This year, the Web lets you master the Olympic experience.
When her moment finally arrives this September, Melissa Price will walk into Stadium Australia with only a bag. In it, the Olympian pole-vaulter will carry just five items: her spikes, some chalk, a tape measure, a water bottle, and a Qualcomm e-mail-enabled mobile phone. Price has three coaches, but not all can make the trip to Sydney. So the California native plans to win the gold, run to her mobile, type "I did it!," hit Send, and climb onto the podium for the national anthem.
It's not enough to say the Internet is changing the Olympics experience. The Web is creating an entirely new state of mind for the century-old gathering. For athletes, the Web will finally offer a desperately needed community -- a place to chat and cheer after a workout or before a race, a way to contact all their coaches with one press of a button. For you, the fan, the nexus between the Olympics and the Web will be something much more unexpected: It will introduce you to athletes you've never heard of, sports you've never thought of, and kinds of interactivity and personalisation you've never dreamed of. It will take you to a level of Olympics information that your television will truly envy.
It's no surprise that this year the Internet will court its largest audience ever. IBM, sponsor of the official site of the Olympic summer games, Sydney 2000, expects 700 million page views during the fortnight in Sydney, compared with 10 million during the 1996 summer games in Atlanta-making the road to Sydney the most-travelled to date for the Web.
Whether by starting new athletic communities or bulldozing old ones, the Web will finally provide what politics couldn't: the glue that binds the five Olympic rings.
The Fan Ring
Olympians are now more accessible than ever, and just wait until the games
begin. Keep in mind that two-thirds of the athletes will be eliminated after
only a few days of competition, and many of them will head straight for
IBM's Athlete Surf Shack at FanM@il. Athletes packed the Olympic Village's
e-mail kiosk back in 1996. In Nagano, 300,000 fan e-mails flooded the shack.
The Athlete Ring
The athletic community may be the tightest and most Web-dependent of all.
Now there's a place where runners from all over the globe get together for
support and news. It's a place without intrusion from reporters or fans.
It's a place that's always open. It's a place like the AOL chatroom
Mysterious Speed Kills. No one uses real names here, but all the regulars
know who's who. "If you took the top 50 track athletes, three-fourths have
AOL accounts," says Boldon, who has Maurice Greene and Marion Jones on his
buddy list. These sprinters don't have to wait for the opening ceremonies to
band together and build friendships.
The Centre Ring
While the Web has made immeasurable strides toward improving the public's
Olympic experience, in some ways the Net has yet to stretch its legs. In
February, the International Olympic Committee forbade the online broadcast
of video from the 2000 games. The reason? When it comes to sports
advertising, television and the Internet don't mix. "TV ad money is how the
Olympic committees fund their programs," says Kevin Rew, who negotiated more
than a third of the sponsorship deals for the Atlanta committee. "Those
rights become less valuable if there are alternate ways of viewing."
Or do they? Let's say you're an ad exec at Home Depot.
Would you rather have your company's name in front of a fan's face for 30 seconds or for an entire segment of coverage? "If I'm a US sponsor, I want the Internet to win," says Rew. "I'd get a lot more bang for my buck that way." NBC owns exclusive broadcasting rights through 2008, but it will show only 10 percent of the competition Down Under. The Internet could make every second available in real time, so an Internet deal could become far more lucrative for the IOC than a new TV contract. "Will live streaming video be available by 2004? I don't think so," says Sports.com managing director Tom Jessiman. "But by 2008, the fur will fly."
The Future Ring
Nonetheless, the Net will dominate the Olympic scene long before 2008.
Already, Michael Johnson fans can log on to NBCOlympics.com and see that the
sprinter's heart ticks steadily at 185 beats per minute for the duration of
a 400-metre race. In coming years, expect to get the speed of a figure
skater and the strength of a boxer's jab. Then look to be able to fence
virtually in a gold medal match or heave a digitised shot put.
It's hard to believe that the idea of an official Olympic site originated only five years ago. IBM and AT&T battled for its sponsorship and argued fiercely about whether the Internet fell under the heading of computers or telecommunications. Now, in 2000, fans following the games will get an unprecedented amount of customised content on both desktops and phones.
"This Olympics will demonstrate what might be done in a non-Olympic context," says Rew. In other words, in just a few weeks, expect the way you watch sports to change dramatically. And if there's any doubt remaining about the Web's prowess and promise for 2008, consider that when the Olympic flame was lit in Barcelona in 1992 -- just eight years ago -- the World Wide Web consisted of five pages.
