A Letter From the Publisher: Feb. 15, 1988

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When the Winter Olympics open in Calgary this week, TIME's own team will be on hand, reporting at the speed of a downhill racer, snapping pictures with the derring-do of a bobsledder and enduring late deadlines with the stamina of a cross-country skier. Our coach is Senior Editor Jose M. Ferrer III, who will be supervising his third set of Olympics competitions from New York City. Ferrer demonstrated his gold-medal mettle as Sport editor during the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo and the Summer Games in Los Angeles. Now, as then, his aim is to present readers with coverage that is expert and colorful yet uncluttered with sports jargon. "My two sons are great skiers," says Ferrer, "so I know that a mogul is the one who buys the equipment."

Ferrer has edited TIME's Sport section for six years, though he professes to be neither an athlete nor a rabid fan. "I bring a tempering influence to our coverage," he says. "If it's too 'inside' and I can't understand what we're trying to say, it's a pretty good bet lots of our readers won't understand either." Preparation for the Calgary Games required that Ferrer take time away from his other responsibilities: editing the Law, Religion, Press and Education sections. He enjoys the change of pace. "Major events give readers a sense of TIME's strengths," he says of this week's multipage Olympics package. As the editor, he gets a similar feeling. "To see all of our resources moving in the same direction is impressive." Also formidable have been some of the problems the Games have caused the magazine's various staffs -- from the Copy Desk, which had to devise special style rules (Is a common figure skater's jump an a) Axel, b) axel or c) Axle? Answer: Axel), to the Photography Department, where Researcher Dorothy Affa Ames dispatched her forces all over Europe and North America to corner elusive athletes.

In Calgary, Correspondent Barrett Seaman, normally our man at the White House, will deploy a team that includes Senior Writer Tom Callahan, Correspondents Lee Griggs, Laura Lopez and Paul A. Witteman, and Reporter Ellie McGrath. In New York City, Reporter-Researcher Lawrence Mondi will coordinate the research, Assistant Art Director Arthur Hochstein will design the pages -- and Ferrer, of course, will be calling the plays, or the shots, or whatever the proper sports jargon is. And when he is rested from that Olympian effort, it's on to Seoul for the Summer Games.