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.

As the Games dally with Salt Lake, Nagano pines and a bella Italian awaits

By Ivan Maisel

Once she was the lovely hostess. Now she runs a soup kitchen. A Japanese flag hangs over a small storefront on South Third Street in downtown Salt Lake City. This is Nagano House, representing the host city of the 1998 Winter Olympics. Back then the hostess -- her name is Nagano -- had been dressed up and vivacious, devoted to her worldly partner, the Olympic Games. And now this: to entice visitors to Nagano House, the workers, who are all from Japan, offer free miso soup in a paper cup from 10 a.m. to noon each day. "We wanted to come here and support the Games," said staffer Yumiko Hiraishi. On the walls are Japanese and Salt Lake Olympic flags, signed with good wishes from Japanese schoolchildren, the more ambitious of whom tried out their English. GET OVER THE GOLD MD. THAN NAGANO OLIMPIC reads one message, perhaps urging the Japanese Olympians to win more medals in Utah than they did at home. After noon, Nagano House serves inexpensive lunches. An Olympian from Nagano, Japanese skeleton racer Kazuhiro Koshi, is sitting at one of the seven plastic tables eating a lunch of oden (a winter stew) and onigiri (rice ball). "It tastes like home," Koshi says.

Nagano remains loyal, though its glamorous partner has moved on. The Games have gigoloed their way into Salt Lake City, its skyscrapers spiffed up with Olympic finery, its residents wearing paper doughnut-shaped goggles. If Nagano is known for miso, then Salt Lake is known for Tommie's Donuts, which is promoting itself this week by handing out the specs. That may explain why the IOC is now eyeing that bella donna in residence on the 19th floor of the Wells Fargo Center on Main Street. There, young hostesses in smart black pantsuits with the TORINO 2006 insignia welcome visitors to see what awaits in Italy in 2006. Flat-screen monitors show highlights of past Games while eight TVs and three computers let visitors keep up with the current action. A floor map allows guests to walk their way across the Italian Alps from Turin to Claviere, near the French border.

Several floors below, Casa Italia is operating a 400-seat restaurant that prepares the cuisine of the Piedmont for the guests of the Turin Olympic committee. Tablecloths are white. Wines are white and red. Chefs and waiters flew over from the Turin area. This new lovely surely knows the way to an Olympics' heart: Lunch on Friday featured spinach tortellini, prosciutto, duck breast and asparagus salad, hazelnut cake and il tempo delle castagne, a chocolate chestnut confection that would turn even the most devoted partner's head. As we already know, the Olympics are not the most devoted partner. Torino's short-term future promises a torrid fling. If, however, Torino would like a glimpse of her future beyond 2006, she should walk out of the Wells Fargo Center to the corner and look up the block. There sits Nagano House, doling out miso in a paper cup.