24 OFF TO A FLYING START With a daring late move, Dale Jarrett opened the NASCAR season with a Daytona
5(X) victory
BY ED HINTON
28 MOVING MAN
Calbert Cheaney, perhaps college basketball's leading player, kept No. 1 Indiana
in motion against Michigan
BY ALEXAND R WOLFF
32 TRIUMPH IN A TEMPEST
Fierce storms and Kjetil Andre Aamodt of Norway ruled the Alpine World Ski Championships
in Shizukuishi, Japan
BY WILLIAM OSCAR JOHNSON
36 TWIN KILLER
UCLA's Natalie Williams has set her sights on a double dip: Olympic gold in volleyball
and basketball
BY SALLY JENKINS
40 A CLIFFHANGER
Cliff Robinson, Portland's superb sixth man, has quelled doubts about his skills,
but not the ones about his head
BY RICHARD HOFFER
50 BEARING THE BURDEN
While living amid violence, boxing champ Julio César Chávez fights
to keep his extended family safe
BY GARY SMITH
164 THE CLOCK IS TICKING
In Atlanta, yesterday's Olympic joy has gone with the wind as organizers count
down to the opening of the '96 Games
BY WILLIAM OSCAR JOHNSON SWIMSUITS '93
65 AMERICA FIRST
We travel America's shores, which are as varied as its people
BY JUNE CAMPBELL
66 THE FLORIDA KEYS
A connoisseur of kitsch plunges into the American Caribbean
BY Rick Reilly
84 MARTHA'S VINEYARD
A father-daughter tour evokes thoughts of the past and future
BY LEIGH MONTVILLE
98 ALASKA
A hardy band of kayakers discovers an Ice Age on Glacier Bay
BY E.M. SWIFT
120 MACKINAC ISLAND
Car-free streets and an ageless, elegant hotel make this a gem
BY DOUGLAS S. LOONEY
134 HAWAII
High tech meets ancient tradition in an outrigger canoe race
BY KENNY MOORE DEPARTMENTS
8 LETTERS
12 FACES IN THE CROWD
17 SCORECARD
156 SPORTS PEOPLE
174 COLLEGE BASKETBALL
183 BOXING
186 PRO BASKETBALL
190 POINT AFTER
EDITORIAL NOTE
AFTER 29 YEARS ON THE SWIMSUIT BEAT, SENIOR editor Jule Campbell is a pro at keeping
the locations of her photo shoots secret. Few people in SI's offices know where
she's off to each year, and she has tried-and-true methods for disguising a shoot
while on location—she covers the SI labels on all the luggage, and her standard
story for onlookers is that she's organizing a catalog shoot for Saks Fifth Avenue.
But when Campbell went to Alaska for one of this year's five swimsuit features,
she figured she could finally relax security. After all, the 49th state isn't
your basic Bimini, Bali or Bora Bora. Subterfuge, Campbell felt, would be superfluous.
She was wrong. During a lunch break last August near Anchorage, Campbell sat munching
elk burgers with fully clothed models Ashley Richardson and Vendela when two curious
lumberjacks approached their table.
"Shooting the swimsuit issue here, aren't you?" asked one. "Are
you crazy?" Campbell replied. "Why would I bring swimsuits to Alaska?"
Good question.
Campbell can now reveal the reason she was orchestrating her own version of Northern
Exposure. " The concept this year was to go to some unexpected places, yet
keep it all in the United States," she says. "We're almost always glorifying
somebody else's country, so this year we hoped to provoke people to explore a
little in their own backyard."
Five locales were selected, four of them at extreme points of the American compass.
Much of the Alaska shoot took place on the Matanuska Glacier, 75 rough miles northeast
of Anchorage; Campbell had to helicopter Richardson and Vendela to the frozen
site, where they posed amidst snow and ice while insulated by little more than
Lycra swimwear. It was 4,100 miles from there to the sun-drenched Florida Keys,
another swimsuit stop. And 5,100 miles separate the tropical beaches of Honolulu
and the windswept shores of Martha's Vineyard, Mass. Mackinac Island, Mich., in
Lake Huron, provides a nostalgic touch from the heartland.
As it happens, this Sands Across America idea was hatched during last year's swimsuit
shoot in Barcelona. One lunchtime, Campbell asked her models what they wanted
to eat. The chorus was deafening: "We want burgers!"
"So we got elk burgers," Richardson says. "We had to endure our
share of goose bumps, sure, but since we stayed in the States, there was no communicating
with hand signals, no having to change money and no customs. I think this issue
is a terrific advertisement for the good old U.S. of A."
