World Trade Center flag has taken on life of its own

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Feb 8, 2002 | by Meri-Jo Borzilleri

On the day the 2002 Winter Olympic Games open in Salt Lake City, it's not an athlete, a team or a sport that stands center stage.

It's a tattered American flag, and it amplifies a debate that has dogged the Olympic Games for decades: When does patriotism become jingoism?

Tonight, during the Opening Ceremony, the bedraggled flag recovered from the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attacks will be carried into Rice-Eccles Stadium by eight American athletes. It's a departure from protocol for the International Olympic Committee, which bends about as often as an aluminum Flag pole.

The IOC initially turned down the U.S. Olympic Committee's request to make the flag part of the ceremony, fearing it would detract from the international nature of the Olympic Games. But the group reversed itself after some intense - and public - lobbying from the USOC and its Olympic athletes.

"That flag is so important to so many people," said skeleton athlete Jimmy Shea, selected Thursday to read the Olympic Oath during the Opening Ceremony. "(Sept. 11) was an attack on me, on my family, my friends, on the world. For us to be able to say we're still standing is very important."

"It's important that flag comes in because it's part of each and every American now," said four-time Olympian Amy Peterson, short- track speedskater chosen by her teammates to carry the traditional flag at the head of the U.S. athletes' 211-person delegation. "The fact is it's going to be there and it should be there."

The eight athletes who will carry it are biathlete Kristina Sabasteanski, a member of the U.S. Army's World Class Athlete Program; firefighter and skeleton athlete Lea Ann Parsley; figure skater and three-time Olympian Todd Eldredge, women's hockey player Angela Ruggiero, friend of national team member Kathleen Kauth, whose father was killed in the World Trade Center, luger Mark Grimmette, a three-time Olympian, snowboarder Chris Klug, who underwent a liver transplant; speedskater Derek Parra, who won Pan American Games gold after being hit by a car and curler Stacy Liapis.

The threadbare flag has taken on a life of its own. It has become a celebrity, arriving in Salt Lake City this week accompanied by two of the three Port Authority policemen who will help bring it into the stadium tonight. Plans are the flag, too fragile to be hoisted, will make its appearance during the national anthem and not as part of the athletes parade. The flag was last seen at last week's Super Bowl. It has also appeared flying over Yankee Stadium during the World Series.

But nowhere has it engendered so much debate as in Salt Lake City, its biggest international appearance. More than three billion viewers worldwide are expected to tune in to the Opening Ceremony.

Even before the flag idea was presented, talk swirled about these Games becoming a big American rally in the wake of Sept. 11. Other nations, who also lost citizens in the attacks, have not objected to bringing in the flag and have been supportive of American athletes.

"We are in the United States of America, we are guests of the United States of America and the ceremony for the flag will be an homage to the flag of the United States of America," said Jacques Rogge, IOC president, on Thursday. "It is no departure from what is normally in the Olympic program. We see absolutely no problem. On the contrary, we understand the deep emotion of the American public, but also other nations that have suffered casualties."

Americans haven't always had the world's sympathy because we have not always been gracious on the international stage, nor do we often realize it when we aren't. The 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, boycotted by the Soviet Union, became a medal extravaganza for the United States and Americans played it to the hilt.

Then there are displays like those at Sydney, where American athletes crossed the line between patriotism and good taste. Spectators booed when members of the U.S. men's track-and-field relay team literally wrapped themselves in a flag and strutted and preened for cameras after winning gold. The athletes later apologized.

It's hard to be objective when you're watching the Olympics through red-, white- and blue-colored glasses, or through the lens of an NBC Sports camera. Don Mischler, director of the Opening Ceremony in Salt Lake, remembers watching the L.A. Opening Ceremony, his first, and swelling with patriotic pride. Then an IOC official later remarked that it was one of most jingoistic displays he'd ever seen. Mischler hasn't forgotten that, and is expected to show that restraint tonight.

USOC president Sandy Baldwin, a recently elected IOC member, says a balance can be struck in these Games, and the prominent display of the tattered flag tonight will prove it.

"I want our audience to be celebrating humanity and not just celebrating our country," she said.