"For the Glory of Sport"

We stepped in front of the crowd, and I looked up and saw the Stars and Stripes. All of a sudden I knew I would be performing for Uncle Sam in the Olympics. Right then, I don't believe I could have skated a straight line. This was really different. The Olympics really are something above and beyond-all those flags, the pretty uniforms, Russians smiling at Americans, Americans smiling at Russians, Australians dead serious for once in their lives, the band playing, the Alps almost hanging straight over our heads. It gets you. At least it got me.

--Hayes Alan Jenkins at Cortina

The ceremony that so moved the world's figure-skating champion began with a fanfare of trumpets. Flags of 32 nations were raised above the rim of the Olympic stadium. Somber Swiss in grey lounge suits snapped to attention. Apple-cheeked Dutchmen bobbed orange tassels on their caps. Prim Japanese in blue blazers stood stiffly with blue-belted Russians and a U.S. contingent that sported red, Russian-style fur hats over their snappy white duffel coats. Uniformed Turks were a solid blob of black.

Then the traditional torch, carried by Italian Skater Guido Caroli, circled the arena. Head high and chest proudly puffed, Caroli turned his eyes to honor his President, Giovanni Gronchi. That salute was his undoing; he tripped and sprawled awkwardly before the presidential box. Somehow he hung onto the torch. Seconds later he skated on to light the great bowl of fire that will blaze until the seventh Winter Olympic Games are over.

The embarrassing fall capped a long list of more serious accidents. All week ski trails had softened under bright skies, then frozen at night into suicidal speed runs. U.S. Army Private Leslie Streeter broke a shoulder bone. His teammate, Ragnar Ulland, soared to a crash landing in a practice ski jump and was badly bruised. Italy's downhill ski champion, Maria-Grazia Marchelli, fresh from a plaster cast, whipped down a Tofana slope at 50 m.p.h.; she wound up back on the sidelines with a torn knee ligament. In a sense, the accidents were inevitable. The traditional contests, with which the games began in ancient Greece, strain muscle and mind, but rarely endanger life. Only since the Olympics moved to the mountains have they acquired a real element of danger.

Despite the "Russians smiling at Americans" observed by Skater Jenkins, international rhubarbs kept Olympic diplomats exercised. The Soviet's state-subsidized "amateurs" tried some gamesmanship, hinted that Canadian hockey players were pros. Everyone wanted to start first in the men's giant slalom, before the course was all cut up. An Italian-German hockey game ended in a brawl.

The Italian hosts had outdone themselves with their new 3,300-seat stadium, aisy-ft. ski-jump tower, 63 miles of ski runs, and 40 mobile kitchens. Perhaps the Italians had organized things too well. Scared away by warnings that hotel space was scant, too many fans stayed home with their television sets. But those who did come found a unique spectacle-one not confined to breakneck competition (see below). The chill of dusk in the Alps, the comfort of yellow lights in windows at that hour, the mountains them selves were a great spectacle to people who had come from afar (in the words of the Olympic Oath) "for the honor of our country and for the glory of sport."

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