February 2006 Olympic Issue :

	Short Takes
	Surfer Beware: Olympic Mistakes in Wikipedia and Online Encylopaedia Britannica.
	Interviews
	Nikki Nichols, Author of "Frozen in Time: The Enduring Legacy of the 1961 U.S. Figure Skating Team," Discusses the Legacy of the Airplane Crash That Claimed the U.S. Figure Skating Team 45 Years Ago.
	As She Prepares to Play in Torino, U.S. Olympian Angela Ruggiero Talks about Her New Autobiography, "Breaking the Ice: My Journey to Olympic Hockey, the Ivy League, and Beyond."
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	Get Your Teddy Bear Clip Art.

With the Torino Olympic Winter Games just weeks away, journalists, teachers and students around the world will be logging onto the Internet to research the Olympic Games. Many of these Web travelers will find and use articles from the free Internet encyclopedia, Wikipedia.org, which allows anyone to anonymously write articles or edit existing pieces. From the inception of this open access reference source, people have expressed concern about accuracy and quality of Wikipedia.

In November 2005 John Seigenthaler, Sr., a former assistant to Robert Kennedy, made news when he publicly objected to a Wikipedia article that falsely accused him of being a suspect in the assassinations of both John and Robert Kennedy. Seigenthaler criticized not only the content, but also the inability of anyone at Wikipedia to tell him who the author was. The author eventually came forward and acknowledged the hoax. Advocates of Wikipedia were buoyed, however, by an article in the December 15, 2005 issue of the journal Nature reporting that a comparison of 42 entries on scientific topics in Wikipedia and Encylopaedia Britannica showed that the Wikipedia entries were almost as accurate as those in Britannica.

The conventional wisdom regarding Wikipedia is to "use Wikipedia as a starting point for research (it's an excellent place to find links to other Internet resources on your topic), but double-check with another reliable source before you rely on Wikipedia for any crucial information." After reviewing a few samples of Wikipedia's entries on the Olympic Games, SportsLetter agrees. Use Wikipedia for Olympic research, but be careful. Wikipedia's Olympic articles about the Olympic Games provide good overviews, but they also contain errors.

The staff at the AAF Sports Library in Los Angeles reviewed four Wikipedia articles: "Olympic Games," "Winter Olympic Games," "1932 Summer Olympics" and "1984 Summer Olympics." Our fact check revealed several errors, most of which were minor, as well as some questionable claims. Let's take each of these entries separately and look at the questionable passages in the order in which they appear in the text.

"Olympic Games"

1) The text: "A special edition for winter sports, the Olympic Winter Games, was established in 1924."

Comment: Minor point. The IOC did approve a sanctioned winter sports competition to take place in 1924. However, it was not until the following year, 1925, that the committee retroactively declared this competition to be the first Olympic Winter Games. In other words, the Olympic Winter Games were not established in 1924, but rather 1925.

2) Text: "Even though the bearing of a torch formed an integral aspect of Greek ceremonies, the ancient Olympic Games did not include it, nor was there a symbol formed by interconnecting rings. These elements were introduced during the 1936 Berlin games."

Comment: Not true. The five ring symbol was introduced more than two decades before the 1936 Games.

3) Text: Re: the 1906 multi-sport competition in Athens, usually referred to as the Intercalated Games, "Although originally the IOC recognised and supported these games, they are currently not recognised by the IOC as Olympic Games, which has given rise to the explanation that they were intended to mark the 10th anniversary of the Modern Olympics. Most contemporary Olympic historians, however, consider them to be official Olympic Games."

Comments: It is not clear on what basis the writer claims that most historians believe that the 1906 competition was an "official" Olympic Games. The scholarly literature does not seem to support the claim. It might be the case that most historians believe that the 1906 Games should be official, but even that is a questionable and unsubstantiated claim.

4) Text: "The growth of the Olympics is the largest problem the Olympics face today."

Comment: The largest problem? Maybe, maybe not. Other contenders for "largest problem" are doping, commercialization, over-exposure due to the two-year rather than four-year cycle between Olympic events, a sense that the Olympic Games no longer represent "Olympic values" or "Olympic ideals," and competition from other sports events and entertainment products. Regarding the last point, some television analysts predict that in the United States the television show "American Idol" will attract more viewers than the Olympic Games when the two programs go head-to-head.

5) Text: “In 1972, when the Summer Games were held in Munich, West Germany, eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists. A bungled liberation attempt led to the deaths of all of the abducted athletes and a policeman, with five of the terrorists also being killed.”

Comment: The bungled rescue attempt did not result in the deaths of all eleven athletes. Two already were dead at the time of the raid. They were killed before the rescue attempt, when the Palestinian terrorists raided the Olympic Village. Also, most sources state that three, not five, Palestinians were killed at the airport.

6) Text: "The Soviet Union did not participate in the Olympic movement until the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki."

Comment: Soviet participation in the Olympic Movement began in 1951, when Constantin Andrianov became an IOC member. Soviet participation in the Olympic Games began in 1952.

7) Text: "Between 1996 and 2002, Afghanistan's National Olympic Committee was suspended from the IOC because of the Taliban regime's ban on any kind of sport."

Comment: The Afghanistan National Olympic Committee was suspended from the Olympic Movement, but not from the IOC. The IOC is composed of individuals not national committees. The suspension took effect in 1999, not 1996. Afghan athletes actually competed in the 1996 Olympic Games. Finally, the Taliban did not impose a "ban on any kind of sport." In fact, in 2000, the Taliban-led government wrote to the IOC seeking readmission to the Olympic Movement.

8) Text: "Nevertheless, the IOC held to the traditional rules regarding amateurism. In the 1980s, amateurism regulations were relaxed, and completely abolished in the 1990s … As of 2004, the only sport in which no professionals compete is boxing."

Comment: The IOC removed any reference in the "Olympic Charter" to amateurism in the 1970s. Restrictions in the 1980s and 1990s were imposed by individual sport federations. As for boxing, although Olympic boxers do not compete in professional bouts, some Olympic boxers can and do receive cash bonuses from their National Olympic Committees for winning Olympic medals.

"Winter Olympics"

1) Text: "Three years later, Italian count Eugenio Brunetta d'Usseaux proposed to the IOC to stage a week with winter sports as part of the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm. The organisers opposed this idea, wanting to promote the Nordic Games, a winter sports competition held every four years between competitors from the Nordic countries."

Comment: The Nordic Games were not just for athletes from Nordic countries. Austria, Hungary, Germany and England sent athletes to the Nordic Games.

2) Text: "Originally, the 1976 Winter Games had been awarded to Denver, but in a 1972 plebiscite, the city's inhabitants voted against organising the Games."

Comment: True, but incomplete. The state's voters also voted against the Games. The state referendum was the more important of the two.

3) Text: Re: the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Games, "The threat of the American boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics was also clouding these Olympics, as the decision to do so fell during the Games."

Comment: President Jimmy Carter first floated the idea of a boycott in January 1980. The Lake Placid Games began February 4. The USOC voted in April 1980 to not send athletes.

4) Text: Re: 1992 Albertville Winter Games, "Germany competed as a single nation for the first time since the 1930s, and former Yugoslavian republics Croatia and Slovenia made their debut. The Soviet Union still competed as a single team, under the name of Unified Team."

Comment: Germany had competed as a single nation as late as 1964. Also, there was no Soviet Union in 1992.

5) Re: 1994 Lillehammer Winter Games, "American skater Nancy Kerrigan had been injured some months before the Games in an assault planned by the ex-husband of opponent Tonya Harding."

Comment: The phrase "some months" is misleading. The attack took place January 6, less than six weeks before the Games began on February 12.

6) Re: 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games, "Canadians jubilated as both their men's and their women's hockey teams defeated the United States to win the gold; the men's team thus ended a medal drought that had lasted 50 years to the day.

Comment: This should read "gold medal drought." The Canadians won bronze and silver medals in ice hockey between 1952 and 2002.

"1984 Summer Olympics"

1) Text: "The organizers of the Los Angeles Olympics are able to produce a profit of over $200 million. It is the first Olympiad ever to make a profit."

Comment: "Olympiad" is misused here. An Olympiad is a four-year period, not a sports event. More importantly, 1984 was not the first time an Olympic Games produced a surplus. The 1932 Games resulted in a surplus of about $1 million dollars.

2) Text: "Tennis and Baseball are included for the first time (as demonstration sports)."

Comment: This is simply incorrect. Tennis first appeared on the Olympic program in 1896. It remained on the program through the 1924 Games. Baseball was a demonstration sport a number of times before 1984. There is no doubt that baseball was a demonstration sport in 1912 Games. Some historians cite 1904 as the first appearance of baseball as a demonstration sport. One well-known source, David Wallchinsky’s “The Complete Book of the Summer Olympics,” contends that baseball exhibitions took place in conjunction with the 1900 Paris Olympic Games.

3) Text: "Steffi Graf wins her first Olympic title."

Comment: Tennis was a demonstration sport in 1984. Winners of demonstration sports are not considered medallists or Olympic champions.

4) Text: "The opening ceremony featured the arrival of Bill Suitor by means of the Bell Aerosystems rocket pack (also known as a Jet Pack) who flew in from the roof of the main stadium to the location of the Olympic Flame."

Comment: The last part is wrong. Mr. Suitor's flight was a defining moment of the Opening Ceremony, but he neither took off from the roof nor landed at the "location of the Olympic Flame."

"1932 Summer Olympics"

1) Text: Re: the Olympic Village, "An Olympic Village was built for the first time, occupied by the male athletes. The village is now a part of the nearby University of Southern California."

Comment: No. The site of the 1932 Olympic Village was and is several miles from the university.

2) Text: "Babe Didrikson wins two gold medals in the javelin throw and the hurdles event, and only loses a third in the high jump because her jumping technique is ruled inferior and is placed second."

Comment: Her jump was not ruled "inferior," but rather illegal according to the rules of the competition.

Add Wikipedia . . . The Wikipedia terms "Olympics" and "Winter Olympics," for the record, are not part of the official Olympic Movement lexicon. The preferred terms are "Olympic Games" and "Olympic Winter Games."

Last Wikipedia . . . The AAF Library staff also checked the online Encyclopaedia Britannica, examining roughly the same topics covered in the review of Wikipedia. Britannica, in our opinion was better written than Wikipedia, but it contained several errors, too.

"National Olympic Committees"

1) Text: "A person who has ever competed in sports as a professional, who has ever coached sports competitors for payment, or who is engaged in or connected with sport for personal profit is not eligible to serve on a national committee."

Comment: This was true at one time, but is decades out of date.

2) Text: "In some sports, including track and field, figure skating, and skiing, athletes must place income from commercial endorsements and sponsorships in a restricted trust fund, which is controlled by their national federation."

Comment: Again, this claim is out of date by many years.

"Los Angeles, California, U.S., 1932"

Text: "The star of the Games was American Babe Didrikson (later Zaharias). She had won five events at the U.S. Olympic trials, but Olympic rules allowed women to compete in no more than three."

Comment: Britannica is one of many sources claiming that "Olympic rules" prevented Didrikson from participating in more than three events. This is a dubious claim. The event referred to as the "Olympic trials" also was the Women's AAU National Track and Field Championships in Evanston, Ill. Two of the five events Didrikson won at Evanston — the shot put and baseball throw — were not Olympic women's events in 1932. The 1932 "Report of the American Olympic Committee" clearly indicates that there were no Olympic trials in shot put and baseball throw. More to the point, the 1930 "General Rules Applicable to the Celebration of the Olympic Games" makes no mention of a three-event limit. The minutes of the 1931 IOC Session, the last Session before the 1932 Games say nothing about a three-event cap, nor does the "Handbook of the International Amateur Athletic Federation, 1929-1931" or the athletics rule booklet published by the Olympic organizing committee in 1932.

"Los Angeles, California, U.S., 1984"

Text: "Under the direction of the American entrepreneur Peter Ueberroth, the 1984 Olympics witnessed the ascension of commercialism as an integral element in the staging of the Games. Corporate sponsors, principally U.S.-based multinationals, were allowed to put Olympic symbols on their products, which were then marketed as the "official" such product of the Olympics."

Comment: The statement regarding symbols is true, but the implication of the passage is that 1984 marked the first time corporate sponsors were allowed to put Olympic symbols on their products. That is not true. As an aside, it is interesting to note that the organizers of the two Games preceding 1984 used far more official sponsors and partners than did Los Angeles. There were 628 companies in Montreal's 1976 "Official Sponsors Program," compared to 164 in Los Angeles.

NIKKI NICHOLS

On February 15, 1961, Sabena Flight 548 crashed in a Belgian field near the Brussels airport, killing all 73 passengers on board. Among those who perished were the 18 members of the United States Figure Skating team en route to the world championships in Prague, as well as the 16 coaches, officials, and family members who were accompanying them. The crash remains one of the most tragic episodes in American sports history: never before had the U.S. lost an entire national team in any sport. Among the victims were Maribel Vinson Owen, the nine-time national champion and the 1932 Lake Placid Olympic Winter Games bronze medallist, and her two daughters, 16-year-old Laurence (the singles champ), and 20-year-old Maribel, Jr. (one half of the pairs champs).
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Many top coaches also passed away, and the incident left the national skating program in temporary ruins. American women had won the previous two Olympic gold medals (Tenley Albright in 1956 and Carol Heiss in 1960), while American men had captured the previous four Olympic gold medals (Dick Button in 1948 and 1952, Hayes Alan Jenkins in 1956, and David Jenkins in 1960). At the 1964 Olympic Winter Games, the U.S. managed only a bronze.

Now, with the 45th anniversary of the crash fast approaching, Nikki Nichols revisits this story and details how the U.S. Figure Skating program recovered in "Frozen in Time: The Enduring Legacy of the 1961 U.S. Figure Skating Team" (Emmis Books). Trained as a television reporter-producer, Nichols is a part-time journalist whose work has appeared in Skating Magazine and the Indianapolis Star. She also trains as a competitive skater, having won a state title and competed as a finalist (in singles) at the 2005 U.S. Adult National Championships.

SportsLetter spoke by telephone with Nichols from her office in Indianapolis.

Nikki Nichols: I read about the crash on the U.S. Figure Skating Association website — they had links to all these articles that were done for the 40th anniversary of the crash. Being a TV person, I talked to one of my bosses and said, "I would really love to do a documentary about this." He said, "Why don't you write a book?" So, I was very intrigued by that idea, and I decided to figure out who was out there who would talk to me.

SL: Was it difficult to locate surviving family members and friends and to get them to talk about this incident? How did you research this?

NN: I called the U.S. Figure Skating Association, and I was told that the archivist at the World Skating Museum [in Colorado Springs] was in charge of the material [about the crash]. She told me that I needed to fly out there and spend some time in the archives. Which I did — and there were binders and baskets and crates full of letters from family members to the Association, newspaper clippings, the crash report, and letters from the victims to the Association just before they departed. Looking through those articles, I got a sense that there were a lot of people around who were still willing to talk about it. I was interested in talking to the family members, but it was impossible to get a complete list of family members.

SL: What primary sources were most helpful in writing the book?

NN: Because I skate, I had a lot of connections in the skating world. My coach — Natalie Seybold — is a 1988 Olympian in pairs, and her coach was Ron Ludington, who was a 1960 bronze medallist. He was supposed to be on the plane because he had coached a team in the dance. Back then, they just didn't fund their excursions the way they do now, so he was left behind. One person led to another person, but there was a long list of people who I wanted to talk to but was unable to locate or approach. There were people who just came right out and said they didn't want to talk about it. And that's totally understandable. My biggest regret about that is there are certain people in the book who aren't given as much attention, and that's because their family members either didn't want to talk or there just weren't any surviving family members to talk to.

SL: You write that these were the first U.S. Figure Skating Championships to be televised (by CBS for its "Sports Spectacular" show, although it aired several weeks later) and that the year before, the 1960 Squaw Valley Games were the first Winter Games to receive U.S. television coverage. What has changed in figure skating — and the television broadcasting of figure skating — from 1961 to the present?

NN: Looking at the 1961 broadcast, a lot was different. First, it was in black and white. The first Winter Olympics to be televised in color was in 1968. That was the first time Americans could watch a long program in color, and they saw Peggy Fleming. Her blazing green dress against her dark hair and white skin was very dramatic.

In 1961, television didn't go out of its way to make the competition dramatic or compelling. It was a very basic and bare-bones broadcast. The human side of skating was totally de-emphasized. I don't think it was deliberate. I just don't think they realized how dramatic it could be. The two most compelling stories to me were what was happening in the pairs event and the ladies event. You had the two daughters of Maribel Vinson Owen both vying for national titles once owned by their mother. I mean, this is outstanding television, and they barely mentioned it.

Back then, they didn't save the ladies competition for last. Instead, the men's event came last. The men were put on an equal billing with the women, which is not what happens today. Today, they call the ladies free skate "the biggie." Now, the ladies close the event.

What was also funny were the commercials. In terms of the demographics for skating, the understanding didn't seem to be in place. There were mostly cigarette, beer and car commercials. The one for cigarettes shows these two skaters — they're pairs skaters — and the announcer says, "Looks like you could use a re-charge." They come over to the side of the rink, and the guy lights up a cigarette, and they actually start skating around the rink smoking.

SL: : Why do you think the marriage of figure skating and television has been so successful?

NN: I think that it's hard not to watch. It's such a unique and elegant art form. It's this rare combination of artistry and athleticism. And, in some of the disciplines, it's a combination of Hollywood and dance coming together. I think that it's very television-friendly — you've got all the make-up and the dresses and the sparkles — and I think helping it along was getting rid of the "school figures."

SL: Why were the compulsories eliminated and do you think that the elimination of compulsories has been good for the sport?

NN: Skating purists will argue that they never should have gotten rid of figures, but the audience would watch a competition and be completely perplexed as to how the person who skated the most beautifully in the long program was not able to win. And that's because, until a certain point in time, figures were worth 60 percent of the final score. Then they added the short program, to lessen the impact of figures, while also giving good free-style skaters another chance to shine. By 1992, figures were eliminated from international competition.

Once the TV producers got involved in the sport, it became clear that figures were not an audience-friendly art. It's impossible for the audience to see what's actually being performed on the ice. The judges are looking for very specific tracings on the ice, which the camera doesn't pick up too well. You have to be well-trained to understand what exactly they're looking for.

Whether or not it was good for the sport, the jury is still out on that. I think figures were really valuable for skaters to master the edging and blade work that you need to have a certain polish. I loved watching that with the 1961 skaters — they had such a great quality to their skating.

SL: You write that, in 1961, the skaters were very different physically than today's athletes. Why is that and how have the changes in physique affected the sport?

NN: Back then, because the skaters were doing compulsory figures and emphasizing that over jumps, they weren't putting as much practice into the jumps as today. In 1961, they were doing double jumps, as opposed to the more demanding triple jumps of today. The athletic quality of the jumps was different back then. So, their bodies were curvier then — they looked like real girls for their age. They weren't these waifs that are around today.

But, today, skating has transformed into such an athletic endeavor that you have to be in peak performance shape in order to do these jumps. Skaters have to supplement their training with weight training, endurance training, and stretching. A lot of skaters do yoga or ballet. You have to be more lean to get into the air and do those revolutions. Somebody like Michelle Kwan — she's a lean pocket of muscle mass.

SL: In 1961, the Owen family was a figure skating dynasty. How would you describe the influence of "Big Maribel" in the sport?

NN: Maribel was a single mother, ahead of her times, and she was the first female sportswriter for the New York Times. She was blazing trails all over the place. She was an extremely outspoken, incredibly charming, loving woman — and also very, very tough. She never took a break. She was always working on something.

One story I relate in the book was that, at the end of the school figures at the 1960 Olympics, Carol Heiss was marked second. Maribel went out on the ice and looked at the tracings, and she went ballistic and called it "rank ignorance." Somebody who heard her outburst came to her and said, "If you make a stink out of this, your daughters might not do so well." Her response was, "I don't care. We need to clean up our act in the judging." She was willing to put her neck and her daughters' necks on the line to stand up for what was right. That's what I admired about her. She had an incredible sense of decency. She was known for sneaking a little black girl into the rink at Boston after the cashier had told her that "No blacks are allowed here." That skater's name was Mabel Fairbanks, who went on to coach Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardiner.

As a coach, her legacy lives on in a lot of people. She coached Ron Ludington, who goes on to coach Kitty and Peter Carruthers. She coached Frank Carroll, who coached Linda Fratianne and Michelle Kwan. Last year, when Michelle Kwan won her ninth U.S. title, she tied Maribel Vinson Owen. There was a big deal made about it, and Michelle said that she had a "cosmic connection" with Maribel. I think that says a lot. She died 45 years ago, but her coaching techniques are very much alive today.

SL: Maribel had an intense rivalry with Norway's Sonja Henie — and Henie won every time and became the first great star of figure skating, with gold medals in 1928 (St. Mortiz), 1932 (Lake Placid) and 1936 (Garmisch and Partenkirchen). How would you describe Henie, on and off the ice?

NN: Her impact on the sport was incredible. She brought glamour to the sport, which was not an area that Maribel excelled in. Sonja Henie was very flirtatious and engaging on the ice. She had a charisma that translated well onto the big screen — she was one of the first Hollywood female millionaires. There was always a lot of fuss around her — what is she wearing?— and I think some of the other skaters didn't like that.

SL: In 1961, Laurence Owen was considered the future of U.S. figure skating. You describe her as "like a Picasso — bold unpredictable patterns, strong colors, very abstract." What made her so different on the ice?

NN: I don't want to slight the other skaters because the bronze medallist [at the 1961 U.S. Nationals] that year, Rhode Michelson, was the clear athlete in the field. She was very reminiscent of Midori Ito of Japan in the way she went for the jumps. Extremely muscular. The silver medallist, Steffi Westerfield, was very dainty and had a lot of polish to her skating, but didn't do so well on the jumps. But what made Laurence stand out was this wide