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:

Franz Klammer    ALPINE SKIING

Olympic Highlights: Gold medal in the downhill in 1976

A ski guide now, Klammer blazed the way in ’76 with his full-tilt run. Courtesy Franz Klammer

Though he won 25 World Cup downhill races and five titles between 1972 and 1985, Klammer will be forever known for two madcap minutes in Innsbruck. Before 60,000 of his countrymen, the 22-year-old farmer's son from Mooswald, Austria dubbed the Astronaut for his eye-catching racing suits and the Kaiser because he ruled the mountains made a wrenching turn near the end of the Patscherkofel course, erasing a .19-of-a-second deficit and earning the '76 downhill gold. The turn, which Klammer calls "the best decision of my life," was the culmination of a careering, precarious run, a study in the controlled anarchy that always characterized Klammer's style.

Now 48, Klammer lives in Vienna with his wife of 22 years, Eva, and their daughters Sophie, 13, and Stephanie, 8. He has lent his name to a ski lodge in Telluride, Colo., and one in Bad Kleinkircheim (in his native Carinthia), a location he's lobbying to have added to the World Cup slate. Klammer also works as a ski guide for big-ticket clients in the U.S. and Europe and has done television commercials for products as diverse as Volksbank Austria and Mozartkugeln chocolate. "The equipment has gotten better, and the courses have gotten smoother and faster, so you can just tuck the whole way down," laments Klammer of downhill skiing today. "In the old days, at least there was room for creativity."

—Daniel G. Habib