Cyber sport out in the cold

The internet will be flying the Olympic flag this year

		By BBC News Online's Jane Wakefield

The internet looks set for a bumper Olympic year as the official website of the Winter Games braces itself for millions of hits.

The International Olympic Committee promises Salt Lake City 2002 will be the first year the internet is fully integrated into its plans.

To set the tone, Saltlake2002.com promises to be the most comprehensive site in the history of the Games.

The technology providers SchlumbergerSema estimate that about 15 million people will visit the website.

The precedent has already been set, with more than 11 billion hits for the Sydney Olympics website.

But the bad news for most websites is that the IOC has banned any unofficial site offering live webcasting of sporting events.

Obscure facts

However, this has not stopped a wealth of Olympic sites cashing in on the Games' enduring popularity.

There are a host of sites out there, ranging from education sites which use the principles of lugeing to teach basic physics to others offering background information on some of the Games more obscure sports.

Find out all about curling

So if you always wanted to know about curling but were afraid to ask, then visit curlingbasics.com.

It promises to talk you through basic curling principles by way of animated practical examples.

If your interest is more geographical, you might want to learn more about the state that is hosting the Games.

In which case head for utah.com where, among other things, you can find out all about the Mormon history associated with the state.

Croatian jokes

Of course many of the athletes have their own websites. German ski jumper Sven Hannawald uses his to reveal his favourite cake recipe as well as offering a lifesize poster to cut out and keep.

Croatian skier Janica Kostelic's homepage tells us that her favourite movies are Die Hard 3 and Platoon and that her favourite food is, somewhat bizarrely, bird food.

She also takes the opportunity to tell her fans the following joke:

Q: Who are hunters

A: A group of boozers who walk through the woods to another bar

It obviously loses something in the translation.

Eagle has flown

For nostalgia fans, wondering what happened to British ski jump hopeful Eddie the Eagle, a visit to the Now Your Talking website might be in order.

As well as letting you know what the star is up to now, a round of after dinner speeches apparently, it also directs you to his book, On the Piste, and informs you that a major film of his life is in the pipeline.

British skeleton bobsleigher Alex Coomber has just launched her own homepage in time for the Olympics.

Helpfully, it explains what skeleton bobsleighing is as well as providing background information about the Briton tipped for a medal at the Games.

Her agent Henry Chappell told BBC News Online why homepages are so important to athletes like Coomber.

"It is really so that fans can keep up to date with their idols and get the facts directly from the horse's mouth, rather than through a half-true story in the press," he said.