2008 Woodie Awards
U.S. team expects to excel in Turin
Gil lebreton knight ridder newspapers
Issue date: 1/17/06 Section: Sports
- Page 1 of 4 next >
Four years ago, America was already hunkered down for the winter.
The pain and fears of Sept. 11, 2001, were still fresh in every mind.
Patriotism was at a fever pitch. Airplanes had empty seats. Prime-time television had a captive audience.
The Olympic Winter Games, live (sort of) from Salt Lake City, quickly became the star-spangled, feel-good TV miniseries of the year.
U.S. winter athletes won a record 34 medals. America began rushing home from work, just to see how we were doing in luge.
Alas, it seems like only last February when we cheered for Jonny Moseley's Dinner Roll jump and wanted to hug Sarah Hughes.
But maybe that's the problem. The XX Olympic Winter Games open 26 days from today in Turin, Italy, and it still feels like football season. The Games of Torino, as the Italians call the Alpine capital, have sneaked up on us like a fried cannoli.
The rallying cry of the Torino Games has become "passion lives here." But even in the country's Piedmont region, where Turin is tucked in on three sides by the towering Alps, ticket sales have been sluggish and wintry weather slow in coming.
Of the approximate 1 million Olympic tickets on sale, less than four weeks from the Opening Ceremonies, organizers are still holding an estimated 400,000.
"Hey, calmati, calmati!" Settle down, the Italians are saying. Everything will be taken care of in time.
A typical Olympics, in other words.
But can it captivate viewers, without the 9/11 drama and a Rocky Mountain backdrop?
NBC is again betting that the Winter Games can. It plans to televise 416 hours of the Torino Games, much of it in high definition.
And while history suggests that the U.S. medal count will drop by 40 percent, as previous Olympic hosts usually do, Team USA officials have quietly offered the opinion that those days are over.
"Prior to the Salt Lake Games, the U.S. was considered almost an afterthought on the winter sports scene," said Jim Scherr, chief executive officer of the U.S. Olympic Committee. "But I think we're again going to surprise the world."
The pain and fears of Sept. 11, 2001, were still fresh in every mind.
Patriotism was at a fever pitch. Airplanes had empty seats. Prime-time television had a captive audience.
The Olympic Winter Games, live (sort of) from Salt Lake City, quickly became the star-spangled, feel-good TV miniseries of the year.
U.S. winter athletes won a record 34 medals. America began rushing home from work, just to see how we were doing in luge.
Alas, it seems like only last February when we cheered for Jonny Moseley's Dinner Roll jump and wanted to hug Sarah Hughes.
But maybe that's the problem. The XX Olympic Winter Games open 26 days from today in Turin, Italy, and it still feels like football season. The Games of Torino, as the Italians call the Alpine capital, have sneaked up on us like a fried cannoli.
The rallying cry of the Torino Games has become "passion lives here." But even in the country's Piedmont region, where Turin is tucked in on three sides by the towering Alps, ticket sales have been sluggish and wintry weather slow in coming.
Of the approximate 1 million Olympic tickets on sale, less than four weeks from the Opening Ceremonies, organizers are still holding an estimated 400,000.
"Hey, calmati, calmati!" Settle down, the Italians are saying. Everything will be taken care of in time.
A typical Olympics, in other words.
But can it captivate viewers, without the 9/11 drama and a Rocky Mountain backdrop?
NBC is again betting that the Winter Games can. It plans to televise 416 hours of the Torino Games, much of it in high definition.
And while history suggests that the U.S. medal count will drop by 40 percent, as previous Olympic hosts usually do, Team USA officials have quietly offered the opinion that those days are over.
"Prior to the Salt Lake Games, the U.S. was considered almost an afterthought on the winter sports scene," said Jim Scherr, chief executive officer of the U.S. Olympic Committee. "But I think we're again going to surprise the world."
