| Salt Lake City |
 |
 |
| GER |
12 |
16 |
7 |
35 |
 |
| USA |
10 |
13 |
11 |
34 |
|
| NOR |
11 |
7 |
6 |
24 |
|
| CAN |
6 |
3 |
8 |
17 |
|
| RUS |
6 |
6 |
4 |
16 |
|
| AUT |
2 |
4 |
10 |
16 |
|
| ITA |
4 |
4 |
4 |
12 |
|
| FRA |
4 |
5 |
2 |
11 |
|
| SUI |
3 |
2 |
6 |
11 |
|
| NED |
3 |
5 |
0 |
8 |
|
|
|
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German 'mascot' driven by Games
He brings his prized Trabant car to Utah
By Norma Wagner
Deseret News staff writer
Talk about taking the Olympic spirit to great lengths.
German Rolf Becker has earned his title as the unofficial mascot for his native Olympic teams, and it's no wonder. For the 2002 Games, he drove from his hometown of Halle in central East Germany to the northern coastal city of Bremerhaven and loaded his prized Trabant — a two-cycle communist-era minicar designed in the 1930s — onto a ship bound for America, then drove from Charleston, S.C., where it landed, through New Orleans, Houston, Albuquerque, over to San Francisco, into Yosemite National Park and then headed to Utah, where he has cheered his countrymen on during the Olympics these past two weeks.
Why go to so much trouble, not to mention 6,200 miles of roadwear in a car that uses the same kind of engine as a snowmobile with a horsepower of about 26?
Why not? the 54-year-old German pop artist asked. "The Olympics are a stage upon which many people play."
It's not like he hasn't been drawn into the audience before.
In 1992 Becker made his first Olympic trek to Barcelona, then on to Atlanta for the Games in 1996, and Sydney in 2000. He was forced to go solo during the Nagano Games in 1998 because his car, sadly, was denied passage. He said he still is not quite sure why.
"They told me in Japanese so I don't know 100 percent why," he said. But Becker has his own theory. "This car is a great enemy to the Japanese car. This is a German car."
On the other Olympic sabbaticals, however, he was accompanied by what he affectionately calls his "Trabi." It's the 32nd Trabant he has owned. "It is the most honored car of the Games," he said proudly before admitting the Trabant actually is not the official Olympiad car. But his country's newspapers do identify Becker as Germany's official Olympic cheerleader and most peripatetic patriot.
"I don't know all the athletes, but most of them know me," he says, purporting himself as "THE Olympic world-traveler" on his Web site www.d-rolf.com.
Becker's Olympic travels beg an obvious question: So how did Utah as host compare?
"You are good people, nice people. They are good to you here," he said. "I have seen how hospitable you are. It is more than I expected."
E-MAIL: nwagner@desnews.com
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February 24, 2002
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