You Can’t Get There From Val d’Isere

While the XVIth Olympic Winter Games play on in Albertville and its environs, the citizens of this remote Alpine skiing outpost are catching their breath and restocking for the next wave of visitors Sunday, when the men’s super-G is scheduled.

The other sports--ice hockey, figure skating, bobsledding, ski jumping, cross-country skiing, etc.--might as well be taking place on another planet. They’re on television constantly here, but except for the freestyle competition, which peaks today in nearby Tignes with the moguls, a medal event for the first time, the action is two to three hours away. Even attending the women’s Alpine races involves a two-hour journey down the narrow, twisting road to Moutiers, then another hour or so through a different valley and up a second twisting road to Meribel.

But then that was the whole idea when Jean-Claude Killy began organizing these Winter Olympics: Everyone in the Savoy wanted a piece of the action.

Up here in the region called L’Espace Killy, where the Games’ co-president grew up, skied and now owns ski shops, they couldn’t even get all of the men’s Alpine events. After the super-G, it will be Tomba Time on Tuesday, when Alberto the Great makes his first appearance, in the giant slalom, but the final race, the slalom on Feb. 22, had to be thrown Les Menuires’ way by the organizers.

No matter. This village was one of the world’s great ski stations before the Olympics and will still be one after the Games are gone.

Unlike many of France’s newer, glitzier resorts, Val d’Isere has character and a past. The older buildings are restored rather than bulldozed. A 200-year-old church still is used for services, its bells calling the faithful and tolling the passing hours. Restaurants, many situated in rustic stone-and-wood structures, are plentiful and provide varied fare for their international clientele.

Besides the three-star hotel dining rooms with their full-course dinners for 220 francs--about $40--with wine extra, there are less pretentious brasseries, such as Le Pavillon run by an Englishman named Pim. He spent two years in San Jose recently and offers an almost-American cheeseburger for about $10, with Mutzig beer from the Alsace another $3. U.S. downhiller AJ Kitt and his parents have been regulars there for the last week.

But skiing is what this place is all about, and between Val d’Isere and Tignes, which are connected by lifts and runs, there are more than 200 miles of slopes, spanned by cable cars, gondolas, funicular railways and chairlifts of every description. The action even continues into summer on two lift-served glaciers.

Saturday night, the cable car above the Bellevarde Face will serve as the launching point for a flood-lit bungee-jumping show to be staged as part of the Games’ unofficial program by local daredevils. So far, there are no plans to request medal status for the event.

This weekend’s crowds probably will not match those of last weekend, when about 35,000 watched Sunday’s downhill in sunny weather. However, many of the same characters will be on hand, including the M&M; man, who resembles a more-rounded, more colorful Mr. Peanut; the group of about 10 versatile musicians who roam the slopes and town playing everything from oom-pah to Dixieland; the Scottish pipers, who escort British skiers back to their digs; the omnipresent gendarmes, in their new-for-the-Games blue uniforms, and an entire cast of “ghosts of Olympics past.”

Besides Killy, who won three gold medals at Grenoble, France, in 1968, they include Billy Kidd, Bob Beattie, Karl Schranz, Bernhard Russi, Gustavo Thoeni, Ingemar Stenmark and Pam Fletcher.

Fletcher, Beattie, and Kidd are commenting for American television and radio. Schranz is working for Austrian television and newspapers.

Stenmark is promoting his various ski-industry interests. Thoeni, his rival in the mid-’70s, is Tomba’s coach.

Russi, the downhill champion at Sapporo, Japan, in 1972, is keeping himself busy defending the Bellevarde course he created for last Sunday’s race.

Killy is the busiest of all, which prompted him to say this week: “I’ll never organize another Olympic Games. The first time was a great privilege; to undertake it a second time would be suicide.”