China saves Olympics, says USOC chairman
15/7/2008 16:29
Peter Ueberroth, chairman of the US Olympic Committee (USOC), will lead
the US team to Beijing with a deep sense of gratitude, because he believes China
saved the Olympics, the New York Times reported yesterday.
The story began
with a phone call Ueberroth received from Beijing on May 12, 1984, and it
carried the news he believed would determine the fate of the Olympics, not just
the Games he was working to organize in Los Angeles that summer but all the ones
beyond, according to the report.
At the other end of the line was Charles
Lee, the man he had sent to persuade China to attend the Olympics for the first
time.
Ueberroth, then the leader of the Los Angeles Olympics organizing
committee, was asking China to attend the Games despite a boycott led by the
Soviet Union.
When Lee told him that China would come, Ueberroth felt like a
"salvation".
"When I got the phone call that they were coming, well, it still
gets to me right now," Ueberroth said in the interview with the New York
Times.
"It changed the whole face of the Games," he said.
Only 14
countries boycotted the 1984 Games, which became a financial and political
success.
Ueberroth, now 70 years old, said he still remembers the huge cheer
the Chinese team received at the opening ceremony at Los Angeles Coliseum in
1984.
The Beijing Olympics will be his last as USOC
chairman.
Xinhua
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