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Tuesday, Feb. 9, 1999

War-scarred Sarajevo eyes another Olympics

By AIDA CERKEZ-ROBINSON
Associated Press

   SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina - Ravaged by war and bearing little resemblance to the city that staged the 1984 Olympics, Sarajevo wants to hold the Winter Games in 2010.
   The Bosnian Olympic Committee announced its intentions Monday, the 15th anniversary of the 1984 Olympics.
   All the facilities built for those games were destroyed by shells and gunfire that rained on the city from 1992 until the end of 1995.
   A broadcast Monday recorded the words of IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch at the 1984 closing ceremony: "See you again, dear Sarajevo."
   What followed was a statement from Bogic Bogicevic, the head of the Bosnian Olympic Committee: "The candidacy for the Olympic Games 2010 will be officially announced."
   Bogicevic later said that Sarajevo's candidacy would be officially submitted to the International Olympic Committee at the end of March.
   The site of the 2006 Winter Olympics will be determined in June and the 2010 Games in 2003.
   "I'm for it," said Sadik Hadzisadikovic, 64. "All of these ruins would be repaired. It could again be a tourist's paradise," he added.
   Now, the only foreign visitors to Bosnia are those who come to help rebuild the land. And they are the ones who visit the former Olympic sites on both sides of the boundary that divided Sarajevo under the 1995 peace agreement.
   The partitioning of Bosnia - the Bosnian Serb republic and the Muslim-Croat federation - left many Sarajevan skiers deprived of their favorite mountain Jahorina, now under Bosnian Serb control.
   They crowd the only two ski lifts, recently rebuilt, on Mounts Igman and Bjelasnica that are under Muslim-Croat control.
   Along the slope carved in the forest, yellow tape on both sides marks areas not checked for mines. At the first substation of the Igman ski lift, there is a sign warning, "Don't step down. Mines!!!"
   The start of the bobsled run on Mt. Trebevic is now in the Bosnian Serb entity and the finish in federation territory.
   The city's pride, the Zetra sports arena for figure skating and speed skating, is being rebuilt and scheduled to reopen at the end of March.
   The arena will get its copper roof back. But next to the hall, in a soccer field, is a surrounding sea of graves. The nearby graveyard expanded during the war.
   

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  © 1999 Corpus Christi Caller Times, a Scripps Howard newspaper. All rights reserved.