HEBRON — The organizer of last year’s Redneck Olympics is changing the name to the Redneck Blank to avoid a lawsuit, but Friday he got a letter from an attorney for the U.S. Olympic Committee telling him to change the name before holding another event.

Harold Brooks called the lawyer, San Francisco-based Douglas A. Winthrop, but after talking with him, Brooks said he’s still not sure whether he’s in the clear. The USOC holds a trademark on the word “Olympics” in the United States in lieu of federal funding for the U.S. Olympic Team, and uses proceeds from licensing the word to train and house Olympic athletes.

Brooks said Friday that an event in Maine with a few attendees wouldn’t affect Olympic athletes.

Although Brooks took “Olympic” out of the name, fliers for the event still advertise “Olympic style events.”

The USOC has sued organizations for use of the word. In November, the owner of the former International Institute of Olympic and Sports History settled with the USOC following a lawsuit and agreed to drop the word “Olympic” from the name of a planned Pennsylvania museum.

“Although the USOC has no desire to prevent you from hosting your event,” the letter to Brooks read, “it cannot permit your continued unauthorized use of the term Redneck Olympics.”

Brooks joked that “Olympic Blank” was the best name he could come up with. “I couldn’t come up with another name. I pulled a blank.” He said he couldn’t help it if local people keep calling it the Redneck Olympics.

Brooks said Winthrop wouldn’t tell him whether the guarantee of “Olympic-style games” would infringe on the USOC’s trademark. The lawyer told Brooks that he couldn’t give him legal advice.

The 2012 event will be bigger than last year’s, which attracted about 2,600 people, Brooks said. He’s planning more live music, comedy and cow patty bingo, in which a cow field becomes a bingo board and people can bet on where the cow will leave a “patty.”

He’s also planning a rodeo at the end of June that will be Maine’s first Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association event in years. He said it will be an extension of the Redneck Olympics, and people can buy tickets for one or both of the events.

Brooks said the rodeo is a chance to bring the West to Maine. “My father wanted to go out West, and he never got a chance to,” Brooks said. He’s selling about 2,000 tickets to the rodeo, which will have more than 100 cowboys and cowgirls competing in seven events.

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