By any system of scoring, Russia ran off with the seventh Winter Olympics. In the unofficial arithmetic of sideline experts, the Soviets won with 121 points. Second: Austria, 78½ third: Finland, 66½. But strangely, it was a group of grim and driving U.S. females known in Cortina as "the Skating Mothers" who had the most to cheer about. Like mothers of most virtuosos, they drove their children hard, with fierce jealousy of their rivals. "They look like women who were born 150 years too late," said one newsman. "Otherwise. they would have been shouldering Madame Defarge away from her front seat...
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