Word: cortina
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...system of scoring, Russia ran off with the seventh Winter Olympics. In the unofficial arithmetic of sideline experts, the Soviets won with 121 points. Second: Austria, 78½ third: Finland, 66½. But strangely, it was a group of grim and driving U.S. females known in Cortina as "the Skating Mothers" who had the most to cheer about. Like mothers of most virtuosos, they drove their children hard, with fierce jealousy of their rivals. "They look like women who were born 150 years too late," said one newsman. "Otherwise. they would have been shouldering Madame Defarge away from her front...
Only the dashing skill of the Scandinavians, Swiss and Austrians in the skiing events kept Russia's team lead as low as it was. More than any other single competitor, Austria's Anton ("Toni") Sailer held back the new giants of winter sport. Cortina's only three-time gold-medal winner (giant slalom, slalom and downhill), handsome Toni Sailer was the undisputed hero of the Winter Olympics. Thousands of his countrymen crossed the border to watch him schuss to victory, his well-known white cap topped with streamers, his bright white smile gleaming under dark goggles...
...white ice of Lake Misurina, the Soviet skater was a study in scowling concentration. Forgotten was the happy camaraderie of stadium ceremony. This was why he had spent bleak, cold years of practice back home at Alma-Ata, this was why he and his Olympic teammates had come to Cortina: to whip the world...
Like every other Russian at Cortina, Moscow Speed-Skater Grishin, an engraver by trade, was honed to a fine edge. At Oslo, four years ago, the Soviets held off their Olympic entry because they knew they had yet to catch the West in winter sports. Now they were ready. Skiers had trained through their long winters, developed daring techniques on the jumps, stamina and speed in grinding crosscountry going. As for Grishin and his fellow skaters, they had raced and raced and raced more, until their thick thighs looked deformed with ropes of muscle...
...distance races at the Olympics have traditionally gone to Finns and Swedes, but at Cortina they were not in a class with a Leningrad student named Lyubov Kozyreva, who must have done her homework stretching her cross-country stride. She swung over the lo-kilometer (6.2-mile) course in 38:11, scant yards in front of Teammate Radiya Eroshina...