Winter Olympics: Sochi 2014 v. Lake Placid 1980

By Patricia Guthrie

Imagine an Olympics without cell phones or personal computers of any type:  No desktops, laptops, iPads, iPhones, smart phones, androids, apps, blogs or videos gone viral.  No digital, no links, no "likes," no nightly social media "report." Cameras needed film, telephones needed cords, and journalists tapped out stories on typewriters.
Ancient history, right? 

That's what I feel watching any Olympics that comes around these days, summer or winter. I can't help but compare the host cities, the facilities, the expense, the growing number of sports and events and number of participants to my time at what had to be the last of the simple Olympics — the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics. I took a semester off from college at the University of Buffalo (N.Y.) and signed up as a volunteer with the International Olympic Organizing Committee, specifically to assist the media as I was considering journalism as a career. If you want to learn more about prehistoric pre-digital pre-computer pre-Internet Olympics, check out by other Olympic posts.
Lake Placid cost $363 million to stage; 
Sochi cost $51 billion. The number of events and number of nations more than doubled and the number of athletes nearly tripled.
Here's what else has changed over 34 years:

1980 LAKE PLACID WINTER OLYMPICS
Xlll Winter Olympiad

Host Country: United States of America

Population of Host city: 2,500

37 Nations

1,081 athletes 

10 Sports

Alpine Skiing, Biathlon, Bobsleigh, Cross Country Skiing, Figure Skating, Ice Hockey, Luge, Nordic Combined, Ski Jumping, Speed Skating

38 events

6,700 volunteers

4,000 accredited media

Television rights: ABC paid $15.5 million

Security personnel: Not many

TOTAL COST: $363 million

2014 SOCHI WINTER OLYMPICS

XXII Winter Olympiad

Feb. 5, 2014 to Feb. 23, 2014 (17 days of competition)

Host Country: Russia

Population of Host City: 343,000

88 Nations

2,8871 athletes

15 sports

Alpine Skiing, Biathlon, Bobsleigh, Cross-Country skiing, Figure Skating, Ice Hockey, Luge, Nordic Combined, Ski Jumping, Speed Skating, Short Track, Curling, Freestyle Skiing, Snowboard, Skeleton

Debut competitions: 12, including women’s ski jump, team event figure skating, slope style skiing and snowboarding

98 events

25,000 volunteers

13,477 accredited media

Television rights: NBC paid $775 million

Security personnel: Between 37,000 to 100,000

TOTAL COST: $51 billion

Photo Credit: Rob Schumacher/(USA TODAY Sports Images)Competitors ski past Olympic rings at Sochi's Laura Cross-Country Ski and Biathlon Center during the men's team sprint classic semifinal.

Mascots

Lake Placid: Roni and Ronny Raccoon

Sochi: The Polar Bear, The Leopard, The Hare
Songs/Mottos

Ronny Raccoon

Lake Placid: Chuck Mangione’s “Give it All You Got”

Sochi: Hot. Cool. Yours.

Venue Firsts:

Lake Placid: First time artificial snow used at Winter Olympics

Sochi: First sub-tropical city selected for Winter Olympics

Venue Snafus:

Lake Placid: Buses failed to get spectators to events on time, small town barely holds all the athletes, spectators, officials and media

Sochi: Outdoor venue meltdown from above-freezing temperatures, roaming dogs, unfinished construction, bad water and confusing hotel toilets

One athlete, many medals

Lake Placid: U.S. speed skater Eric Heiden wins five gold medals in all five long track distances. His medals comprise 83 percent of USA’s total gold medal count. His feat has yet to be repeated.

Sochi: Russian speed skater Viktor Ahn wins three gold medals and one bronze in short-track distances, the same medals he won in 2006 as a South Korean skater. Ahn decided to move to Russia in 2011 in search of better coaching and support.

Lake Placid: Hanni Wenzel of Liechtenstein wins the women's giant slalom and slalom. Sweden's Ingemar Stenmark wins the men’s giant slalom and slalom.

Sochi: American-born Vic Wild wins two gold medals  in snowboarding slalom and giant slalom for Russia, where he moved for better support and training.

Lake Placid:  Nikolay Zimyatov of the USSR earns three gold medals in cross-country skiing. Anatoly Alyabyev of the USSR wins two gold medals and a bronze in biathlon.

Sochi: Darya Domracheva of Belarus wins three gold medals in biathlon events, winning more medals than her nation had won in total at the five previous Winter Olympics.

Ice Hockey High Drama

Miracle on Ice: U.S. men’s ice hockey team beats U.S.S.R. 4-3,  breaking the Soviet long hold on hockey gold. The Americans, comprised mostly of collegiate players, go on to beat Finland to win the gold medal. For play-by-play action.

Four Times the Charm: Canada’s women’s ice hockey team defeats the American team for the fourth time in Olympics gold medal competition. Losing 2-0 with less than four minutes to play, Canada tied the game and then scored another goal on a power play in overtime.

1980 LAKE PLACID MEDAL COUNT

East Germany: 23 total, 9 gold                                       

The Polar Bear, The Leopard, The Hare

USSR: 22 total, 10 gold

USA: 12 total, 6 gold

2014 SOCHI MEDAL COUNT

Russia: 33 total, 13 gold

USA: 28 total, 9 gold

Norway: 26 total, 11 gold

Published: The Amherst Bee (N.Y.) Feb. 1980

Tubas, trombones replace teletype at Olympics

(Author Patricia Guthrie is a Williamsville South High graduate serving as a press steward at the 1980 Winter Olympics)

The XIII Olympic Winter Games at Lake Placid have faded into a memory. For those who were there, the games offered a mixed bag of memories - ranging from dreams to nightmares from which to choose. 

Some observers like the cynical press, chose to

reminisce most on the nightmares; reporting
relentlessly on the snared bus shuttle and inflated
food and ticket prices while cracking jokes about the
Lake Placid Olympic "Unorganized" Committee.
But there were others like I, too enthralled in
witnessing the Olympic dream unfold before us, to
take heed in issues that might be scarring the

spectacle of such a magnificent athletic show.
For this was the Olympics - a once in a lifetime
experience to absorb. And because these Games and
myself would pass this way but once, the only
memories that remain are of the gold, the glory and
the splendor of it all. For myself, emotions ran high
during those 10 days that ended all too soon, but my
deepest feelings occurred Sunday evening at the
Games' closing ceremonies.

Lake Placid will always be known for The "Miracle on Ice" 

It was there in the darkened arena after watching

the athletes' final parade and upon hearing Lord
Killanin deciare the Games over when I realized the
Olympics truly were over. Tears welled in my eyes
and a seldom felt lump caught in my throat. When
you see your dream come true, it is tough enough to
believe it is actually happening. Yet it is tougher still
to accept the dream has to end and become no more
than a memory.

However, being, the stubborn dreamer that I am, I thought I would remain around Lake Placid after the Games ended to catch the afterglow. But I
discovered that there is no afterglow at the Olympics. The spark of the Winter Games in Lake Placid sizzled out and died Sunday night with the last firework in the sky. 

By Monday afternoon an overwhelming air of silence pervaded the tiny village. Scalpers were no longer heard screaming their ticket events and prices. The once constant hawking cry, "get your official Olympic" something from scarves to hockey pucks was now only a ghostly echo. Throngs of flag waving Americans 
no Ionger lined Arena Drive, the road outside the
Olympic Fieldhouse where they had wildly cheered
on the golden ascent of the U.S. hockey team. All
that was left to recall what happened only the day
before were remnants of excessive partying, cigars
cans and wine bottles left behind in the dirt brown
snow. Across from the Fieldhouse at the speed
skating oval, Zamboni machines lie silent as they
provided the lone audience for a solitary skater
tracing the golden tracks of Eric Heiden.
Two-way automobile traffic resumed early Monday
morning on the Main Street of the small hamlet.
No longer was the one traffic light town a pedestrian
showcase of all the world's athletes and spectators
milling around to window shop and trade pins. The
lumbering rattle of semi trucks rolling into dismantle
the Main Press Center replaced the drone and
exhaust of hundreds of buses.

Amherst's Bernard Kapuza, communications
coordinator at the Olympics, played pressure hockey for 10 days as he converted the high school into the Main Press Center. Two years of planning went into the creation of the press headquarters. Kapuza and
his crew had five days to return to its scholastic
status. After that, his job requires him to remain in
Lake Placid until April. Then he plans to take a long
and well-deserved vacation. By now the 500 students
at Lake Placid High School have returned to
their desks and are probably gazing at the speed
skating oval and arena below, Iost in their own sea
of memories.

Double scotches and Kirin beer are no longer served in Mrs. Whalley's drab third floor Home Economics room. Once transformed into a spacious flamboyant cocktail lounge complete with four televisions and a seven foot screen, it served as the press center's favorite retreat for "the working journalists.” Bunsen burners are now lit in the science room, converted back from the Kodak darkroom. 

Tubas and trombones have replaced the teletype and television sets in the music room, once Rueters'News wire Service room. Mrs. Danussi's English class has resumed studies in room J3, once labeled Tass, the Soviet press agency. Typewriters no longer clatter in "the pit," - the term affectionately applied by the press to the gym, used as the main newsroom where international journalists once hunted and pecked side by side.

The high school's auditorium will never again be

witness to the excitement it encountered during the Olympics. Never will a school play or a concert equal the drama and poignancy that unfolded in its walls
when it was used as the press conference room. Its stage was the sight of Beth Heiden's tears, her brother's sheepish grin and the platform for a bunch of exuberant, joking golden boys known as the U.S. hockey team.

But the press has deserted its headquarters, as the

athletes have abandoned their village. Life goes on
for both the competitors and reporters; the Olympics
being only another event to compete in or to cover.
If the Lake Placid Games mark the end of the Olympics as we know them, perhaps it is a fitting ending. The story of the hosts of these Winter Games is a story filled with as much determination and guts as the athletes who competed there. And in the end, they both competed successfully. There were mistakes, heartbreaking moments, gold medals won by a record one one-hundredth of a second and athletic performances unparalleled in sports for their drama and excellence.

But now it is all over. It is time to return home,
enter reality and leave the two-week fantasy behind.
Amherstonians returning home-include Edward
Rath, who served as a press coordinator for the luge
and bobsled, and Miss Louise Abbott, who worked at
the men's start of the luge run as a track steward.
Both expressed sorrow at having to see the games
end and leave new friends behind, but were thankful
to have witnessed and participated at the Olympics.
"I just had the greatest time," said Miss Abbott. "I
felt like I had gone to Europe just being there, since
hardly anyone I worked with spoke English."
Rath summed up the Olympic sentiment best. "It
was one of the most thrilling experiences of my life,”
he said. "Sure, it was sad to see it all end, but it left
you with a bank of memories that you will always be
able to reach back on."
You can bet there will be a lot of dreamers

reaching back for a long time to come.

Lake Placid Games: Last of the Simple Olympics

Published: The Amherst Bee (N.Y.) Feb. 1980 

Olympic arrival witnessed by ‘dreamer'

(The author is a Williamsville South graduate who is majoring in journalism at the University of Buffalo.)

by PATRICIA GUTHRIE

Dreams are goals in life seldom pursued and not often reached. When they are fulfilled, they tend to leave the dreamer lost in wonderment and lacking in words. Such is the experience encountered by this dreamer at the XIII Olympic Winter Games.  Ever since l first dribbled a basketball, ran in a track meet and survived a cross country ski race, I can remember dreaming of how I'd someday make it to the Olympic Games. Back then, my rainbow dream was of standing on the highest level of the triple stepped podium, bowing my head to receive the gold medal. Reality has since altered that dream of mine that is undoubtedly shared by all youthful athletes. Instead of participating at the Olympics as a competitor, I am proudly serving as a member of the Lake Placid Olympic Organizing Committee support personnel, without whose volunteer help, the Olympics could not be staged.

Lake Placid's Olympic view and venues

Next to the 1600 athletes and team personnel here from 39 countries, the World Press seems next in line in terms of importance, prestige and the power they possess at every Olympic event. More than 500 support personnel are needed in the Press Division alone in order to accommodate the 4000 accredited journalists. Serving and controlling press members is my job as a Press steward at the Olympic venue of Mt. Van Hoevenberg, where the events of bobsled, luge, cross-country skiing and biathlon are staged. 

The main press center is in a "bubble," an inflated dome that is madly being equipped at the last moment. Typewriters of dozens of languages line the tables. Eight color television sets hang overhead, ready to capture the broadcasting from every Olympic venue while a seven foot video screen is waiting to playback any event a journalist wishes to see. Copy machines are already spitting out paper at the rate of two and a half copies per second. Teletype machines and telephones lie silent until the rush to transmit copy around the world begins. Looming at the entrance to Mt. Van Hoevenberg the past few days has been a huge white structure resembling a mushroom. But the mushroom recently crumbled as bulldozers chipped away at its stem and trucks came to cart away the rest of its artificial snow. The snow now lines the cross-country and biathlon courses. 

1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics opening ceremony

In the Village of the Lake Placid, the speed skating oval was the sight of the torch joining ceremonies. From OIympia, Greece, where the Olympic flame burns between the Games, it was run 4,000 miles by Olympic torch relay runners who carried the flame through their home countries. These same relayers, uniformed in in yellow suits, proudly marched their flags through the stadium. Hostesses dressed in red capes, hats and black boots, lined the ice as the band from Burlington played the national anthem. Out from a tunnel came flames shooting three feet into the air. The two torch relayers glistened as they ran beside the glazing ice and spirited Olympic crowd. A lone torch bearer from Lake Placid stood tall as Rev. Bernard Fell, executive director of the LPOOC said, "May the spirit of the Olympics burn bright at Lake Placid.” The Olympic torch was then carried back through the stadium just three feet in front of me. It's times like this when I become too wrapped in the moment to put feelings into words. If you are a dreamer, you will understand. 

Olympic Bobsledder Am I

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Feel like an Olympic bobsledder -- for a moment

Patricia Guthrie - Staff

Sunday, January 18, 2004

Park City, Utah -- I am zowing 80 mph down an Olympic bobsled course, and I can't remember why.

OK, I'm really only going 79.6 mph. A freight train is rumbling through the tunnel of my ear, with a chorus of zow, zow, zow. From the maelstrom, a voice keeps shouting: "Curve 6," "Curve 7," "Curve 8," rattling in the din like the ghost of Christmas past.

Then, a pickup truck pulls up and parks on my back. l've had enough.

I want out.

Now.

But just as my head detaches from my neck and my neck from my shoulders, and my shoulders from my arms, a wondrous motion takes over. 

S-l-o-w-i-n-g d-o-w-n.

I open my eyes. I breathe. I tap the top of my black helmet.

You, too, can have this Olympic experience -- aptly named the Comet -- at the Utah Olympic Park in Park City. That is, if you're at least 16 years old, physically healthy, mentally not so much and have $200. lt's the real deal -- the real ice, the real curves, the real sled, the real crush of gravity dropping four times your body weight on top of your cranium.

Oh, and a real bobsled athlete or coach steers the four-person sled down the 15-curve, $20 million track, reputed to be the fastest on the planet. (There are only 14 bobsled courses worldwide, three in North America.) So someone knows what they're doing. Screaming or praying is your job, as well as the two others who'll be scientifically selected by weight and lQ to share the ride.

> Comet bobsled fast facts: The track measures just under a mile and drops the equivalent of a 4O-story building in less than a minute.

Two dozen brave souls (22 men, two women) showed up last month on the day I decided to try the course. Most of the speed junkies were stuck in the daily doldrums of life as lawyers, accountants and stockbrokers.

"lt's like 70 percent good adrenaline and 30 percent real bad," Alex Weisskopf expounds after his ride in the four-person bob. Weisskopf, a self-described country lawyer from Ashville, Ala., is one of my teammates. We've dubbed ourselves Team South without any input from the third person assigned to our sleigh, tall dude Tracy Duckworth from Salt Lake City. This is his second ride so he doesn't say much.

Weisskopf tells me that his wife and four kids are off sliding in tamer territory at a nearby tubing park.

"l've always wanted to do this," he says. "Four years ago, we went to lnnsbruck [Austria] and they had a bobsled. But instead of going on a really cool bobsled ride, I was dragged with my wife shopping for Gucci in Venice [taly]. ln really horrible, cold, nasty Venice."

> Park City fast facts: Adding up Park City's sprawling downhill terrain: 48 ski lifts, ' 332 trails, 8,550 skiable acres. Altitudes range from 6,720 to 8,460 feet above sea level.

Besides attracting outdoor enthusiasts year-round, Park City goes Hollywood every January for Robert Redford's Sundance Film Festival. At the 10-day show, independent filmmakers premiere their films. The fest runs through Jan. 25. Shuttling movie stars around makes for great conversation with hotel van drivers. One told me with pride: "Last year, I drove around Jennifer Lopez and, whatever her boyfriend's name is. They went to a restaurant in downtown, and police had to close down Main Street because so many people rushed to see them.”

> Deer Valley Ski Resort

lts patrons can ski in for a Sunday brunch at the renowned Stein Eriksen Lodge or get toasty anytime in front of the lodge's massive fireplaces and Troll Hallen Lounge's stock of single-malt scotch. (Yes, Utah still has some strange liquor laws but also lots of creative bartending.)

Gourmet offerings have become quite an added attraction in the ski industry. No greasy hamburgers and plastic pizza anymore. lt's more like cantaloupe, prosciutto, artichokes, antipasti and grilled mushrooms and dipping sauce. But no matter how scrumptious the food, it's probably best to indulge après bobsleigh.

New course record!

Perhaps that helped my Team South to the best time at the finish line -- 53.31 seconds. Course champions! Until the second sled blasted off. And then the third,the fourth, the fifth. But at day's end, we all got gold medals -- well, pins commemorating our feat -- and something better: bobsled bragging rights.