Their Home Away From Home

Max Fillmore is opening his home in Bountiful, a suburb of Salt Lake City, for 10 days to a couple he has never met, knowing only they need a place to stay and he needs to contribute something toward making Olympic visitors feel welcome.

Starting Wednesday, Fillmore and his wife, Sharla, will host Gail and Joanne Smith, the father and stepmother of Sunset Beach short-track speedskater Rusty Smith. The arrangement was made through the Athlete Family Host program, which is sponsored by Samsung. The program places more than 1,000 relatives of Olympians from around the world with 600 families in the Salt Lake City area. In addition to the families of U.S. athletes, families of athletes from Japan, Russia, Lithuania and Australia have been matched with local host families.

Fillmore, a food services broker, and his wife, an elementary school principal, know the Smiths only through e-mail. Yet Fillmore said he had no hesitation about offering them accommodations and as much tour-guide advice as they want.

“We’re very excited,” he said. “My wife is volunteering, driving for the Olympic family, and my son is driving athletes. I was thinking this is an opportunity I could meet some people and have a good time and not make such a commitment to [volunteer] training, which required a tremendous amount of commitment.

“I heard about the program on the radio and we were lucky enough to be picked. The program is designed for a maximum of eight days, but they said they were going to stay in a hotel 90 miles away, and we said we couldn’t let them do that.”

Smith, whose mother, stepfather and girlfriend will stay with other host families, is delighted with the generosity. “My parents don’t have a lot of money so they wouldn’t have been able to come otherwise,” he said.

Fillmore said he hadn’t heard of Smith, but has done some research since discovering he would be host of Smith’s family.

“I’m eager to meet them and learn a little bit more about what his chances are to bring home the gold,” Fillmore said.

Condo Mania

The good news is that some residents of a Salt Lake City condo are hanging international flags from their balconies.

The bad news is, some passers-by claiming to be from the People’s Republic of China demanded that Taiwanese flags hanging from the balcony of two condos be removed.

The condo representatives rebuffed the two men, claimed that they weren’t going to be bullied or back down from their mission of spreading international good will.

Then they admitted that the owners of those two condos left town before the Games, so nothing could be done anyway.

Gracious or Cautious?

Herb Brooks, coaching the U.S. men’s hockey team for the first time since he guided the 1980 team to a stunning gold medal at Lake Placid, said he declined an invitation to join the 1980 Olympians in lighting the caldron high above Rice-Eccles Stadium during last Friday’s opening ceremony.

“It was nice to see. I watched it on television,” he said. “I had a chance to maybe go, but it belongs to the players.

“I wasn’t going to get up that high with the players because maybe they’d push me off.”

Player Prerogative

Brooks also said team captain Mike Eruzione has, over the years, exaggerated some aspects of the 1980 team’s odyssey.

“I listen to the gospel according to Mike,” he said.

“Mike believes in free speech. He just doesn’t give ‘em anymore.”

Skater With Voltage

Never underestimate the inspirational power of the Olympics.

In his Olympic debut, speedskater Kip Carpenter, 22, of Brookfield, Wis., skated the men’s 500 meters in Olympic-record time, 34.68 seconds.

It didn’t hold up, but it was good enough for third place, going into today’s second half.

Said Carpenter:

“This was my first Olympic race and I was super amped. I was more nervous for the Olympic trials. So many times this morning, I just couldn’t wait. I wanted to go out there and rip it up.

“There was no doubt in my mind that I was going to have the best performance of my life.”

Rinky-Dink

So you want to see one of the Olympics’ most popular events? Be prepared to see only three-fourths of it.

Amazingly, the Delta Center has seats--including some of the most expensive ones--from which one cannot see the entire ice during figure skating events.

Even more amazingly, organizers have acknowledged this blunder and are selling discount, obstructed view tickets.

The problem? What else? Greed.

Before the Olympics, organizers had a choice of holding the figure skating events in the larger E Center rink on the outskirts of town, or in downtown Salt Lake City on the smaller surface of the Delta Center (renamed the Salt Lake Ice Center during the Olympics).

Hoping to generate more bucks because the Delta Center has more seats, they decided to hold it there.

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Times staff writers Helene Elliott, Mike Kupper and Bill Plaschke contributed to this report.