your net:// Web watch on the Games

By CHRIS BARTON

Top marks for live website viewing of the games have to go to the Sydney Morning Herald for its excellent live text coverage.

Journalists at various events are calling in commentary, which is typed as fast as possible on to the website and complemented by photographs.

It was here that I got news of who was lighting the flame at the opening ceremony - nearly an hour ahead of TVNZ's delayed coverage.

The site also allows viewers to interact by typing their own comments about the live events. Here are a number from upset US viewers, such as "I was very eager to watch this event live in US. But what a shame! One of the most powerful countries - which would lead the race for most number of gold medals and not covering the games live... "

For the opening ceremony and the first-day triathlon and swimming, Radio 2UE in Sydney kept its net audio streaming service open. But by late afternoon, the IOC had ordered it shut down.

Pity, because the Australian commentators were great: "Here comes Yugoslavia - haven't they been to hell and back?"

NBC's site in association with Quokka has live text content, too, with its Action Tracker which keeps up to date with images, commentary and results of track and field, swimming, diving and gymnastics.

The download to use Tracker takes about two minutes on a modem.

Besides the Official Olympic site there are plenty of other sites to get the latest in games news and information.

Not surprisingly most are slanted towards coverage of their location.

LINKS:

Official Olympic Site

New Zealand:

NZ Herald Olympic News

nzoom

nzcity

Australia:

Sydney Morning Herald

2UE Radio

Channel 7

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Sydney Link

Games Info


Britain:

BBC


Canada:

CBC

United States:

NBC

olympics.sportsline.com

sportsillustrated.cnn.com

espn.go.com/oly/summer00

foxsports.com/olympics

sisyndicate.com/2000olympics

Yahoo! Sports

Another site worth visiting if you want to send some words of encouragement or congratulations to any of the Olympic athletes is:

www.fanmail.olympic.ibm.com.