There are always a few glitches when a city takes on the enormous task of hosting an Olympic Games, even though Salt Lake officials say the Games are running smoothly. When ticket holders arrived Saturday for the first two men’s hockey games, they discovered their row did not exist yet. But it was built the very next day. Hockey fans at the Peaks Ice Arena in Provo have complained about ceiling fans that direct what feels like Arctic air their way. And there have been a few, small transportation problems, including a traffic jam on Sunday en route to Snowbasin Ski Area, preventing about 2,500 spectators from seeing the first portion of the men’s downhill race.
As for garbage, the Olympics is expected to produce more than 44 times the normal amount of trash in downtown Salt Lake City. And the city hopes to recycle up to 85 per cent of that waste. Officials estimate the 14 venues will produce two million kilograms of trash during the 17 days of the Games. But they’re working hard at getting rid of it. In the middle of the night squads of trash collectors roam on golf-cart sized little vacuums, inhaling every drop of litter. And during the day, more than 60 workers travel the streets with “litter pockets” – portable trash bins with extendible wands to snag rubbish.
So you didn’t make it to the Games. There’s always the Internet. Not only are viewers tuning in to the Games’ television coverage in record numbers, so is the number of people who are turning to the Web. Through Monday, about three million individual users logged on to either of the official Olympic Web sites. And last Friday during the Opening Ceremony, more than one million people visited NBCOlympics.com, 427 per cent higher than on the opening day of the 2000 Sydney Games.
And finally, do you wonder where those shiny gold, silver and bronze medals come from? O.C. Tanner Company started work on the more than 800 Olympic medals awarded to the athletes, months ago. The medals were designed in the shape of a river rock, like those found in the mountain streams of Utah, and each medal is slightly different.
