Only 536 days to go - for the Winter Olympics. The Salt Lake City 2002 Olympic Games have a website which amongst other things is looking for happy-go-lucky volunteers who will work for nothing. It also has a section labelled "Make Your Mark On History". You can achieve this by becoming part of the Olympic Legacy Brick Programme. That is you buy a brick and get cemented into some place in Utah.

But making a mark in history has other connotations for the Mormons in Salt Lake City. It was the bidding scandal for the Games that forced the IOC into expelling 10 of its committee members for inappropriate behaviour. Others would have called it taking bribes but with international sponsors threatening to pull out, the IOC thrown into crisis because of public opprobrium and its facade of grandeur in ruins, some of the lower end of the scale scams did end. Now, that did make a mark on history.