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Finland braced itself this week for an invasion. Planes and ships, loaded to capacity, were already disembarking the advance guard of an expected 40,000 foreign visitors to the Olympic Games at Finland's capital. Helsinki's main boulevard, the Mannerheimintie, was lined with store windows displaying the five-colored Olympic rings. In the 10 local newspapers, news of the imminent games almost crowded out the G.O.P. convention in Chicago and the war in Korea. Some householders were demanding, and getting, sky-high prices for bed & board. Helsinki's restaurants hurriedly recruited an extra 2,500 helpers, who were subjected to a brief course in the pronunciation of French wines and liqueurs.
In the Olympic village at Käpylä (where all but the women's contingents, the Russian team and their satellites were quartered), clouds of Finnish autograph hunters buzzed around the visiting athletes like hungry mosquitoes: "Sign pliss. Your name, pliss." Next to the big U.S. team (350 men and women), neatly dressed in their blue Olympic blazers, grey slacks and gabardine hats, the squad that attracted the most attention was the closemouthed Russian team, some 400 strong, which was constantly convoyed by 300 stony-faced "officials." Making their first Olympic appearance since the Czarist days of 1912 (when they didn't win a single gold medal), the Russians had apparently abandoned their idea of shuttling the Red athletes by airlift in & out of Helsinki each day. Instead, they were immured in a separate "Little Iron Curtain" village, six miles from the Olympic Stadium. But they were plainly on their best behavior. Located next to the U.S. boathouse, Russian oarsmen jovially insisted on lending the Americans a scull.
Olympic Truce. How good were the Russians? Nobody knew. But the broad-backed Russian women, who claim seven world records, were expected to dominate the women's track & field events. Standing virtually alone against them was the amazing Netherlands housewife, Fanny Blankers-Koen, who won four gold medals at the 1948 London games. One first-rate Russian showing is almost certain, and in a game that even the Russians admit the U.S. invented. Olympic fans hope that the Russian basketball team, European champions in 1951, will meet the U.S. in the final.
As Baron Erik von Frenckell, Helsinki's mayor, proclaimed this week the traditional "Olympic truce" (a throwback to the B.C. days when the Greeks called off their local wars to celebrate the games), there were a few inevitable rhubarbs. Both Nationalist and Red China, along with East Germany, suddenly and belatedly demanded admission for their teams. Bulgaria, which drew Russia in a first-round soccer match, complained bitterly when a soccer "unknown," The Netherlands West Indies, drew a first-round bye.*
But the 1952 Olympics would also mark the end of some past enmities. Both Japan and West Germany were competing again in the Olympics for the first time since World War II. Germany's Olympic trials had already produced a sensation when Werner Lueg, a 20-year-old West-phalian, equaled the world record for the 1,500 meters ("metric mile") with a clocking of 3:43.