A full list of articles T A B L E_T A L K Olympic Village: All the news on everything that skates, skis or slides at the Nagano games R E C E N T L Y The fastest man on ice By Gary Kamiya The downhill is canceled again and scalpers are fleecing your correspondent, but a thrilling men's 1500-meter speed skating race brings the olympic spirit alive (02/13/98) Retro burger By Gary Kamiya Musings on women's hockey, Japanese English, the quest for tosto and other cross-cultural oddities (02/12/98) CBS drops the ball in Nagano By Daniel Radosh Bring on the cheerleaders! The anorexic gymnasts! CBS's Olympic coverage is a snooze (02/12/98) Stoned on ice By Gary Kamiya Our man in Japan learns to love curling, the Monty Python of spectator sports (02/11/98) Apres moi, de luge By Gary Kamiya Getting a half-second high from the sport that gives a whole new meaning to the expression "balls out" (02/10/98) More Olympics articles

Hockey stars and scalpers, expats and party animals THE OLYMPICS ARE LIKE THE PILGRIMAGES OF OLD, WITH HOLY RELICS (THE MEDALS), SAINTS (THE ATHLETES), EVIL BISHOPS (CORRUPT FIGURE-SKATING JUDGES) AND AN UNRULY ARRAY OF FOLLOWERS. Chris Pronger of Canada checks Ulf Dahlen of Sweden at the Big Hat Arena. BY GARY KAMIYA NAGANO, Japan -- Sunday, 9:30 a.m. The heaviest snow yet is falling. Saku has almost completely vanished from view, thank God, but the rest of the skiing is threatened. They may not be able to hold all of the events -- they're running out of time. Yesterday morning, with a head full of Suntory Old Whisky and Heineken, I dragged myself out of bed for the women's downhill. When I got to Nagano it had been canceled, naturally. I'm 0-for-3. I don't know why I even try anymore. At least I didn't go all the way up the mountain this time. On Friday I saw the first heat (they race on successive days and combine the times) of the women's 500-meter speed skating. The new clap skates are revolutionizing the sport: Bonnie Blair's 10-year-old Olympic record of 39.10 seconds, set in Calgary, was used as a punching bag. The Japanese fans went wild when Kyoko Shimazaki posted a 38.75. Her moment in the sun lasted until the world-record holder, Canadian Catriona Lemay-Doane, skated a 38.39, her countrywoman Susan Auch rang up a 38.42 and Tomomi Okazaki skated 38.55. Shimazaki went from record holder to also-ran in 20 minutes. I thought I could salvage the washout of the women's downhill by going to see the final run of the 500 meters yesterday, but I didn't have a ticket and the scalpers outside Nagano Station weren't budging from 30,000 yen -- $250. I thought that was a little steep for an event that lasts all of an hour, so I caught the shuttle over to the venue, figuring I might get lucky. If demand is low, scalpers have to sell at the last minute for whatever they can get -- that's how I got into the men's 1,500. I realized the jig was up when a line of people met the shuttle bus at the M-Wave parking lot holding up signs saying "I need a ticket." Walking defeated back to the shuttle -- Lemay-Doane won, by the way -- I ran into a character I'd run into on a street corner after Friday night's Russia-Kazakhstan hockey game. We had both been trying to flag a taxi and decided to share one. As we rode along, making Olympic chit-chat, I said, "The guys who are really getting rich here are the scalpers." He laughed and said, "That's what I do." Bob (when I formally interviewed him, he suggested I use "Anderson" as his last name) was a clean-shaven, fast-talking guy from Minneapolis who came across as a likable combination of a righteous, won't-burn-you pot dealer and a street-smart small businessman. "Nah, we're not getting rich. We're doing OK," he said. When he found out I was a journalist he became even more loquacious, talking about the ins and outs of his profession until we got to the station. Now he'd popped up again. He and a partner had zoomed over to M-Wave to see if they could do some business, but had struck out. "There's no tickets anywhere in this town for anything this whole weekend!" he exclaimed. "Nada. Zilch. I've never seen it so tight. Nobody's got anything." He didn't seem too bothered by it, though -- he was an upbeat guy. We stood on the desolate sidewalk, spectacular snow-covered mountains forming a surreally inappropriate ring around the ugly, sprawling city, people stoically streaming past to get back on the bus. I asked him how long he'd been doing this. "You're not gonna believe it," he said. "Thirty years. Actually, 29 -- I'm 39. I got started when I was a kid, hustling tickets at Minnesota Twins games." It was a full-time, year-round business for him. He'd just come from the Super Bowl and the Pro Bowl. As soon as the Olympics ended he was headed for the NCAA Final Four. So why were tickets so tight? "There's a couple of reasons. The venues are all small. They don't have many seats, and half of them are taken by the media. And we're one and a half hours from the biggest city in the world. Plus, the second weekend of the Olympics is always the biggest. When people come here at first, they're scared to spend money -- we've all heard the horror stories about the $500 McDonald's hamburger. Then they realize it isn't like that. Hell, I was just in Paris, and it was twice as expensive as here." N E X T+P A G E+| Inside the fraternity of ticket "brokers" PHOTOGRAPH BY TODD WARSHAW/ALLSPORT Archived images are provided by Allsport Photography USA, Inc. all rights reserved, any redistribution, resale, re-print or other use is strictly prohibited without written consent from Allsport Photography USA, Inc. directly.