Olympics go online

Reena Ganesh and Krithi Aiyappa

The Olympic games started in ancient Greece for religious reasons, to pay

tribute to the king of the gods, Zeus. The speed and skill of ancient Greeks in

hand to hand combats were witnessed by the plains of Olympia, where the first

Olympic Games began.

From wild olive wreaths to gold medals, Olympics have come a long way. The

difference is not only in the field of the Olympic infrastructure but also the

way people follow the Games. If past Olympics have drawn sports fanatics around

the globe to the television, the first Olympics of the new millennium has seen

the Internet competing with the traditional media to offer more than just the

live coverage of the heroes in action.

And why not? If there can be a site for 'how to propose to my girlfriend',

why should the Olympics, with all its charisma, be any exception? Now, we have

every single detail connected to the event on the Web. If you don't want to

stand in a queue to see Ian Thorpe cut across the waters in style, then you can

buy your tickets online and also see all the information available on Olympic

tickets at YeahSports!.

During the Olympics, it is just not the competitors who win, but also the

surfers (the Web surfers). There are hordes of great gifts being offered by

various sites to lure visitors. Check out this

site that promises a car if you play an athletic game (a virtual game, of

course! Don't expect you to run in the Olympics) on the site. Well, this one

calls itself the official site of the Y2K Olympics.

They even display images of the games, which are changed every two minutes.

To sports fanatics the world over, the Internet has turned out to be a boon.

Now they don’t have to wait for the next day’s newspaper or wait to get home

to watch the television to catch the latest from Sydney. Now that people are

usually online in their offices, all they have to do is log on to Web sites like

olympics.com, quokka.com

or sydney2000.com to get the updates

from Sydney. Also several athletes have their own Web sites where you could get

their photos, give feedback, wish them luck, send flowers online or just give

vent to your feelings. You could also get trivia and fun facts on the happenings

in the Olympics on various Web sites.

But, for live coverage of all the events you would still have to depend on

good old television because live webcasting of the games has not taken off. Not

that technology is lagging behind, but rather due to the politics and big money

involved in broadcasting rights that various television channels have bought.

The IOC has not authorized the use of biometrics or webcasting during the Sydney

games.

Watching the next Olympic games to be held in Athens on the Internet may be a

different experience. You may actually feel what your favorite players are going

through, share their moments of glory or tears as athletes might carry

biometrics chips on their bodies that transmit information such as speed and

heart rate etc. So you know exactly what they are feeling at that point of time!

You could hear live commentary of any event in the language of your choice and

with the developments taking place in broadband to facilitate faster Internet

access, the next Olympics could well prove to be a rich audio-visual experience.