Winter Games

Paul Tsongas almost got nuked yesterday. But it may be Tom Harkin who gets vaporized. Tsongas, the former Massachusetts senator who last week won a surprise victory in New Hampshire, finished in a virtual tie with maverick Jerry Brown in Democratic presidential caucuses in next-door Maine yesterday. Brown mobilized environmental activists by targeting Tsongas' support for nuclear power. Tsongas ended the day in South Dakota, taking shots from rival candidates during a cantankerous debate in Sioux Falls before the state's presidential primary tomorrow.

The NHL announced that Monday's Winter Classic game between the Flyers and New York Rangers at Citizens Bank Park has been moved from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. The league released this in a statement: The revised start time decision was based on [Monday's] weather forecast and should offer optimal game conditions for players and fans. All tickets to the 2012 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic will continue to be honored and all ticket-holder agreement language remains unchanged.

The International Olympic Committee, which had gathered in special session to clean its scandal-ridden house, checked off its things-to-do list and declared success yesterday. If the key to a successful meeting is setting a fail-proof agenda, then the IOC knows how to run a meeting. Whether what emerged from the two-day session will provide lasting reform for the tarnished keeper of the Olympic flame could take years to determine. At least the machinery seems to be in place.

Baseball legend Willie Mays and New York Yankees manager Joe Torre were scheduled to be at New York's Battery Park, next to the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, on Tuesday for a 9 a.m. news conference announcing the participants in the Olympic torch relay that will lead up to next year's Salt Lake City Winter Games. The news conference was postponed, though, because Salt Lake Organizing Committee president Mitt Romney had extended a series of meetings in Washington with U.S. congressional leaders.

It is a sadly familiar story: The Olympic contender competes for years, falling just short of the medal. Then finally come the big victory, the jubilant celebration - and the allegations of cheating. Except in this case, the story concerns not an athlete but a city. After 3 1/2 years of reveling in its selection as the site for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, Salt Lake City has seen its triumph marred. Four investigations are probing allegations that some members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC)

When he was just a boy, Mitt Romney would stare up at the black skeleton of the roller coaster, a swooping giant of a ride at long-gone Salt Air amusement park, adjacent to the Great Salt Lake, and think that it didn't look so scary from the ground. "But when you got to the top, it was 'Oh, boy, here we go,' " Romney said last week. "That's how it is for the Olympics. We've been cogging up to the top of the mountain, and now it's time to go. " Thursday marked the one-year-away celebration of the start of the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City.

The luge run at Utah Olympic Park is a fast one on which top sleds can exceed speeds of 85 m.p.h. Yesterday, a pair of American teams seemed to find extra speed while riding the wave of cheers and noise for the length of the course. For the second straight time in the Winter Olympics, sleds representing the United States took the silver and bronze medals in luge doubles. Mark Grimmette and Brian Martin captured the silver medal, and Chris Thorpe and Clay Ives took the bronze. That gave the United States 14 medals in the Salt Lake City Games - its highest total ever in a Winter Olympics, with nine days of competition still to come.

The worst thing that could happen to a Winter Olympics happened yesterday. Winter. More than a foot of snow fell in a blizzard in Val d'Isere, where the men's downhill is to be held Sunday. Snow is just what the French needed for scenery and the last thing they needed as they prepared to move 730,000 spectators to downhill races and bobsled runs spread over 13 venues connected by narrow mountain roads. "It will be terrible if the weather is like this," Claude Regis said as he wiped a red trickle from his nose and inspected the damage to his Audi station wagon after its collision with a snowplow on the road down from Val d'Isere.

The Wasatch mountains are still snowcapped around Salt Lake City, even in June, and sometimes you can ski almost into this summer month. The roads are fabulous, the arenas are plentiful and modern. The airport is big and busy, the hotels are geared to skiers and skaters and the people who like to watch skiers and skaters. The people are friendly and eager to please and, don't worry, you can drink your colas and coffee. The Mormons will let you. So Salt Lake City is ready to welcome the world.

They are so big. The biggest. Paul and Isabelle Duchesnay. Ice dancers. Brother and sister. Top French attraction at the Winter Olympics. World champions. Cover of Time magazine's international edition. They hold a news conference. Flower boxes on the dais. Nameplates. Wait, don't start yet! Somebody rushes in to switch the nameplates. And the chairs. Plastic chairs won't do. Get the wooden ones. Isabelle and Paul wait offstage like rock stars. A door opens. In they come. Coronation music plays.