NEWTON'S LAW: WORKING UP OLYMPIC HATRED IS HARD IN NEW WORLD ORDER

The crusty old New York sports writer Dick Young, a man of set ways who gave weight to the description "old school," was on a radio call-in show some years back. A caller asked his opinion about Olympic competition. You might say he warmed to the subject.

"I don't think that ice skating or gymnastics or any of that pixie stuff have anything to do with sports," growled Young.

He spoke in the manner of one who felt the smell of liniment and the decorum of a boxer's locker room were the stuff of true sporting ambience.

But ... pixie stuff? While pairs skating might lack some of the machismo of pugilism, I'm convinced that balancing yourself on razor blades while gliding on ice and holding a woman aloft with one hand requires a bit of athletic skill.

My view of the Winter Olympics falls somewhere in the vast stretch of property between the perspective of Dick Young and that of Paula Zahn. One hated them, one fawns over them; given this range, I am heartened by my own ambivalence.

Don't find in this some wanting patriotism on my part. I am stirred in these global competitions by the American flag being raised and "The Star Spangled Banner" being sounded. In the winter games, you don't get much of a shot at this so it becomes all the more consequential.

(The national anthem of Norway is "Ja, vi elsker." If you watch much of the games, you'll come to know it.)

I'm not much for losing sleep over America's showing in the games. There are plenty of people to do that, it seems. A large number of them work for CBS, whose demeanor at this point is not unlike the housewife bringing in the neighbors for tea but not moving any Tupperware; there is some incentive to be enthusiastic.

Most of the network folks accept this boosterism in good spirit and pitch in where they can. The pickings are sometimes slim, this being a competition of many nations and some athletes not capable of top-flight performance.

CBS preempts the occasional tedium by airing features on subjects ranging from ice driving to the operation of a Zamboni machine. (Is there a science called Zamboniology?)

I also heard this sentence spoken by one of the correspondents: "The U.S. bobsled team again finds itself mired in controversy." When you start to take the quarrels of malcontent bobsledders to heart, you've been in the Alps too long.

For all my Olympian good intentions, holding true to the motto that it is the trying, not the winning, that counts most, I can be as jingoistic as the next guy. I am an American, after all. Somewhere inside me, albeit deep, there was a twinge of regret we lost that yachting cup to the Australians several years back.

However, the New World Order poses a problem where Olympic emotions are concerned. Playing the Unified Federation team in hockey, as the United States will do today, lacks the gusto of playing the Soviet Union team 12 years ago in Lake Placid.

Heck, the Unified hockey team might include the best-fed Russians on the planet; you could despise them only for being privileged. In terms of purely irrational competitiveness, it makes you yearn for the days of Afghanistan.

There are few political bones to pick in the winter games. It's not like you can work up a good political hatred for Canada, based perhaps on some bad trade agreement or an obscure border dispute.

What they need to do to regain this fervor is find a way to get Libyans on ice.