ALBERTVILLE, France -- In the village of Val d'Isere, they knew of the special grace and stubborn individualism of an 8-year-old child named Jean-Claude Killy.
It was a different place seven years after German occupiers were routed in World War II, a slow-paced town still awakening to the world beyond the next mountain. There were no boutiques stuffed with $400 fuchsia-and-black ski outfits, no restaurants with $40 lunch specials, no $200,000 condos.
There wasn't even a television set.
In the hard-bitten hamlet in the Savoie region of France, shepherds worked sunup to sundown, grazing cattle on wind-swept land nestled in the Alps.
The Killys were newcomers to the isolated valley of snow, transplants from the Alsace region come to begin a new life working in a fledgling ski industry. The "Chinese," they were called derisively by the descendants of the six founding families of Val d'Isere.
But there was something about the child even then. Each day after school, and sometimes even during school, Killy would strap on wooden skis and schuss with the wind through the trees and down Tete de Soliase, a mountain at the edge of the village. He would look up to the lift and pick out a chair and then race it to the bottom: a shy, limber child matching strength against an engine, a cable and a chair.
"I was so small," Killy said. "The mountain looked so big. And then, one day, I beat the chair down the mountain."
In the next decade, he would grow up and rule skiing, becoming a national hero by winning three gold medals at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France. And then, even later, he would reach the summit of all sport by bringing one of the world's great athletic prizes to his home.
The 16th Olympic Winter Games that begin Feb. 8 in Albertville are Killy's Games. This man is no dim figurehead sitting on a dais, waiting to give the speeches and sign the autographs, while the deal-makers do the hard work in the back room. He is no superstar clinging to the past. From the beginning, he has shaped the course of this $725 million event that will draw more than 2,000 athletes, lure more than 1 million spectators and be seen by more than 2 billion television viewers.
You see, after all these years, Killy finally said he never loved the adulation or the money that went with the triumphs. Killy never forgot the days when he chased the chair down the mountain. It was the race that intrigued him then, as it does now -- the idea that he could push himself across a fine line that separated winners from losers.
"I never liked the skiing," he said. "What I liked was the competition."
No, Jean-Claude Killy would never lose.
Never.
Center of attention
He walks into a room and seizes attention. At 48, he is still the athlete and the star, even though he appears diminished by time. The pale skin on his face is weathered from years spent racing in freezing weather under a bright sun. His brown hair is thinning.
But he is a man who lives up to the image that entranced the America of the 1960s -- the dashing, international star with a debonair accent. His blue, double-breasted sport coat is tailored perfectly to his trim physique, his black loafers are neatly shined and his gray slacks, white French-cuffed shirt and red tie are uncreased.
He remains very much the embodiment of his sport and his country. Picture a skier and you see Killy, all elegance and courage, a man alone hurtling down a mountain. And, of course, Killy is France, a cultured hero for the television age.
But he is tired, very tired.
For more than 10 years, Killy has been consumed by the Olympics. Ever since he took the first tentative steps to bring the Games to his home, sitting in a cafe in 1981 with his friend, Michel Barnier, and writing notes on a napkin, Killy has worked for these Games. He and Barnier, a local, boy-wonder politician, serve as co-presidents of the local organizing committee, COJO. They have brokered political compromises and raised millions of dollars in endorsements, all in a bid to prepare the Savoie to greet the world.
And it all started because of the roads.
To understand Killy and the Savoie, you must understand the terrain of this slice of France that sits near the Italian and Swiss borders. The mountains produced isolation and poverty. It wasn't until 1937 that Val d'Isere even was linked to the valleys below by the Iseran road. The idea for a ski industry blossomed two years later, but was placed on hold by World War II.
"The people of this region are very discreet," Killy said. "They don't spend much. They work hard. They've been poor so long. They needed something."
As recently as two years ago, traffic jams of 13 hours or more were not uncommon as vacationers clogged the 1 1/2 -lane road that curved and dipped through the Alps.
The Olympics would bring new roads and expanded train service to the Savoie. The roads would bring more tourists and more money.
"If tourism hadn't shown up, there wouldn't be a soul in the mountains," Killy said. "At the turn of the century, all of the young men of the Savoie went to Paris. They were the taxi drivers, the
oyster openers, the piano movers, of the age."
A life built on skiing
Robert Killy settled his family in Val d'Isere in 1945, two years after the first ski lift opened. He came to make money and nurse his frail son, Jean-Claude. Robert Killy started a ski-rental business, then a ski sales shop, and, finally, he opened a small hotel and restaurant.
Jean-Claude, a shy child called "Toutoune" (puppy dog), thrived in the mountain air. He skied to and from school. He raced with friends. But he was stricken with tuberculosis as an 11-year-old, and after attending four different secondary schools, dropped out of school at 15.
His destiny would be to race against men on mountains.
"When I was growing up, I didn't even know the Olympics existed," he said. "It took me years to realize my next-door neighbor, Henri Oreiller, was an Olympic downhill champion in 1948."
Killy joined the French national team in 1961, but it wasn't until 1966 that he provided the first hint of future stardom, winning the downhill at the World Championships in Portillo, Chile. He went on to dominate the World Cup circuit, winning 12 times in 1966-67. By the time the Olympics were held in Grenoble in 1968, Killy was favored to match the medal sweep of Austria's Toni Sailer, who won the downhill, slalom and giant slalom in 1956.
"It was a great privilege knowing for a few months that I was the best in the world at something," Killy said. "It lasted for two seasons. When I was first struck by it, realizing I was No. 1, it was vertigo. It was trouble. If you are smart, you realize it won't last long. That keeps you modest."
He carried a country's hopes down an icy slope in Grenoble. He won the downhill by .08 of a second. He overwhelmed the competition in the giant slalom. Finally, in the slalom, with fog shrouding the course, Killy lost.
And then, miraculously, he won.
He was trying to hold off the determined advance of Austrian Karl Schranz. On the second run, Killy finished and took the lead. But Schranz stopped short at the 22nd gate, claiming a spectator had wandered out on the course. Given a restart, Schranz skipped down the mountain and won.
Two hours later, though, judges ruled that Schranz actually had missed two gates in the earlier run. An appeals jury met for five hours and disqualified Schranz.
The third gold belonged to Killy.
"I don't remember much about the race," Killy said. "I cared for the race, but I didn't care if it was over or if I had won a gold medal or not. I already had two golds.
"Getting into the Games, I would have been satisfied with one gold medal. It was a great satisfaction when I realized the medal was mine. When I see Karl Schranz, he says it was still his medal. And I say, 'No, it was mine.' If he needs the medal, then I'll let him borrow it."
Riches built with gold
The three golds turned into millions of dollars. Killy retired from competitive racing at 24 and conquered Madison Avenue as easily as he once overwhelmed downhill courses. At one time or another, he represented 120 companies. His skiing sold cars and watches and vacations. He even starred in a dreadful movie, "Snow Job."
"It was the timing, and I had nothing to do with that," he said. "It was the same with Arnold Palmer. He was the one in golf whose timing was so perfect. With me, television and economic circumstances merged. All the sponsors, they came to me. They were fighting for me. I went to visit Henry Ford in Detroit, but I got a better offer from GM."
He lived the good life. He learned how to fly a helicopter. He raced cars. He purchased flats in Paris and St. Tropez and established his legal residence in Geneva, for tax reasons, of course.
And on New Year's Eve 1968, he fell in love with Daniele Gaubert, a film star who recently had divorced Leonidas Rhadames Trujillo, son of the former Dominican Republic dictator. They were married in November 1973 and raised a family of three. Killy adopted his wife's two children from the previous marriage -- Rhadames, 25 and a law student in the United States, and Maria Daniele, 26 and a graphic artist in Paris. Emilie, 21, works in television production in Switzerland.
The marriage left Killy content. If anyone would live happily ever after, then surely it would be this Olympian. But in the early 1980s, his wife was found to have cancer, and she died in 1987. Friends say the death devastated Killy. Even now, he talks of his wife with quiet passion.
"Life has some obstacles like that," he said. "I had to take them as they came. I had to overcome them. My life is just a regular life. Pleasures and problems come for everyone. You have to balance it. I don't consider myself exceptional in anyway. Tragedy strikes us all."
A ridiculous idea
The Olympics -- the whole idea was preposterous. But there they were in a tiny cafe in 1981, Killy the athletic hero, and Barnier, who, at 27, was the president of Savoie's regional council and the youngest deputy in the French National Assembly. The more wine they drank, the more they talked, the more reasonable the notion became.
"It was crazy," Barnier said. "But it was wonderful."
The two plotted. All along, it was Killy's name that provided the magnetism and the publicity necessary to rally local leaders and, eventually, the International Olympic Committee to the cause of the Savoie. In October 1986, Albertville was awarded the Games.
Organizing the event would tax all of Killy's political and personal skills. He had to drive hard bargains with worldwide sponsors and even harder ones with headstrong community leaders.
The Olympics proved to be the ultimate in political patronage in the Savoie. Each town wanted a piece of the Games. When the infighting got out of control, Killy quit as co-president of COJO Jan. 29, 1987, only 13 days after he accepted the job. But he was back in command in March, less than two weeks after accompanying IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch to the 1988 Winter Games in Calgary, Alberta.
The locals had received a message: Killy was the Games. When he returned to the Savoie, Killy parceled out the events.
The venues for these Games are as permanent as disposable diapers, and they're spread across a vast area. On television, the Games will look like a Steven Spielberg tribute to winter. But up close and personal, the Games likely will produce gridlock, as thousands of spectators traverse the mountains in buses.
Spreading the wealth
Albertville, a squat, nondescript city of 20,000, is the site of the glamour events -- the opening and closing ceremonies in a temporary, 35,000-seat stadium, figure skating in a compact, 9,000-seat arena and speed skating in a 10,000-seat stadium that quickly will be converted to track and field.
In all, 12 towns will share in the Games. But the focus outside of Albertville will fall on Meribel, site of the women's Alpine events and hockey tournament; Courchevel, with its mountains and trees providing the backdrop for ski jumping and Nordic combined; La Plagne, a tiny outpost for luge and bobsled; and Killy's home of Val d'Isere, base for four men's Alpine events, including the downhill.
Connecting the towns are the twisting roads, upgraded by the French government. And there is also the four-lane highway that connects Albertville with Moutiers, the gateway to the Three Valleys.
"On the positive side, there won't be a big nightmare in the center of the Games," Killy said. "Most of the people of this area are used to organizing the events. The downside is that this is all a much bigger headache, logistically and technically. But we survived."
Killy's Games will go on for 16 days. They'll pour across three weekends. They'll bring together a rapidly changing world that now includes one German state instead of two and a new creation out of the old Soviet Union, the Commonwealth of Independent States.
When the portable Olympic flame is extinguished Feb. 23, Killy plans a long rest. He'll ski again. He'll jog again. He'll oversee his ski apparel business.
In the Savoie, his legacy will be not one of sports and medals, but something more concrete.
He'll leave behind the roads.
"Would I do this all over again?" he said. "Once is a privilege. Twice would be suicide."