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| OLYMPIC METTLE
February 9, 1998The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Transcript |
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With the 1998 Winter Olympics underway in Nagano, Japan, former Olympic athletes reflect on the meaning of the games and its place in the collective memory of the nation.
A RealAudio version of this segment is available.
NEWSHOUR LINKS:
February 9, 1998
A background report on the Winter Olympics.
July 30, 1996
A discussion of how Olympic champions are made.
July 23, 1996
An Online Forum discussing the impact of professional players on the Olympic movement.
July 22,1997
The NewsHour's panel of historians examine the history of the Olympics.
Browse the NewsHour's sports coverage.
OUTSIDE LINKS:
1998 Winter Games
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: With us now are four athletes who competed and won in former Olympic games. Dick Button won two Olympic gold medals for figure skating in 1948 and 1952-- the first American to capture figure skating gold. He's been a commentator with ABC Sports for more than 30 years. Cindy Nelson was on the U.S. ski team in four Olympics, beginning in 1972. She took home
a Bronze from Innsbruck in 1976 and a Silver from Lake Placid in 1980. Figure skater Paul Wylie won a silver medal in Albertville in 1992 and was also the team captain for the U.S. Olympics skating team that year. Michael Eruzione was captain of the 1980 Gold Medal winning hockey team. Cindy Nelson, is the feeling different somehow? Are the pressures different on you in the Olympics?
Olympic pressures.
CINDY NELSON, 1980 Silver Medalist, Skiing: I think that they very much are in Alpine skiing. We
have a tour called the World Cup tour, where you ski against all of the same skiers that these skiers will meet at the Olympic games. But the Olympic games are the biggest competition a competitor will face in their entire career. And when they go to the games, it's let all stops out and give it the performance of a lifetime. So it does differ a great deal from the normal competition tour that these skiers will be on.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Paul Wiley, how did you deal with your nervousness before the Olympics if it feels so different from other competition?
PAUL WYLIE, 1992 Silver Medalist, Skating: Well, I think mostly I just worked on my preparation before the games and the five weeks leading up to the Olympics I did back to back run-throughs. I did a lot of mental preparation, more than I would normally. And I tried to imagine that when I was doing my performances in the practice that I was actually at the Olympics. And once I got to the Olympics I reversed it and imagined that I was at home. So I had a lot of strategies, but literally when they close that door, there's no greater feeling, no greater exhilaration because you know that that one particular performance will impact the rest of your life, will impact your professional career, and also the way people see you forever.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Michael Eruzione, did you have different strategies too for training and thinking about it?
MICHAEL ERUZIONE: Well, I think so. I think different than Paul and Dick and Cindy--they're more of an individual sport--in hockey, you know, you have yourself plus 19 teammates. And you really can kind of depend on each other a lot more than I think the individual athlete can. So you go to the arena, and you are preparing one way and your teammates are preparing another, but yet as a group you're all still preparing to go out and perform, so, you know, I think the great thing about, you know, being an Olympic athlete and competing with the teams is the opportunity you have to depend not only on yourself but to depend on your teammates as well.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Mr. Eruzione, what did you think before that game against the Soviets? Did you have any sense that you might actually win it?
MICHAEL ERUZIONE: Oh, I think so. You know, if you don't believe you can win, there's no reason
to be there. You know, I think we felt going into the Soviet game that we had a chance to win and we were playing very well. Jim Craig was absolutely on top of his game. And I think the fact that we were playing the games in Lake Placid had a great deal of effect on us. It helped us a great deal with the home crowd, and, you know, we were playing the best hockey of the year at that point, and no reason why we didn't think we could go in and win.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Were you surprised by the reaction? It was almost taken as a political and moral victory.
The 1980 Miracle on Ice.
MICHAEL ERUZIONE, 1980 Gold Medalist, Hockey: Absolutely shocked. We did not know what was going on around us. It wasn't until after the Olympic games that were over, when we went to the White House that we really got a sense or feel for what the country was witnessing. You know, in Lake Placid, it was a small, little place, and we knew the people in Lake Placid were happy and having fun, but had no clue the country was as in tuned and as excited as they were.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Paul Wylie, what about you, you'd come in 10th in the '88 Olympics and then you had this great performance in '92--were you surprised by how you really rose to the occasion?
PAUL WYLIE: I was actually. I think everything about the week was a surprise. I got into
Albertville, and I noticed that I was skating the best of the Americans, and that was the first surprise I got. But then in the short program I really was able to conquer all of the previous performances that I had that were not that great and skate a clean program. All of a sudden I was in third place, and then that night when it all came down to the long program, I was able to rest on the fact that my long program performances have been pretty good. So it's--it still surprises me that I won the Silver, and it was a wonderful victory for me, and when I got off the plane in Dulles Airport, I was surprised when people applauded and knew who I was. And that's the power of television. You are instantly sort of transformed into a national hero. And it's a great thing.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Cindy Nelson, all great athletes can have great and bad days, just like everybody. How do you try to make the great day coincide with the day you're at the Olympics?
CINDY NELSON: That's the challenge for a true champion. You know, I've been listening to the answers to all of your questions from the various Olympians with us here today, and the thing that comes out to me is that the Olympics is so big. You can't imagine how big a competition this is and what happens is the competitors come into it and they either have to put their blinders on, in order to focus on their performance, what they can do to bring themselves to their highest level, at that particular moment, when that downhill racer goes out of that starting gate, they're going to have the run of a lifetime, the same thing with the skater when they go out onto that ice for
their final performance. It's so big, and all that intensity comes into it, and you feel it, so for the athletes that are true race horses, they are able to raise their level of competition. There are the dark horses you probably haven't heard of all season long, and all of a sudden in Olympic competition they're there, and that's what I think is so great about the Olympics. And it is truly, truly the biggest competition of any of these athletes' lives, but they're going to be facing these next two weeks in Nagano is the biggest time in their lives.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Dick Button, is that the way it was for you, that you almost had to put on blinders to avoid being--having it all too--distract you too much?
Mr. Button: "And that pressure...is exactly what I mean when I say the more the Olympics have changed, the more they stayed the same."
DICK BUTTON, 1948 and 1952 Gold Medal, Skating: Well, Anything can distract you. I mean, a
bird going by you can distract you. And that pressure, that enormous amount of concentration that is necessary, is exactly what I mean when I say the more the Olympics have changed, the more they stayed the same.I don't care how much commercialization there is, or how many millions of people are watching, you still feel in your stomach that same feeling, that it's almost like a knife turning; that you cannot get away from that until you actually start. Once that happens, then you're on your way.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Dick Button, you won the Gold in '48 and then you came back and won it again in '52. What was--was it harder to come back the second time and win it?
DICK BUTTON: I think so. You know, you recognize that with Brian Boitano in 1994. It was much
harder for him to do it. It wasn't harder for me, but it had a whole different atmosphere. I knew now what the story was. I knew that it was a different world, and I wasn't striving to reach for something. I was striving to kind of hold everything together and to do new things and to pull it together. It was a totally different pressure, and but still one that was absolutely wonderful.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mike Eruzione, how did your life change after the Olympics?
MICHAEL ERUZIONE: Well, you're talking to me. If we didn't win, I wouldn't be here. You know, I think I was given some opportunities that I probably would not have been given--you know, corporate
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Paul Wylie, how did your life change?
PAUL WYLIE: Well, I think for me the victory foremost, first and foremost, was a personal victory, and it really rewrote my whole skating career and had a happy ending for the amateur part of it, but also
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Cindy Nelson, how did your life change?
Ms. Nelson: "And for us, the Olympic games are our equivalent of the Super Bowl."
CINDY NELSON: Well, my life has changed a great deal. I grew up in Northern Minnesota, and I would not have been exposed to the different parts of the world and the cultures and different walks of life if it hadn't been for my success in ski racing. Since retiring from ski racing, I like the others, have had an opportunity--opportunities that would normally not have to me with television and with
corporations and sports marketing. It is now a profession and a career after a skiing career, so that itself is what has changed for me. I think in talking to all of us tonight there's one thing to remember for all the Americans that are watching this: These sports that we were all part of and we all competed in are not major sports for this country. It's not football; it's not basketball; it's not baseball. And for us, the Olympic games are our equivalent of the Super Bowl. And that's what it feels like when you succeed. And so that changes those football players' lives as well as it changes ours, and it's--you know, I feel very fortunate to have had the great successes that I did have in skiing, and also I'm grateful for all the opportunities that have come my way since then.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Dick Button, how did your life change?
DICK BUTTON: Well, totally, because I mean, I was always in love with figure skating, and I continued it with it afterwards, but it gave me the access to enter places and enter worlds that I have never known before. But I think there's one point I would like to make about what has changed in the
sport of figure skating and the Olympic games. The commercialization of it, which everybody is talking about, is only one aspect of it. The other aspect is what that has done to the sport of figure skating. It has been so great that it has eliminated one half of what figure skating is all about, and that is the skating of figures--the name, figure skating, is no longer an accurate one because figures have gone away. They were too boring; they took too long; too many people weren't interested. As a result, television simply couldn't handle it and the governing bodies eliminated what was the oldest and strongest and longest tradition of what the sport of figure skating was all about.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Well, thank you all very much for being with us.
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