Winter is going to be one big drag

It probably would be unfair to label the Salt Lake City organising committee the most corrupt in Olympic history, but you would have to say that they were clumsier in going about this bribery business than were most of their predecessors. The litany of transgressions has by now been well chronicled - supplying nubile young escorts for visiting delegates wasn't particularly unique, but throwing in a year's supply of Viagra added a touch of originality.

Had this been any other sport or, for that matter, any other business, it is safe to say that the chief executive would have been brought down by the scandal.

Somehow, Juan Antonio Samaranch not only weathered the storm, but survived to preside over the subsequent purge of those unlucky enough to be caught with their hands in the cookie jar, along with some of those caught dispensing the cookies.

If the recently concluded Sydney Games set a new standard for unbridled joy, the Winter Games which will follow two years hence appear destined to provide the opposite.

In their efforts to distance themselves from the pattern of bribes which resulted in their being awarded the 2002 Winter Olympics in the first place, the SLOC authorities have replaced ousted officials almost exclusively with grim-faced pillars of the Mormon faith which dominates Utah affairs.

In any other business, for instance, SLOC President Mitt Romney would be regarded as a carpetbagger. He is the son of a Michigan governor whose most significant achievement was getting himself trounced in an effort to unseat Ted Kennedy in a US Senate election in Massachusetts.

In the absence of his principal qualification for the job, which is that he is a member in good standing of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, his presence in his present office would be considered a bad joke. Now, if you think the summer Games include a lot of silly sports - ballroom dancing and beach volleyball leap to mind - you owe it to yourself to take in a winter Olympics sometime.

My particular favourite has always been the biathlon relay, which combines the seemingly diverse pursuits of cross-country skiing and target shooting. To produce an equivalent event in the summer Olympics might require the participants in a 4x400 metres relay team to stop at the conclusion of each lap and, say, successfully open a tin of soup before handing on the baton to the next runner.

I haven't covered a winter Olympics since nearly freezing to death in Sarajevo back in 1984, and, the truth be known, I probably wasn't going to go to Salt Lake City anyway. Any slim chance that might have happened vanished with this week's announcement that the organisers propose to turn the entire venue - including outdoor, non-enclosed facilities - into one gigantic no-smoking zone.

To be sure, the anti-smoking zealots who have permeated every facet of American life have had their particular impact on sport. Boxing has never been the same since cigars were banned at ringside. We've even gotten used to the idea of stepping outside the stadium press box to nurture a couple of quick puffs during timeouts.

But the notion of taking an entire, openair, church-owned, downtown area and designating it "No Smoking" on the grounds that it is an Olympic venue takes it over the line of sensibility.

Not even in California, where a man can be clapped into irons for lighting up in a bar, would they attempt to ban al fresco tobacco use. The problem stems from the fact that the Mormon Church donated several blocks of downtown Salt Lake City to the organising committee, which in turn designated it the Olympic "medals plaza".

Since a security fence will border the perimeter, it somehow falls within the purview of Utah's Indoor Clean Air Act - though it is entirely outdoors - thus providing a pretext for implementing the ban.

At least, that's the stated rationale. Here's what it's really about: The Mormon Church's canon, known as the Word of Wisdom, forbids the consumption of alcohol, coffee, and tea, as well smoking.

You'd have to say the SLOC leadership has strained credulity in its efforts to lay the blame for the draconian regulations elsewhere. "I'm not here to explain the LDS Church position on coffee, smoking or alcohol," SLOC spokeswoman Caroline Shaw somewhat testily explained. "I'm not going to get into a discussion of the position of the LDS Church."

Even Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson recognises this as pure poppycock. City officials had originally hoped to circumvent the church-state issue by confining the Games to publicly-owned sites, but when the LDS Church donated the property (as well as $5 million to refurbish it to Olympic standards) for the downtown plaza, it apparently won the right to set the moral standard as well.

"When people say this has nothing to do with religion, they're wrong," Mayor Anderson said last week. "Mitt Romney and others have always said we simply can't do it. The property is owned by the LDS Church. I understand that. But let's be forthright about what the reasons are."