Altius, Citius, Fortius!

On the fifth day, a heat wave hit St. Moritz, forming pools of water on the Alpine rinks. Looking angrily at the sunny sky, Olympic Games officials called off several events. Not until the seventh day did anyone try to toboggan down the whole length of perilous Cresta Run.

Among those who ascended to the starting point high above the village was a local boy, a sturdy, tough-looking Italian, Nino Bibbia, whose father runs a fruit& -vegetable shop in St. Moritz. Nino lay down on the iron framework of his toboggan, crash helmet in place, and shoved off. His "skeleton" (as Alpine tobogganers call their steel-runnered sleds) slithered dangerously down the famous ice chute, whose turns have sporty names like Scylla, Charybdis and Battledore.

Bibbia roared into Church Leap with his face a few inches from the ice, steering with his body, breaking & banking with his spiked boots. For a fleeting second, he could see the white panorama of St. Moritz, and directly below--extending a sinister invitation--the village cemetery. One false move would put him in it. A few yards further, he roared into a sharp right turn, had no trouble until his skeleton sled went too high into Shuttlecock. With a desperate jerk, he brought it down. Said he afterwards: "I still had two fingers of space between the edge of the bank and the runner of my skeleton--that's just enough." An inch more and he would have crashed. Six times he made the descent of Cresta Run's spine-tingling ice path, to win an upset victory and Italy's one Olympic gold medal.* Average time: 5:23.2 (average speed: 42 m.p.h.).

Two for Henri. Upsets were frequent in the winter Olympics' final days. The highly touted U.S. two-man bobsledders got whipped. So did France's curvaceous Georgette Thielliere-Miller, regarded as the world's best woman skier. But a flashy countryman of hers--Henri Oreiller, a 21-year-old sunburnt peasant boy from Val d'Isere--was the only person to win two gold medals in 1948's winter Olympics. He hurtled a snow-covered slope to win the men's downhill, and won the Alpine Combined event, too. Swedes kept grinding out victories--in the Pentathlon, the 10,000-meter speed skating, the 18-, 40-and 50-kilometer ski races. No U.S. skier was up to the rugged 50-kilometer (30 1/4-mile) grind through the Alps.

Pig-Tailed Champion. By the seventh day, the red-faced U.S. was still hoping for its first Olympic victory. The girl who won it was slim, brown-haired Gretchen Fraser of Vancouver, Wash., who wears pigtails and looks younger than her 29 years. No one gave her (or any other U.S. woman) a chance against Europe's talented stars. She was the first to ski down the tricky special slalom run, which had thawed and frozen again. For ten minutes she stood nervously at the top of the run, her eyes closed most of the time, while officials tested the electric timing device and fussed with the position of the gates. Then she was off.

Through the first four gates she took a long chance -- refusing to slow up for icy spots. She flew down the slope, zigzagging between the red and yellow flags that mark the gates, skidded once and almost missed a gate. Her first run was clocked in 59.7 seconds ; the second time, she cut two seconds off that. Thanks to Gretchen Fraser, the U.S. had won its first Olympic ski race in history. The same day, boyish Dick Button, 1 8, of Englewood, N.J., jumped and spun through his figure-skating routine to give the U.S. its second triumph.

Canada, which had only one sure string to its Olympic bow, had to wait eight days to score a point. Then Glamor Girl Barbara Ann Scott (TIME, Feb. 2), with grace and precision, outshone 24 competitors to win the women's Olympic figure-skating championship. Her victory was so big an event in Canada that Prime Minister Mackenzie King personally wired her congratulations, and announced his action, amid cheers, in Ottawa's House of Commons. Final winners: Sweden (with 82 points), followed by Switzerland (77), the U.S. (73¼).

* A saucer-sized disc inscribed with the Latin words: "Altius, Citius, Fortius," meaning, roughly: "Anything you can do, I can do better."

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