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.

Guns and Roses

Biathlon's Poirées blend skiing, shooting, medals and matrimony

World champions, the Poirées aim to seal Olympic gold with a kiss. Jens Meyer/AP

For married biathletes Raphael Poirée of France and Liv Grete Skjelbreid Poirée of Norway, country comes first -- in the day, that is.

From dawn to dusk over the next four days, the Poirées will traverse Soldier Hollow's training grounds with their respective delegations. Come nightfall, Raphael quietly leaves French team housing at the Homestead Resort to join Liv Grete at the adjacent Inn on the Creek, where the Norwegian team has set up headquarters. As they cozy up at the B&B deep into the Utah night, the couple talks "about everything but sport -- like our life, our future together," says Raphael. "One day, maybe I become Norwegian or she becomes French. We have much to decide once we get home."

As medal favorites in the biathlon's pursuit competition tomorrow at Soldier Hollow -- the Poirées could become the first married couple to win individual Olympic golds for different countries. They met at the 1992 junior world championships, and mutual admiration blossomed into a long-distance love affair. ("She's exceptional!" exclaims Raphael. "He's a very nice guy," Liv Grete says with a giggle.) When not competing, the Poirées, both 27, live in the Grenoble countryside, where they ski, shoot and cross-train together for up to four hours each day. Raphael, one of the best in the world with a .22-caliber rifle, helps his wife with her shooting technique, while Liv Grete, whom they both agree is the superior skier, gives him pointers in that discipline.

Their competitors good-naturedly call it a marriage of convenience. "You're training with another world champion!" says Kristina Sabasteanski of the U.S. "Could there be a better environment to work in?"

The Poirées' recent success makes that a rhetorical question; they have combined for nine World Cup wins this season. If both finish first here in any pursuit competition (Raphael was 10th in the 20-km individual and ninth in the 10-km sprint; Liv Grete took silver in the 15-km individual and finished fourth in the 7.5-km sprint), it would mark the third time that the sweethearts have topped the podium on the same day. They both won gold at the 2000 world championships, just three months before they were married that May.

While the Poirées compete under different flags, their ambitions are unified. "We both want to be the best," says Liv Grete, "but if just one of us medals, it will be like we both have."

—Kelley King

Cleared for Takeoff

Q: Do speed skaters wear anything underneath that skintight suit? A: For everyone's sake, we should certainly hope so. Speed skaters are looking for any edge to make them go faster, hence the seemingly painted-on duds. However, it's imperative that speed skaters wear something comfortable beneath the suit. For competitions held on an indoor track, most skaters will wear only underwear beneath their suits. When racing on an outdoor track, they may add more coverage underneath depending on the temperature. "Some athletes wear T-shirts as well," says Susan Ellis, coach of the U.S. Olympic short-track speed skating team, "but I don't think you'll ever find a skater who will wear nothing under the suit." —Elizabeth Newman

Haven't had your fill of catty infighting, icy ambition and charges of competition-fixing? Fear not. Apolo Ohno goes after his first gold medal tonight.

Battling a flu and riding a wave of publicity good and bad, Ohno, the 19-year-old short-track speed skater from Seattle, will begin or end the most audacious quest of these Winter Olympics with the 1,000 meters at the Salt Lake Ice Center. No one else came into the Games with a better chance to win four golds, and though such a feat is unprecedented in short track, Ohno is hardly intimidated. "It can happen," Ohno says. "There's no doubt in my mind."

The state of Ohno's mind has mattered ever since 1998, when he entered the Olympic trials as a favorite, only to buckle under pressure and finish dead last. Worry about his focus grew after December's Olympic trials, when Ohno was hit with an accusation -- later found baseless by an arbitrator -- that he and a teammate had fixed a race to insure that Ohno's friend Shani Davis made the team. (As it turned out, Davis will not compete in Salt Lake, having been left off the relay because of slow practice times.) Ohno's coach says the skater's time is at hand. "He's got total focus; he's absolutely ready," says U.S. speed skating coach Susan Ellis. "He gets this look in his eye, and you just know he's on."

He certainly is capable: Ohno took home two golds, a silver and a fourth-place finish in the 1,500 meters at the world championships a year ago. As the crash of a South Korean racer in the 5,000 relay on Wednesday again showed, however, short-track speed skating is nothing like long track and its lonely battle against the clock. In short track dozens of variables conspire against perfection, and one bump, one stripped edge, one wrong move by another skater can spell doom. "If it can be done," says former U.S. coach Patrick Wentland, "Apolo will do it."

The one sure thing is that plenty will watch. A sellout crowd of 15,394 filled the Ice Center when Ohno went in the preliminaries on Wednesday, proving that the combination of Olympic ambition and scandal remains irresistible. "I was at the men's figure skating finals [Thursday] night, and there were a whole lot more people in the stands for us," says Ellis. "Right now, I'm told, we're the hottest ticket in town."

—S.L. Price

Belarussian Bellyache

"If the judges have a question about a certain jump, then a picture is worth a thousand words." — Michelle Kwan on the use of instant replay in figure skating

Their hockey team (currently 2-2, after losing to Russia yesterday) is one of the surprises of the Games, but sports officials in Belarus are flame-broiling mad at U.S. organizers for their delegation's medalless performance. Their athletes, they claim, are being slowed by American fast food. Caterers at the Olympic Village insist they offer an extensive menu, but the Belarussians aren't biting. "Our sportsmen are getting sandwiches ... and various hamburgers," deputy sports minister Alexander Grigorov beefed to Reuters. "They need normal meat, fresh fruit juices, hot soup."

—Mark Beech

Herminator, Shmerminator

Despite his soaring successes, Eberharter languishes in the shadow of countryman Maier. Heinz Kluetmeier

It is late January and Stephan Eberharter of Austria has just won a World Cup Super G race on the Hahnenkamm course in Kitzbühel, Austria. The next day he will win the Hahnenkamm downhill, the crown jewel in a magical season during which Eberharter has won nine World Cup races in three disciplines (downhill, Super G and giant slalom) and finished on the podium 14 times.

He should be the toast of his ski-crazy nation, yet an asterisk hangs over the 32-year-old Eberharter's head like a full, winter moon. From the 1997-98 through 2000-01 seasons, when Hermann Maier ruled Alpine ski racing, Eberharter won six World Cup races and finished second to Maier 11 times. In August, Maier nearly lost his right leg in a motorcycle accident, knocking him out for the season. In his absence Eberharter has exploded -- which is precisely the problem. After finishing third in last Sunday's downhill, he is favored to win today's Super G at Snowbasin. If he wins, expect someone to invoke the Herminator's name.

The Maier issue is the last straw for Eberharter, a brilliant athlete who can be charming and funny. (Asked about his early ski days, he says, "Small town in the mountains, skied very young, became better ... you have heard it all before from many other Austrians.") Yet he will not forgive the Austrian public and media for abandoning him when a torn ACL in 1995 got him dropped from the national team and forced him to claw his way back through the Europa Cup Triple A circuit. He had been precocious, winning two world championships (Super G and combined) at age 21. But by '97, as Maier began to rise, Eberharter was regarded as washed-up. Now that he rocks again, he swallows praise as if it were kerosene.

In press conferences he says the right things in a monotone. For a smaller audience his words are different and more emotional. "It's all bull----," Eberharter told SI in Kitzbühel. "The media, the public, it's all bull----. You are doing well, they lift you up. When you're down, they hit like with a hammer."

It will be a shock if Eberharter wins neither the Super G nor the GS. It will also be a shock if nobody tosses Maier's name in his face. But consider what Olympic downhill winner Fritz Strobl said earlier this winter: "If Hermann was here, he might not be winning so many races." Eberharter should know it, and believe it.

—Tim Layden