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http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/torino2006/news?slug=ap-turin-monthtogo&prov=ap&type=lgns

TURIN, Italy (AP) -- Stride across Piazza San Giovanni's large cobblestones toward Turin's main cathedral, home to the Holy Shroud, and chances are you'll be greeted by Gino, who runs a souvenir stand he wheels around on his 1973 scooter.
Search among the postcards and snow globes for a Torino 2006 trinket, though, and you're out of luck. Instead, Gino will gladly offer a keychain or figurine from soccer's 1990 World Cup. What about something from the upcoming Olympics?
"Nothing," says Gino, who wouldn't give his last name. "But there's still time. I'll have something in February."
Aside from plenty of steel scaffolding, colorful cranes and piles of dirt, it's tough to tell that in a matter of weeks the Winter Games will be coming to this home of broad boulevards, Baroque architecture and the majestic backdrop of the Alps.
Signs or flags trumpeting the games aren't up yet, ticket sales are lagging, snow is scarce as usual, and Italian athletes are complaining openly about a lack of interest.
"There's a month to go, and where are the Olympics?" asked Beppe Fossati, editor of Torino Cronaca, a local newspaper. "The Olympic spirit is missing."
Hard to tell from the weather that the games are coming.
Snow is rare in these parts. During the games (Feb. 10-26), there's only about a 1 percent chance of daily snowfall and a 16 percent chance of rain, with temperatures averaging in the upper 40s.
A city known mainly as a center of industry is undergoing major changes ahead of the games in what locals see as a chance to become a tourist destination.
Right now, however, the Olympics are one of the best-kept secrets in sports -- even in Italy. As of last week, 585,000 tickets had been sold of about 1 million available; only 40 percent went to fans, with 60 percent to sponsors, national Olympic committees, sports federations and other groups. About 215,000 were sold in Italy, nearly half of those in Turin and surrounding areas.
But, says Cesare Vaciago, CEO of organizing committee TOROC: "The sale of tickets is proceeding according to plan."
As of last Wednesday, 19 percent of tickets had been sold for skeleton and luge, 46 percent for ice hockey (although that translates to more than 170,000 tickets, and the men's gold medal game is sold out, other than 200 tickets released the day before), and 71 percent for Alpine skiing. The top sellers, percentagewise, are figure skating (86 percent) and speedskating (82).
"There still are tickets for pretty much everything," said Giorgio Lauretta, TOROC's head of ticketing. "I'm not worried about the fact that we still have to reach our goal (about 850,000 tickets). Up until the last day of the games, people will buy tickets."
The good news? Fewer spectators could mean shorter security lines outside and good spots available inside sparkling, state-of-the-art arenas that, once loose wires are tucked away, are certain to draw raves. It could make it easier to get a table at restaurants offering Piedmont specialties such as truffles or boiled meats and bold red wines like Barolo. And less hassle for shuttle buses navigating narrow, winding roads to venues in the Alps about two hours away.
Still, retired skiing star Alberto Tomba, expected to be the final torchbearer, and some current athletes are worried.
"It's a real shame that people aren't talking about the Olympics enough," said Giorgio Rocca, the hosts' top hope for an Alpine skiing medal. "This event wasn't promoted in the best way," he told radio station RTL.
A publicity campaign costing about $8.5 million -- one of the victims of budget cuts, according to TOROC's marketing coordinator, Alberto Acciari -- hasn't exactly resulted in chatter about the Olympics in cafes.
Organizers thought the torch relay would get Italians excited. When the relay began in Rome, national soccer team star Francesco Totti didn't bother to show up as announced.
"If the Winter Olympics are in Norway, that's all that will be talked about," said TOROC's head of media relations, Giuseppe Gattino. "In Italy, it's different. It's a country where there's a lot going on."
La Gazzetta dello Sport, a Milan-based sports daily, typically places Olympic coverage on page 20, following more than a dozen pages about soccer, but also coming after cycling, basketball, tennis and volleyball. References to the Olympics on TV are rare.
Whether it's because of the focus on soccer, the lack of a Tombalike homegrown star, a penchant for last-minute planning, or Turin natives' reputation for being reserved -- all cited by TOROC officials -- there's a decided lack of buzz up and down Italy's boot.
In 2004, when Paris was merely a candidate for the 2012 Summer Games, the French capital was awash with banners and billboards touting the bid.
Why isn't Turin similarly decorated now?
"This will make you smile," Acciari said. "If you put them up early, they'll get dirty."
The International Olympic Committee is satisfied with preparations.
"During the games, we are pretty confident that the city will be a festive city. ... The venues are ready," IOC Olympic Games executive director Gilbert Felli said in a telephone interview. "When you've got a big event like the Olympic Games, you always have a little concern at the bottom of your heart to be sure all the levels of preparation will fit together and the little details will meet expectations."
With its 900,000 inhabitants, Turin is a far cry from the sort of sleepy hamlet that usually hosts Winter Games, plus there's the unusual setup of mountain events about 60 miles away. Orange cannons are spraying artificial flakes in Sestriere, a skiing resort built up in the 1930s by Fiat, once the financial engine that drove Turin but a company in decline for several years.
In some places -- the postcardlike view from the bobsled course at Cesana, for example -- Alpine peaks are painted white with snow. In others, would-be breathtaking vistas are less striking, such as the brown mountainsides near the ski jumping in Pragelato, 6 1/2 miles from Sestriere.
There's work afoot everywhere. The main Olympic merchandise store -- which had more workers than customers Saturday afternoon, all 10 registers idle at one point -- sits near the Po River at Piazza Vittorio, where an underground parking lot has been under construction for 1 1/2 years. Already past due, it won't be finished before the Olympics, so ditches will be covered temporarily and bulldozers hidden away.
"There's just a month left, but a lot of work left," taxi driver Pietro Costanza said. "They say that for the Olympics, everything will be 'bello' -- clean and cleared up -- but we'll have to wait and see."
The athletes' village at Sestriere is filled with workers and surrounded by trucks. Asked when it will be finished, TOROC spokesman Giorgio Deiana laughed and said: "When it's finished." The main Olympic Village in Turin -- painted the colors of the Olympic rings, the buildings will be sold by the city to make up about half of TOROC's about $97 million shortfall -- is linked to the rest of the city by a pedestrian bridge held up by a red arch, considered by some the Olympics' most lasting symbol. The bridge ends abruptly, a slab of concrete suspended in the air, going nowhere -- yet. At Cesana, metal stands for spectators await their plastic seats. Beside the refurbished stadium in Turin that will host the opening and closing ceremonies, fresh asphalt was being rolled last week.
"Today, I'm very relaxed. A year ago, I was much worse," said Sandro Pertile, competition manager at Pragelato. "Athens gives us a lot of confidence. They were in much worse shape, and they pulled it off. If they did it ... ."
Organizers are focusing on ticket sales, funding -- TOROC's board of directors meets Tuesday to approve the final budget; while parts were trimmed, the cost of the opening and closing ceremonies rose about 40 percent to $34 million -- and transportation. Security is being handled by the Interior Ministry, which increased those funds last year and likens its preparations for the Olympics to those for Pope John Paul II's funeral. Pairs of soldiers with guns at the ready and berets tilted just right eyeball visitors to venues in the city and mountains.
Aside from concerns about terrorism, there are the anarchists who held violent demonstrations at a G-8 summit at Genoa in 2001 and could organize protests against construction of a high-speed rail link to nearby France.
But TOROC president Valentino Castellani's biggest worry is transportation.
"There will be a lot of things that don't work the first day. It was that way everywhere, and I don't see why we would be an exception. At Sydney. At Salt Lake City. Atlanta was a disaster, I've heard, though I wasn't there," said Castellani, former mayor of Turin. "We'll study how things go the first day. The second day will go better. And by the end, no one will remember that the first day there was any problem."
Each winter, Turin invites artists to display works using light around the city. Jenny Holzer, an American, set up a projector that scrolls phrases in white capital letters on the back wall of the Palazzo Madama, which dominates the spectacular Piazza Castello, site of the medal plaza during the Olympics -- and of plenty of scaffolding these days.
One phrase reads, "La mancanza di carisma puo essere letale," meaning, "Lack of charisma can be fatal" -- which, by the look of things with a month to go, is perhaps a more fitting slogan for the Turin Games than the official "Passion Lives Here."
If that includes a passion for the Olympics, it's being suppressed right now.
Then again, as the vendor Gino pointed out, "There's still time."
 

Olympic icon Mary Lou Retton 'continues to fight' in ICU as fundraiser for her medical expenses shatters goal​

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Olympic gold medalist Mary Lou Retton is "fighting for her life," according to her daughter McKenna Kelley. On Tuesday, Kelley posted a fundraising campaign for her mother, and the family has received an overwhelming amount of financial support in just a couple of days.

In the post, Kelley said Retton has been in the ICU with a rare form of pneumonia for over a week now, and she is not able to breathe on her own. As Retton battles to stay alive, Kelley has asked for financial support for her mother, who is currently without insurance.

"We ask that if you could help in any way, that 1) you PRAY! and 2) if you could help us with finances for the hospital bill," Kelley wrote in her fundraising post. "ANYTHING, absolutely anything, would be so helpful for my family and my mom. Thank y'all so very much!"

The campaign has already raised over $278,000, which is more than five times the original goal of $50,000. That money has come from 4,935 individual donors, including one who donated $50,000, and the fundraiser has been shared 1,100 times so far.
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