A SCRIBE OF THE OLYMPICS: FOLLOWING THE NEW YORKER'S E. J. KAHN, JR.

Now that the Olympics have come back, after the requisite four year absence, we are once againe bombarded with milliseconds and long, hyphenated German names. For relief, we look back upon the best writing (to our knowledge) that has ever been done on the Olympics, that of the New Yorker's E.J. Kahn, Jr.

Kahn, who covered the Olympics for the New Yorker for several decades, delivers a much more oddball view of the Games than any other scribe. Kahn's Olympics are a kind of mad but truthful circus filled with offbeat individuals who, for some reason, join every four years to do the most bizarre things.

It is impossible to envision Kahn up in the stands of any Olympic stadium, on his feet, cheering loudly for an athlete or a nation. Rather, we like to think of him as a sharp, spry middle-aged man in a brown suit sitting pleasantly in his seat reading something by Waugh. Occasionally, he'll look up at the action going on in front of him, pull out his little notebook, jot something down, and resume his reading.

How can we see him as anything else when we read this transition to a point about the East German domination of the 1976 Olympics in Montreal:

"The Montreal Star's music critic said of a revival this week of an eighteenth-century Italian opera, `L'Olimpiade,' that it lacked focus. In the main Olympiad, the focus has been on East Germany, with the strains of whose national anthem we are now as well acquainted as with `Aida."'

Kahn's view of the Olympics is refreshing, and, in a sense, it's probably necessary to maintain one's sanity at the Games. It would, after all, be unfortunate to waste a trip to Montreal or Los Angeles cooped up in a row of hot seats given little to watch but an occasional dash or 10,000 meter walking race. Kahn's solution to all this highly sanctioned monotony is to keep an alert eye which is ready to wade through the crap and focus on the human quirks and foibles pervading the Games. In a piece on the 1984 Summer Games in L.A., for example, he directs our attention to an Olympic cookbook and team handball player Mary Phyl's favorite recipe:

"And what was her favorite recipe? `I haven't cooked for a while,' she said. 'I guess my favorite is blueberry pie, but that's probably because I didn't get any of it while we were touring Europe.' I believe that that is an exclusive Olympic quote."

Apparently, little changed in Kahn's view of the Games between 1976 and 1984, and the one outstanding characteristic of his writing is its appreciation of equity. Kahn has little use for the all-star, the quadruple-gold medal winner. He even seems to possess a desperate hope that, somehow, the Games will actually be a fair, level playing ground devoid of the big kid on the block. It is this spirit that motivates his wonderful encapsulation of 1984's Olympic king, Peter Ueberroth:

"Ueberroth, who used to run a string of travel agencies, seemed to be everywhere at all times, as if competing in some private decathlon. HIs favorite line for reporters, repeated right up until the closing ceremonies, was `So far so good'. . . Ueberroth dominated the scene to such an extent that one of the I.O.C. president's underlings was overheard referring to him as 'Ueberralles."'

In the face of the generally miserable Olympic coverage, it's nice to be able to fall back on Kahn. But we'd never actually want to meet the man for fear that he turns out not to be the graying, dapper, eccentric man in the stands with a copy of Waugh in one hand and a neat little notebook in the other.