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Page 10 THE BATTALION
WEDNESDAY, JULY 26, 1978
Officials excited about possibilities
Festival stresses amateur athletics
United Press International
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.
— The first National Sports Festi
val, which begins Thursday with
more than 2,000 athletes competing
in events ranging from archery to
field hockey, eventually may pro
vide young American athletes with
the national exposure they deserve,
according to a U.S. Olympic official.
Baaron Pittenger, U.S. Olympic
Committee director of special pro
jects and director of the festival,
predicted Sunday the festival would
be one of the nation’s top sports at
tractions within 10 years.
"Ten years from now, we believe
this will be the single greatest sports
event in the country,” Pittenger
said. “Compared to anything —
Super Bowl, the World Series, any
thing.
“You will have the best athletes in
26 sports together at the same time.
It will be a hell of an event, a show
case for the nation’s top amateur
athletics.”
Pittenger, who Sunday met some
of the 1,200 arriving athletes, said
five cities, including Colorado
Springs, already have expressed in
terest in hosting next year’s event.
“Actually, the festival is designed
for three things,” Pittenger said.
“One is to provide a focal point for
our pro-oriented society of amateur
athletes and athletics.
“We get excited once every four
years and then forget about amateur
athletics,” he said. “The festival will
be a yearly reminder of the quality
and activities of our athletes. ”
Pittenger said the festival also
would provide a high level of com
petition for athletes and give them
the incentive to use the summer
well. The third goal, he said, is to
give exposure to a wide range of
sports in the Olympic program, in
cluding many that aren’t widely fol
lowed in this country.
The 1,200 athletes who arrived
Sunday joined another 965 already
in town preparing for the four-day
festival. The undertaking will in-
BU coach
anticipates
festival
United Press International
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.
— If the National Sports Festival,
which opens Thursday, is such a
good idea, why hasn’t it been tried
before?
“Nobody had the guts till now,”
Clyde Hart said Monday. “And now
that they have the guts, this is going
to be something.
“I can’t believe what they have
done on such short notice. ”
Hart is the head track and field
coach at Baylor University and will
coach the South track team this
week in the monumental enterprise
sponsored by the United States
Olympic Committee.
“We first heard for sure that this
thing was going to go in last
January,” Hart said. “That does not
give you much time. And I did not
know then the scope of the festival.
“In fact I did not know until I
came here that all these other sports
were going to be represented, too.
There just has not been that much
advance notice of it.
“I can’t believe we have the qual
ity of athletes in track and field that
we have here. In future years we are
going to have even better athletes
because they are going to want to
come here.
“It’s going to be just like an
American Olympics. Except for the
Pan American Games, I doubt there
has been a larger gathering of
athletes in this country since they
held the Olympics in Los Angeles
(in 1932).”
Athletes participating in the festi
val were invited by the USOC and
Hart said he and his track and field
colleagues used performances in
NCAA and AAU competition as a
guideline.
“Some of the ones we wanted
were competing in Europe and I can
understand them wanting to do
that,” Hart said. “But as the word
began to spread we began to get
more and more inquiries from
people who originally said they did
not want to participate.
“In just the last few days we’ve
added James Walker from Auburn
who won the NCAA and AAU in
termediate hurdles.
“He came back from Europe early
because he found out it was going to
be an exciting event. He gambled
that we would have a place for him
here and we do.
“And another case was Mike
Novelli (distance runner from Rice
University). We invited Mike in the
first place and he turned us down,
but we had one of our distance run
ners drop out and the next day Mike
called and asked if he could recon
sider.”
Among the top track and field
athletes competing will be sprinter
Harvey Glance and Olympic long
jump gold medal winner Arnie
Robinson.
elude most of the events program
med for the 1980 Summer Olympic
Games and Pan American Games,
as well as ice hockey and figure skat
ing for the Winter Games.
A team comptition format involv
ing four sections of the nation —
East, South, Midwest and West —
will be used.
Track stars Marty Liquori,
Franklin Jacobs and Al Oerter,
gymnasts Kurt Thomas and Kathy
Johnson and figure skater Linda
Fratianne will compete.
Jacobs, a sophomore at Fairleigh
Dickinson University who set a
world indoor high jump record of 7
feet, 1V4 inches earlier this year,
heads the East track and field team.
Oerter, a former Olympic champ
ion, said one advantage of the festi
val was the fact that many amateur
athletes now had to travel to Europe
to get good competition.
“This will keep athletes at home, ’
he said. “It will bring athletes and
various events a lot closer to the
public eye. The Olympics are a little
obscure. They happen every four
years. Now there will be more expo
sure before the Games.
Opening ceremonies tonight will
feature the lighting of a festival
torch with a flame brought by a
chain of runners traveling a 26-mile
course from the top of Pikes Peak.
Carrying the symbolic flame on its
final lap will be runners Mary Dec
ker of Colorado University and Ric
Rojas of Denver University.
F. Don Miller, executive director
of the U.S. Olympic Committee,
said the festival “won’t reach full
flower in the first year” because of
the short amount of preparation
time and the fact that many of the
national governing bodies already
were committed to conflicting
schedules for this summer.
"But we think it will be very
good, and five years up the road, it
has unlimited potential, he said.
Most of the events will be staged
in Colorado Springs or at the nearby
Air Force Academy, but the
baseball, synchronized $wi
cycling and mens’ and women
hockey are scheduled at
south of Colorado Springs,
Most of the athletes wi.
the Air Force Academy win
security is available. Prad
also will not be given tot,
anti the locations of specific
will be kept confidential j
the security arrangements
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