Sport: With Homemade Snow and Dreams of the Past

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For all the suffocating security, the Games remain a unique human experience. Sums up Zhenghua Bao, 14, a figure skater from mainland China, which is attending its first Olympics since 1936: "We have been away from the Olympics for so many years. This is a wonderful opportunity to come and meet all the other young people from around the world."

The Snow Making. All through November, no snow stayed on the ground. All through December, the same. The first week in January, still no snow. The local Roman Catholic bishop sent out a pastoral letter urging parishioners to pray for the stuff. Not a flake that fell survived the warm winter until Jan. 8-9, when a paltry 4 in. fluttered down. But Karl Fahrner, 50, was not worried. Says the man in charge of preparing the alpine courses: "We knew in November that we could make all the snow we needed, make better snow and better courses. So we did it."

A member of the Austrian ski team from 1948 to 1951, Fahrner did it with a crew of 45 workers and a network of pipes and hoses that wound 25 miles up Whiteface Mountain. They sprayed water under pressure to create a fine mist that froze instantly and settled on the slopes. In all, 10% miles of slopes have been covered to a depth of as much as 15 ft. For skiing, the man-made snow is not only as good as the natural thing; it is better. The crystal structure of man-made snow is denser; it forms smaller flakes that can be packed more solidly and will stand up better to skiing stress. What is more, the precise mixture can be controlled, enabling Fahrner to lay a solid, almost icy base that will defy a thaw, then top it with fluffy powder.

Lean and vigorous, Fahrner has taken a mountainside and turned it into a ski racer's snow sculpture. With swarming Caterpillars and snow packers, he has added bumps and rolling terrain to the course, piling up snow here, scraping some away there, molding an ideal racing network. "The skiers will see some things that are quite different than when we had the World Cup races here last year," he says. "The courses are much tougher, much more technical and difficult."

Fahrner broke his back in a ski-lift accident a month before the Olympics, but last week, wearing a brace, he was out on the course, prowling the mountain in a Sno-Cat, shouting into a walkie-talkie over the roar of the diesel engine:

"Bob, can we get someone up on Niagara [a stretch of the men's downhill run] to tighten a section of the safety net?" He paused to survey his mountain: "The worst thing that could happen now is for it to snow."

If a storm did come, Fahrner would send up scores of workmen on skis to pack down the new snow in order to give the competitors a solid surface.