NAGANO, Feb 14: Love-lorn athletes hooked up to the internet in the Olympic Village to cyber-coo with sweethearts in far flung lands on St Valentine's day.The Village Surf Shack was transformed into a love shack, festooned with red hearts and baskets of chocolate kiss candies, as athletes scrambled to e-mail their devotion to loved ones back home yesterday.
Thousands of postcards, letters and e-mails flooded into the Village as officials went into overdrive to deliver Valentine messages from around the world to Nagano's 2,400 athletes.
At the Surf Shack, Kazakhstan figure skater Marina Khalturina did a swift triple toe loop around a Finnish athlete as a computer terminal became available. Quickly scanning her inbox for messages, she beamed as name after name appeared.
``For me to call these people would be too expensive. But it really means so much because I have been away from home for so long,'' she said, blushing as she refused to reveal the contents of the messages.
Ukranian husband and wifefigure skaters Irina Romanova and Igor Yaroshenko set up a special joint Valentine's day home page and officials said the daily average of around 10,000 messages had reached 13,000 by noon. Jamaican bob-sledger Jason Morris checked his daily e-mail and found his basket overflowing with love notes.
``I spent almost three hours yesterday answering e-mail and it's worse today,'' said Morris, 27, from Kingston. The Valentine's day messages are great, man. It really gives you a good feeling even if you don't know these people,'' he added. It wasn't only in cyberspace that love was in the air.American athletes received nearly 10,000 cards from the US, while former Canadian Olympic skier Ken Read used the daily Canadian Olympic News Journal
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
