Sport: With Homemade Snow and Dreams of the Past

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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.