Bring Your Own Balloon

By John Skow

"Winter is icummen in," Ezra Pound wrote. "Lhude sing God-damn." And he bemoaned the season: "Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us." Exhorted Pound: "Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM."

So sing, Ethel, because we've been standing here freezing for two hours. Thus ran the mood after the opening pieties of this somewhat dreamily organized chilblain derby, when those in the audience who had not thoughtfully arranged to travel by hot-air balloon had to foot it through the slush for the three miles back to town. Eight marchers were treated at the hospital for frostbite. The bus system had broken down earlier in the week because of a labor dispute, but now, after several days of practice, it was breaking down spontaneously, without need of a labor dispute. The hot-air balloons, on the other hand, worked just fine; they bobbed overhead, all brave and fine and directionless, as Lord Killanin spoke wistfully in praise of peace.

The buses turned balky again that very night, after the first run of the luge, leaving hundreds of people standing on the pavement with cold water seeping into their shoes. The trouble is that Americans would sooner take hook worm medicine than a bus. The fact is that the buses know they are despised, and in their resentment they simply would not stop.

There are many bus-taking nations represented here -- Austria, for example, where buses are contented and well behaved -- but the Olympic delegations from these nations are made up of big shots who ride in limousines in their homelands, and they no longer know how to smile at a bus that has lowered its ears, pat its flank, and get it to open its doors. No one is quite sure where the buses go when they are not sulkily picking up people at the luge run, but there is no doubt that the ban on private cars has cleared the streets of traffic. State troopers standing in the intersections kick pebbles and talk about their vacations. What is in some question is whether the war between the buses and the people may also have cleared the Games of a good many spectators.

Crowds at the venues have been sparse to medium ("venue" in ordinary English is something you try to change if you face a richly deserved conviction in a court case, but in Olympspeak it is a place where an athletic contest is held). Even the men's downhill, generally thought to be the most grandly lunatic of the Winter Games, drew less than a swarm. At the men's 30-km cross-country venue, the American spectators would have fit around a poker table or two. (Some 400 people rocked from one cold foot to the other, but most were Norwegian or Finnish officials.)

For all the occasional rough spots, a U.S. visitor to the Olympics can take a measure of pride in what is going on at Lake Placid. The soft, fine old mountains that surround the town have a North American hugeness to their breadth, if not to their height. The people of the Adirondacks, who are doing the work, an occasional hustler aside, are decent and friendly, and they have a wry humor about the vast self-promotion in which they are engaged. "Be one of the lucky 75,000 people to own a copy," says a young program seller who is not doing well. He makes a long, sad face, and no one who sees his humor can mistake his nationality: he's an American. At the visitor's ramshackle motel, a venerable roadhouse reactivated for the Olympics after some seasons of dormancy, the hot water is intermittent, baggage vanishes, and an unforeseen Dutch journalist settles determinedly on the spare bed during a period of fuddlement. In the morning, despite promises, the restaurant is not open for breakfast. But wait, all is not lost! "Try upstairs," says the bartender of the night before, blinking and yawning. There the help is eating breakfast. And the visitor gets orange juice, French toast, a passable omelet, and coffee and all, in this land of grotesque overcharge, for no charge at all.

The world of winter sports is not very large, despite all the flags that were raised at the opening ceremonies here, and for most of those on hand the Olympiad is a series of meetings and reunions. Probably that is why the Games survive; the athletes and officials and journalists like them. I set out to find a couple of friends I know to be here, and fail utterly; confusion triumphs. Then at Mount Van Hoevenberg, I run into an athlete from my home town, Biathlon Specialist Don Nielsen. He is a tight-bodied, strong-minded man of 28, happily obsessed by a sport not much honored or understood. "Listen," he says. We are standing at the entrance to the field where the Biathletes practice their curious combination of cross-country and riflery. A tinkling sound is coming from the rifle pits. "Glass targets," explains Nielsen. "Come watch; you'll love it."

And at Austria's hospitality house there is Karl Schranz, whose forlorn ghost had stalked the battlements at the men's downhill. The Austrians loved to call him "the Lion of St. Anton." Some lion. Years ago, before the '60 Olympics, I had asked how he, as a veteran racer, helped the younger Austrian skiers. "It is necessary to beat them down to show them who is best," the lion said then. Now I ask whether competitive tensions are upsetting the Austrian downhillers. "I was a member of the team for 17 years, and there was no friendship there," says Schranz. "Never." He sits back, sipping his beer, a man secure among his friends. --John Skow

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