Pie fight new Olympic demonstration sport

By Ray Ratto

Kelli White is probably wondering right about now why she went for the plea bargain, taking her two-year ban from track and field instead of rolling up her sleeves like Marion Jones and getting her piece of the Olympic version of the bench-emptying brawl.

The latest chapter in this vicious little tableau came the other day when Jacques Rogge, the head of the International Olympic Committee and the keeper of the migraines, referred to Jones as "technically innocent" (which is basically "semi-pregnant" without the baby shower) and hinted that she might do herself and the planet a favor by skipping the Athens Games on the grounds that "technically innocent" somehow is not the same as "actually innocent."

Jones, of course, took this in the spirit it was given and called Rogge's remarks "ignorant," which is basically "actually ignorant" without getting down to specifics.

In other words, with the Games little more than two months away, there's some serious ugly going on here, thus assuring you, the viewer, of the nastiest, least morally uplifting and, therefore, most entertaining Olympics yet.

People are scared of Athens. The other shoe in the BALCO Two-Step has yet to fall. America is suffering one of those occasional drops in popularity that puts it somewhere above the bubonic plague of the Dark Ages but still slightly below the economic collapse of the '30s. The IOC is angry at the American foot-dragging on the drug issue, and the Americans are angry at the IOC's absent-mindedness -- namely whose TV network pays the bills.

In other words, we are not far from the kind of Olympics that will be so unpleasant that we are likely to watch in greater numbers than ever just to see if Joe Rogan pops up in the Aegean with six models and a tanker's cargo hold filled with maggots for "Fear Factor: The Diplomats."

Now for you dewy-eyed internationalists who see in the Olympics everything that is noble about brother/sisterhood through competition, this may come as a bit of an overstatement. For those of you currently being Bud Greenspan, this may not make for a great film. It certainly won't make for a classic Greenspanian tearjerker.

But for those of us who have always wondered why all this athletic make-nice still keeps score by countries, and understand all too well that the Olympics are more cynical than cyclical, well, this is the logical extension of the most tumultuous (which is a euphemism for "ugly") time for the Games in years.

These Games can't end up well, no matter how well the security in Athens holds up, and no matter how gracious the Greeks decide to be. There are too many dogs barking to quiet the kennel, too many people who distrust too many other people, and too many chemicals in the air. Right now, the Olympic flame is even money to set one of its custodians on fire.

Thus, while the Rogge-Jones spit-fest seems unseemly for such a crypto-noble cause, it is actually helping provide a primer for the unpleasantness to come. You see, it may be distasteful, undignified and even offensive, but when it helps guide us to the real experience of the Sez You? Sez Me Games, it surely can't be wrong.

You see, we're going to have to callus-up for the Games. We're going to have to skip past the insincerities of "One Games One World" and see these Olympics for what they are going to be -- a piefight with roofing nails in the crust.

Toward that end, the Rogge-Jones exchange is a useful icebreaker for what comes next, whatever it might be. Maybe Dick Pound tackling Tim Montgomery at the starting line at the track trials in Sacramento. Maybe marshals padlocking the taekwondo championships in a salute to the Korean guy who just got sent to the can for bribery and embezzlement.

In other words, kids, we're just warmin' up. By the time the flame gets back to Greece, we may be looking at the world's largest minor-league hockey fight.

Ray Ratto is a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle.