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Frightened villagers branded the Olympic men’s downhill Alpine ski course an avalanche risk in the latest controversy over facilities built for the Winter Games.

Residents of the hamlet of Le Joseray, at the foot of trendy Val d’Isere’s Bellevarde piste where the downhill was raced Sunday, said construction work on the mountain face had put their homes in the direct line of avalanches.

“Every time it snows I get frightened,” said Marie-Christine Tutel, whose parents-in-law were injured last December when an avalanche plowed into Le Joseray after heavy snowfall and wrecked the family barn, farm machinery and a manger.

Harald Czudaj will be allowed to compete in the Albertville Winter Games, even though the bobsledder admitted that he was once an informer for the former East German security police, German Olympic officials said.

The clearance came after the Czudaj’s teammates appealed to German officials to let him compete because they had not been harmed by his work for the Stasi, German Olympic Committee president Willi Daume said.

Czudaj admitted working as an informer for the Stasi, writing at least 10 reports about teammates and officials of the Dynamo bobsled club in Altenberg, East Germany, since 1988. He apologized to his teammates.

American downhiller Megan Gerety ran a ski-slope stop sign, probably knocking herself out of the Winter Olympics and leaving a Norwegian coach with a broken leg.

Gerety, 20, who is scheduled to ski in the women’s combined downhill Wednesday, collided with coach Ole Magne Walaker when she skied down a closed training course.

She went past another Norwegian coach who tried to stop her.

Gerety’s injuries were a deep bruise and slight strain of her left knee, but her coach said those injuries probably would be enough to keep her out of the Games.