To: The International Olympic CommitteeFrom: The Image...

To: The International Olympic Committee

From: The Image Clinic (To Doctor the Spin, You’ve Got to Be on the Ball)

Regarding: Rocky PR times ahead, good buddies.

Just when we’re counting down to Barcelona, here comes this Special Olympics. That’s right. Friday through Sunday, the California Special Olympics will erupt, coruscate, scintillate, whatever, at various UCLA venues--Drake Stadium (where opening ceremonies are scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Friday), Pauley Pavilion, IM Field, the Men’s Gym, the Men’s Pool and the Tennis Complex--plus the El Dorado Bowl in Westchester and the VA Hospital in Westwood.

Get this. Two thousand athletes age 8 and up from all over California will swim, run, throw, cycle, bowl, do gymnastics and play softball, tennis and basketball, cheered on by 500 volunteer coaches and 3,500 volunteer supporters. And we’d bet our bottom dollar--which, we don’t mind saying, is at the bottom of a mighty thick roll--that:

There won’t be any doping scandals.

There won’t be any controversies over whether a 250-pound shotputter with whiskers that can file iron is really a woman.

There won’t be any riots, boycotts or other ugly manifestations of nationalism. People who yell, “We’re No. 1!� will be referring to everyone there, not to one or another Superior Way of Life.

There won’t be any androids.

There won’t be any agents waiting at the finish lines with fat contracts so that simon-pure athletes who have done nothing but train at their chosen sport for the past 12 years can turn pro officially.

There won’t be any money, period. Just a good time, or some such thing.

And get this. Even the admission is free!

Can sport as we know it survive this?

More to the point, goodbuddies, can our own little get-together in Spain stand the comparison? I know we’ve got Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia cathedral, and the flamenco, and bulls, and Orwell’s and Hemingway’s ghosts, and maybe we can lure some of those topless beauties on the Riviera down to the beaches of Catalonia to keep the press corps happy. But then what?

If you ask me, we’re up a sewage outfall without an Evinrude.

Our only chance is a total media blackout on this Special thing. Can’t we just not tell anybody about it?

Maybe it’ll go away.