Winter games notebook

Compiled from Times wires
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 13, 2002

A terror alert, but no threat

SALT LAKE CITY -- Security forces papered the area with fliers of suspected terrorists and chased false leads Tuesday. At the same time, they emphasized there were no known threats toward the Games.

Responding to an FBI alert of a possible attack against the United States, Olympic security workers distributed thousands of pictures of suspects and investigated a half-dozen leads the pictures generated.

All the leads turned out to be groundless, and FBI agent Don Johnson said there was no evidence the suspects have ever been in the Salt Lake City area.

"We have had sightings here in Utah that all turned out to be false sightings," said Johnson, who heads the FBI's Salt Lake City office.

The Olympics are under the watch of an unprecedented $310-million security effort. So far it has resulted in a nearly trouble-free Games, with more than 15,000 police, troops and other security personnel on guard.

A SCARE NEVERTHELESS: A woman was held for observation Tuesday after she spilled a bottle of flammable chemical on an intersection near the athletes' village, the Secret Service said.

The woman, who was not identified, had stolen several bottles of the chemical from the University of Utah Medical Center, said Tony Ball, spokesman for the Secret Service.

Her actions were unrelated to the Olympics, but were instead intended to get the attention of her daughter, who worked at the hospital, Ball said.

Due to the proximity to Olympic Village, the Secret Service was called to the scene. A hazardous materials team from the Salt Lake City Fire Department responded and cleaned up the spill.

A fire department spokesman said the chemical was ethyl bromide, used as a fumigant and as an anesthetic for minor surgery.

RATINGS WINDFALL: NBC's higher-than-promised ratings for the Games will help the network sell the remaining two-thirds of commercial time it has available for the 2004 SummerGames in Athens, advertising buyers said.

Viewership for NBC's first four days of coverage is up 25 percent from the same period at the 1998 Games in Nagano, Japan, and 19 percent better than the network promised.

YOUTH IS NOT SERVED: There were no guarantees, and Lindsey Weier knew that. But it didn't make the news that she wouldn't be skiing at these Olympics any easier to swallow.

Weier, the 17-year-old Mahtomedi (Minn.) High School senior and youngest women ever to make a U.S. cross-country ski team, hoped to compete in one of two events -- the 15-kilometer mass start on Saturday or the 10K individual race Tuesday.

But her coaches, concerned about putting too much pressure on their budding talent, kept her out of both races and told her to just enjoy the Olympic experience.

"I'm extremely bummed out," Weier said after watching Tuesday's races at Soldier Hollow. "The thing that really made me mad was Saturday we could have entered four skiers, and we only entered three. But I'm still having a good time. I'm staying in the village, and it's really cool being around the other athletes."

HIGHER, FASTER, STRONGER, NAKED: The first Olympians in ancient Greece took it all off. Some skaters and skiers in these frigid Winter Games are following suit.

Dutch speed skater Gianni Romme was photographed in his starting pose wearing nothing that could slow him down, nothing at all. "Gianni Romme at his most fragile," the Dutch paper Algemeen Dagblad wrote.

Photos of the French snowboarding team, their upper torsos covered only by paint-on tattoos, made it onto the official team program.

Germany's Nicole Thost, the 1998 gold medalist in the halfpipe, posed half-clad in the mass-circulation Bild Zeitung. She was promoting her upcoming appearance in Playboy magazine.

"Too bad she could not show off such curves in the halfpipe," the tabloid commented on her 11th-place finish at these Games.

PALTRY PROTESTS: So far, protests haven't been gold medal stuff. That didn't change Tuesday when reporters outnumbered demonstrators.

Holding signs, waiving black flags and beating drums, a dozen protesters called for people to demonstrate against the military presence.

Three times as many journalists turned out at a downtown Salt Lake City intersection to cover the event.

And one passerby wasn't listening. "I think security is great. It's to our benefit," said Shirlene Luke of West Valley City.

GIVE ME A BREAK: The crowd at the 2001 world curling championships did a cheer spelling out the last name, letter by letter, of Finnish star Markku Uusipaavalniemi. ("Give me a U, give me a U"). At the end of the cheer, after the crowd had shouted, "What does that spell?" the arena fell silent.