WORLD SPORTS SCENE / RANDY HARVEY : Female Skiers Up in Arms Over Lack of Slope on Downhill Course

Officials from Lillehammer’s Olympic Organizing Committee now know why various international competitions taking place here in recent weeks are known as test events. Not only have they tested the venues for next February’s Winter Olympics, they also have tested the organizers’ patience with the athletes, the media and even each other.

When the organizing committee (LOOC) starts next month to assess the most recent input, the venues are likely to fare considerably better than the rest.

They all--the athletes, media and organizers--made a comeback over the weekend by singing harmonious praises to the Olympic men’s downhill course 28 miles north of here in Peer Gynt country at Kvitfjell.

But there remained discordant vibrations in the fresh, crisp air from the previous weekend’s downhill race for women on the Olympic course at Hafjell. Kvitfjell, in English, means White Mountain. Hafjell does not translate, but the women skiers were calling it Half Mountain because it is so flat compared to other courses on the World Cup circuit.

“If people see this downhill on television, they will say, ‘I might as well go to the library,’ ” Germany’s Katja Seizinger said.

Twelve of the top 15 skiers boycotted the final training run before the race and demanded that their Olympic downhill competition take place next winter at the more challenging Kvitfjell. Further frustrating the organizers, Norway’s King Harald reportedly told an international ski federation official that His Highness backed the women. Naturally, that became a big headline in the national newspapers.

But the biggest headline of all was reserved for a cross-country ski race, in which the official results were not released until the next morning because of a computer glitch caused by human error.

Well, an American might say, it’s just cross-country skiing.

But saying that to a Norwegian would be akin to saying, “It’s just a cow,” to a Hindu. Norwegians like cross-country skiing so much that one of the controversies here is that the spectators’ seats in the stadium are too few and too far away from the start-finish line to provide the highly-charged atmosphere that people are accustomed to for races here.

“SKANDALE” screamed the front-page banner headline in Norway’s largest-circulation newspaper, Verdens Gang, on the morning after the computer snafu. Television commentators were hardly more kind, saying that the organizers had been “shamed by the fiasco.”

“LOOC Ute Av Kontroll?” asked another headline above a VG sports columnist’s kommenterer.

Not at all, say LOOC officials.

They say that perception is encouraged by the Oslo-dominated media, which reflect skepticism from a large percentage of the 451,000 people in the nation’s largest and most worldly city that their country cousins 106 miles to the north at Lillehammer (pop. 23,000) can pull off the Winter Olympics. How country are they? The most frequently seen road signs here warn of moose crossings.

According to popular jokes throughout other regions of the country, the people of this largely agricultural area are the Polish of Norway.

In this case, LOOC officials defended their honor by blaming the Swede who is in charge of the computer system.

Otherwise, they could not be more pleased with themselves.

Problems?

No problem.

“That is why we have test events, to find out what things need to be corrected,” said Gerhard Heiberg, LOOC’s president.

Test events for figure skating, bobsled, luge and ski jumping went without a hitch. The same was true for speedskating after the first day, when the 14,000 spectators generated so much heat in the new arena at neighboring Hamar that the the ice began to melt. Organizers solved that in subsequent days by turning down the thermostat.

“The skaters promised me five world records if I promise them that people will not smoke inside,” Heiberg said.

Constructed in the shape of an upside down Viking ship, the indoor speedskating arena is the world’s best. Equally unique is the ice hockey arena that is being built into the side of a mountain in another community, Gjovik. The only venue yet to be completed, it will open three months ahead of schedule on May 6.

“I was in Albertville a year in advance, and they had much bigger problems than we do,” Heiberg said, referring to the French site of the 1992 Winter Olympics.

LOOC’s chief operating officer, Henrik Andenaes, agreed.

“There is no reason whatsoever for any kind of panicking,” he said. “It’s a pity that we had some problems during World Cup events because they are important to the athletes, but, 11 months before the Games, you will hardly find any organizing committee that is this prepared.”

As for those problems, Andenaes said LOOC knows where they are and how to solve them.

“It’s a matter of testing and training our people,” he said. “There are no black boxes here.”

Only black headlines.

“Large headlines and talking about scandals is certainly far too much,” Andenaes said. “There are not many things to arrest us over.”

Observers here have faith that LOOC will succeed next winter.

“If you went to the main station in Oslo and asked the first 100 Norwegians who got off the train if they had ever been involved in the organization of a skiing event, 60 would say they have,” said Michael Brady, an American freelance journalist and ski instructor who has lived in Norway for 30 years.

“That’s the best thing the people at LOOC have going for them. So many Norwegians have experience at some level in putting on winter sports events, even if it’s just selling cake and coffee in the concession stand at a local junior race.”