Olympic Notebook : Ashford Chosen to Carry American Flag

SEOUL — Evelyn Ashford was elected Thursday night by the various U.S. Olympic team captains to carry the flag and lead the delegation in the opening ceremony Saturday. Ashford, 31, lives in Phillips Ranch and is a graduate of UCLA.

Ashford, who won the gold medal in the 100-meter dash in the 1984 Olympic Games, was also a member of the 1976 team at age 19.

She will compete here in the 100 and on the 400-meter relay team.

Ashford held the world record in the 100 meters until July, when it was broken at the U.S. trials by Florence Griffith Joyner.

Initially, 161 countries committed to compete here, but the number dropped to 160 when Madagascar withdrew and then fell to 159 Thursday when the Libyan delegation was barred from leaving its hotel in Tripoli.

But Friday, it was back up to 160, when IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch announced that the Libyan team was, indeed, coming to Seoul. “I sent them a telex, and I didn’t receive a telex back in kind,” Samaranch said, “but I did receive word that they would be coming.”

Add Samaranch: The IOC president’s term will run out in August of next year, but he announced at his press conference Friday afternoon that he had received communiques from nearly all the IOC members, asking him to run for reelection for another term.

And that seemed like a sure thing when he responded by saying: “It would be the dream of my life to preside over the Games of Barcelona (in 1992), because that is my home.”

Samaranch also said that an IOC member, whom he didn’t name, had received a death threat in the past week from a member of Abu Nidal’s pro-Palestinian terrorist group.

The Athletes’ Village, next door to Olympic Park, is expansive and impressive. The Athletes’ Hall, a horseshoe-shaped three-story glass building that houses the dining area, movie theater, department store, barber shop and beauty salon, video game rooms, tea room, bank, post office and countless other little shops and rooms, is physically magnificent.

But U.S. athletes are bored. After the first stroll through, the thrill, apparently, is gone.

Dave Berkhoff reports that the swimmers are amusing themselves by sailing paper airplanes out the windows of their ninth-floor apartments. “We’ve developed a very complex point-system, with premium points for getting closest to the ditch or hitting the building that’s about 100 yards away,” he said.

Volleyball star Karch Kiraly thinks they all got “a little spoiled by L.A.” He says the only thing saving the volleyball team from climbing the walls is the Nintendo video game that one of the team members brought along.

He said the volleyball players are getting pretty good at the Mike Tyson boxing game, the golf game and the baseball game but added: “The volleyball is impossible. We can’t figure it out.”

In sum, Kiraly said, “There’s not a hell of a lot to do.”

Even English-speaking TV selection is very limited.

Most of the athletes are spending their time engaging in the wild bargaining going on up and down the street of Itaewon in the middle of Seoul.

The only real amusement in the Athletes’ Village is people-watching. The thousands of athletes there react the same way anyone else does when they recognize a star. When Danny Manning and David Robinson stroll through the electronics department of the store in the village, foreign athletes stop to stare. When Greg Louganis walks into a room, conversation stops.

But, as U.S. Greco-Roman wrestler Duane Koslowski said, “It’s not like these guys are strutting around acting like they’re better than the rest of us. They can’t help it the way other people react to them. Hey, let’s face it, if the rest of us feel anything about that, it’s envy.”

Koslowski did get a kick out of passing along the latest pecking order gossip, though.

“We heard that Carl Lewis wanted a special parking space at every venue,” said Koslowski, who has been waiting at appointed spots for the buses. “Isn’t that great? And when the basketball players were told that the athletes were rooming two to a room, they said, ‘Even us?’ ”

Koslowski’s only complaint about the Village is that the English-speaking athletes get swallowed up by the sheer numbers of athletes from a long list of tiny foreign countries, and you can wander for hours without finding someone to speak to.

He’s certainly not complaining about the food. As the heaviest of the Greco-Roman wrestlers, he’s the only one not worried about making weight.

“I did talk to the guy in charge of the food service here, and he said the only complaints he’s had are from Americans,” Koslowski said.

Add Manning: Reporters need not approach any members of the U.S. basketball team while they’re out and about. When Manning sees a badge with a big, bad E--for all media representatives--he waves a hand in a gesture that says, “Stop, Go Away, Don’t Bother Me.” Pressed, he actually says, “We are not allowed to talk until our designated press conferences.”

The protective blanket that has been thrown over the U.S. men’s basketball team even included a ban on autographs when the team toured Disneyland. The men’s basketball players were the only athletes told not to sign autographs, a Mickey Mouse decision if ever there was one.

Although most of U.S. athletes are staying in the village, many of the top track and field stars are staying in luxury hotels. Among them are Carl Lewis, Edwin Moses, Florence Griffith Joyner, Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Valerie Brisco.

When Lewis arrived in Seoul Wednesday night, he discovered he had no accommodations. Since he had not made arrangements, he was not allowed into the Athletes’ Village, quite a reversal from four years ago in Los Angeles when he didn’t want to go near the Athletes’ Village at USC.

For one night, the U.S. Olympic Committee put him in the Olympic Family Town, which is far from plush. He checked into a five-star hotel the next day.

Verbatim: The Korea Herald reported: “Seoul Olympic organizers were alarmed by Korean female volunteer workers sitting intimately close to foreign male athletes, a scene frowned at in Korea. But they appeared relieved when they learned that the volunteer workers were conducting a poll on behalf of a university broadcasting center. One volunteer worker, protesting the peeping eyes said, “Is there any law barring us from dating foreign athletes?”

And the Herald reported: “Korean operational staff members are often seen gawking at Nordic female athletes bathing in the sun. Some of the athletes are almost naked when they bathe in the sun on the veranda of their apartments. In the dining room of the Athletes’ Hall, some female athletes are often sparsely clad.”

Times staff writer Randy Harvey contributed to this story.