What's New.

The article mentions changes in the Olympic games. When the ancient Olympics began, the event lasted one day, only Greeks took part, athletes competed naked and married women were not even allowed to watch. The Games, with a break of about 2,000 years, have been evolving ever since. This year, in the 18 days of competition in Athens, a record 202 countries will be represented, athletes will don the latest aerodynamic bodysuits and carbon-fiber-soled footwear, and women will, for the first time in Olympic history, wrestle. New sights at these Games will include ultrafast needle-nose canoes, hard-shell swim caps, a redesigned gymnastics vault (sloped in front, and with a larger surface area to ensure safer takeoffs) and, if anyone is daring enough to try them, strapless swim goggles. After the Salt Lake Games, NBC Sports boss Dick Ebersol decided he wanted to televise the Olympics on an unprecedented scale, and so the network and its affiliates (MSNBC, CNBC, USA, Bravo, NBC HDTV and Telemundo) will air a staggering 1,210 hours from Athens--nearly three times the record 441 1/2 hours of coverage from Sydney and more than the 1,133 hours from the past five Summer Games combined. A Phi Beta Kappa at Stanford, Patricia Miranda has been accepted at Yale Law School and hopes to become a role model for women who want to take up the sport--and plenty do: Some 4,000 U.S. girls competed in wrestling last year, 20 times the number of competitors in 1991.