Lithuanian or Uzbek team, for if each of these so-called republics were to field its own team, the medal count for the USSR would be substantially lower, diminishing the political pay-off for the Soviets who cited athletic prowess as proof of ideological superiority. So, for them, the idea of a Ukrainian Olympic team was a non-starter. The International Olympic Committee agreed with the Soviet position.

But none of that stopped Mr. Zinkewych. He prepared lists of Soviet Ukrainian Olympic champions from the past, along with a roster of Ukrainians representing the USSR. At the same time, he recruited a few dozen young people, including me, to come to Montreal. He arranged places for us to stay in the vibrant Ukrainian community there, set up office space and financing and lined up tickets to events.

Montreal was a thrill I'll never forget. For three weeks we not only passed out fliers, prepared press releases and held news conferences, we also attended events and even got to mingle with world-class athletes. I was in the stadium when Hungary's Miklos Nemeth threw the javelin more than 300 feet for a gold medal and a world record. I saw America's Edwin Moses win the 400-meter hurdles. I was in the hall when Poland played Cuba in an epic volleyball match that ended with a 20-18 Polish win in the fifth and final game. I rose to my feet respectfully when Queen Elizabeth entered the arena for the diving competition and later leaped to my feet when a young Oleh Blokhin from Kyiv Dynamo appeared on the soccer field with the Soviet team. I joined people from six continents to dance in the streets of Old Town until late into the night. Ah youth!

Yet nothing matched the men's 100-meter dash. Because the winner is traditionally dubbed the "World's Fastest Human," this premier sprint is usually scheduled toward the end of the Games to build the drama. The defending Olympic Champion was Valerii Borzov of the Soviet Union. I had seen him four years before on TV from the Munich Games, when Jim McKay of ABC Sports told viewers that the fabulous sprinter, winner of two gold medals and a silver, wasn't Russian at all - he's Ukrainian. Wow!

The 100 meters in Montreal, therefore, was a hot ticket, and I was lucky to have one. By that time, those of us promoting Ukraine's right to participate in the Games had received a good bit of attention. The Soviets certainly knew we were there. Take women's handball, where the Soviet Union was represented by Spartak from Kyiv. In a game against Romania, diaspora Ukrainians waved the blue- and-yellow banner and cheered the Soviet women with chants of "Ukraina! Ukraina!" On the other side of the arena, Soviet coaches and officials responded with "Soyuz! Soyuz!" while waving the red flag with the yellow hammer and sickle. By week three, television and newspapers were devoting coverage to the issue of Ukraine's exclusion from the Olympic Games and by the time of the 100-meter dash, there was definitely a buzz over this issue.

Rumors were rampant: "Borzov has defected," someone said. "Not so. They drugged him and he's in a KGB prison," someone else knew for a fact. "He's dead. They staged a fake accident," was yet another story. Would Borzov, the "World's Fastest Human," answer the referee's call to take his mark? Everyone was equally ignorant, equally expectant.

Well, Borzov did show up and made an extremely brave statement doing so. That year, the Soviet track team wore a blue warm-up suit emblazoned with "CCCP" (USSR) and that's what Borzov wore, of course - only over the blue pants, he had a pair of nylon pull-up pants - they were yellow. Few among the 60,000 spectators in Olympic Stadium saw any significance to that, but I did along with a select group of others.

Like the other sprinters, Borzov warmed up before slowly removing the nylon pull-ups and his warm-up suit and finally backing into the starting blocks. In the finals, he came in third, ceding his title as "World's Fastest Human" to Hasely Crawford of Trinidad and Tobago, an island nation in the Caribbean, the size of Delaware with a population of a million. It was their moment of glory. Good for them.

As a former track coach, I find it amazing that Borzov ran the exact same time in Montreal to win a bronze medal that he ran in Munich for the gold: 10.14 seconds. Today, 28 years later, he's Ukraine's minister of youth and sports. Earlier this year, he carried the Olympic torch as it made its way to Athens. As for Crawford, he's a national hero with postage stamps issued in his honor and an airplane and sports stadium named after him.

Hundreds of thousands of athletes, coaches, officials and tourists will be in Athens for the Olympics. Each will leave with a story from this special event that's nearly 3,000 years old. My own story intertwines however briefly with the story of one of history's greatest athletes and with the story of an unsung hero of Ukraine's liberation, how Ukraine's flag made its first appearance on an Olympic playing field: the blue top emblazoned with "CCCP" and the yellow pants that Valerii Borzov wore for the 100 meters in Montreal. I hope he, Osyp Zinkewych, and everyone else enjoy the 2004 Games as much as I will, parked as I'll be in front of a TV set, comfortably positioned midway between then and now, marveling at the skill of today's athletes and wondering at the way 28 years can fly by like a 100-meter dash. Wow!

Andrew Fedynsky's e-mail address is: fedynsky@stratos.net.

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