Snoozing at the mouth of a narrow valley, its air perfumed by nearby steel plants, its riverbank paved for a parking lot, its squat office buildings ringed by mounds of sooty snow, Albertville hardly seems destined for global fame. But raise your eyes above the small-town skyline: the Olympian glory of the French Alps explodes in a pastel sunset, sparkling through pine-serrated glaciers. After Sarajevo's Bosnian backwater and Calgary's urban stampede, the 16th Olympic Winter Games will be a soaring high-wire act: 57 events staged in 10 venues across seven valleys and 620 sq. mi. of the Savoie region's magnificent mountain peaks. Following Albertville's opening ceremony this Saturday, the Olympics will take off into the wild white yonder of Val d'Isere, Courchevel and other mountaintop resorts. "I would like people to go home feeling that they spent a fortnight on another planet," says Jean-Claude Killy, ski-racing legend and co-president of the Games.
But what promises to be a dazzling, otherworldly spectacle could also become a logistical horror show. Over the Christmas holidays, 7,000 people were stranded in cars and trains when avalanches blocked valley roads. A similar disaster struck last February, cutting off several resorts from the outside world for two days. Olympic organizers say they are prepared. "The first flake won't even have time to hit the asphalt," says Killy. "It will land on a snowplow." But a few minor accidents on the two-lane mountain roads that lead up to the ski runs, bobsled course and hockey rink could create gridlock in transporting the 2,300 athletes, 6,000 journalists and 800,000 spectators who are to start arriving this week. "If coordination doesn't improve, the Games will be a sizzling failure," warned Andre Baudin, mayor of Tignes.
No matter the inconvenience for sports fans during the two weeks that the televised world focuses on Albertville, the locals will still be chortling all the way to the bank. "The Games were conceived as a way to bring public investment to the region," says Michel Barnier, president of the Savoie , General Council and co-president of the Games with Killy. And so they did. In the past five years the French state spent $1.1 billion on new roads and high- speed trains into the region and millions more on four sewer plants, three hospitals, 1,240 miles of optic fibers and spotlighting for 20 churches and castles. Albertville, with its 18,200 inhabitants, boasts a grandiose new theater and arcaded plaza (christened Place de l'Europe) and fresh-laid cobblestones, plus a 23-ft.-high slab of granite posing as avant-garde sculpture. "We're no longer a sad little city!" rejoices the municipal magazine.