Barcelona the Win-Win Games

By PICO IYER BARCELONA

The shadow Dream Team was working its magic in a rickety, almost empty country stadium. There were Roman numerals on the scoreboard. Black-and-yellow butterflies fluttered around the net. The few sportswriters in attendance were sitting cross-legged on the ground, to avoid the blistering sun. The bus driver hadn't even known how to find the place.

The number of fans supporting the perennial world champions was approximately zero. And though this was their national day, no flags were flying in their honor. Nonetheless, the Cuban baseball team went out and polished the diamond till it sparkled, showing off all the sports-for-sports'- sake swagger of a team that has won 63 of 64 international games in recent years. All but unknown prodigies with names like Omar and Orestes and Lourdes gave a master class not only in the fundamentals but also in the finer points of flamboyance -- bunting one-handed, stretching singles into triples, chiseling the plate like jewelers. According to many Americans, at least seven of them could command multimillion-dollar salaries in the U.S.

Afterward, the opposing coach, Rafael Avila, was exultant. "For us it's a victory," he said. "I'm very pleased with our kids." The Dominicans had, after all, come within eight runs of tying the Cubans. The Cuban pitcher, for his part, complained that he'd had a bad day. And the smiling Cuban centerfielder Victor Mesa (a.k.a. "El Loco") bubbled over with noblesse ; oblige: "The Dominican Republic should be very proud to lose only 8-0." Across town that afternoon, where another dominant Dream Team was on display, the responses were almost identical. "Our objective has been to keep them within a 45-point range," said the coach of the Angolan basketball team, Victorino Cunha, after playing the U.S. True, he had lost by 68, but that seemed a minor victory after being 48 points down at halftime. "For us," said an Angolan, "it's good to lose by 60 points."

There was no shortage of winners as the Olympics loudspeakers began playing national anthems last week: Fu Mingxia, the poised Chinese diver who was not even born when El Loco began hitting home runs for Cuba; the Maldivian swimmer who became the first in his country's Olympic history not to finish last (in part because that position was already occupied by another Maldivian swimmer).

But as a Tibetan monk (on hand for Buddhist duties in the Olympic Village) noted, "More will lose than win." And the losers were already finding reasons for reassurance, ways of measuring themselves against the insuperable, sources of delight. The Angolans, for example, seemed almost flattered when American Charles Barkley jabbed an elbow into one skinny Angolan. It suggested to them that Barkley was taking them seriously, treating them as roughly as he would his professional opponents.

For those expected to win, like the Cubans, it was harder to trump expectation. In their second game, they dispensed with Italy 18-1 and were probably distraught about giving up a run. Then they trounced Japan 8-2. One day later, to vary things a little, against an uncommonly strong U.S. team, they spotted the Americans five runs in the first inning and calmly breezed past, 9-6. Yet as they continued their imperturbable strut toward the first Olympic gold medal in the all-American pastime, the Cubans were carrying on their shoulders all the ambiguities of the Games. Were they an ideal embodiment of the Olympic spirit -- spurning cash to play for country -- or in fact its desecration, mere public relations puppets with which the Cuban government could show off its prowess to the world (while the rest of the island starved)? Were they the most professional amateurs you could ever hope to see, or an aging, Potemkin example of a state-sponsored system of shamateurism?

The U.S. Dream Teamers were up against other kinds of obstacles. Weren't they just All-Stars, coach Chuck Daly was constantly being asked, or merely Hollywood Globetrotters? Why did they dominate the spotlight here? Why did they not stay in the Olympic Village? One reason was that 7-ft. millionaires are not easy to hide, and everywhere they went, the American players were mobbed by the stars of a hundred nations eager to have their picture taken with them, or just to catch a touch of sympathetic magic. Even El Loco, when asked why he wore the number 32, referred to Magic Johnson.

That was why, perhaps, so many competitors spoke of the court -- or the field, or the pool, or the gym -- as the one high clear space where they could be themselves. On the court, no one asked Magic about AIDS; on the court, Michael Jordan could scowl and stick out his tongue. On the field, the Cubans could leave revolutionary issues behind them and let their running speak for itself. On the board or on the bars or between the lines, the questions ended and the answers began. The public arena, before 10,000 spectators and 2 billion viewers, may be the one place where today's stars can at last be free, and alone.

The Olympics reflect issues, yes, but they also offer a refuge from them, a way for symbols to become people again, and for struggles to be replaced by no-lose propositions. After playing against the Dream Team, Croatian coach Petar Skansi was smiling like a champion. Not just because he had come within 33 points of tying the U.S. Not only because, briefly, he had been able to ignore the bloodshed in his homeland. But mostly, he said, because "I was impressed with the way Mr. Jordan and Mr. Daly pronounced our names. They know about us. That is very important to us. That means we are something in the world of basketball!" The winners counted their medals last week; the losers counted their victories.