Games are held every four years but to the athletes that quadrennial event is a matter of just about

perennial preparation. And these days, as Harold Downell reports from the U.S. Olympic Committee

National Training Center, the stopwatch and tape measure are supplemented by the computer.

It's almost as if the United States Olympic Committee is preparing for war, not games in 1984.

The budget is more than $71 million, almost five times the amount spent on the 1976 games,

and they will make maximum use of what they call their secret weapon. The science of biomechanics

is not new in itself, but as refined and perfected by Dr. Gideon Ariel, an Israeli-born computer

science expert, it puts the U.S. team years ahead of its competitors. I think we've got the secret

weapon here and we're going to beat these Germans and the Russians. It is a painstaking process,

taking several hours to set up a sequence of motion pictures, transferring frame-by-frame the

angle of each joint from the ankle to the elbow, from the film to the computer, finding errors

that cannot be seen by the camera or the human eye alone. Al order has won four Olympic gold

medals during the discus. He has set six world records. This is also Al order after his technique

was processed by the biomechanics computer, which not only showed him what he was doing wrong,

but also told him exactly how to throw the discus further than anyone has ever thrown it before.

He was able to throw on the computer 250 feet. This is over 10, almost 20 feet, 18 feet,

better than the world record. He has it in his body, the motor got it. Now we have to tune it.

It's a matter of tuning. I think the results show that I am showing better. I don't think I'm throwing

to my potential. I know the computer says I should be throwing around 250. Now whether it

can throw 250, not as something that's up here. But the analysis is telling me how to work more

productive. Not only is the biomechanics computer being used to analyze the performance of American

athletes, it's also a tool to determine if the competition has any secrets the team ought to know.

One thing for sure, the East German and the Russians and the best athletes in the world will

not be able to keep what hypothetically calls secrets from our sport medicine program because

we will analyze them and we'll know what they're doing. And if they're doing better, we'll learn

how to do it even better than them. The US women's volleyball team has already benefited,

working with the analysis of the Japanese champions. A few years ago, this team wasn't even considered

competitive. Now it's one of the top rated in the world. Olympic athletes will be coming here

for intensive work with the biomechanics laboratory between now and the 1984 games.

That's when they'll find out for sure if the secret weapon really works.

Harold Dow, CBS News, Colorado Springs.