Norway’s Koss Still Olympic Inspiration

During the 1994 Winter Olympics, while everybody in the United States was getting excited about Bonnie Blair and misty-eyed about Dan Jansen, there simply wasn’t anybody better than Johann Olav Koss.

The splendid Norwegian speedskater won three gold medals - all of them in world-record time - and he did it without wearing his special, ultralight Super Skates. Koss declined to wear the miracle skates because they’d been designed solely for him, and he didn’t think it was sporting to have that sort of competitive edge.

Koss’ world records and gold medals would have been achievement enough, but then he went and donated his $32,000 in corporate bonuses to the humanitarian group Olympic Aid. The money went to children and other war victims in Sarajevo, and during the Games, Koss challenged his fellow Norwegians to pledge a certain amount of money for each medal won by a Norwegian athlete.

He retired after the Lillehammer Olympics, traveled the world for Olympic Aid, then started medical school at the University of Oslo. (His mother is a gynecologist and his father a cardiologist.) Koss, who just turned 28, is halfway through med school now, but he recently decided to take a year’s sabbatical to serve as the point man for UNICEF and Olympic Aid-Atlanta.

“This is a great opportunity to reach 18 million children who are suffering in war areas,” he said the other day by phone from Atlanta. “It’s a chance to do much more than you could do in your whole life as a doctor.”

Koss has visited more than a dozen areas ravaged by civil wars, but he was most affected by a trip to Eritrea, on the horn of Africa, in September of 1993. He saw some street kids playing and noticed that one boy, Ahmed, was particularly popular.

“I asked why,” Koss said, “and the other children told me it was because Ahmed was the only one with long sleeves.”

It seems the kids would wad up all their ragged T-shirts, then use Ahmed’s shirt to wrap around them, tying the sleeves together. That was how they made a ball so they could play soccer.

“I was thinking of all my equipment and my opportunities,” Koss said. “I thought, ‘My God.”’

The next day, he watched another group of kids standing silently in front of a shop that had pictures in its display window - pictures of soldiers who had been killed in the war with Ethiopia.

“I was watching them from a distance, and they showed so much respect,” Koss said. “Then all of a sudden a cyclist passed by (on a training ride), and they immediately ran after him, cheering. I thought, ‘What kind of heroes do we want our children to have in life - living sportsmen or dead soldiers?’

“At that moment, I must say, I was proud to be a sportsman. You know, when you’re training for the Olympics, you’re always doubting what you’re doing is important enough. But that (moment in the street) gave me inspiration for my training before Lillehammer, when I was always doubting and wondering.”

So Johann Koss has put his big medical career on hold to raise money for UNICEF and enlist American athletes to help with Olympic Aid. His principal goal - modest but remarkable - is the establishment of a worldwide truce during the 17 days of the Olympic Games next summer in Atlanta.

“We see all these mass graves,” he said, “and we need to make to make something concrete happen. We want to have children surviving during the Games.”

Briefly

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