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Ueberroth, 47, masterminded a triumph that involved four-fifths of the nations of the globe. The bottom line, in terms of both money and morale, was more than impressive. Traditionally, the Olympics have lost money. In 1976 Montreal was left with a $1 billion debt, and Canadian taxpayers are still paying off the loss. This year, for the first time, the Games received almost no government funds and ended up with an unimaginable surplus of $215 million --and the sum could reach $250 million by June. To do this, Ueberroth mustered a force of 72,000, about half of them volunteers. Despite the Soviet boycott, the Games became one of the greatest athletic spectacles in history.
Some 2.5 billion people, more than half the earth's population, watched the Los Angeles Games. Not since Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon has America had such an opportunity to lift its best face to the world. Ueberroth arranged the showing. He took over the stage of the global village, the earth intricately interconnected, and he spectacularly presented the U.S. upon it. If such success represented a political manipulation of the Games, blame not American leaders but the irrepressible high spirits of Ueberroth's free enterprise.
Ueberroth was, among other things, preternaturally lucky. Almost everyone who thought about it had made a private bet with himself that no matter how tight the security, the odds were that a fanatic with a bomb in a gym bag would take down half a stadium one afternoon. When, the night before the opening, a man drove a car down the sidewalk in the Westwood section of Los Angeles, killing one person and injuring some 50 others, Americans muttered, "Oh, God! Here we go." But then the Games went off as peacefully as an Edwardian field day.
The boycott, as it turned out, brightened the mood of the Games, if not necessarily the quality of the competition. The success of the Games was Ueberroth's, and America's, unanswerable reply to the Soviets. The Games drew a vivid implicit contrast between American and Soviet styles--the American Games all light and air and flashing motion (the essence of freedom dramatized), while the Soviets sulked in their totalitarian dusk.
Before Los Angeles, commentators predicted the death of the Olympics as a form: too political, too nationalistic. The Los Angeles crowds were often rudely nationalistic. But the Games transcended that partisanship. Part of the charm of an Olympics is that we are for those days represented by bright, eager, muscular youth, intensely alive. They become us, they embody us. Their acts become ours. From this identification flows a sense of pride and possibility and renewal.
Ueberroth presided over the Games in a spirit that reflected much of a new American style. He and his team, including LAOOC Executive Vice President Harry Usher and Hollywood Producer David Wolper, worked with imagination and brutal self-interest. In negotiations, they relentlessly pleaded poverty. A lot of the people who worked as volunteers were left in the aftermath wondering why they did not share in the profits. Some got bonuses. Most did not. Ueberroth received a $475,000 bonus, which, considering his accomplishment, was well earned. He gave the money to charity.