Olympic Village

A man who got inside a chain-link fence near the Olympic Village in Salt Lake City was charged yesterday with unlawfully entering a national security site. Sheldon Iver Goodman, 48, was trying to take a shortcut across the University of Utah campus on Sunday when a Secret Service agent found him inside an outermost Olympic security perimeter. Goodman climbed around a fence blocking one end of a 300-foot-long pedestrian bridge by dangling 20 feet over Wasatch Drive and swinging himself back onto the bridge on the other side of the fence.

The Canadian hockey team spent Monday night in a luxury Tokyo hotel. Hope it was enjoyable. Now the king-size beds turn to cots. The steaks turn to Soba noodles. And the eyes of the world turn to the players. Most of the more than 125 National Hockey Leaguers - including seven Flyers and their general manager, Bob Clarke - who will be taking part in the radically altered and much-anticipated Olympic tournament straggled into this remote central Japanese city last night and this morning.

The U.S. men's hockey dream team finally got physical at the Olympics, but not until after it was prematurely eliminated from the tournament. The dream-teamers, who talked for a week about how much they enjoyed staying in their spartan Olympic Village rooms, vented their frustrations by breaking up a few of the rooms. "There was a mess," said Rene Fasel, president of the International Ice Hockey Federation. "I had information from the U.S. side something happened after the game.

U.S. bobsledder Pavle Jovanovic has filed a lawsuit against the maker of a protein powder he blames for causing him to fail a drug test and miss the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah. Jovanovic, a pusher for the U.S. sled driven by Todd Hays, is set to compete in the two- and four-man bobsled events in Turin, Italy. His lawsuit was filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City against Century Foods International, of Wisconsin. Jovanovic, who lives in Toms River, N.J., contends he tested positive for the banned 19-norandrostenedione steroid on Dec. 29, 2001, after consuming Century Foods' Nitro-Tech protein powder purchased at a store in Park City.

The U.S. Olympic Committee received confirmation from Olympic officials yesterday that there will be no restrictions on Bibles being brought into the Olympic village in Beijing next year. The USOC contacted the International Olympic Committee about the issue in response to a story posted on the Catholic News Agency Web site citing a list of prohibited items that was reported to include Bibles. That story said the Italian daily La Gazzetta dello Sport reported that organizers cited "security reasons" for prohibiting athletes from carrying any kind of religious symbol at Olympic facilities.

Bob Knight said yesterday that the U.S. Olympic men's basketball team didn't win the gold medal in Athens last month because the players were too pampered on and off the court. The Texas Tech coach, speaking to a gathering sponsored by the San Antonio Sports Foundation, said things would have been different had he been leading the team instead of Larry Brown. For starters, the NBA stars representing the United States would not have been staying on a luxury ocean liner. "They would not have been on the Queen Mary," said Knight, who coached the U.S. men to the gold in 1984.

Getting to the Olympics went really smoothly. I was met at my gate at the airport and escorted a short ways to where I got my credential, right there on the concourse. Within 25 minutes after landing, I was in the Olympic Village. The security is tight, just as I'd heard. There is a lot of military in the village. We're in some nice, new dorms at the University of Utah. Each suite has four bedrooms, two players to a bedroom, eight to a suite. Johnny LeClair is my roommate; I don't know yet who all the other guys in the suite will be. Some NHL teams had games last night, so most of the guys aren't here yet. The only thing bad about the rooms is there isn't much closet space.

Olympic officials here yesterday offered reassurances that their new $21 million aquatic center will be ready on time following the collapse Monday of a steel roof beam at the facility. Problems continue to plague one other Olympic construction project. Two dormitories in the Olympic Village - which will house athletes during the Games and students from Georgia State University afterward - are sinking on their foundations. The buildings have settled more than nine inches in places.

You could see it in their faces. You could hear it in their voices. And you could feel it from their performances. Yesterday was the busiest day of the Olympics - there were 18 events scheduled at 14 venues - and for the athletes, there was never any doubt that they would continue to compete. At dawn, some athletes were just waking up in the Olympic Village and just getting word of the bomb that exploded at the Centennial Olympic Park early yesterday morning. Others, like the members of the Dream Team, were trying to get to sleep in their hotel, which overlooks the site of the explosion.

Philadelphia took a tiny, useful step this week on its journey toward a bid to host a Summer Olympic Games. Wait! What's that? Oh, the voice of habitual Philadelphia cynicism and defeatism demands to be heard: You mean a pointless step on a foolish quest toward an impossible goal, don't you? Well, no, actually. The Philadelphia region has the goods to make a strong bid to host a Summer Games as early as 2016. All it needs to do is to muster the civic will, the optimism, and the spirit of regional cooperation to pull it off. The city's new designation as a "community partner" of the U.S. Olympic Committee puts it in position to host Olympic-related events in coming years, testing its ability to mount the big show.

A task force commissioned by USA Track and Field lashed out at the American relay system, recommending streamlining Olympic trials and calling for a more stringent policy for dopers who want to be reinstated. The report came in the wake of a disappointing showing at the Beijing Olympics. Americans led all countries with 23 track and field medals but their seven golds were the lowest total since the 1997 world championships. The task force is called "Project 30," a nod to the goal of winning 30 medals at the 2012 London Olympics.

SILENT GESTURE, that's what Tommie Smith had in mind when his wife bought the black gloves in Mexico City. Then he won the 200-meter race at the 1968 Olympics and he slithered his hand into the right glove and handed the left glove to John Carlos, who had finished third. Silent gesture, indeed. No punches thrown, no bullets fired, no blood shed. Kaboom! Only trigger-quick punishment and the mushroom cloud of controversy and bitterness and anger that hovers to this day. Two black athletes on the victory stand, shoeless, a clenched fist thrust into the Mexico City dusk, heads down while the anthem played.

Fani Halkia, the reigning Olympic champion in the women's 400-meter hurdles, told reporters she was "shocked" to learn she had tested positive for the banned substance methyltrienolone and would be unable to defend her gold medal. Halkia spoke to Greek journalists early today at a central Beijing hotel. She said she was summoned by the head of Greece's Olympic delegation and told of the results of the first sample she gave to World Anti-Doping Agency doctors. "I am shocked," she said, according to Greek media reports.

The USA Basketball roster for the Summer Olympics in Beijing was announced yesterday and - big surprise - it looks good on paper again. Whether it will also look good against teams from other nations, teams that have a habit of using dirty tricks like passing the ball, running good motion offenses, setting screens, and playing defense all the time, is another matter. That 2004 U.S. Olympic team looked pretty good when it was announced, too, and that one finished 5-3 in Athens, sneaking out of town in third place.

The U.S. Olympic Committee received confirmation from Olympic officials yesterday that there will be no restrictions on Bibles being brought into the Olympic village in Beijing next year. The USOC contacted the International Olympic Committee about the issue in response to a story posted on the Catholic News Agency Web site citing a list of prohibited items that was reported to include Bibles. That story said the Italian daily La Gazzetta dello Sport reported that organizers cited "security reasons" for prohibiting athletes from carrying any kind of religious symbol at Olympic facilities.

Even now, 39 years after he won it in the high-altitude heat of Mexico City, the Olympic gold medal sometimes beckons Tommie Smith. And when that happens, the 62-year-old, who once held 11 world records simultaneously, lifts it out of a drawer in his California home and recounts its remarkable story to his grandchildren. "That is if I can get them to put down the Xbox," he said. It is a story that will outlive Smith, a story of how this Texas cotton-picker's son became the greatest 200-meter runner of all time, of how he won at the 1968 Summer Games, of how his social conscience grew like the muscles in his legs, and, ultimately, of how a stark photograph captured and immortalized a pair of fists raised in protest.

Thanks, Olympic dreamers. Envisioning the Philadelphia region as host to the 2016 Summer Olympics was no mean feat. Nor was the achievement in taking along a fair number of often-skeptical Philadelphians on this flight of fancy. Too bad that buzzing in our ears Wednesday afternoon was the alarm clock - the lark, not the nightingale. It wasn't welcome to be shaken awake. But at least the U.S. Olympic Committee was lavish in its praise of the city, while nonetheless placing Philadelphia's bid in the also-ran column, along with that of Houston.

Philadelphia took a tiny, useful step this week on its journey toward a bid to host a Summer Olympic Games. Wait! What's that? Oh, the voice of habitual Philadelphia cynicism and defeatism demands to be heard: You mean a pointless step on a foolish quest toward an impossible goal, don't you? Well, no, actually. The Philadelphia region has the goods to make a strong bid to host a Summer Games as early as 2016. All it needs to do is to muster the civic will, the optimism, and the spirit of regional cooperation to pull it off. The city's new designation as a "community partner" of the U.S. Olympic Committee puts it in position to host Olympic-related events in coming years, testing its ability to mount the big show.

U.S. bobsledder Pavle Jovanovic has filed a lawsuit against the maker of a protein powder he blames for causing him to fail a drug test and miss the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah. Jovanovic, a pusher for the U.S. sled driven by Todd Hays, is set to compete in the two- and four-man bobsled events in Turin, Italy. His lawsuit was filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City against Century Foods International, of Wisconsin. Jovanovic, who lives in Toms River, N.J., contends he tested positive for the banned 19-norandrostenedione steroid on Dec. 29, 2001, after consuming Century Foods' Nitro-Tech protein powder purchased at a store in Park City.

Italy's health minister and Olympic chief ruled out easing the country's strict anti-doping laws during the Winter Olympics in Turin, which begin in February. Health Minister Francesco Storace said athletes who take banned substances should simply stay home, the news agency Apcom reported during Storace's visit to Turin yesterday. Athletes can face criminal sanctions for doping violations under Italian law, raising the possibility of police raids in the Olympic village. Jimmy Shea, 37, who won the 2002 Olympic gold medal in skeleton, announced his retirement after failing to make the four-man U.S. skeleton team for the coming World Cup season.