ACTOR LUNDGREN HAS OLYMPIC ROLE.

Byline: Larry Siddons Associated Press 

In the movies, Dolph Lundgren usually plays a bone-breaking tough guy. In his new off-screen role, he will play den mother to a team of Olympic athletes.

Lundgren, the muscular star of "Rocky IV" and other action flicks, is team leader of the U.S. modern pentathlon squad at the Atlanta Games. He'll be responsible for making sure the athletes eat right, catch the bus to practice and generally have the comforts of home as they compete for medals.

"And he'll be responsible for curfew," said Robert Marbut, president of U.S. Modern Pentathlon.

That should make for a bunch of well-rested athletes. Who wants to risk missing bed-check against a guy who, as the sinister Soviet heavyweight Ivan Drago, once hissed at Rocky Balboa: "I must break you!"

As a former athlete - he was captain of Sweden's national karate team - Lundgren knows he'll have three weeks of hard work.

"That's OK," he said. "Amateur sports is, for me, something with such purity. Entertainment doesn't give me that. I know the way an athlete thinks and I know how they are feeling. I will be working hard, but it will help these guys. And it can't be as bad a movie set."

Lundgren's association with modern pentathlon lends a little glamour to a sport sorely in need of some. Despite being one of the oldest sports on the schedule, it is facing Olympic extinction.

The event represents the five athletic exercises a soldier might have to perform to deliver a message: running, horseback riding, swimming, shooting and fencing. Developed by the father of the modern Games, Pierre de Coubertin, it is considered somewhat out of date and faces displacement by the more contemporary and widely practiced triathlon by the next Olympics in 2000.

To guard its position, pentathlon agreed to changes, including staging all events on one day rather than spreading them over five and simplifying the scoring.

And it went looking for high-profile supporters such as Lundgren, whose homeland produced the first five modern pentathlon gold medalists and who became acquainted with U.S. team members Rob Stull and Mike Gostigan while making the movie "Pentathlon" two years ago.

"They helped me train. We stayed in touch and one thing led to another," Lundgren said. "They asked me to help the team and I said 'sure.' I've never been to the Olympic Games before, and for an athlete I guess that is the ultimate, to be there.

"Now I can go to the Olympics and try to help the team and live vicariously through Rob and Mike and the other athletes. It will be good to be with them. They are good friends of mine."

CAPTION(S):

PHOTO

Dolph Lundgren, muscular star of action films, is team leader of the U.S. modern pentathlon squad. Associated Press