Bloggers give personal glimpse of Winter Olympics

TURIN - The networks know the Winter Olympics are good for business, with viewers glued to their screens for hours, developing a sudden passion for speed skating and slaloms and happily sitting through hours of interspersed advertisements.

But at this year's games, the polished performances of seasoned commentators are in competition themselves - against the new media world of blogs.

A quick surf of the net and you find online diaries dedicated to individual athletes, random comments from people hanging out in Turin and thousands of links to news stories and pictures. Few of them are beautifully written but, in a way, that's the point.

Reading some entries, unedited and posted with just a click, people around the world can get a glimpse of the personal side of the Olympics, the behind-the-scenes experience of being here.

"It's really true. Actually being at the Olympics is totally different," one blogger wrote on torinoblog.com, regaling readers with the story of his trip to the snowboarding event at Bardonecchia, complete with hotdog prices and travel times.

"We breathed the true Olympic spirit, brotherhood, cordiality, the happiness of people from all over the world come together in a massive party," he wrote in Italian.

Not to be outdone by the web-savvy, NBC, which owns the broadcast rights to the Olympics, has set up its own blogs with one written by champion skier Bode Miller's sidekick.

Another collates first-person experiences from NBC's army of producers, technicians and presenters which might never make it on screen - which is a shame in the case of one.

"I noticed a large crowd of media people standing outside a swank, downtown Torino hotel this evening," wrote sports executive Jon Miller. "Apparently, there were media reports that actor George Clooney - filming a movie in Italy - was staying in the hotel.

"Standing in the middle of the crowd, unrecognised with a wry smile on his face ... was George Clooney."

- REUTERS