The Miami Herald
"Gosh! Heck! Utahans angry about skating"
By Dave Barry
People out here are so mad they could spit, if spitting were legal in Utah.
They're mad over this figure-skating scandal, which has the figure-skating world in such a state of confusion that National Guard troops have been called in to safeguard the mascara supply.
In case you don't keep up with world events, here's what happened: During the pairs finals, the Russian team of Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze made a number of flagrant errors, including these:
Sikharulidze double-footed an axel landing. Or possibly he double-axeled a land footing. Whatever he did, it was flagrant.
Sikharulidze also was wearing a disco shirt from 1978.
During one of her spins, Berezhnaya can clearly be seen, in slow-motion video replay, taking a puff from a cigarette.
So everybody was sure the gold medal would go to the Canadian team of Jamie Sale and David Pelletier, who not only skated perfectly but also are much easier to spell. Yet the judges gave the gold to the Russians, a decision that had even the normally mellow Utahns screaming vicious profanities, Mormon-style ("What in the gosh darn HECK?!" "I'll be gum swizzled!" etc.)
The New York Times
"Loitering behind the clean streets"
By Charlie LeDuff
On a normal winter day, the homeless population in Salt Lake City hovers around 2,000 people. But with the Olympics in town, those who house the homeless estimate the current number to be about 3,000.
Some people came for the rumors of work, and some arrived by freight train looking for a sandwich. Others were evicted from their inexpensive motel rooms and apartments because the owners could charge exorbitant rents to the tourists visiting the Winter Games, while others had no place to go when their encampments under the bridges were bulldozed for security and beautification purposes.
As it turns out, there is little work. As for the hustle, it is illegal to panhandle orally in Salt Lake City, the police say. Scalping Olympic tickets for thousands of dollars is legal. Begging out loud is not.
Hobos in Salt Lake City are stranded. They have no bus money and, with the heavy security, it is nearly impossible to jump the trains and avoid jail time. So they loiter . . .
The security is so tight that a reporter and an editor from The New York Times who went to the Union Pacific rail yards last weekend were detained, fingerprinted, photographed and issued summonses for trespassing. The hobos already knew this.
Cox News Service
"Salt Lake City vibrates with Olympic love"
By Rachel Sauer
GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. ? How many ways are there to say, "I love you"? Te amo. Ich liebe dich. Je t'aime . . . Salt Lake City.
Which is something I never, ever in a million years expected to say. In the summer of 1996 it was a city I couldn't wait to leave, the embodiment of everything I don't like about Utah. Monochromatic, I huffed. Small-minded. Provincial. Phony. Boring. (It never occurred to me then that the quality of a place depends more on me than on it.)
Salt Lake City, to me, was the urban equivalent of an annoying, know-it-all cousin who tattles and gets everyone else in trouble. So it was surprising last weekend when I stood on a downtown corner and got misty-eyed with love and admiration for Salt Lake City. The Olympics have done something to it. The city feels incredibly vibrant and colorful, with a visible pulse tapped into the beating heart of humanity.