(2 of 2)
Nobody is grounded on Sapporo's Susukino Street, a neon strip of honky-tonk bars and nightclubs. To accommodate the estimated 1,000,000 visitors to the games, the corps of bar hostesses in kimonos and miniskirts has been swelled to more than 5,000 by imports from Tokyo. For a price, some are available for afterhours visits to the city's 450 tsure-komi-yado (take-girl-in hotels), where room rates are quoted by the hour. Other popular sports are the Genji Turkish Bath, where the New York Times breathlessly reported that "girl attendants cover their nude bodies with soapy foam to serve as human washrags," and the Green Building, a kind of high-rise hangover haven with no fewer than 187 bars under one roof.
The action on the slopes promises to be just as wide-open. Russia is expected to excel in hockey, cross-country skiing and the biathlon (a combined skiing and rifle-shooting event), Italy in bobsledding and West Germany in the luge (a type of sled race), but the men's glamour skiing events—downhill, slalom and giant slalom —are a tossup. With such brilliant racers as Switzerland's Bernhard Russi, Italy's Gustavo Thoeni and France's Jean-Noel Augert at the peak of their powers, it is highly unlikely that anyone will win all three events as France's Jean-Claude Killy did in the 1968 games. In the women's division, though, the 18-year-old Austrian whiz, Annemarie Proell, has a good chance of becoming the first woman skier to take the three gold medals.
The U.S. invaded Sapporo with a 131-member team, the largest among the 35 competing countries. Tyler Palmer, who finished third in the World Cup slalom last winter, could swivel his way right to the top. In women's skiing, the flying Cochran sisters, Marilyn and Barbara, figure to cop at least one medal. In figure-skating, Janet Lynn and Julie Lynn Holmes are strong contenders while John Mischa Petkevich, the leaping dervish from Harvard, is capable of an upset. In the pairs the young California team of Ken Shelley and Jojo Starbuck rate as third-place finishers at the very least. When it comes to surefire bets, though, the hottest thing on ice is 16-year-old Speed Skater Anne Henning, the world record holder at 500 meters. Says her coach: "They may as well carve Annie's name on the gold medal right now."
While the ultimate results of Winter Olympics are as unpredictable as the doka yuki—super blizzards that shriek in from Siberia—the one certain winner in the 1972 games is Sapporo itself. "In all the heady process of reshaping our city for the games," Sapporo Mayor Takeshi Itagaki said last week, "we've gained well over ten years in urban renewal."