THE OLYMPICS / WINTER GAMES AT ALBERTVILLE : WORLD SPORTS SCENE / RANDY HARVEY : In Albertville, Nonchalance Is the Word

ALBERTVILLE, France —  We laughed when one of the wire services reported last week that some folks who apparently wouldn’t know a luge from a lug nut tried to buy tickets for the Winter Olympics in Albertville, Ala. But upon arriving here last week, we began to wonder if the joke was on us. Maybe the Winter Olympics are in Albertville, Ala.

They don’t seem to be anywhere in the vicinity of this small industrial village, where, only six days before the opening ceremony, the only decorations on the main street appear to be left over from Christmas. It is little wonder that nonchalance is a French word.

When discussing this with the locals, they are not offended. Far from it. They are proud in their defiance of the Olympic spirit.

Some claim it is because COJO, the French acronym for the organizing committee, hasn’t done enough for the economy in the Savoie region. COJO officials say they have been compelled to do business in other regions as well as the Savoy because of the federal government’s generous financial commitment to the Games.

But Savoyards don’t want to hear it. The wife of a local pharmacist was fuming Sunday because COJO, in providing flu shots for its staff and volunteers, bought the vaccine from Paris.

There also is an air of skepticism here about COJO’s claims that the Games will pay for themselves. People here believe they will have to pay for them, citing the example of nearby Grenoble, which played host to the 1968 Winter Olympics. Taxpayers there only recently retired the debt.

COJO spokesman Jean-Marc Eysseric said that the attitude will improve when the torch arrives tonight in the Savoie.

“I hope you will feel the Olympic spirit in the smiles of the people more than with lights on Olympics rings in the mountain,” he said.

When reporters took their notebooks from their pockets and wrote down Eysseric’s remark, he beamed.

“I am the spokesman,” he said. “I have been practicing for two years.”

The national pastime of the French is not rugby, soccer or cycling. It is workers’ protests. On Saturday alone in the Savoie, there were three strikes.

Taxi drivers blocked both sides of the main highway between Albertville and the press center in La Lechere and the broadcast center in Moutiers, where they knew they would receive maximum attention, if not necessarily sympathy from frustrated drivers, to protest their limited access to Olympic venues.

Employees on the TGV (the fast train) route between Paris and the Savoie stopped work to protest the installation of automatic ticket dispensers.

And three-fourths of the 250 dancers who are supposed to participate in the opening ceremony refused to attend a rehearsal to protest poor lodging and working conditions.

Artists also are in the middle of a controversy in Barcelona, the site of the 1992 Summer Olympics.

Two of Spain’s most celebrated opera tenors are raising their voices in anger at each other over their respective roles in the opening ceremony. Jose Carreras has one. Alfredo Kraus does not.

Carreras said they didn’t invite Kraus to join him and others, including Placido Domingo, in the ceremony because Kraus was critical of the popular performance by Carreras, Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti on the night before the 1990 World Cup soccer final in Rome.

“Kraus has repeatedly said that he is not in favor of opera being sung at events such as these,” Carreras said.

Kraus called Carreras’ rationale a “declaration of war.”

While on the subject of the finer things in life, it should be mentioned that 53 of France’s most famous chefs will be in Albertville at various times during the Games to prepare dishes for a special restaurant that is being set up under a tent.

If all the stars in the Michelin guide for the restaurants that these chefs represent were combined, this would be a 123-star restaurant.

The set price for a meal per person is only $165 and change, not including wine.

Former Soviet athletes will compete for the Unified Team in Albertville, known in English as the United Team.

Those athletes will wear a patch on the sleeves of their uniforms that identifies their republics. When they are on the victory stand, their republics also will be announced. However, rather than their national anthem and national flag, the Olympic hymn will be played and the Olympic flag will be raised.

Expect to hear the name Russia a lot. Of approximately 200 athletes on the team, all but between 30 and 40 are from that republic.

Citizens from the new Commonwealth of Independent States, who have a voracious appetite for sports on television, were facing a Winter Olympics blackout until recently.

The former Soviet Union’s committee for television and radio already owed $1.5 million to the European Broadcasting Union when a $500,000 bill for the rights to the Winter Games came due last month. The EBU threatened to withhold the signal from the former Soviet republics. But IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch intervened, negotiating an extension for the CIS.

Despite tremendous financial obstacles in the CIS, Goodwill Games organizers remain optimistic, at least publicly, that the Games will go on in 1994 in St. Petersburg, Russia.

But Vitaly Smirnov, who presides over the association of Olympic committees from the former republics and is an IOC executive board member, said in an interview Saturday that he is not so sure.

“I have sympathy for the Goodwill Games,” he said. “I think they were misinterpreted as opposition to the Olympic Games. But they have very many problems in St. Petersburg.”

The IOC executive board announced Saturday that it will hold an election to replace Robert Helmick, who resigned late last year under pressure while being investigated on conflict-of-interest charges, as one of two U.S. representatives to the 92-member IOC in a session before the Barcelona Olympics.

There is a long list, at least in the press, of potential candidates, including one who emerged last week, Ted Turner. Absolutely anything is possible.