Summer Olympics on the Web

by David M. Durant -- Library Journal, 8/1/2000

The Summer Olympics is the world's largest sporting event, rivaled only by soccer's World Cup. Next month, the Summer Games resume in Sydney, Australia, from September 15 to October 1. In spite of the lengthy time difference (15 hours from the East Coast) between the United States and Australia, Olympic fans will still be able to find current, reliable news and results via the World Wide Web. Dozens of sites will offer Olympic coverage before and during the games.

Reviewed below are four featured sites offering quality information on the Sydney Olympics and the Olympic movement. Also discussed are alternate sites providing news coverage of the Sydney Games, the history of the modern Olympics, a look at the ancient Olympics, and sources for further Olympics research.

Sydney 2000 Official Site
http://www.olympics.com/eng
Date Visited: 7/12/00
Developer/Provider: Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG)
The official Sydney 2000 site serves as a comprehensive source. The main page includes the latest news, press releases, and recent updates. The site is best navigated using the menu at the top of the page. Select Sports, then Choose a Sport to find current news, history, rules, schedules, venues, and links to other sites. The Athletes and Countries sections, incomplete at the time of this writing, promise to offer information on every participating athlete and nation. Look under History and then Olympic Spirit to find good explanations of the Olympic flag, flame, motto, oath, and creed.

Sydney 2000 will particularly interest those traveling to Australia for the Games. About the Games includes sections on other events concurrent with the Olympics, including an Arts Festival and the Green Games. The Sydney section provides a detailed guide to the city and surrounding area, including content from Citysearch.com, as well as tourism and travel information. Users can also find information on tickets, venues, and purchasing official merchandise.

The site is easy to navigate, frequently updated, and includes a search engine. The use of graphics, including advertising banners, may frustrate users with low-end technology.

The Bottom Line: This serves as a good overall source on the Sydney Games, with reliable, frequently updated information on events and athletes, venues, tickets, and a detailed guide to Sydney and its environs.

NBCOlympics.com
http://www.nbcolympics.com
Date Visited: 7/12/00
Developer/Provider: National Broadcasting Corporation
NBC's official site for Olympic coverage offers extensive news and information -- at the time of review, the best available. Navigate the site using the menu at left on the main page. The Choose a Sport pull-down menu in the upper left corner provides news and featured articles on each Olympic sport, including results, schedules, and athlete bios. Click on the About This Sport link on the left-hand side to find out rules, history, qualifying details, and a glossary of terms. Selecting Features provides a list of feature articles organized by sport or topic, while Olympic News offers the recent stories regardless of the topic.

Users looking for information on NBC's Olympic broadcast schedule can either check under Schedules or click on the Broadcast Schedule link in the lower right corner of the main page. NBC Commentators offers a list of the network's color analysts for each sport, as well as links to their online columns. Athlete's Voice features interviews with numerous Olympic competitors, many of which include audio files and images.

Overall, the site contains a wealth of information, is updated frequently, and includes substantial multimedia content. The main menu of options appears on every page, making navigation fairly easy. However, the graphics-intensive nature of the site and use of frames may frustrate those with low-end connections and/or browsers. The site lacks a search engine.

The Bottom Line: NBC's site offers current news and results, solid background information on each sport, and athlete biographies, including sound files and images. At the time of review, it had the best sports coverage.

Sydney 2000 Fans
http://www.sydney2000fans.com
Date Visited: 7/13/00
Developer/Provider: Trent White
Billed as the "Definitive Unofficial Guide to the Sydney Games," Sydney 2000 Fans offers a noncommercial, easy-to-use site with a local flavor. Select Sydney 2000 to find basic information and links for each Olympic sport, plus the full Olympic schedule, venues, a list of all competing nations, and a demographic profile of Australia.

The Olympic Games section includes lists of all medal winners from the last three Summer Olympics, brief histories and medal counts for every Summer Olympics, trivia, and world records for swimming and track and field. The Features section offers essays discussing various issues concerning the Olympics, such as the role of the media, ticket distribution, and the impact of the games on Australia. Image Gallery offers photos of the various Sydney Olympic venues. The site also includes some useful links.

While the main set of navigation links appears on every page, the Site Guide also provides a good summary of the site and its contents. Judicious use of graphics keeps this site fast-loading.

The Bottom Line: Though not as thorough as the official site or that of NBC, Sydney 2000 Fans is more accessible for users with low-end technology and provides a solid source of Olympics information, making it especially good for students and educators.

International Olympic Committee (IOC) http://www.olympic.org
Date Visited: 7/13/00
Developer/Provider: International Olympic Committee (IOC)
The official IOC site serves mostly as a link to other sites: International Sports Federations, national Olympic Committees, and the Olympic Museum. The central IOC section links to a news site, where IOC News includes the full text of official news releases and historical/political articles from the publication Olympic Review. Highlights of the Week offers weekly summaries of Olympic news and developments. The IOC Facts and Figures link from the page top includes the text of the Olympic Charter and official IOC reports (many of which require Adobe Acrobat Reader).

The Olympic Museum site, at left on the homepage, includes a Virtual Gallery of exhibits on Olympic history, with text, images, audio, and video. Topics covered include Olympic torches, Olympic coins and stamps, and opening and closing ceremonies.

Users seeking information on the Sydney Games should click on Sydney 2000 World News in the main page upper right-hand corner. This section offers a selection of newspaper and wire service articles from around the world, providing alternative perspectives. Select All Articles for news published in the last 24 hours, by region. An archive contains articles going back several months.

The Bottom Line: A rich source of official IOC content, links to national and international sports organizations, and worldwide press coverage, IOC should best aid those doing research on the international Olympic movement.

Alternate Sites
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Olympics News
http://www.abc.net.au/news/olympics
CNN/Sports Illustrated Sydney 2000
http://cnnsi.com/olympics
MSNBC Olympics
http://www.msnbc.com/news/olympics_front.asp
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation Olympics site offers news reports on the Games, athlete biographies and other in-depth features, and links to audio news broadcasts. The site is a good source for news on the socioeconomic impact and political controversies of Sydney 2000, as well as the Australian perspective. CNN/SI Sydney 2000 offers the latest news, athlete biographies and online diaries, and features by CNN/SI columnists. The site also includes some articles from the print version of Sports Illustrated. Click the United States banner on the right side of the page to check the status of American teams in various Olympic sports. MSNBC Olympics offers current news articles, plus additional items listed by sport. Ask the Expert features the opinionated New York Daily News columnist Filip Bondy.

Britannica.com: Olympic Games
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/2/0,5716,115022+1+108519,00.html Munich Olympics 1972
http://www.jf-stockholm.org/munich/english.html
The Nazi Olympics, Berlin 1936
http://www.ushmm.org/olympics/index.html
Britannica.com: Olympic Games offers a lengthy narrative history of the games from Encyclopedia Britannica, including images and a bibliography. Despite a mislabeled link, both Winter and Summer Olympics are covered. The site also includes links to other Britannica articles and to related web sites. Munich Olympics 1972 is dedicated to the 11 Israeli athletes killed by Palestine Liberation Organization terrorists. Created by a Jewish educational organization in Sweden, the site includes a brief narrative of the Munich events, links to related sites, images, and brief biographies of the Israeli victims. The Nazi Olympics, an online exhibit from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, discusses the events and background of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, including the nature of the Nazi regime and its efforts to use the games and sports in general for ideological ends. The exhibit includes text, images, and audio files.

Ancient Olympic Games Virtual Museum
http://devlab.dartmouth.edu/olympic
The Ancient Olympics
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Olympics
The Real Story of the Ancient Olympic Games
http://www.upenn.edu/museum/Olympics/olympicintro.html
The Ancient Olympics, an online exhibit sponsored by the Perseus Project at Tufts University, includes a comparison of ancient and modern Olympic sports, a virtual tour of the site of Olympia, essays on the broader context of the ancient Olympics, and stories of ancient Olympic athletes. The exhibit includes narrative text, images, and some video files. With a bibliography and links to other sites, it's a good starting point for research on the ancient games. The Ancient Olympic Games Virtual Museum, from Dartmouth University, serves as a useful introductory resource for students. Noteworthy features include the History section, which offers brief descriptions of the Games and surrounding context. The Victors exhibit features an interactive map showing event winners by city-state, while the experts forum has interviews with several Dartmouth classical scholars. The Real Story of the Ancient Olympic Games is a set of lengthy FAQs from the University of Pennsylvania; yes, the ancient games included politics and commercialism.

Olympic Information Center
http://www.aafla.org/OlympicInformationCenter/OlympicInformationCenter.htm
Olympic Studies Centre
http://blues.uab.es/olympic.studies
Olympic Information Center, affiliated with the Amateur Athletic Foundation in Los Angeles, offers digitized full-text collections including official reports from several Olympic Games, oral histories of mid-century Southern California Olympians, and a searchable database of articles digitized from the IOC's Olympic Review. For students and educators, the site offers curricular materials. Art and Sport is an online exhibit of Olympic posters. The Autonomous University of Barcelona's Olympic Studies Centre includes a searchable Olympic Studies Directory of institutions and researchers, a list of Olympic web links, and a separate collection of Sydney 2000 links. Select Olympic Studies Online Documents to access research reports on doping, policy aspects of Sydney 2000, and more.