Olympics-Record number to compete at Nagano  

By Scott McDonald
    NAGANO, Japan, Dec 8 (Reuters) - A record number of 
athletes will compete in February's Winter Olympics, 
organisers said on Monday, adding they were waiting to hear 
from several more countries before announcing exact figures.
   Those which had met a December 1 deadline for telling the 
Nagano Organising Committee (NAOC) how many athletes they 
planned to send indicated they would send about 2,000 in 
all.
   "That number is not exact as some will not qualify, but 
there are still other countries which have not told us yet," 
said one NAOC official.
   The 2,000 athletes would surpass the record 1,801 which 
competed in Albertville, France, in 1992. The second most 
was 1,739 in Lillehammer, Norway, in 1994.
   A higher number was expected in Nagano, the NAOC official 
said, because three new sports had been added here -- 
women's ice hockey, curling and snowboarding.
   Curling and women's ice hockey alone would probably 
account for an additional 200 athletes, the official said.
   NAOC assistant public relations manager Norihiko Ijima 
said an announcement on the number of competing athletes was 
likely to be made in the middle of December.
   There will also be a record number of countries 
competing, surpassing the 67 which took part in Lillehammer, 
NAOC officials said.
   Eighty-three countries, the same as for Lillehammer, 
responded to an invitation by the International Olympic 
Committee (IOC) to take part in the February 7-22 Games, but 
some of them, such as Laos and El Salvador, are not members 
of any of the seven winter sports federations involved in 
the Olympics and have not qualified any athletes for the 
Games.
   The United States, with more than 250 athletes, was 
expected to have the most competitors, while host Japan 
expects to enter more than 210.