The Norwegians were furious, the Japanese frantic, while the Dutch were busy justifying themselves. The first controversy of the 1998 Olympics came in the speedskating, after the Dutch won gold and silver in the 5,000 metres (bronze too if you count the Belgiumised Bart Veldkamp) and the world record was subject to its biggest improvement in 104 years.

There was always likely to be trouble in the M-Wave arena. The introduction of the hinged klapp skates last summer led to a winter revolution; 10 world records were broken in the first three months of the season. There were three more in less than an hour in this competition - but it was not the skates that were blamed.

The Dutch in Nagano arrived with another modification; a gofaster stripe on their suits that really did make their skaters go faster and it could cause no end of trouble. The Dutch were never anything but favourites. In Gianni Romme, they had the world record holder, in Rintje Ritsma a two-time medallist from Lillehammer.

It was Veldkamp, though, who set the world record spree in motion. In his heat, the world champion was a slow starter, only into his stride after the first 600m, but a fierce second half saw the Belgian reduce Romme's record to 6min 28.31sec. Had it not been for the interval to re-ice the track, Veldkamp's world record would have lasted no more than 10 minutes. As it was, Veldkamp had 25 minutes as the fastest 5,000m skater on earth before Ritsma came out to further lower the record, shaving seven one hundredths of a second off Veldkamp's time.

The third record, and with it the Olympic title, came to Romme half an hour later. The 24-yearold's start was electric, the pace maintained to break Ritsma's record by a massive six seconds (6:22.20), but no-one was slapping the shy Romme's back afterwards, except his Dutch team-mates. Everyone else wanted to know about the silicon strips glued to the back of his legs and helmet.

Experiments had led the Dutch to believe that altering the surface of the suit behind the skater would affect the drag element; they estimated it could increase speed by half a second for each 400m lap. Yet it was not the Dutch who first approached the International Skating Union in Nagano, but Veldkamp, who was also trying out the strips. That was on Thursday. On Friday, the Dutch team inquired about their legality and on Saturday, the ISU approved their use.

After the races, the Norwegian chief coach was incandescent. Holding a piece of the silicon between his fingers, Sven Havard Sletter maintained that the strips broke the ISU's own rules. "The suit is supposed to follow the body's normal shape and this is not the normal shape," said Sletter, who led a protest by both his team and the Japanese. The ISU will be hard pressed to disqualify all three medallists, so the fastest race today will be off the ice, by teams chasing their own go-faster stripe.

Women's ice hockey and snowboarding both took their bows in the Games. The Canadian Ross Regliati won the slalom title in the snowboarding, while his compatriots waltzed to a 13-0 victory over Japan, to emphasise their status as favourites in the ice hockey. Yuka Oda, in the Japanese goal, even saved 43 shots as well.

Up at Hakuba, though, it was all anti-climax as the men's downhill was postponed to tomorrow because of fog and, of all things, snow. Worryingly, it brought back memories of the last time the world championships were held in Japan, five years ago.