A consumer’s guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, played, heard, observed, worn, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it’s in play here.

What: Search for Olympic Information.

Where: The World Wide Web.

The old way to get immediate Olympic information was almost charming, in a primitive, low-tech way.

In 1980, we sat around the dining-room table listening to the radio account of the USA-Russia hockey game from Lake Placid, N.Y. For the entire nerve-racking third period, a friend from St. Louis got her information after we placed the phone next to the radio.

Now, phone bills don’t have to skyrocket out of control.

If properly motivated--and sleep deprivation isn’t a concern--you can monitor the Olympics through the Internet, wandering through the vast environs of the world wide web during the wee hours of the morning.

But what if you are one of many who don’t want to wait for the tape-delayed broadcast on television but also aren’t willing to stay up all night, sipping coffee and scrutinizing the judges’ marks.

The information is out there.

One case in point was the figure skating pairs’ short program, which started at 3 a.m. Sunday [local time]. At 8 a.m., there was no mention of the event on CNN’s Headline News.

However, it was all over the web. Nando.com had the Associated Press account posted by 6:26 a.m. Likewise, cnnsi.com had the information, as did the other big world wide web sports sites, ESPN’s sportszone.com and MSNBC and yahoo.com.

Of course, CBS sportsline (sportsline.com) was all over it. If you wanted to see the start list and order of appearance for the pairs event, it was there. So was the breakdown of the scores.

So within minutes, you could find out that Todd Sand touched his hand to the ice on the side by side triple toeloops, and that he and his partner Jenni Meno were in sixth place. Or that Artur Dmitriev and Oksana Kazakova, leaders after the short program, skated to “2001--Space Odyssey.”

Here, the only thing missing was a view of the “Kiss and Cry” room.