On The Sidelines

For the organisers of the forthcoming Winter Olympics, it seems, it simply never rains but it pours. Having been embroiled in one controversy after another for the past three years, the Nagano Organising Committee (NOC) now face a new problem with El Nino, the weather system currently playing havoc with conditions in several parts of the world, threatening to bring warm weather to Japan this winter and, in turn, a conspicuous lack of snow.

With the 100-day Olympic countdown starting on Thursday, organisers are trying to remain calm but they are already bringing in the snow machines just in case and working on their fall-back plans. "At the moment, we don't pray for God's help," says Akira Tsukada, head of snow sports at the NOC. "But it would be different if it doesn't snow when the Games are near at hand."

Bad weather has become the hallmark of winter sport events in Japan after the 1993 world alpine skiing championships in Morioka were spoiled by wind, snow and rain. The men's super-giant slalom was not run at all.

At that time, International Ski Federation (FIS) president Marc Hodler lost no sense of humour. He followed Japanese organisers to a local shrine and prayed for the mercy of the mountain god.

This time around, however, Hodler is providing one of the NOC's biggest headaches, announcing this week that if recreational skiing is banned above the downhill race course, as is proposed to help prepare the area for competition, the FIS may withdraw altogether from the Games.

"If they kill skiing, we will go away. We may pull out of the games so that there would be no skiing at all, not even jumping, not even cross-country . . . nothing," said Hodler.

Dwindling attendances, departing stars and diminished television ratings have left Major League Soccer looking to next year's World Cup to give United States football a boost.

The second season of the league, which FIFA was so keen to see succeed, finished up last Sunday on a high note with a sellout crowd of 57,431 watching DC United defend their title with a 21 triumph over Colorado.

MLS also signed a six-year television deal earlier this month that will bring $5 million in revenue next season, even though ratings for MLS matches fell 16 per cent from the inaugural season.

Attendances also fell 16 per cent, to 14,616 a game. Play-off numbers were 4,000 a game lower until the final. MLS commissioner Doug Logan, however, insisted that he is not worried, despite having expected 20,000 fans a game this year.

"We're concerned but remember our projection for the first year was 12,000, which we exceeded. The original projection for the second year was 13,500 with 15,000 for the third year."

Logan is now hoping that next summer's World Cup in France will help to boost attendances for season three but there are other problems to be sorted out with players representatives, unhappy that first-team regulars are earning as little as $25,000 for the season, filing suits against the league under anti-trust laws and accumulated losses for the two seasons to date topping $30 million.

Coincidently, the USSF is about to decide on whether to give the go-ahead for a new professional women's league. Salaries here are expected to start at $15,000 for the three-and-a-half month season and break even is expected to be achieved with attendances of around 3,000.

The National Soccer Alliance claimed to have raised $12 million up front from the commercial sector and have eight teams anxious to take part.

Simon Barker, the 32-year-old QPR player, was reportedly chuffed when he was asked recently to be on a panel for a television programme - it was the first time he had ever received such an request. It seems that the gloss sort of went off the occasion, though, when Barker found out subsequently that the programme, despite putting it more kindly, was basically about ordinary footballers getting slightly over the hill.

There was a sign of things to come in Iceland this week, perhaps, where police staged a dawn raid on the offices of the country's boxing federation and seized gloves, punch bags and other equipment which they suspected of being used for training.

Boxing is, in fact, banned in Iceland and coverage of the sport on the national airwaves is also prohibited under a law passed back in 1956. The association is allowed to exist on the basis of freedom of association but legal experts employed by the state recently decided that the sale of equipment which could be used for coaching could be prevented.

Sales of sports memorabilia, as we mentioned in this space last week when we reported on the latest exploitation of Muhammad Ali's career, can raise very big bucks indeed, particularly when the cash raised is going to charity.

So it was a bit of a surprise when the buggy which Seve Ballesteros used to get around as he attempted to keep an eye on the progress of his players during the Ryder Cup raised only 500,000 (pesetas) at an auction last week.

In a great many other countries a figure like that would be quite a windfall but in Spain, half a million pesetas amounts to a little over £2,000 - almost certainly less than the cost of buying the vehicle new.

Trainer Peter Walwyn has had more than 30 winners so far this season and after every one he has placed an advertisement in the next day's Racing Post results page, in the appropriate section for the race in question announcing the victory to be "Another Walwynner."

"It came to me in a flash of inspiration earlier in the summer," he told a British newspaper columnist last week adding that "it's OK if you've got a name like Walwyn but it's not much good if you're called Snodgrass."

Well, you've got to admit, he has a point.

Please send any correspondence to On The Sidelines, Sports Dept, The Irish Times, 11-15 D'Olier Street, Dublin 2 or e-mail emalone@irish-times.ie

Many thanks to Michael Moriarty and Liam Hannon who discovered on a recent trip to Brussels that, even before our lads had taken the field against Belgium on Wednesday night, our opponents were honouring Mick McCarthy.

The Irish boss, as can be seen from the picture, appears on the money over there, an honour not even bestowed here on Big Jack during the glory days. You'd like to think they'll be fed up enough with him after next Saturday week's game to come up with somebody new but just now it seems more likely that they'll start bunging our players on their stamps.