Ill-Omened Olympics

Borne north by car and plane, by skier and foot racer, the Olympic torch this week will travel from Rome to the famed ski resort of Cortina d'Ampezzo in the Dolomites. Its arrival will open the seventh Winter Olympics. Even before they began, the games seemed headed for trouble.

For one thing, the weather has been bad, i.e., good.* There was an acute snow shortage. Days of bright sunshine softened the ski runs. Slush filled Cortina's streets. Flags of competing nations hung limp in the warm air. As the bobsled run slowly spoiled in the heat, national arguments developed over who should get a chance to practice. Italian Alpine troops were standing by to cart snow from colder slopes.

Even worse than the weather crisis, there was a lengthening casualty list:

P: American Skier Katy Rodolph, a point winner at Oslo in 1952, crashed into a tree in a practice meet, broke a vertebra in her neck and was lost to her team.

P: Tenley Albright, world's champion figure skater and one of the U.S.'s few sure bets for a first place, tripped over a hole in the ice and gashed her leg. But the pretty blonde premedical student, who took up skating to offset the effects of childhood polio, insisted she would be ready for competition. Her physician father, who flew in from the U.S., agreed. Said Tenley: "I'll skate even if the leg is broken."

P: Germany's best Alpine woman skier, Evi Lanig, took a tumble on a downhill run and broke her arm.

P: Whipping down a practice bobsled run, Belgium's Charles de Sorger wound up with a broken arm and an injured spine.

P: Crack Russian Skier Valentina Nabatenko broke her leg while schussing down Cortina's Tofana mountain.

Although the Olympics were always meant to be contests between individuals, not nations, national partisans insist on keeping team scores. The accidents changed the calculations, but the pick of the field were the Russians, competing in the Winter Olympics for the first time.

Tuned up by long training at Alma-Ata, Soviet ski center, Russian skiers and skaters were swift enough to break records even in practice. The Russian hockey team seemed strong enough to give both favored Canada and the U.S. a fight. Russian cross-country skiers looked unbeatable. Only in the Alpine events (downhill and slalom) did U.S. men seem to have a chance to pile up points. Skeeter Werner and Ralph Miller will carry the highest U.S. hopes, but Austria's Toni Sailer will probably whip the field. Andrea Mead Lawrence, who won the slalom and giant slalom for the U.S. in 1952, has borne three babies since then and may not have won back her old skill on skis. With Tenley Albright on the injured list, Figure Skater Hayes Jenkins may well be the U.S.'s only sure gold-medal winner.

* The wrong weather is almost a tradition for Winter Olympics. At St. Moritz, in 1928, blinding snowstorms followed by unseasonable warmth almost wrecked the games; Lake Placid in 1932 all but melted in midwinter thaw; at Oslo, 20 years later, warm weather nearly wiped out competition.

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