Pan Am Games Set to Unfold : Once Again, They Seem a Showcase for U.S. Athletes

In the world of international athletics, the Pan American Games have been little more than a pre-Olympic showing of Yankee might: Swoop into a Central or South American country with a well-trained, well-financed team and leave two weeks later with most of the medals, making snide remarks about the lack of sophistication of the host country.

This year will be different.

The games are in Indianapolis. Jokes about functioning indoor plumbing are out. Wholesome Hoosier hospitality is in.

Still, some things never change. The games, which will open today and end Aug. 23, should be another show of U.S. athletic power.

The United States has more athletes, more coaches, more of just about everything than the 37 other countries entered. It is likely that the U.S. team will surpass its Pan Am Games record of 136 gold and 284 total medals set four years ago at Caracas, Venezuela.

Because the games are in Indianapolis, the U.S. amateur sports federations have found the competition much easier to sell to their athletes than a week or two in South America. This should make for a stronger overall team than the one that represented the United States four years ago.

“Having the Pan American Games in the United States adds a new dimension,” said Mike Jacki, executive director of the Indianapolis-based U.S. Gymnastics Federation. “It’s really a big boost to the quality of the event and the sports image of the event.

“The sports federations have been cheating the games a little in the past, not looking at it as a major competition. But this time we wanted to have our best here.”

The U.S. gymnastics team includes the best of the rising female stars, Kristie Phillips and Jennifer Sey, and two holdovers from the 1984 U.S. Olympic men’s team, Tim Daggett and Scott Johnson.

But not all countries, including the United States, will field their best athletes in every sport. Even such glamour events as swimming and track and field will be without many of the stars.

The best U.S. and Canadian swimmers are committed to the Pan Pacific Games, starting Thursday in Brisbane, Australia. Track will be missing such top U.S. performers as Edwin Moses, Evelyn Ashford and Butch Reynolds, and almost all of the top Canadians are skipping the games to prepare for the World Championships at Rome Aug. 29-Sept. 6.

Even so, the games will have their competitive moments, which probably will be fueled by doses of patriotism and hometown cheering. Taunts from Latin American crowds rooting for their countrymen against that large neighbor to the north have been the rule, but U.S. crowds have an opportunity to return the hospitality this year.

There might be no better country for U.S. fans to root against than Cuba.

The Cubans, making their first full-fledged sporting appearance in the United States since the Castro revolution, will be the favorites in baseball, boxing, judo, men’s team handball, weightlifting and women’s volleyball. They also will provide much of the competition in men’s volleyball and track.

Anti-Cuban feelings already have forced organizers to move the closing ceremonies from American Legion Mall downtown to the Hoosier Dome, and the Cuban-American National Federation, an anti-Castro group, has opened an office two blocks from media headquarters.

The Cubans, on the other hand, have been angered by the planned participation of Roberto Urrutia, a member of the U.S. weightlifting team and three-time world champion who defected from Cuba in 1980.

Cuba, however, won’t be the only country here that boycotted the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games. Nicaragua has sent a strong baseball team, led by second baseman Julio Medina. A national celebration was set off four years ago when the Nicarauguans defeated the United States and won the silver medal at Caracas.

Baseball should again be one of the most competitive sports. Cuba is the defending World and Pan American champion and has won seven of the previous nine Pan Am baseball tournaments. But the U.S. team was heartened by an exhibition tour of Cuba last month in which it won two of five games. The U.S. team includes Jim Abbott, a pitcher from the University of Michigan who was born with one hand.

Basketball and volleyball are the other team sports that probably will command most of the attention.

The United States is the defending world champion in both men’s and women’s basketball and again will be favored at Indianapolis.

David Robinson, the former Navy center and first player selected in the National Basketball Assn. draft, leads the U.S. men’s team. He will be joined by a starting lineup of U.S. collegians that also is supposed to include Danny Manning, the All-American forward from Kansas, and Jerome (Pooh) Richardson, UCLA’s point guard.

But Denny Crum, the U.S. coach from the University of Louisville, is trying to guard against overconfidence. He noted that the United States had trouble with Panama, Venezuela and Puerto Rico in the World Championships last summer.

The Puerto Rican team is led by Jose Ortiz, the former Oregon State center and first-round draft choice of the Utah Jazz, and is coached by Gene Bartow, formally of UCLA and now at Alabama Birmingham. Canada, which finished fourth in the 1984 Olympics, also should contend for a medal.

“This isn’t going to be as easy as a lot of people think,” Crum said this week. “This is going to be a competitive tournament.”

The U.S. women’s team features most of the team that defeated the Soviet Union in the World Championships last summer, led by 1984 Olympians Teresa Edwards and Anne Donovan. But they could be pushed by Brazil, Cuba and Canada. The Brazilians feature Hortencia Marcari, who scored 48 points against the United States in the 1983 games.

“There is a great deal of pressure coming off the success of last summer,” said Jody Conradt, the U.S. women’s coach from the University of Texas. “It had been so long since we defeated the Soviet Union, now we’re the favorites. The higher expectations make things different.”

The men’s volleyball could be the best competition outside of World and Olympic play. The United States is the Olympic and World champion but may be without its captain, Karch Kiraly, who is out with a broken hand. With Cuba, Argentina and Brazil also entered, only China and the Soviet Union are missing among the world’s top six teams.

Cuba is the overwhelming favorite in women’s volleyball after easily defeating the United States in a recent Olympic zone qualifying tournament in Havana. The United States beat Canada for second in the tournament and earned a spot in the 1988 Olympics as the women continue to rebuild after losing the entire team that was second in the 1984 Olympics.

The individual sports will include some of the United States’ biggest stars from the 1984 Olympics, including gold-medal winners Carl Lewis and Greg Louganis.

Louganis will lead a strong U.S. diving team that also includes Kelly McCormick.

Lewis, winner of four gold medals in the Olympics, heads one of the better teams U.S. track and field teams ever entered in the Pan American Games. Lewis is scheduled to compete in 400-meter relay and long jump.

He withdrew from several European meets last month after slightly injuring his hamstring in the U.S. outdoor meet in San Jose to prepare for the games. Lewis has called the long jump facility at Indianapolis the best in the world and one conducive to challenging Bob Beamon’s world record of 29 feet 2 1/2 inches.

He also considers the games special because his mother, Evelyn, was a hurdler in the first Pan American Games and he made his international debut in the 1979 games in San Juan, Puerto Rico, winning a bronze medal in the long jump.

The women’s long jump should also be interesting as Jackie Joyner Kersee, the former UCLA star, takes a break from the heptathlon to concentrate on her strongest individual event.

But there is much more to the track and field. The sprints will be strong with Mark Witherspoon and Lee McRae in the 100-meter dash, Floyd Heard in the 200 and Roddie Haley in the 400.

The middle distances also should be interesting with top U.S. runners Johnny Gray taking on Brazilian Jose Luis Barbosa in the 800, and Jim Spivey and Steve Scott running against Joaquin Cruz, another Brazilian, in the 1,500.

The U.S. team also includes Mike Conley and Willie Banks in the triple jump, and two former UCLA stars and Olympic silver medalists, Greg Foster in the 110-meter hurdles, and Mike Tulley in the pole vault.

The women’s team also will have Judi Brown King, the American record-holder in the 400 hurdles, and Valerie Brisco, who will run only in the 1,600-meter relay.

With such top Canadians as sprinter Ben Johnson and hurdler Mark McCoy resting for the World Championships, the Cubans should provide most of the competition in track and field, led by Luis Delis in the discus and Javier Soto Mayor in the high jump. Mexico has entered its two Olympic champions in the walks--Ernesto Canto at 20-kilometers and Raul Gonzales at 50.

Cuba will be favored to dominate the boxing, despite the absence of Teofilo Stevenson, the three-time Olympic super-heavyweight champion. Stevenson, who reportedly was recently involved in a car-motorcycle accident that caused a fatality, was not named to the Cuban team.

Of the seven defending Cuban world champions, four will compete in the games--Juan Torres at 106 pounds, Angel Espinosa at 165, Pablo Romero at 178 and Felix Savon at 201.

The Americans will have three world champions entered--Kelcie Banks of Houston at 125, Kenneth Gould of Rockford, Ill., at 147 and Darin Allen of Columbus, Ohio, at 165. The team that competes in Indianapolis could be the heart of the team that the United States will send to the Summer Olympics next September in Seoul, South Korea. “We’ve got three world champions and not one of them can consistently (dominate) here in the U.S.,” said Col. Don Hull, president of the USA Amateur Boxing Federation. “This should be telling us a lot. My guess is we have a lot of depth this time. Banks is a terrific boxer, a genuine world champion, yet he keeps squeaking by. I hope that means his competition here in the U.S. is really tough.”

PAN AM FACTS AND FIGURES

Question: What are the Pan American Games? Answer: The Pan American Games are an amateur sports event held every four years in the summer before the Olympics for countries in the Western Hemisphere. This includes countries from North and South America and the Caribbean. The first Pan American Games were held in 1951 in Buenos Aires. They were attended by 21 countries and about 2,513 athletes competing in 19 sports. This year’s games are the 10th and will feature 38 countries and 4,400 athletes competing in 30 sports.

Q: Which countries will have the largest and smallest teams?

A: The United States will have the largest team with 677 athletes. Canada, with 524, and Cuba, with 458, are next. Haiti will have the smallest team, 7 athletes.

Q: How many times have the games been held in the United States?

A: This will be only the second time the U.S. has played host to the games. The last time was in Chicago in 1959.

Q: When will the games start and end?

A: The opening ceremonies will be held today at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Competition is to begin Sunday in 18 sports. Competition will end Aug. 23 when the closing ceremonies are held in the Hoosier Dome.

Q: Where will the participants be housed?

A: The athletes will be housed in the Pan American village set up at Fort Benjamin Harrison, home of the Army Finance Center, on the northeast side of Indianapolis. Officials and coaches will be housed at Butler University and Marian College.

Q: Which countries will be competing in their first Pan American Games?

A: British Virgin Islands, Grenada and Aruba.

Q: Which languages are spoken?

A: English, French, Portuguese and Spanish are the four working languages in the Western Hemisphere but English and Spanish are the official languages of the games.

Q: Who will televise the games?

A: CBS has paid a record $4 million for the U.S. rights. It will televise 26 hours of competition. That is an increase of nine hours from 1983. Cuba plans 220 hours of television and radio coverage.