Ron C. Judd / Times staff columnist
Olympics notebook: Men ride canoes from Green Lake to Athens

STEPHEN DUNN / GETTY IMAGES Seattle canoeists Jordan Malloch, left, and Nate Johnson have made the Olympic team.

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Beneath all the glory, pride, hype and emotion swirling around any Olympic Games, matters decidedly more practical lurk.

Such as: How long can I continue to pursue the Big Dream and pay my car insurance at the same time?

The way Nate Johnson sees it, he made it just under the wire.

"My parents, they've been paying for this thing forever," Johnson, 27, quipped about his mom and dad, Carol and David, of Wedgwood. "I've been living with them for the past four years. I've got to get out."

That parental support paid off last week when Johnson and sprint-canoe partner Jordan Malloch, 28, also of Seattle, became the first local athletes to qualify for the U.S. Olympic team prepping for the Summer Games Aug. 13-29 in Athens.

It will be the first Olympics for Johnson, the second for Malloch, who was named as a last-minute team member for the 2000 Sydney Games.

"My parents are happy I made it this time," Johnson said. "They weren't really into supporting me another four years. I'm cut off."

He can laugh now that a dream hatched as a youngster has come true. Johnson was 12 when he was approached by a Seattle Canoe Club coach who told him to grab a paddle, because it might one day take him to the Olympics. He began paddling in 1989 on Green Lake and never looked back.

"Each year I kept getting more and more serious, and faster," the 1995 Nathan Hale High School grad said. "And the faster I got, the more fun I had."

Johnson came close to qualifying for the Sydney Games when the U.S. team landed an additional spot at the last minute. But his high-school friend and paddling and training partner, Malloch, got the nod because he'd been faster in singles racing.
 
In Athens, Johnson and Malloch will paddle the 500-meter doubles sprint-canoe race, which, like all flatwater canoe/kayak events, will take place at the rowing venue at Schinias. The course already has drawn headlines for its surging winds, which blew competitors off the course in a test event.

That might actually help the Seattle duo, because they're physically larger than many sprint canoeists. Johnson is 6 feet, 190 pounds; Malloch is 6 feet, 180 pounds.

The duo, coached by Dave Fort of the Seattle Canoe Club, doesn't harbor illusions of gold medals in their event.

"The rest of the world unfortunately is incredibly fast," Johnson said. "Our goal is to make the finals, which would be the top nine. We have the potential."

The U.S. sprint-canoe/kayaker's "team leader," a logistical coordinator for the Games, will be Mark Parish, another Seattleite and longtime mentor to Johnson and Malloch at the Seattle Canoe Club.

Johnson and Malloch qualified by finishing second behind a Canadian team at the recent Pan American Championships in Brazil. At the same event, a four-seat U.S. women's kayak team that included Kathy Colin also qualified for the Athens Games.

Colin, a Hawaii native, is a 1997 University of Washington graduate who once rowed with the Huskies women's crew. She posted two sixth-place finishes in doubles kayak semifinal races in Sydney.

Johnson and Malloch have two major races in Europe in June, then will return home for training until the Games. They've spent many years living and training at the U.S. Olympic Center in Chula Vista, Calif., but prefer to train where it all began — on Green Lake.

"I go faster in Seattle, because I'm happier here," Johnson said.

Bomb's away

This week's police-station bombings in Athens, apparently timed to coincide with the 100-day countdown to the Games, continue to reverberate through an Olympic world already feeling skittish about Greek security.

If the Games organizers can't build venues on time, the thinking goes, how can they protect the athletes and Olympic officials?

Greek officials finally found something they can do quickly this week, rushing to downplay the incident, which apparently was carried out by domestic "anarchists." The Greeks are spending a record $1 billion on security, and have enlisted the cooperation of the armed forces of NATO nations, including the U.S.

The Greek minister of public order attempted to assure top U.S. law-enforcement officials Friday that this week's triple bombings were being blown out of proportion.

"Our plans are very well prepared," George Voulgarakis said at a news conference. "We do not have terrorist cells in Greece."

Hmm. Are they sure?

The Olympic delegations of many nations remain skeptical — a feeling no doubt fostered by the International Olympic Committee's unprecedented decision to take out a $170 million insurance policy to prevent bankruptcy of the organization should the Games be canceled because of war, earthquake or — oh, yeah — terrorism.

The U.S. and Britain will send their own armed security guards to Athens to protect their athletes. Australia is considering the same, and that nation's largest airline, Qantas, has said it will be ready to divert planes to Greece to evacuate Aussie athletes should things go sour.

In the U.S., some scribes already have begun to question, publicly, whether any sporting event is really worth all this fuss, let alone risking lives of athletes or Greek citizens.

But canceling or postponing the Games — in spite of the Greeks' fumbling of all manner of Olympics planning to date — would be construed as surrendering to terror. And a whole lot of TV money is sitting on the table. Stay tuned.

Light their fire

Pele. Edwin Moses. Cathy Freeman. And Jennifer Aniston?

As they said on Sesame Street, one of those folks is definitely NOT like the others. But the real world has very little bearing on the torch relay for the Athens Games, a multicontinental media event being called the first truly "global" relay in the Games' history.

The Athens torch-carrier list includes a remarkable athletic all-star team, with the likes of Magic Johnson and Carl Lewis. For the torch's brief U.S. appearance June 16-19 (the closest it comes to Seattle is Los Angeles) add a celebrity list that includes Aniston, suddenly being portrayed as a "Greek-American" actress.

The flame, which was lit in ancient Olympia on March 25 (and already has accidentally gone out at least once, only to be relit by the ceremonial Ancient Greek Backup Flame) will be earning major frequent-flier miles on its 46,800-mile trek across six continents, 27 countries and 33 cities. The torch will be carried by about 11,000 dignitaries, athletes, celebrities and volunteers, and will make its first-ever stop in South America.