The Atlanta Constitution from Atlanta, Georgia • 85

OLYMPICS UPDATE: THE GAMES The Atlanta Journal The Atlanta Constitution Sunday, July 21, 1991 G3 aimers learn from Montreal's mistakes I KvkV--- Comparing the stadiums Atlanta Olympic chief Billy Payne sees Kansas City's Royals Stadium as a potential model for Atlanta when it constructs an Olympic stadium that will be transformed into a baseball facility after the 1 996 Olympics. Mr. Payne points out that all the seating in Royals Stadium is behind the baselines, affording fens the best possible view. Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium has seats ringing the entire field. The Braves consider the outfield seats too far from the field.

Kansas City, stadium plan Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium By Danyl Maxie Staff writer The Montreal Expos play their home games in a big white elephant named Olympic Stadium. Originally a venue for the 1976 Summer Olympics, it stands as a shining example for how not to convert a stadium into a baseball-only facility. The Atlanta Braves have taken note. In 1997, they will inherit the next built-for-the-Olympics stadium, to be constructed in the south parking lot of Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. The Braves want an upgrade from their present digs, not another headache like Montreal's.

The Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG) sees little connection between what it is trying to build and the pitfalls of Montreal's efforts. Olympic debt $1 billion "I'm not sure a 20-year-old example by 1996 is a good example," said ACOG President Billy Payne. "Construction technology, design technology and computer technology none are remotely the same now. I think the lesson we learn from Mbntre-al is don't build a monument. Build a functional stadium that ball.

Their current capacity at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium is 52,000. So far, there are no blueprints for how to transform what will be an oval stadium (for optimum track viewing) into a non-oval baseball stadium. What happens to the extra 40,000 seats? "The plan is to design them in such a way that they can be dismantled," said ACOG spokesman Bob Brennan. "What happens to the actual seats after that, I don't know. The precise design has not been created." A better example in K.C.

What ACOG envisions, however, is a facility much like Royals Stadium in Kansas City. There are no bleachers behind the outfield. After the Olympic transformation, the Braves won't have any, either. "Basically, we could take the footprint from the Kansas City baseball stadium, which many, consider the best in the world," Mr. Payne said.

"It's more of a vertical stadium, meaning the stands go up higher down the baselines so that fans are closer to the action, instead of putting them in the outfield. It's got kind of a horseshoe shape, and then we'd just enclose the other end for the Games." ACOG has hired a joint venture of two architecture facilities planning firms to translate its needs and those of the Braves into something an architect can build to suit both. Olympics, then baseball "It's one thing to do a tennis extension for 10,000 seats you just move in the bleachers," said Jeff Floyd, a partner in one of ACOG's planning firms, Size-more Floyd Architects. "It's another to design the centerpiece of the Olympics. You wouldn't want a minor-league stadium half permanent seats, half bleachers." What the Braves want is a state-of-the-art stadium that emphasizes fan comfort, not multipurpose use.

Clearly, it is not a place they envision sharing with motocross or the Falcons, both of whom can be rough on turf. That means seats closer to the action, highly accessible concession areas, ample restroom facilities and skyboxes for high-paying clients. It means a good view from any seat in the park, and the circular Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium doesn't afford that, Mr. Floyd said. wrrnMi inn Ha File Atlanta Olympic officials foresee a facility like Kansas City's Royals Stadium.

In the background is Arrowhead Stadium, home of the Kansas City Chiefs football team. Too many seats are far from the field. A retractable roof which Atlanta won't have has caused numerous problems. The Braves find fault with a lot in Montreal's stadium. "Almost everything," Braves President Stan Kasten said.

"If will appease the needs of those who will use it." Montreal's stadium has become the centerpiece of a $1 billion Olympic debt that still hasn't been cleared 15 years after the Games. The place isn't suited for baseball intimacy, either. you look beyond the outfield fences, there's almost room to put another field in it." That's not the kind of coziness the Braves want. The stadium they will inherit will have seated 85,000 for the 1996 Games before being pared to 45,000 for base Olympic memories: Games left mark on Georgia athletes M1 ran i Lsr I ft By Karen Rosen Staff writer It takes years for some people to reach the Olympics. After making the U.S.

team for the 1928 Games, it took Fred Alderman nine more days just to get there. Mr. Alderman traveled by ship to Amsterdam for the '28 Summer Olympics. The East Point resident remembers John- ny Weissmuller, the future Tar-zan, swimming inside a big can-' vas tank suspended by a belt so he could "swim like crazy and not go anywhere." Mr. Weissmuller had an ad-; vantage over runners like Mr.

Alderman. "By the time we got there," he said, "none of us could run. Everybody ate too much ice cream, too." Fortunately for Mr. Alder- man, the iclay was held on the last two days of track and field competition. He and his three teammates won a gold medal in world-record time.

Mr. Alderman, a Michigan native, is the oldest Olympian living in Georgia. "When you get to be 86," he said, "you don't have much competition." Competition has been the catchword for the more than 100 living Olympians who were born, trained or now live in Georgia. Long training pays off "The best moment," said Steve Lundqulst of Jonesboro, double gold medalist in swimming at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, "was walking into the dorm the first day saying, 'I'm here. This is it.

This is what I've trained for all my Mr. Lundquist's towel was the most photogenic of the '84 Games, imprinted with the words, "America Thanks for a Dream Come True." "The pride you felt was immediate," he said. "People would stop you on the street we're in the middle of Watts and they'd say, 'Dude, great swim, saw it on It was the greatest two weeks of my life." Meeting Hitler in Berlin Kathlyn Kelley Owens always is asked the same question when people learn she was a high jumper in Berlin in 1936. "Did you meet Hitler?" "Yes I did," said Ms. Owens.

"We went down the receiving line and I shook his hand." She was just 15, but she was struck by the strangeness of some of the things she saw in Berlin and some things she didn't see. "We saw no children, not even at the stadium," said Ms. Owens, of Chamblee. "They were being trained somewhere else. That was the time Hitler wanted a super race." In the 1952 Summer Games in Helsinki, Barbara Jones Slater of Clarkston became the youngest person to win an Olympic gold medal in track and field when she ran on the U.S.

women's 400-meter relay team. She was 15, "everybody's baby." Ms. Slater, who also won a gold medal in 1960, was unaccustomed to the "white nights" in Helsinki, when it was daylight 24 He expected to win and did win at the world championships a year later. Mr. Dziedzic, who moved to Marietta in 1985, displays that gold medal but keeps his Olympic bronze in the attic.

"It wasn't what I wanted," he said. "The experience was fun and enjoyable, but not satisfying." Massacre at Munich Dennis Berkhottz, a 1972 team handball competitor, recalled the massacre of 11 Israeli team members during the Munich Olympics. "They told us to go downtown and have a good time," said Mr. Berkholtz, now marketing director for the Georgia Dome. "The sad thing was, we came back late at night and were told everything was fine.

We went to bed without knowing any killing ever took place." The mood at the Munich Games changed, armed guards prowling everywhere. But, Mr. Berkholtz said, "To this day, I believe they were the best Olympics ever." At the 1960 Games in Rome, Ed Crook of Columbus won a gold medal in boxing as a middleweight. As if that weren't enough, he was blessed by the pope. One of Mr.

Crook's teammates was Cassius Clay, later Muhammad Ali. For Mr. Crook, winning the Olympic gold "was something you probably wouldn't think would happen. You get a chance, and it happens- and it's just something you'll never forget." I I File Swimming gold medalist Steve Lundquist was honored with a parade in his hometown of Jonesboro in 1984. hours a day.

Once, she woke up thinking it was morning and discovered a carnival down the street. "I was on the ferris wheel and sprinter Mae Faggs and boxer Floyd Patterson came looking for me," she said. "I waved to them, told them to join me." It was 2 a.m. "They gave me a whipping," she said. A whipping one day, a gold medal the next.

"It's like a high, a rush," Ms. Slater said. "You nev athletes from around the world. Michael Jacques of Warner Robins had been a competitive weightlifter for 12 years when he made the 1988 U.S. team.

He placed 13th in Seoul, "my lucky number now," he said. "I never look at it like being beaten by the Top 12. 1 look at it as having defeated the bottom 19." For Stan Driedric, a wrestling bronze medalist in the 1976 Montreal Games, the Olympic experience was disappointing. er come down. I'm still not down." Watt Bellamy of Atlanta was a center on perhaps the greatest basketball team in Olympic history: the 1960 U.S.

squad, which was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame. "That was the culmination," Mr. Bellamy said. In the Olympic Village in Rome, Mr.

Bellamy discussed the 1957 Little Rock school controversy when federal troops intervened with interested 1 V'V J. 1 VC 1M -vir Georgia Dome is taking shape The skeletal stage of construction is nearing completion on the Georgia Dome, a 1996 Olympic venue that will debut with an Atlanta Falcons football game in August 1992. Dome officials have promised to deliver the stadium within its S175 million construction budget, and that appears likely because almost all of the project's contracts have been awarded. More than three-fourths of the 203 luxury suites priced as high as $200,000 per year already have been taken. The total cost of the Dome, including land acquisition, is expected to be $214 million.

During the 96 Games, the Dome is scheduled to be used for Olympic basketball, boxing and team handball events. 1" "If if-MP ir Frank Niemeir Staff Tne Georgia Dome, an Olympic venue, also is expected to be the Falcons' home beginning In 1992. Jean Shifnn Staff A worker assembles lights at the Dome site Downtown..