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∙FIGURE SKATING. If the U.S. has a sure bet for a gold medal at Grenoble, it is Peggy Fleming, 19, a consummate technician who two weeks ago won her fifth straight U.S. championship with 135.96 points out of a possible 150. A perfectionist in the classic school figures, which count for 60% of a skater's score, Peggy should go into her free-skating routine with a comfortable lead; if not, she could run into trouble from Japan's Kumiko Okawa, 22, a breathtaking free skater. At Grenoble, Peggy will probably be joined on the winners' platform by Austria's two-time men's world champion, Emmerich Danzer, and the defending Olympic pairs champs, Ludmilla Belousova and Oleg Protopopov of Russia.
∙HOCKEY. The Americans are big; the Canadians are brutal. The Russians are both. They also have won five world amateur titles in a row. At last year's championships in Vienna, they out-scored all opponents 58-9. Anything but a Russian victory at Grenoble will be a major upset.
∙CROSS-COUNTRY SKIING. Skiing, as a mode of cross-country transportation, dates back at least 4,000 years, and this may be the one sport in which today's Olympians are not clearly superior to their predecessors. In 1884, for example, one Apmut Ahrman arrived late from a wolf hunt for the start of a 137-mile race in Sweden, spotted his competitors a twelve-mile lead and wound up second by only eleven minutes. Ahrman then skied twelve miles home, to discover that a bear had broken into his stable. He chased the bear for 30 miles, killed it, and carted the meat and skin home in two trips—covering, in all, 370-odd miles on skis in a week. Competitors at Grenoble will have things easier, or at least shorter: the longest race is a mere 50 kilometers (31¼ miles). Russian women are expected to sweep the ladies' races as they did at the 1964 Olympics. Among the men, the favorite is Norway's sinewy Gjermund Eggen, winner of three gold medals at the 1966 world championships, but he will be pressed hard by his own teammates and a strong Swedish squad.