The Sports Illustrated Olympic Daily is published in Salt Lake City and available in event venues and on newsstands for 16 straight days during the 2002 Winter Games. Here are some sights and scenes from today’s edition:

Torn by pre-Games controversy, the 9/11 flag held together last night's ceremony

By S.L. Price

On Thursday, Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee, explained that an Afghan delegation would not be permitted to march in last night's parade of athletes in part because "the opening ceremonies of the Games should not be a place for symbols. It is a place for the best athletes in the world." This, coming just minutes after he had eloquently defended the presence of the most potent symbol in today's frightened new world the American flag pulled from the wreckage of the World Trade Center was jarring, but what could Rogge say? Invested with the memory of the dead and with the emotional might of millions, the 9/11 flag carries a power that no flame, rings or medal count can match.

Indeed, by the time the 2002 Winter Games opened last night in Salt Lake City, the flag had become the event's biggest personality, trumping Michelle Kwan and Picabo Street, the Mormon Church and even President George W. Bush. Columnists argued over the flag -- Should it be carried in by an athlete? Should it fly overhead? -- even after Thursday's compromise decided that it would be carried into Rice-Eccles Stadium surrounded by an honor guard of eight members of the U.S. team. Europeans and global-minded Americans worried that the flag's presence would inspire a jingoistic frenzy of red-white-and-blue obnoxiousness, and some, like the Dutch speed skaters who declined even to attend the ceremonies because they were afraid of catching cold, could never understand how a piece of cloth could matter so much to someone like U.S. short-track speed skater Amy Peterson. "It's part of each and every American now," said Peterson, who carried the official U.S. flag in the athletes' parade.

Presented and taken the proper way, though, the 9/11 flag was never a threat to whatever the Olympic ideal purports to be. No, the 9/11 flag flew at a structure called the World Trade Center, and 80 nations were represented in the smoking rubble of that horrific morning. If the Olympic movement is about nations coming together in peace, well, many peaceful people came together and died that day -- and the 9/11 flag just happened to be the one flying above them then.

"That flag doesn't just represent the United States," said U.S. luger Mark Grimmette, a member of the honor guard, "it represents all the people in the World Trade Center that day."

When the 9/11 flag finally came into the stadium, no one knew whether the crowd would cheer or stand silent; it was the night's one unchoreographed moment. The crowd stood quietly, the only sound a helicopter beating overhead as a light snow drifted down from the sky. This was not the kind of symbol Rogge had any reason to fear.

There will be plenty of moments in these Games to gag on patriotism run amok. There will be plenty of attempts by agents and athletes to cynically milk the moment and plenty of thumb-sucking pronouncements about the American Dream by NBC. But despite all the hype, last night's march of the 9/11 flag was a moment of purity. Too many people care too deeply, still, for it to be mistaken for anything else.