What Color Is Your Flag Today?

By Bruce W. Nelan

Due to circumstances beyond its control, the most powerful sports machine in history cannot be part of the 1992 Olympics. No red hammer-and-sickle flags will fly at Albertville, and the national anthem heard at past victory ceremonies has, like the country itself, been overtaken by the second Russian revolution.

Since its Olympic debut in 1952, the Soviet Union -- or more precisely, athletes from the 15 republics of the U.S.S.R. -- has won 1,212 medals, far more than any other nation. They wrapped up 29 of them at Calgary four years ago, including 11 golds, mostly in Nordic skiing and figure skating. And of course, there was the phenomenal hockey team; it took seven golds between 1956 and 1988.

Now, in place of the Soviet Union, there are 15 separate nations and something called the Commonwealth of Independent States, which provides a tenuous framework for cooperation among 11 of them. The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have already reclaimed their status as separate competitors. Seven other former republics are not competing. But five states -- Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan -- will participate jointly at the Winter Games. Members of the so-called Unified Team wear the traditional red-white-and-light-gray uniforms of the former Soviet Union, but will be allowed to display the name, flag or symbol of their state on the sleeve.

They will march under the five-ringed Olympic flag and carry a placard -- presumably large -- reading UNIFIED TEAM OF THE NATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEES OF RUSSIA, UKRAINE, BELARUS, KAZAKHSTAN AND UZBEKISTAN. If a team member wins a gold medal, the Olympic hymn, Beethoven's Ode to Joy, will be played during the awards ceremony, at which, N.O.C. officials expect, the athlete may have his or her home country announced. The full Unified Team includes 192 athletes. About 160 will actually compete, and of those, 148 are from Russia.

"Only the name has changed," claims former biathlon world champion Viktor Mamatov, now a sports official in Moscow. "The spirit, the team, the trainers and the coaches are the same." They will be going for gold in Nordic skiing, the biathlon, skating and hockey, he insists. Others are not so sure. Alexei Bykov, a Russian speed-skating hopeful, thinks the country's uncertain future will have a negative effect on athletes who, he says, "need comfortable conditions and psychological security."

Less than two months ago, the Russian government abolished the giant, anachronistic Soviet State Committee for Physical Education and Sport, leaving thousands of athletes and coaches without the managers and financiers who ruled their lives for decades. "We have such limited resources, even for training on ice," says Marina Pylaeva, a Russian speed skater. "We had to work out carefully how much we could do with the money we had."

The N.O.C., created only last spring, figured $800,000 was needed to train and send the team, says vice president Alexander Kozlovsky. The committee appealed for support from businesses around the world and set up an Olympic lottery to bring in cash. The campaign paid off and even netted a lucrative contract with Germany's Adidas, which will supply most of the team's competition uniforms. Outfits for the ceremonies as well as daywear and much of the equipment will be supplied by Goma, a Yugoslav textile firm. There is some irony in that, since Yugoslavia has split apart in a bloody civil war. Its former republics of Croatia and Slovenia (home of the country's best Alpine skiers) will be participating separately.

Several former Soviet republics have begun the process of applying for membership in the international Olympic movement. Although sports bureaucrats in Moscow are lobbying to maintain a unified team and the International Olympic Committee also prefers that course, by summer most of the new states are likely to end up competing in Barcelona under their own flag. Their athletes may continue to win, but they will also be competing against one another. Members of the rest of the world's teams will be forgiven if they quietly sigh in relief that the Soviet juggernaut's decades of dominance are over.

With reporting by Sally B. Donnelly/Los Angeles and Ann M. Simmons/Moscow