With Homemade Snow and Dreams of the Past

Eager and determined, Lake Placid prepares to hold the 13th Winter Olympics

The people of Lake Placid were persistent. Their parents had played host to--and many had competed in--the Winter Olympics of 1932, and they wanted to bring the Games back to their village. Over and over they trooped to meetings of the International Olympic Committee and submitted proposals, only to be snubbed for such fashionable Alpine resorts as Cortina and Innsbruck. When the I.O.C. agreed on an American site for 1960, the nod went to the Sierra Nevadas and Squaw Valley, but still the Lake Placid boosters kept returning, a shade from the Olympics' past that refused to be put to rest.

Now, the dream is coming true. This week, the tiny (pop. 2,997) and casual Adirondack village plays host to the world as athletes from 37 countries, along with journalists and fans from just about everywhere, gather for the 13th Olympic Winter Games. A crew of 200 translators fluent in two dozen or so languages has been brought in to smooth the competitors' way. A Panzer division of vehicles --buses, cars, vans, snowmobiles and four-wheel-drive mountain climbers--has been assembled to transport people and supplies.

Everything is coming together when for so long it looked as if every thing would come flying apart. With disarming candor, the local officials who finally managed to bring the Games back to Lake Placid admit that they did not know what they were getting into. The area had world-class skiing slopes, but no support facilities for the Games and no idea of how to go about building them. Says the Rev. Bernard Fell, an ebullient former policeman who is president of the Lake Placid Organizing Committee: "None of us were trained in managing a construction project or picking a contractor. We didn't even know there had to be environmental impact studies, and they've cost us three-quarters of a million bucks."

Last week Fell worked on final details in an office that was as modest as the man himself. An Olympic flag hung from a small pole on one wall. As he talked, he signed the certificates that will be given to the top finishers. Lake Placid's motto for the Games has been "An Olympics in Perspective," and he said he felt that the organizers had lived up to the challenge. The Games would have few of the flashy trimmings of other years, but the facilities for the competition were first-rate. That was the point. "I don't know of any headaches right now," said the man who is the minister of a tiny (91-member) United Methodist Church. "I'm convinced that everything is as well set up as it can be. If we maintain our flexibility, it should function fine."

To be sure, there have been dislocations. Prices rose as the temperature dropped. The bill for a good hotel room--a precious commodity in a town that will bulge with 51,000 people every day for the duration of the Games--has nearly doubled and is running about $98.

Houses are renting for as much as $50,000 for the month.

With just 5,600 beds available in the Lake Placid area, many spectators will be forced to stay in resorts and cities miles from the slopes. Some will be bused in from as far away as Montreal (110 miles) and Burlington, Vt. (100 miles). A huge traffic tie-up is all but certain on the narrow mountain roads leading into Lake Placid, which has but a single traffic light.

Yet for all the problems, including a nearly total lack of snowfall, the village of Lake Placid is ready for its winter carnival. Unlike some Olympic cities, where carpenters were still sawing and hammering away even as athletes started to arrive, all the Lake Placid venues are prepared and waiting for competition. "It may sound dramatic," one resident said on the eve of the opening ceremonies, "but let the Games begin!"

Security. The Olympic Village for the 1980 Winter Games looks like a prison, and when the athletes leave, that is precisely what it will become. At night, lights on tall poles glare down on the double 12-ft.-high fences. To gain entry, visitors must have proper credentials bearing their photographs and an authorization code. New York State troopers guard the road leading to the village administration building, where more policemen watch over a pair of airport metal detectors and X-ray machines. Specially trained dogs even sniff the luggage of arriving athletes for bombs. Says Britain's Paul Gibbins, a competitor in the biathlon (which combines riflery and cross-country skiing): "Sad to say, but in these times, a prison for Olympic athletes is a good idea."

Memories are still vivid of the 1972 massacre of eleven Israeli athletes and coaches. A total of 750 New York State troopers--almost a quarter of the force--and a small army of FBI agents, Customs and Immigration cops, Border Patrolmen, state forest rangers and Secret Service men provide the protection for Olympic athletes and officials. Foreign secret police are also participating; Soviet KGB officials, for example, have been scouting the arrangements for months.

The FBI has had a special SWAT team training in the mountains since early 1978. The agents tote high-powered rifles, wear white camouflage suits and travel on skis along the trails on Whiteface Mountain, where the alpine events will take place. The sight of the team whooshing across a hillside recalls nothing so much as the whiter war in Finland during the Soviet invasion of 1939. Says Fell: "I hope security is not so tight that people won't enjoy themselves."

Despite the guards, the Olympic esprit, arising from the ideal of bringing the youth of the world together, still lives in the Olympic Village. A free game room filled with the latest in pinball machines and electronic games does a brisk business. TILT is an international language. A disco with ear-numbing banks of speakers and flashing lights is in full shriek at night. In the main courtyard of the Olympic Village, the flags of the I.O.C., the Lake Placid symbol and the 37 countries represented at the Winter Games, snap in the wind against a winter sky. Below, athletes hurry to practice sessions.

For all the suffocating security, the Games remain a unique human experience. Sums up Zhenghua Bao, 14, a figure skater from mainland China, which is attending its first Olympics since 1936: "We have been away from the Olympics for so many years. This is a wonderful opportunity to come and meet all the other young people from around the world."

The Snow Making. All through November, no snow stayed on the ground. All through December, the same. The first week in January, still no snow. The local Roman Catholic bishop sent out a pastoral letter urging parishioners to pray for the stuff. Not a flake that fell survived the warm winter until Jan. 8-9, when a paltry 4 in. fluttered down. But Karl Fahrner, 50, was not worried. Says the man in charge of preparing the alpine courses: "We knew in November that we could make all the snow we needed, make better snow and better courses. So we did it."

A member of the Austrian ski team from 1948 to 1951, Fahrner did it with a crew of 45 workers and a network of pipes and hoses that wound 25 miles up Whiteface Mountain. They sprayed water under pressure to create a fine mist that froze instantly and settled on the slopes. In all, 10% miles of slopes have been covered to a depth of as much as 15 ft. For skiing, the man-made snow is not only as good as the natural thing; it is better. The crystal structure of man-made snow is denser; it forms smaller flakes that can be packed more solidly and will stand up better to skiing stress. What is more, the precise mixture can be controlled, enabling Fahrner to lay a solid, almost icy base that will defy a thaw, then top it with fluffy powder.

Lean and vigorous, Fahrner has taken a mountainside and turned it into a ski racer's snow sculpture. With swarming Caterpillars and snow packers, he has added bumps and rolling terrain to the course, piling up snow here, scraping some away there, molding an ideal racing network. "The skiers will see some things that are quite different than when we had the World Cup races here last year," he says. "The courses are much tougher, much more technical and difficult."

Fahrner broke his back in a ski-lift accident a month before the Olympics, but last week, wearing a brace, he was out on the course, prowling the mountain in a Sno-Cat, shouting into a walkie-talkie over the roar of the diesel engine:

"Bob, can we get someone up on Niagara [a stretch of the men's downhill run] to tighten a section of the safety net?" He paused to survey his mountain: "The worst thing that could happen now is for it to snow."

If a storm did come, Fahrner would send up scores of workmen on skis to pack down the new snow in order to give the competitors a solid surface.

A few miles away, Doug Fletcher watched as scrapers gnawed away at a three-story-high mount of man-made snow, scooping it up for loading into an ever moving convoy of dump trucks. One week before the Olympic Games were scheduled to open, the final yards of the cross-country courses were being blanketed. For the first time in history, man-made snow was being used for Nordic skiing. In less than a month, Fletcher's crew of 50-plus men, 30 dump trucks and 19 spreading machines had trundled through the woods around Mount Van Hoevenberg and covered a maze of trails 17 miles long with almost a foot of snow.

As the snow slowly crept into the huge stadium where fans will sit to watch the start and finish of cross-country and biathlon events, the taciturn Fletcher smiled. "It was a big job, but we did it." The British biathlon team manager offered a more eloquent summation: "When you think of it, it's a modern miracle. They've made all the snow for an Olympic Games."

Spreading the Word. Whatever happens on the slopes and in the rinks, there is certain to be at least one world record broken before the closing ceremonies: more will be written, broadcast and photographed during these Winter Games than during any others in history. More journalists will be in residence--and in competition--at Lake Placid than athletes.

To accommodate newsmen, classes at Lake Placid High School were suspended in late January so that a press center could be installed in its classrooms, auditorium and gymnasium. Computer terminals will provide biographical information around the clock on every athlete competing in the Games.

But all this pales in comparison with the television facilities. ABC has spent $25 million to produce the Games, scattering 109 cameras throughout the venues. Total value of equipment in use: $70 million. The most complex operation will provide top of the mountain to finish-line coverage of alpine skiing. For that task alone, nearly 50 miles of cable were laid to connect 25 cameras on Whiteface Mountain--then patched up when the local wildlife, including a foraging bear, started to nibble on the lines. Getting all the electronic gadgetry installed was no snap. Says Marvin Bader, ABC sports director of special projects: "It's a small town. There's one hardware store, one lumberyard, and for electronics, you've got Radio Shack."

As preparations went ahead for the Games, there were some fusses offstage.

The Soviet athletes arrived at the Olympic Village, took one look at their quarters, and pronounced themselves horrified. A spokesman declared that the facility was "unlivable and unsanitary," and altogether too suggestive of the prison it will become.

Meanwhile, the team from Taiwan was fighting in the courts for the right to use its own flag and anthem, a right denied by the International Olympic Committee when it voted to accept the team from mainland China. On another front, I.O.C. began considering the request from the U.S. Olympic committee, made at the behest of President Carter after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, to cancel, postpone or move to another site the Summer Olympics scheduled for Moscow.

While the officials and the lawyers wrangled, the athletes swarmed into the Adirondack village that had the gumption to become the host for the Games. Far up on Whiteface Mountain, growling Sno-Cats groomed the courses that will test the finest skiers in the world, while speed skaters glided across a shining oval of ice in front of Lake Placid High School. It could be--it should be--a glorious Winter Olympics.

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