Racing shines on Winter Olympics stage

By DAVID GREEN

There it was, the eve of the official kickoff of stock car Speedweeks in Daytona, one night before the Budweiser Shootout, and I was watching -- the opening ceremonies for the Winter Olympics, brought to me from Torino, Italy, by NBC.

It was a pretty entertaining evening in general, but as a race fan, I was especially rewarded by the appearance of a Formula One racing car which had a role in the event. The car was a Ferrari, sans corporate sponsors' logos and bedecked instead with the five-ring symbol of the Olympic Games on the engine shround and rear wing and a representation of the Italian flag on the nose cone.

It wasn't seven-time champion Michael Schumacher at the wheel; one report named Ferrari test driver Luca Badoer, while Dutch television speculated that it was motorcycle racing ace Valentino Rossi (Italians, both). The driver, whoever he was, wowed the crowd with some doughnuts, filling Stadio Olympico with the shriek of the V-10 engine and Bridgestone tire smoke. What a great thing for auto racing fans, I thought, for our sport to be a part of this.

And then, I thought: Why couldn't we (Americans, that is, whose favorite form of motorsport is NASCAR stock car racing) have done something like this in Atlanta in 1996?

Last night's Ferrari moment was apropos. For one thing, there is F1's Olympics-style podium recognition and the playing of the (gold medal) winner's national anthem. There's also the global nature and competitive nationalism of grand prix racing. But mainly, there was the significance of racing and of the Ferrari marque in the host country.

Surely a similar argument could have been made on behalf of NASCAR -- if not in Salt Lake City in 2002, surely in Atlanta in 1996.

Not that the orchestrators of the events in Torino did everything right. I couldn't help thinking, what in the world were the former Italian Olympians doing in those silver jumpsuits? Silver is the color of Germany in international racing, dating from the pre-World War II Auto Union (now Audi) machines and present-day Mercedes-Benz, a partner with the British McLaren team.

I guess it's true that the silver outfits worked much better for the light show, and better reflected the green-white-red colors of the Italian flag that Ferrari red would have done. But silver? SILVER? How about white, instead?

Also, there was a significant omission from the list of participants. The honor of carrying the torch into the stadium during opening ceremonies is reserved for those with an Olympic pedigree, but it's too bad Alessandro Zanardi couldn't have taken part in some way in this marvelous event. Zanardi is a remarkable and inspirational representative not only of his home country, but of Earth's human population at large.

If he couldn't carry the torch, he could have driven the Ferrari in its exhibition. Heck, Zanardi does better doughnuts than Badoer -- or Rossi, or Schumacher, or anybody else, for that matter. It was Alex who made that particular form of victory celebration popular during his tremendous run in CART.

If Zanardi couldn't be a part of the event, at least his sport was. If the Olympics should ever come back to America, here's hoping that American auto racing might have some representation in the events.