Sport: Getting Ready to Play the Palace

Sarajevo prepares for the winter and the world

The Los Angeles Olympics next summer will be the pride of capitalist gamesmen. For what the Yugoslavs whimsically call "the other Olympics," they have gathered $140 million from worldwide TV rights, $3 million from Coca-Cola, and various other millions from 22 corporations, including the Miller Brewing Co., Nikon and Kellogg, to put on something of their own commercial Games. Unlike the Los Angeles production, however, the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Games have required a great deal of construction. And far from refusing individual contributions as the Los Angeles committee has, the Sarajevo organizers have politely accepted $10 million from 1.4 million citizens, amazing support in an economy where the dinar is down to one-sixth of its 1979 value against the dollar.

Sarajevo, from the Turkish saray (palace), is a bustling mountain valley city (pop. 447,687) where world events have visited before. In 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary was assassinated there by a local student, precipitating World War I. The places where wars begin evidently have a limited appeal for tourists, since the airport felt no need for a modern landing strip until one was installed this year.

Nine fir-lined peaks ring the town.

During World War II, Josip Broz Tito sheltered his partisans in the caves and crannies that honeycomb the hills, and in 1942 Tito's future Foreign Minister, Koca Popovic, led the First Proletarian Brigade across a plateau called Freezing Point. Temperatures fell to -40° F, and 200 troops lost either their limbs or lives. This is where the Nordic events, the ski jumping and the biathlon will be held in February.

So congested is the Olympic program, six ice hockey games will precede the Feb. 8 opening ceremonies, unusual scheduling but appropriate to an organizing committee furious to stay ahead of itself. Thanks to Yugoslav heart and volunteer labor, the matter is being accomplished. While much remains to be done, everything is essentially ready. For the past two years, thousands of workers have been blasting, digging and building heartily. The merriest have been 5,000 teenagers, sweating ten hours a day just a few weeks ago, leveling the ski-jump ramp, laying carpet in the athletes' quarters, working literally for a song at the end of the shift.

When testing was needed for the speed-skating rink at the Zetra complex (a renovated 30-year-old stadium, a new indoor arena and an outdoor skating oval), 10,000 "volunteers" a day showed up with their skates. The Games have already been an occasion for joy.

New structures include a 7,000-bed dormitory for visiting journalists, a radio-TV complex, a press center, a dozen restaurants, and some 15 inns for an expected 30,000 tourists, from whom the organizers hope to net $50 million. Besides the 2,000-capacity Mojmilo Olympic Village, which is a series of high-rise apartment buildings, a special hotel for competitors in the Nordic events was built cantilevered on the face of the mountain. Athletes with icicles in their beards will begin to report there in January, the better to muffle the shock of the Sarajevo winter.