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.

Parra Sailing

Former in-line ace Derek Parra is a speed skating revelation

Competing in Salt Lake is the easy part for Derek Parra, the first Mexican-American to win a speed skating medal. Lowering his personal best for the 5,000 meters by 15 seconds under the glare of the Olympic flame on Feb. 9? No problem. Taking the line later today as a favorite in the 1,500, the race in which he took a silver medal at the worlds last year on the Utah Olympic Oval? Simple stuff. Merely making it back to his second Games at the elderly age of 31? An adventure.

Parra grew up spinning his wheels on roller skates in San Bernardino, Calif., proudly accepting free Cokes from fellow skaters for his victories as a 14-year-old. He won in-line world titles at distances from 500 meters to 26.2 miles and took gold in the marathon at the 1995 Pan Am Games in Mar del Plata, Argentina, despite being hit by the pace car during the race. Resigned to the fact that in-line skating wouldn't become part of the Summer Olympics program, Parra took up long-track speed skating in '96. "I was pretty ugly on the ice," he recalls. "I couldn't beat anyone that first day." Three weeks later, bad form notwithstanding, Parra finished third in two events, making the U.S. national team. He barely qualified for the '98 Nagano Games and was told by international officials that he would skate in the 5,000 after a skater from Kazakhstan failed to register. When the Kazakh team protested, skating officials replaced Parra on the day of the race.

Parra tried again, moving to Park City two years ago and taking a job as a floor and wall department salesman for Home Depot while his wife, Tiffany, returned to Orlando with her parents. After Tiffany became pregnant last March, the couple saw each other for a cumulative five weeks before the baby, Mia Elizabeth, was born in December. Last week, after a month of subpar performances, Parra set a world record of 6:17.98 in the 5,000 and watched Jochem Uytdehaage of the Netherlands beat it less than half an hour later, relegating him to a silver medal. "I guess my time was up," Parra laughed after the race. "I worked a long time for those 15 minutes of fame."

—Brian Cazeneuve

Six Degrees of Raimo Helminen

Q: What is the fastest sport in the Winter Olympics? A: While the bullets fired from a biathlete's rifle travel at 777 mph, the fastest speed a human will attain at the Winter Games will come in the men's single luge. Last November, Tony Benshoof of the U.S. blasted down the track at Utah Olympic Park, hitting a top speed of 91.8 mph. That exceeded his own Guinness World Records mark of 86.8 mph, which he had set on the same track a month earlier. So just why does the luge go so fast? "The hard, fast, almost bump-free ice," says USA Luge representative Jon Lundin. "Luge is such a finesse sport, and with the ice as smooth as glass at Utah Olympic Park, it makes for ideal conditions and maximum speeds." —Andrea Woo

The first thing you notice about Raimo Helminen -- after you've taken in the swatches of gray in his dark hair and the crags in his face -- is the way his teammates keep glancing over at him when he speaks. Helminen is Team Finland's resident sage, a 37-year-old center and the first hockey player to take part in six Olympics. "It has been a long trip," he says.

Now playing for his hometown, Tampere, in Finland's Elite League, Helminen appeared in 117 games for three NHL teams between his debut at the 1984 Games and his emergence as a key playmaker for Finland's silver-medal-winning team in Calgary four years later. He regards the Olympics as watershed events in his 20-year career and recalls both the lows ("Albertville was not fun; I played lousy," he says of a seventh-place finish in '92) and the highs, which include the "great weather!" in Lillehammer in '94 and Finland's bronze in '98, the debut Games for NHL players.

So does Helminen plan to go for a lucky seven in 2006? "This is my last stop," he says. "I think."

—Kostya Kennedy

McSkiing?

As a spectator sport, cross-country skiing is an acquired taste. The skiers go into the woods. An hour or two later they come out of the woods. With the Olympic debut of the 1.5-kilometer sprint today at Soldier Hollow, cross-country believes it has found a vehicle that will keep TV viewers from reaching for the remote. Though cross-country sprinting sounds like an oxymoron, it has delivered to the sport the same jolt that short track is bringing to speed skating. Sprints take barely three minutes. There are four skiers to a heat, and all four understand basic geometry. When they try to ski the same angles at the same time, there's a lot of "rubbing," as U.S. sprinter Torin Koos calls the NASCAR-like Lycra trading. Says Sindre Bergan, manager of Norway's team, "There will be fights all day long."

That's the sizzle. There's some steak, too. Though it's short, it is a ski race. As Italy's Fabio Maj, a relay silver medalist in Nagano, says, "The legs are the most important." Still, the old guard has yet to embrace the new format. Mart Siimann, president of Estonia's Olympic committee, offered this assessment of the sprint: "It's good for TV. Short -- it's over. It's McDonald's."

The public has responded. Last year a sprint at the Royal Palace in Stockholm drew 30,000 fans. Sprinters are convinced it's merely a matter of time before billions and billions are served.

—Ivan Maisel

Talkin' 'bout a Revolution

"Why wouldn't they cheer for me? The people also like the Russian skaters." —Figure skater Irina Slutskaya, on the reception she expects tonight at the Salt Lake Ice Center

The head of the International Skating Union said yesterday that he wants to eliminate tainted judging by adding more judges. Now this is what we call ice dancing.

The proposal by ISU president Ottavio Cinquanta would eliminate the perfect score of 6.0 and increase the number of judges from nine to 14. Only seven of the 14 scores, randomly chosen by computer, would count, minimizing back-room score swapping because judges wouldn't know whose votes would count. The proposal, if approved by the ISU council, would not likely be implemented before next fall. Under the new system judges would award points for both individual elements and overall execution, in effect quantifying the Games' most aesthetic event.

Real reform, however, will require more than changes in format. Federations in judged sports need to be accountable to independent review because, too often, the richest and most powerful sports operate in a vacuum. Figure skating has cleaned house in the past week, but a vacuum alone won't do everything the sport needs.

—B.C.