Cold War, Olympics first collided in Italy: Utahn recalls Cold War, Olympics

[Fiona]

Life eventually took Dick Mitchell through the fall of Saigon.

But the Utahn's big thrill 50 years ago was being on the U.S. Olympic Alpine ski team the last time the Winter Games were held in Italy.
"It was an intermixing of cultures, a very delightful one, I felt," Mitchell, now 76, said of the 1956 Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo.
Cortina was a groundbreaking Games, the first in which the Soviet Union participated. Mitchell got an early glimpse at Cold War relations, a political battle of will that had a profound effect for decades on Mitchell's life and the Games.
First, in Cortina, Mitchell struck up a fleeting friendship with a member of the dominating Soviet team, a downhill skier who invited him to his hotel room, which was equipped with cans of Russian fish, vodka and laundry drying in the window. But the relationship didn't last long.
"The Cold War was in full bloom and the Soviets had a political operative overlooking the team," Mitchell said. "As soon as the political guy saw this Russian skier and I were forming a friendship, he intervened and told the Russian he couldn't fraternize with me anymore."
A decade later, Mitchell served in the Vietnam War, the result of a U.S. attempt to stop the tide of communism. He wound up flying 166 missions in Vietnam, 149 over the communist-controlled North. He was shot down twice.
"A helicopter came and dropped a cable down into the jungle both times," Mitchell said. "A lot of my squadron mates weren't that lucky. Some were killed. Some were taken prisoner and spent six years in the 'Hanoi Hilton,' " the nickname for the infamous North Vietnamese prisoner of war camp.
In the world of athletic competition, the Cold War came to a head in 1980 and '84. First, President Carter barred the U.S. team from the Moscow Summer Games, protesting the Soviets' invasion of Afghanistan. Four years later, the Soviets were no-shows at the Los Angeles Olympics.
Back in 1956, however, the emerging communist power simply kept close watch on its athletes and made propaganda points by winning the most medals.
Politics aside, the 1956 Games were notable for bringing the Winter Games to the world. Cortina was the first Winter Games to be televised. Those Olympics also were the last to hold figure skating outdoors, allowing the event to flourish in years to come in spectator-friendly arenas.
The Cortina schedule was small compared with what Turin has in store during its 17-day run, which starts Friday. In 1956, there was no luge, biathlon, skeleton, snowboarding, freestyle skiing or curling. Nor were there female speedskaters. The Opening Ceremony for the 821 athletes (Turin will have 2,500) from 32 nations was held at the outdoor speedskating oval.
But the spirit of the Games was everywhere.
"There were a lot of flags and pomp and ceremony," Mitchell recalled. "We got to march in the big arena and see all the other teams marching in their uniforms. We were proud to wear our U.S. uniforms."
Mitchell's path to the Olympics began at age 11 in Ogden, where he was one of a generation of solid racers who honed their skills at Snowbasin, then in its primitive stages.
"They had one little rope tow. I went up there at the invitation of a kid who knew how to ski - and I didn't. I fell all over the place," he said. But Mitchell was hooked and before long, he started racing. "We would cut some branches and stick them in the ground and have a race."
Mitchell went on to become captain of the University of Utah ski team in 1953, then spent the next couple of winters racing on the Intermountain and Eastern circuits, regularly butting heads with such other Utah skiers as Jack Reddish, Dick Movitz and Dev Jennings.
While serving as an Air Force lieutenant going through flight school, Mitchell accumulated enough circuit points to earn a spot on the eight-man U.S. Olympic Alpine ski team. After a handful of World Cup-style races in Europe, he made his way to Cortina, where he was disheartened to find he was not among the top four American racers in the downhill, giant slalom or slalom. That left him out of the Olympic competition, although he was a forerunner for the men's downhill, racing the course to make sure everything was ready for the actual competition.
"It was terribly disappointing," he said, noting that memories of his forerun remain vivid. The Kastle 220s he used are still in the garage of his Park City-area home. "I was flying, faster than I've ever gone. My skis were big, long, heavy suckers. But at that speed, they seemed kind of maneuverable."
Mitchell finished the run, something 28 of the 75 starters failed to accomplish. Eight were hospitalized after crashing on the icy, wind-blown course.
Another University of Utah skier on the U.S. team, Marv Melville, was among those who fell that day. "That was carnage over there," he said. "I broke my ski from tip to tail, ripped the binding right out of it."
Buddy Werner, of Steamboat Springs, Colo., was the top American skier, finishing 11th. "He was a go-for-broke kind of guy, like Bode Miller," said Mitchell. "He never slowed down for anything. He was go for it all or crash." Eight years later, Werner died in an avalanche in Switzerland.
Shortly after the Olympics, Mitchell's ski racing career ended with a broken leg at Lenzerheide, Switzerland. It was time to concentrate on becoming a pilot.
When his flying days ended, Mitchell became Air Force attache to the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. He arrived in October 1974. By April 1975, "my last assignment was to be in charge of the tennis court landing zone. My last few hours there, I loaded Vietnamese civilians onto helicopters 30 at a time to be taken out to the Gulf of Tonkin.
"Once we got them out, it was time for me to go. I was evacuated out of there in the middle of the night, to an aircraft carrier in the gulf."
Eventually, Mitchell found his way home to Utah. In 2002, his Olympic experience came full circle when he served as a "slipper," packing snow on the downhill course - at Snowbasin. And now he will watch the Turin Games on television, remembering his Olympic moments from half a century ago.
"All in all, it was enormously fun and enlightening and I was very happy to be there with the team," he said.

mikeg@sltrib.com

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