What was going on when I was born?

COPPER MOUNTAIN, Colo. - "You don't have to motivate them," Kelly said, with a smile, recalling the episode during a recent training camp at this resort high in the Rockies. "They've got the experience, and they're gonna go that extra mile to make it." The World Cup skiing circuit will begin this week with men's and women's slalom events at Kranjskagora, Yugoslavia. In a season that will also include the Winter Olympics at Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, in February, American hopes have never been higher. For the first time, the United States will have two defending World Cup champions in the Alpine events (Phil Mahre and Tamara McKinney), along with such established international-class skiers as Steve Mahre, Christin Cooper and Cindy Nelson. The outlook in the Nordic events, led by Bill Koch, is equally upbeat. "We're going to approach it like any other World Cup season," said Bill Marolt, the director of the Alpine program, before departing for Europe. "Because of the stature of the Olympics, there is extra stature and emotion, and there is a higher level of intensity and preparation. But we know what our capabilities are, and we know if there's a hunt, we'll be in the hunt." The United States has never won an Olympic gold medal in men's Alpine skiing, one of the glamour events of the Winter Olympics. This is another reason why Phil Mahre, with three consecutive World Cup titles, and his brother Steve will be followed more closely than ever this season.

The official decision earlier this month by the McDonnell Douglas Corporation not to produce an all-new 150-passenger airliner leaves the field to the Boeing Company and Airbus Industrie, the European consortium, but it has also stepped up the debate over whether the plane is needed at all. Airbus, backed principally by the German, French and British Governments, is expected to announce by early next year whether it will produce its entrant, the A320 twin-engine airliner that is aimed at replacing older Boeing 727's, McDonnell Douglas DC-9's and other smaller narrow-body planes. For its part, Boeing is waiting to see how the market develops for an all-new plane before committing itself to any particular design. Replacing Aging Fleets Virtually all industry officials agree that the airlines will soon have to begin buying some kind of plane to replace many of their aging narrow- body jets, which account for almost 80 percent of the 6,100 commercial planes in the air today.

''Shared interests, common goals and similar suffering have drawn us even closer together.

This economic recovery, like many before it, is slowing from the vigorous growth it showed at its start, economists say with pleasure. For the time being, at least, they are looking for a more modest, but solid, upturn. ''The outlook is for the best of all possible worlds in the fourth quarter and through next year - low inflation and a sustainable recovery,'' said Edward Yardeni, chief economist at Prudential-Bache Securities. ''I didn't think that was possible a year ago.''

A program designed to speed emergency medical services in Manhattan's tall office buildings is to begin early next year. It will be run by New York City's Emergency Medical Service and an organization representing 150 of the city's largest corporations and real-estate interests. The immediate objective, city officials said, is to organize volunteer medical teams in office buildings, especially for the upper floors, to provide first aid until an emergency ambulance crew arrives. Faster Response Time Sought Another goal is to cut the response time of the ambulance crews. The average response time for high-priority calls on the 911 emergency telephone system is now 11 minutes.

Machine tool orders, a guage of business plans to increase production, rose 70 percent in October over levels of a year earlier, an industry trade group reported yesterday. In its monthly survey of orders, however, the National Machine Tool Builders' Association noted that the level of orders last month was still depressed, even though the increase indicates that the recovery is starting to help the capital goods sector. ''In early 1980, monthly machine tool orders averaged over $500 million per month, versus $203 million in October,'' said James A. Gray, the association's president.

Five hundred Federal and state officials and aides have been pursuing a grim assignment here in south-central Pennsylvania, killing millions of chickens that are the livelihood of many of the area's farmers. Crews of workers, in a rush to contain a deadly avian influenza virus that has caused millions of dollars in losses to the state's poultry industry, killed 500,000 chickens with carbon dioxide gas Friday, 465,000 Saturday, and continued their work today on five more farms. This brought their ''depopulation'' total over the last few weeks to about 3 million. ''We've identified about 4 million in infected flocks,'' said David Goodman, a Federal information officer. ''We use that terrible word depopulation to avoid saying slaughter, to emphasize that they are not being killed for human consumption.''

The Economy The pace of the recovery has slowed after a vigorous, initial rebound from the recession. Economists are hailing the slowdown, saying a modest recovery is more sustainable. (Page D1.)

When The Toronto Sun Publishing Corporation bought The Houston Post last month, the company insisted that it had handled and financed the $100 million-plus deal by itself. But many media executives saw in the transaction the hand of Maclean Hunter Ltd., Sun Publishing's half-owner and Canada's biggest communications company. The purchase of the United States's 17th-largest newspaper fulfilled one of Maclean Hunter's own long-term ambitions. Its executives also concede that Sun's ties to Canada's largest media conglomerate did not exactly hurt the deal.

''Shared interests, common goals and similar suffering have drawn us even closer together.

News Analysis JERUSALEM, Nov. 27 - The visit of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Defense Minister Moshe Arens to Washington this week comes at an unusual moment. Rarely in recent years have the explicit, short-term objectives of the United States and Israel overlapped as they do now. The talks are likely to be conducted in a spirit of accord. But beneath this outward harmony, the tone of relations between Israel and the United States is still set by dissonant attitudes and priorities. To the extent that the talks in Washington reach into the fundamentals of Middle East policy, they can be expected to give new voice to these old discords.

Excerpts from report, page B4. New York City has failed to reap the full benefits of its economic recovery, according to a report compiled by two professors. In addition, the report said the employment demands of the city's growing service industry have widened the gap between rich and poor residents. The report found that since the city's fiscal crisis in the mid-70's three out of four jobs generated by industry have been filled by out-of-towners and that the growth of the local economy outpaced business tax revenues by $660 million. It also pointed out that one in five residents lives below the Federal poverty level.