The Olympic Getaway

During this winter's pre-Olympic competitions at Lake Placid—in which all of the competitive venues received high marks—foreign athletes and officials were given tours of the Village. At first there was only isolated grumbling—an Austrian downhiller here, a Finnish ski jumper there complaining about the cramped rooms and the penitentiary atmosphere. But the protest grew. Now it seems that each Olympic nation is trying to outdo the other in the ferocity of its denunciations.

Gianfranco Cameli, a member of the Italian Olympic Committee, toured the Village, then fired off a report to Rome : "After four years of hard training we cannot expect competitors to live in such a lousy place. The rooms clearly show what they are meant for. Two persons cannot be in them. If two stay inside with the door closed for privacy, they'd feel as if they were in prison—suffocating. It is impossible for anyone with heavy winter gear to squeeze into the tiny rooms. If they open the door, whatever they do is done before dozens of strangers."

An official spokesman for the Swedish Olympic Committee said bluntly, "The facilities are rotten, to say the least." The veteran West German ski racer Christian Neureuther told a reporter: "We are not spoiled and we had all heard about this Lake Placid prison before. But we didn't expect how bad reality turned out to be." Tsuyoshi Miyakawa, a member of the Japanese Olympic Committee, said, "The Village facilities are the worst I have ever seen. Standing in the middle of a stark plain, the Village is a really lonely place."

Dr. Peter Pilsl, the secretary general of the Austrian Olympic Committee, said that the tiny rooms might be in violation of the International Olympic Committee policy on accommodations. Said Pilsl, "In his book on the administration of Olympic Games, Lord Killanin himself asks that a single room in an Olympic Village should have at least 10 square meters, a double room 15, and a triple 20. In Lake Placid , the double room with double bunk beds has nine square meters, and a room for four—something Lord Killanin did not even mention—is not much larger. And quite a few of these rooms do not have windows. It is enough to give you claustrophobia. I have been told that when the Village is converted to a penitentiary for young criminals, the double rooms will all become singles. The lawbreakers will be much more comfortable than our athletes."

Johan Schonheyder of the Norwegian Olympic Committee was asked his first impression of the Village and uttered one word: "Shocking." He then recovered to add several more. "One has built a prison and invited the world's best winter athletes to live in it for three weeks," he said. "Well, I am personally in favor of constructing buildings that can be of use afterward. Lake Placid was granted the Games, I guess, for precisely the reason that one should do them as cheaply as possible, and one needed a juvenile jail, and so they killed two birds with the same stone. I do have a certain sympathy for Lake Placid . We will, however, rent on our own two villas in the vicinity of Lake Placid . These villas will cost us a total of $30,000, but we must have a place where our active sportsmen and women can go to relax in different and, above all, spacious environments."

As more and more officials toured the Village, there was a steadily increasing rush by various national federations to find their own accommodations. The Swedish committee rented four houses for a total of $52,000 and may rent one more. The Italians rented two houses; one will sleep 20, the other eight. The West Germans and East Germans also are going elsewhere, and the Austrians are said to have bought a block of apartments for $150,000, which they will sell after the Olympics. Other nations are shopping for houses.

The unexpected boom in real estate has created a climate of avarice in Lake Placid . It seems most threatening to local low-rent, no-lease apartment and shop renters. They fear that their landlords will evict them next winter, because an apartment that might rent for $250 a month in normal times will draw $4,000 for the Olympics. A number of the tenants who work as bartenders, chambermaids, clerks or waitresses have formed an organization called Renters Association of Concerned Citizens on Ousting Our Needed Services, whose members are trying to find some way of protecting themselves from being kicked out of their apartments during the Games. It is a nice touch, considering that the acronym is RACCOONS and the official Lake Placid Olympic mascot is a raccoon cartoon character. But there is no legal recourse, it seems, because most RACCOONS have no leases.

A few weeks ago the revolt over the Village produced yet another unprecedented act by the IOC . Ordinarily, a country must pay for Village accommodations for each athlete whether or not all are used. But not in 1980. Monique Berlioux , a director of the IOC , said, "This time the accommodations are so poor that delegations will not have to pay for them if they move somewhere else. However, security is another matter. Suitable security has been arranged for the Olympic Village, but teams living elsewhere will have to be responsible for their own security."

The warning on security did not even produce a pause in the angry rush to get out of the Village. Austria 's Pilsl said, "Faced with the choice between a security risk and unacceptable living quarters which will affect our athletes' performance, we shall most likely choose the security risk."

In Italy , Milan 's Il Giornale Nuovo played up the search for alternative housing, headlining one article THE ATHLETES "ESCAPE" FROM THE LAKE PLACID PRISON EVEN BEFORE ENTERING IT. The paper went on to note that in some cases rental housing wouldn't accommodate entire teams, however. "It will be interesting," the newspaper said, "to see which criteria the teams will follow in deciding the rotation of 'punishment' terms."