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.

Women's hockey belongs in the Olympics -- but not until Europe can cut the ice

For the women, Canada-Russia was no classic. David E. Klutho

By Michael Farber

Canada wreaked its terrible retribution for the Jamie Salé-David Pelletier pairs skating fiasco on Wednesday, beating Russia 7-0 in a woman's hockey game that was as fair a fight as George W. Bush vs. the killer pretzel. Canada-Russia has been the magical matchup in international hockey since the 1972 Summit Series, but the thrill obviously does not cross gender lines. For 60 grim minutes Canada pressed while Russia packed its defenders around goalie Irina Gashennikova. The strategy worked against Napoleon but not against Danielle Goyette and Hayley Wickenheiser, who combined for three goals and two assists. The Canadians outshot Russia 60-6 but took showers anyway.

The U.S.-Canada final next Thursday could be the most fabulous event of these Games, but the rest of the tournament offers so little in the way of competition or high-caliber play it should make the IOC and International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) blush. Of course, the IOC has a relatively high threshold for embarrassment, but in the first three days of the tournament the U.S. dispatched Germany, 10-0 (shots: 57-8), and Canada continued its sweep of the former Soviet Union by thrashing Kazakhstan 7-0 (shots: 66-11) before meeting Russia. Finland can play a little, but the level of the other five countries is below the most meager definition of Olympic. One, Sweden, which qualified by finishing fourth at the world championships, almost pulled out because its Olympic Committee didn't think the team physically strong or technically proficient enough. (The committee had a change of heart in December.)

Women's hockey is still in its infancy (the first worlds were contested in 1990), and the game has to start somewhere, just as the men's did in 1920 when the U.S. pasted Switzerland, 29-0, in Antwerp. But the Olympics aren't the place.

"They've rushed women's hockey," says Stefan Lindeberg, the Swedish Olympic Committee president who made the belated call to send a women's team here. "They rushed it when they put women's ice hockey in Nagano with six teams, and then they added two more. I would have expected the IIHF to do more to develop the women's game during that period."

The problem of competitive imbalance is far beyond the scope of the IIHF as long as, in Europe, women's hockey is considered a burden rather than a potential boon for the national federations. "There is a serious problem with attitude towards the women's game by the federations in Europe," says IIHF spokesman Szymon Szemberg. "They don't get any of the respect you see in North America." Nor do they get the numbers. Of the 105,675 women players registered with the IIHF for the 2000-01 season -- Canada has a high of 53,221, and Estonia has a low of one, a woman who must be dynamite on breakaways -- Canadians and Americans account for more than 85 percent. The pool in Russia is 322.

Coach Vyacheslav Dolgushin said his Russian team is only one year of intense training away from being competitive with the U.S. and Canada. Maybe one light year. The scandal of the Games is not that a Canadian figure skating pair got hosed but that fans are paying top dollar to see egregious hockey. It's the fault of the federations, not the players, but at $75 a ticket, that's still petty theft.