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.

Rock 'n' Jock

A nightly mix of medals and music puts pizzazz in the Plaza

Pelletier (left) and Salé got high marks for their Barenaked visit. Darron Cummings/AP

The same can be said about every evening at the Plaza, where the medals ceremonies and the concerts that follow have become the hottest show at the Games. Intended as payback to Utahns for their sacrifices as Olympics hosts, the show attracts 20,000 nightly. Some 120,000 tickets were distributed free throughout the Salt Lake area over the five weeks before the Games. Native American performers, the AntiGravity aerial troupe, local bands, fireworks and the medals presentations are all part of the entertainment.

The main attractions, though, are the musical acts that close the show, a lineup good enough for the Grammys or MTV awards. The Dave Matthews Band and Sheryl Crow have already performed; Nelly Furtado (Monday) and Creed (Tuesday) are still to come. The drawback? The medal-winning athletes, around whom the whole night was produced, are often little more than opening acts for the musical talent. "Wednesday night was the first time we had athletes on stage during the concert," says Olympic Medals Plaza executive producer Gail Seay, who hopes for more of the same.

Demand for the tickets has been fierce. When the last ones were given out, on Feb. 2 at a Hallmark store in the Provo Towne Center mall, 500 people camped overnight, then pushed in a door to the mall and surged against the store's metal gates in the morning.

Yesterday, two tickets to the Feb. 23 show featuring 'N Sync sold for $510 on eBay. "They get to see the acts, and they get to see the athletes in their greatest moment," says Chris Harrison of New York City, who says he turned down $500 for his single ticket to the Feb 12 event with Macy Gray. "People are just nuts about this."

—Gene Menez

Q: Why don't women compete in doubles luge? A: Though they have never competed internationally in doubles luge and none are slated to compete in the event at the Salt Lake Games (the competition will take place today at Utah Olympic Park), women can compete in the Olympic doubles luge competition because the event is open to both sexes. Rules allow women to be paired either with another woman or with a man. Despite a perception to the contrary, there's no reason that women can't be competitive. "There may be a strength disadvantage at the start," says Gordy Sheer of the U.S., a doubles luge silver medalist at Nagano, referring to the initial pull off the starting ramp that propels competitors down the course, "but as far as maneuvering and driving, there's no advantage between the sexes." —Albert Chen

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Alex shares his brother's penchant for dodging death. Just days before he won his first medal in Nagano, Hermann walked away from a horrific upside-down tumble over two sets of safety netting in the downhill. In November 2000 Alex was training in Kaprun, Austria, where he routinely took a cable car through a tunnel to get to his ski site. The day he decided to take the morning off, the car caught fire inside the tunnel, killing 155 people. Later that month Alex was driving home to Flachau, Austria, from a race in Tignes, France, when an icicle flew off a truck ahead of his Mercedes, causing him to hit the brakes and collide with another truck. (He walked away with minor injuries.) For Alex the slopes have been a safe haven.

Alex tried Alpine until at age 14 he realized he wasn't world-class material. At 15 he took a job in a bricklayer's workshop and later went to work in the Hermann Maier Fan Shop in Flachau. In 1997 a friend introduced him to snowboarding. In Alex's first World Cup event two seasons ago he placed 49th. In March 2001 he cemented his status as an Olympic contender by winning two World Cup races.

The younger Maier knows how competitive the older Maier can be. "When we play a game of football [soccer]," he says, "If I make a goal before him, he wants to start new. I'm the younger, so I win not so often in football."

This time, though, Alex's bid for victory is a goal his brother can support.

—Brian Cazeneuve

"Let's just say there was a lot of duct tape involved." — Chris Soule of the U.S. on his rough-and-tumble start in the sport of skeleton

Scandal? Quel Scandal?

This has drawn front-page coverage all over the world–Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien even phoned his hosed hosers from Moscow–but it has drawn scant attention in France. The tale of the fragile Frenchwoman has been greeted with a Gallic shrug, even by the renowned sports daily L'Équipe. A staffer said yesterday that the paper has not written anything about the judge yet, though it was considering breaking its silence today.

Hey, à chacun son goût.

—Michael Farber

 

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