Amid all the controversy over a possible boycott of the summer Olympics, the only thing threatening to stay away from the Lake Placid winter games is snow.
A single inch of snow is on the ground at Lake Placid with the Olympics a month away, but Olympic organizers say there is no need to panic.
When Lake Placid won the right to host the games three years ago, the organizers promised the first "weather-proof" Olympics.
They may have a chance to prove their pledge, which no doubt carried weight with Olympic officials wary of repeating scenes like Innsbruck four years ago, when Austrian soldiers were bringing in truckloads of snow until about two weeks before the games, and Squaw Valley in 1960, when it didn't snow until the day before the games.
Some may even have been thinking of Lake Placid's first Olympics in 1932, when rain and 50-degree weather forced organizers to bring snow down from mountain passes for the ski jumpers.
Downhill skiers have been practicing on several feet of man-made snow at Whiteface Mountain, said Ed Lewi, press director for the Lake Placid Olympics organizers. The ski jump trials went off without problems 10 days ago, he said, and the runs for bobsleds and the luge are refrigerated.
The only problem area, Lewi said, is the cross-country course, which is used for several different events.
"We're making snow and stockpilling it," he said. Unimog blowers have covered four miles of the cross-country course and, if necessary, the Olympics can get by with 15 miles, rather than the full 30 miles.
A greater threat than continued absence of natural snow is the possibility of warm weather that would melt artificial snow.
Armed with its snow-making capabilities and its faith that there won't be a major thaw, the Olympic committee is not contemplating moving any event out of Lake Placid, Lewi said. There had been some consideration of moving the cross-country and biathlon, an event combining skiing with target shooting, to Canada, but Olympic organizers think that won't be necessary.
"The only thing we need snow for is cosmetics," lewi said, "so that it will look like winter around here."