Sport: With Homemade Snow and Dreams of the Past

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With just 5,600 beds available in the Lake Placid area, many spectators will be forced to stay in resorts and cities miles from the slopes. Some will be bused in from as far away as Montreal (110 miles) and Burlington, Vt. (100 miles). A huge traffic tie-up is all but certain on the narrow mountain roads leading into Lake Placid, which has but a single traffic light.

Yet for all the problems, including a nearly total lack of snowfall, the village of Lake Placid is ready for its winter carnival. Unlike some Olympic cities, where carpenters were still sawing and hammering away even as athletes started to arrive, all the Lake Placid venues are prepared and waiting for competition. "It may sound dramatic," one resident said on the eve of the opening ceremonies, "but let the Games begin!"

Security. The Olympic Village for the 1980 Winter Games looks like a prison, and when the athletes leave, that is precisely what it will become. At night, lights on tall poles glare down on the double 12-ft.-high fences. To gain entry, visitors must have proper credentials bearing their photographs and an authorization code. New York State troopers guard the road leading to the village administration building, where more policemen watch over a pair of airport metal detectors and X-ray machines. Specially trained dogs even sniff the luggage of arriving athletes for bombs. Says Britain's Paul Gibbins, a competitor in the biathlon (which combines riflery and cross-country skiing): "Sad to say, but in these times, a prison for Olympic athletes is a good idea."

Memories are still vivid of the 1972 massacre of eleven Israeli athletes and coaches. A total of 750 New York State troopers—almost a quarter of the force—and a small army of FBI agents, Customs and Immigration cops, Border Patrolmen, state forest rangers and Secret Service men provide the protection for Olympic athletes and officials. Foreign secret police are also participating; Soviet KGB officials, for example, have been scouting the arrangements for months.

The FBI has had a special SWAT team training in the mountains since early 1978. The agents tote high-powered rifles, wear white camouflage suits and travel on skis along the trails on Whiteface Mountain, where the alpine events will take place. The sight of the team whooshing across a hillside recalls nothing so much as the whiter war in Finland during the Soviet invasion of 1939. Says Fell: "I hope security is not so tight that people won't enjoy themselves."

Despite the guards, the Olympic esprit, arising from the ideal of bringing the youth of the world together, still lives in the Olympic Village. A free game room filled with the latest in pinball machines and electronic games does a brisk business. TILT is an international language. A disco with ear-numbing banks of speakers and flashing lights is in full shriek at night. In the main courtyard of the Olympic Village, the flags of the I.O.C., the Lake Placid symbol and the 37 countries represented at the Winter Games, snap in the wind against a winter sky. Below, athletes hurry to practice sessions.