The Olympics: Avalanche at Innsbruck

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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.*