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.