Avalanche at Innsbruck

A curious cosmopolite could learn a lot from last week's ninth Winter Olympics at Innsbruck, Austria. American women have too many teeth, for instance. Russian women have too many muscles. American men are lousy street fighters. Russians ski uphill better than down. Austrians and Frenchmen ski downhill better than anyone. And, above all, for goodness' sake never argue with an Austrian cop.

"Fix! Fix!" Not since the summer games of 1956, when the Hungarians and Russians tried to kill each other in a water polo match, has an Olympics produced so much brouhaha. Dutch speed-skating officials complained that a Swedish referee had the ice shaved at strategic moments--thereby helping Jonny Nilsson (a Swede) win the men's 10,000 meters. Americans spent $4 to file an official protest when Austrian skiers were allowed to study the men's giant slalom course in comfort, by walking it downhill. (Everybody else had to trudge uphill.) German fans screamed "Schiebung! Schiebung!" ("Fix! Fix!") when judges awarded France's Alain Calmat a spectacular score of 98 points for free-style figure skating, even though he fell down twice and burst into tears at the end of his performance. And the Austrian police seemed to have it in for everybody.

Trigger-tempered troopers mauled women spectators, roughed up the French ski coach, hustled newsmen off to the jug for nothing more serious than asking stupid questions. They really mussed up the hairdos of three inebriated U.S. Olympians who borrowed the car of a French sweater manufacturer (without telling him), drove it the wrong way down a one-way street (without a license), and had the bad sense to shout "Dirty Nazi swine!" when they got arrested.

The Russians, on the other hand, got along fine with everybody--and why not? Noblesse oblige, you could call it. "Now, that is something on which I expect you are already well informed," smiled saucy, blonde Lidia Skoblikova, 24, when a reporter boldly inquired after her vital statistics. The No. 1 star of this or any other Olympics, Speed Skater Skoblikova picked up her fourth gold medal of the games last week in the women's 3,000 meters and posed gaily for photographers with all four strung around her neck.*

Other Russians did nearly as well. Going all out to win the men's 1,500 meters, Speed Skater Ants Antson, 25, hurled himself bodily across the finish line--and slid headfirst into a snowbank. Claudia Boyarskikh, 24, a sturdy Siberian schoolteacher, led a 1-2-3 sweep in the grueling women's 10,000-meter cross-country ski race, also won the 5,000 meters, collected still a third gold medal as anchor woman on the victorious 15-kilometer relay team. Vladimir Melanin, described as "a 30-year-old student," coolly plinked 20 straight bull's-eyes (at ranges up to 273 yds.) to win the biathlon--an oddly militaristic combination of cross-country skiing and rifle marksmanship. Skating with all the speed and sureness of, say, the Chicago Black Hawks, Russia's hockey team rattled off seven straight victories, outscoring its opposition by 54 to 10. Against Germany, the Russian goalie only had to make 19 saves; the German goalie made 95--which was still ten too few. One after another, blue-clad Russians tramped to the awards platform, while a weary Tyrolean band played Union Indissoluble, Republics of the Free over and over again.

Sitting Down. By week's end the Russians had amassed eleven gold, eight silver and six bronze medals--for a grand total of 25, almost twice as many as anybody else. The Russians' one king size disappointment was the men's 500-meter speed-skating sprint. On form, the race figured to be a breeze for Evgeny Grishin, 32, the world champion, the world record holder (at 39.5 sec.), the Olympic record holder (at 40.2 sec.), a double gold-medal winner at Cortina in 1956 and again at Squaw Valley in 1960. But accidents will happen, and for a costly instant on the turn, Grishin lost control of one skate. He still finished in 40.6 sec.--enough to tie a Norwegian and another Russian. Then a stocky apprentice barber from Essexville, Mich., set off in a pair of borrowed skates. Body crooked forward ("sitting down over his skates," experts call it), arms and legs pumping rhythmically, Richard ("Terry") McDermott, 23, slashed through the straightaway, around the turn, and across the finish line in 40.1 sec.--giving the U.S. its first gold medal and an Olympic record to boot.

McDermott's victory was not just surprising; it was incredible. In Russia, sport is not just a leisure-time activity; it is a natural resource like uranium--and hang the cost of mining. A pair of top-quality speed skates costs only $12 (v. $75 in the U.S.), and there are 13 speed skating rinks in Moscow alone. Champions like Grishin and Lidia Skoblikova are "amateurs" mainly because there are no professionals in Russia. Grishin is an officer in the Red army, and Skoblikova is a schoolteacher who finds time for some seven hours of practice every day. Even during the offseason, Lidia lifts weights, works out on roller skates, and runs 200-meter sprints--as many as 40 in a single afternoon--all under the watchful eye of a coach. Terry McDermott has had practically no instruction at all: the U.S. Olympic coach lives, of all places, in Los Angeles. Winner McDermott's total preparation for the Olympics consisted of three one-hour workouts a week for one month, then a month of two-hour daily drills.

No Mountains. There are some sports the Russians still cannot fathom. They play terrible tennis, they swim like drain plugs--and they are no great shakes at the Alpine events. ("In Russia, where there are people, there are no mountains," explains Lidia Skoblikova, "and where there are mountains, there are no people.") Neither, it looked through most of last week, are Americans. New Jersey's 14-year-old Scotty Allen became the youngest medal winner ever in the Winter Olympics when he placed third in the men's figure skating. But Oregon's ever-smiling Jean Saubert only managed to tie for a silver medal in the women's giant slalom--and France's marvelous Goitschel sisters, Marielle and Christine, took most of the zing out of that by placing first and second, just as they did (only vice versa) in the slalom days before.

With only two days of competition left, the biggest U.S. squad ever to compete in a Winter Olympics had won only four medals, and a team official was saying: "Let's face it, we're not a Winter Olympics nation." The alibis stopped when a pair of 20-year-olds--Vermont's Billy Kidd and California's Jimmy Heuga--placed second and third behind Austria's Pepi Stiegler in the men's slalom. Never before had Americans won any kind of medal in men's skiing; now, all at once, they owned two. U.S. Coach Bob Beattie hugged his heroes happily, and Europeans tried to shake off the shock of "the biggest upset in Olympic skiing history."

The shock of Russia's smashing success would sting lots longer. Mostly, it was the way the Russians went about it: a grin, a pat on the shoulder, then--crunch, crunch, crunch. Rudyard Kipling put it nicely: "The Russian is a delightful person till he tucks in his shirt."

* She also got a letter from Nikita Khrushchev himself, announcing her appointment to full membership in the Communist Party.

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