On your mark...get set...click!

Tomorrow the summer Olympic games begin in Sydney, Australia. Despite the 15-hour time difference between Buffalo and Sydney, fans can find up-to-the-minute results via the Web. The first place to stop for the latest news and comprehensive information is the official Sydney 2000 site, http://www.olympics.com/eng. From the top-bar menu, choose "Sports," and then select a particular Olympic sport in order to get current results, as well as history, rules and schedules. Another comprehensive site is NBC's site http://www.nbcolympics.com. The site features a "Choose a Sport" pull-down menu under which are results, as well as biographies, of the athletes competing. Other links on the NBC site include "Athlete's Voice," which leads to audio-file interviews with selected athletes, and "About This Sport," which provides rules, history and a handy glossary of terms for each Olympic sport.

For those interested in the politics of the Olympics, there are several useful starting points. See the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Olympics News site, http://www.abc.net.au/news/olympics, for a local, Australian perspective on the socioeconomic impact of Sydney 2000. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) site http://www.olympic.org presents international press coverage of the games under "Sydney 2000 World News." The IOC site also links to national Olympic committees, international sports federations and the Olympic Museum, which features a virtual gallery.

Britannica.com's article on the Olympic Games http://www.britannica.com/ provides a history of both the summer and winter games and includes images, a bibliography and additional links. Britannica.com's site for the 2000 Olympic games includes two fun links: "Best Moves," which is an animated primer on various Olympic sports, and "For the Record," which promises a medal-winners database with real-time updates from Sydney. On the ancient Olympic games, see "The Ancient Olympics" http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Olympics and the Ancient Olympic Games Virtual Museum http://devlab.dartmouth.edu/olympic. "The Ancient Olympics" is an online exhibit that compares ancient and modern Olympic sports, and includes a virtual tour of the site of Olympia. The Ancient Olympic Games Virtual Museum is a good starting place for students-it provides a history of the ancient games, an interactive map that shows winners by city-state, and a scholars' forum.

It is not hard to imagine Olympic competition within a stone's throw of Buffalo. Nearby Toronto recently made the short list of potential summer games hosts. Check out our Canadian neighbor's bid for the 2008 summer games at http://www.torontosummergames.com/

-Austin Booth and Brenda Battleson, University Libraries