Adding Color to Red, White and Blue

For '06 Winter Games, United States Fields Its Most Diverse Team

TURIN, Italy, Feb. 8 -- Back when figure skater Dorothy Hamill, hockey player Mike Eruzione and speedskaters Eric Heiden and Bonnie Blair were winning medals for the United States, the joke was that the snow wasn't the only thing that was white when it came to the Winter Olympics.

The joke may be getting a little old. Once composed almost exclusively of white athletes from small communities in the Northeast and Midwest, the U.S. team that will march into the Olympic Stadium on Friday night for Opening Ceremonies will be the most racially and ethnically diverse in the history of the Winter Games.

It will include a Cuban American from Miami, a Puerto Rican American from Chicago, a Japanese American from Seattle and African Americans from Chicago, Alabama and North Carolina, all among the country's strongest medal hopes. At least 23 of the 211-member U.S. team have Hispanic or non-white backgrounds, and the team includes natives of Florida, Georgia and Texas, as well as South Korea, Russia and Japan.

Though the U.S. Olympic Committee does not keep official records on race or ethnicity, the number of black, Asian American or Hispanic athletes on the U.S. team is more than double that at Salt Lake City in 2002, which included at least 12 minorities. It is nearly four times the number on the U.S. teams that competed in 1998 in Nagano and 1994 in Lillehammer.

"I've definitely seen the winter sport side of it evolve," said men's bobsledder Randy Jones, an African American who has competed in two previous Olympics and won a silver medal in 2002. "There's more color getting involved in all sports."

The evolution of the U.S. team has major implications for the U.S. Olympic Committee, whose congressionally defined mission includes increasing the number of minorities in athletics, and its various winter-sport national governing bodies, which for years have fought what was often a losing battle to attract more of the country's top minority athletes. Sports officials say there is no greater recruitment tool than a more diverse lineup of American Olympians.

NBC, which paid $1.5 billion for the broadcast rights for Turin and the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, sees a benefit as well. As NBC expands its coverage of the Olympics beyond network prime time to its cable channel lineup, it is banking on appealing to a younger and diverse viewing audience.

"The Winter Olympics used to present a promotional challenge," said Mike McCarley, the vice president of communications and marketing for NBC Universal Sports & Olympics. "Now there's speed, danger and an Olympic team that is more identifiable to a more diverse cross-section of America."

U.S. officials say there are several reasons for the evolution. Athletes who grew up roller skating and inline skating far from the ice, snow and mountains of the North and West have been switching to Olympic sports such as speedskating and hockey. In addition, recruiting efforts by winter sport governing bodies have begun to pay off. They've been helped by the success of black and Hispanic athletes at recent Olympics.

"What you're seeing -- and we're very proud of it -- some of it has been very fortuitous and some of it has been by design," U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Jim Scherr said.

Though some winter sports such as skiing and curling remain predominantly white and non-Hispanic, figure skating and bobsled have become increasingly diverse. Speedskating is at the leading edge of the transformation, with a diversity that is on par with, or exceeds, that of most U.S. summer Olympic teams.

Speedskating's long-track team includes Shani Davis, an African American from Chicago; Derek Parra of Carson, Calif., who was the first athlete of Mexican descent to win a Winter Olympic medal when he claimed a gold in 2002; Ryan Leveille, who is part Native American; and Jennifer Rodriguez, who is of Cuban descent and in 1998 became the first Hispanic American to compete in the Winter Games.