OLYMPIAN APPETITE

That, uh, large gentleman who helped escort the U.S. delegation in the opening ceremony was a sumo wrestler known as Musashimaru.

He used be named Fiamalu Penitani when he played high school football in Hawaii and weighed a mere 280 pounds, compared to his current 440 pounds.

How did he gain so much weight?

“I eat a lot,” he said. “I just eat, go to sleep, get up, go to training, come back, eat, go to sleep. No outings.”

What does he eat?

“Anything in the way,” he said.

Musashimaru said he is not yet a big fan of these Games.

“Being from Hawaii, I don’t know too much about winter games,” he said, “but I did watch the movie ‘Cool Running.’ ”

YOU CALL THAT BIG?

Columnist Mike Wilbon of the Washington Post is not impressed by fat.

“Let me dispel something about the sumos: they ain’t that big,” he wrote from Nagano. “Big for us in the U.S. and big for Japan ain’t the same thing. Half the sumos I stood next to before the ceremony don’t come up to my chin.

“There’s not a good left-tackle size dude in the whole bunch. . . . Personally, I’ll take the Packers’ Gilbert Brown in two-out-of-three falls against 99 percent of these guys.”

NUMBERS GAME

More than 2,400 athletes from 72 nations and regions are competing at Nagano.

By way of comparison, the first modern Games, held in Athens 102 years ago, drew only 245 athletes from 14 nations.

SOUP AND BOOK STEW

A couple of Olympic marketing crises appear to have been averted, just in the nick of time.

In Norway, about 4,000 shopkeepers raced to remove advertisements for a book by cross-country skiing ace Bjorn Daehlie amid threats to disqualify him from the Nagano Winter Games.

But those soup cans with pictures of Michelle Kwan, Tara Lipinski and Nicole Bobek can stay on American grocery shelves during the Games as the U.S. figure skaters go for a medals sweep.

The difference? It would appear to be that old standby, money.

According to Associated Press, the Campbell Soup Company’s marketing deal with the U.S. Figure Skating Assn. ran afoul of rules forbidding all but official sponsors from using Olympic athletes in promotions during the games.

So, USFSA agreed to pay the U.S. Olympic Committee an undisclosed amount, to be reimbursed by Campbell’s. John Krimsky, the USOC’s chief marketing official, said the figure-skating payment was small but acceptable.

But nothing like that was doing in Norway, where Daehlie’s autobiography, “The Hunt for Gold.” appeared in late 1997 with a vast print run of 150,000 copies. Advertisements include life-size cardboard cut-outs of Daehlie and can be found everywhere from gas stations to supermarkets.

Reuters quoted Jan Erik Langangen, a lawyer representing the Norwegian Olympic Committee, as saying, “They have to stop all marketing during the Olympic Games.”

Langangen said the advertising, besides promoting the book, highlighted Daehlie’s line of designer clothes and his ski manufacturer. As with the soup cans, during the two weeks of the Games, only official sponsors can have Olympic-related advertisements.

But no money changed hands in Norway, so booksellers and others scrambled to scuttle the offending advertising till after the Games.

“The books can stay on the shelves, it’s the advertisements that have to go,” Langangen said.

Daehlie, a five-time Olympic gold medal winner, is the most successful male cross-country skier ever and a national hero.

“I don’t think that anyone in Norway would dare to get Bjorn Daehlie punished at the Olympics,” Langangen said. “That would be the last kind of marketing that any shopkeeper would want.”