Internet hits soar amid Olympic fever

Sydney: They are not just surfing on Bondi Beach. This is the Olympics where the Internet truly came of age for sports fans.

Send an e-mail to Australia's Aborigine athlete Cathy Freeman and tell her how much you loved her spectacular lighting of the torch at the opening ceremony.

Dazzle your "statistical freak" friends by telling them everything you ever needed to know about the sport of trampolining as it makes its Olympic debut.

The official website of the Sydney Games is currently in gold medal position on the information superhighway, said Nielsen NetRatings, a company which monitors Internet hits.

It said that over the past 24 hours the www.olympics.com site had posted 800,000 more hits than its Australian competitor -- the combined Australian Olympic Committee and Channel 7 television site olympics.com.au.

By the end of the Games, the official www.olympics.com site expects to register 700 million page views. That is 20 times the figure for the Atlanta Games in 1996.

For the thousands of journalists covering the Games, the site's potted biographies of every competitor can make them an instant expert.

For diehard American sports fans, the net is a crucial lifeline. With the huge time difference between Australia and the United States, live coverage from the Olympic Games has become an endangered species.

Television network NBC, which has won exclusive coverage of the Games, does not put out its Olympic package until several hours after the cheering has died down and the stadium lights have been switched off.

But NBC certainly hasn't ignored the Internet revolution.

Its website in Atlanta was manned by a staff of 15 and produced 3,000 pages. With www.nbcolympics.com, that has now swelled to 350 personnel.www.sydney2000fans.com has won accolades as the definitive unofficial guide to the Games with its slick graphics and virtual 360-degree tour of Sydney.



(c) Reuters Limited.