Fantastic Flight of Fancy

By Tom Callahan

At a remarkable ceremony without a distinct beginning or end, the grandest assembly of athletes in the history of the world settled last week into Seoul. The Olympic stadium, 100,000 full, really was just the centerpiece in a swirl of fantastic activity that started on the Han River with wind surfers and skiers and brought blossoms of colorful parachutists bursting from the sky.

While hundreds of small drums tapped footsteps and heartbeats, and the giant Dragon Drum (arriving by riverboat) beat cannon shots and thunderclaps, the children of South Korea danced a delightful welcome for nearly 10,000 sportsmen from 160 countries on parade. Someone thought of limiting the marchers in the interest of time, but the athletes screamed. "You're not in the Olympics if you don't march," said the U.S. hurdler Edwin Moses, who smiled sadly when the first impulse of the American team was to threaten a boycott of the opening scene. Boycott isn't usually an athlete's word. "I still miss 1980," Moses said. "Marching into Moscow would have been thrilling."

Vladimir Salnikov pines the same way for Los Angeles and 1984. "When it looked like only some of us could march here," the Soviet swimmer said, "I was just hoping to be one of them. Eight years ago we were alone. Four years ago we were apart. Just once I wanted to walk in together." Moses is still at the top of his game, but Salnikov's long day as the world's freestyle champion has passed. He can expect nothing more in Seoul than to see the last of his records fall in front of him. Yet he was desperate to be in the parade.

"I've talked to my players about it," said John Thompson, Georgetown's ordinarily unsentimental basketball coach. "But you can't describe the opening ceremony." Now the head U.S. coach, Thompson was an Olympic assistant in 1976. "I was tremendously surprised. I'd been through a world championship with the Boston Celtics, a few things like that. But I was never so overwhelmed. You walk out on that field -- look around at all the athletes -- and a side of you comes out that no one knows. It's just an amazing sense of pride."

A Kenyan runner, Paul Ereng, looked around at his own team. Several countrymen more celebrated than he had not made the squad. "That's the greatest thing about the Games," he said. "They aren't for the most experienced, and they aren't for the least. Neither are they for the best known or the worst. They're for the first one home."

It was a brilliant morning: the Netherlands had the foresight to pack orange parasols. Most of the athletes' costumes were as summery as the straw skimmers sported by the French, though the Australians must have been sweating under their dry-as-a-bone cattleman coats. A few lampshade headdresses competed with several styles of burnooses. But all the world's colors mixed together looked muted next to the wondrous columns of gold and the silky rainbow ranks of Koreans.

The Olympic flame arrived on the exuberant arm of Sohn Kee Chung, 76. In 1936, a year of Japanese colonial rule, Korea's great marathoner sagged on the Berlin victory stand to be wearing the wrong uniform and hearing the wrong anthem. This time he fairly bounced around Seoul's stadium. Among those who helped shuttle the sparkler to Sohn were several American sportswriters who had misplaced their cynicism in the excitement of the city. At Inchon, John Jeansonne of New York's Newsday hit an invisible speed bump and took an incredible header, but with an Olympian effort kept the torch from touching the ground and finished his kilometer awash in Mercurochrome.

When the Olympic birdbath was finally lighted, there were still a few birds in it, the laziest of the doves just released. A couple may have been fricasseed. The risk that attends glory, especially the danger to peace, was already a backdrop of the Games and a theme of the entertainment. Alternately across the infield, children spun pinwheels or broke boards with their feet. Devil masks were brandished in a pantomime of chaos. Like East and West, or North and South, yin slammed yang in a breathtaking display of ropework and philosophy. But the exquisite counterpoint to all the violent charades was the sight of a boy nearly seven, born in Seoul on the day the Games were awarded, rolling a hoop across the suddenly empty lawn.

They aren't for the most experienced, and they aren't for the least. They're for the first one home. "I'm not 19 anymore," said Evelyn Ashford, who was fifth in the 100 meters at that age twelve years ago. "I've come a long way. I've been blessed." She was carrying the U.S. flag, and it made her feel strong. "It's a rush," she said. Ashford won the sprinter's gold in 1984, but she was expected to and scarcely enjoyed it. No one imagines she will do it this time, and she is jubilant at the thought. "No matter what happens, I will have finally had the opportunity in my lifetime to compete against the whole world. If you only knew what that means."

President Roh Tae Woo declared the competition open. In longer form, he told the citizens in a television address, really a pep rally, "Perhaps there has been no occasion before this in which we have been so united with one mind and heart amid rising hope and joy." He signed off on the note of a "safe and flawless Olympic Games."

Long after the athletes were back at their Village, the festival bubbled on beside the Han. In the middle of the Village, next to the police station, are two carved totem protectors -- Chang-seongs -- to ward off disaster and guard the peace. Every Olympian has been invited to contribute a small stone to the base of the totems, but most of the kids chattering back from the stadium were preoccupied with their own spirits. Kimberly Santiago, the 26-year-old, 99-lb. rower ("steerer and yeller") from Monroe, Wis. ("the Swiss cheese capital of the U.S.A."), was typically restrained. "I'm here, I'm here, I'm here," she said.