Bush urged to drop ad mentioning Olympics
~~article_author~~ Reuters
Friday, August 27, 2004
ATHENS Calls of "cut it out" and "give it back" competed with a hot United
States vs.
China medals race on Thursday as the Olympic Games entered their final
days with 80 or so
medals still to be won.
The U.S. Olympic Committee asked President George W. Bush's re-election
campaign to pull a
television ad that refers to the Olympic Games, the International Olympic
Committee said.
The ad, extolling the return of Afghanistan and Iraq to the Games courtesy
of U.S.
military intervention, angered Olympic officials because they felt that it
hijacked the
Olympic brand.
"We own the rights to the Olympic name and nobody asked us," Gerhard
Heiberg, the IOC
marketing chief said. The Bush campaign said Thursday that it had no
intention of stopping
the ads. They will continue to air through Sunday as originally planned,
the Bush-Cheney
spokesman Scott Stanzel said.
"We are on firm legal ground to mention the Olympics to make a factual
point in a
political advertisement," he said.
Drugs stubbornly dogged the Games, with the Ukrainian women's rowing team
losing a bronze
medal and another weightlifter barred.
But the Greek gold medal winner Fania Halkia complained after an ecstatic
win in the
400-meter hurdles that the media was obsessed with doping, and the Russian
shot-putter
Irina Korzhanenko flatly refused to give back the Olympic gold she lost
after a drug test
that she insisted was erroneous.
"I'm not going to give the gold medal back because I'm not guilty of
anything," she told
Izvestia newspaper on Thursday. "I'm 100, 200 percent sure that I'm
innocent."
One Russian official called her actions "ugly" and "stupid."
With many eyes on China's rising pile of gold, the Chinese tried to cool
the overheated
hyperbole at home, forecasting a late Russian medals surge to second place
behind the
United States, when the total medals are unofficially tallied Sunday
night.
"The risk of China not being able to hold on to second place is very
great," Xiao Tian, a
Chinese Olympic Committee vice president said.
Russia climbed to fifth in the medal count after a bad start, with 14
golds. Australia has
16, Japan 15 and China 24, one behind the United States.
Xiao calculated that of the more than 80 gold medals still to be awarded
before the end of
the Games on Sunday, China had solid chances at only two more titles,
men's and women's
diving.
"We do not make gold medals the be-all and end-all of the Olympics and to
do so goes
against the guiding spirit of the Olympic movement," he said in a bid to
dampen
expectations.
A white Zimbabwean swimmer was hailed as a "golden girl" by President
Robert Mugabe after
winning all three of the country's medals so far. Kirsty Coventry got a
red carpet welcome
at the Harare airport to the sound of African drums.
Mugabe, who frequently makes headlines for his tough stance toward
Zimbabwe's white
minority, presented her with $50,000 and a diplomatic passport. Ukraine
lost its medal
after crew member Olena Olefirenko tested positive for a prohibited
stimulant. The crew
appeared to have fallen afoul on a prescription from its own team doctor.
The weightlifter Zoltan Kovacs was the second Hungarian to be expelled
from the Games
after refusing to take a dope test, joining discus thrower Robert Fazekas,
who was
stripped of his gold for trying to cheat on a sample.
Hailed by one Greek tabloid as a "winged goddess," Halkia, who won by a
country mile on
Wednesday, sparked nationwide jubilation, but there were questions about
her startlingly
improved form. Barraged by questions, she asked, "Why do people want to
give a negative
impression of sports?"
All of Greece groaned when the national sprint heroes Costas Kenteris and
Katerina Thanou
withdrew without racing after failing to take drug tests a day before the
Games began on
Aug. 13.
But Halkia said: "They were put against the wall, there was a firing
squad. People
imagined the wildest things."
Copyright © 2004 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
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