Sponsor Signs for More

Three years ago, at the height of the Salt Lake bid scandal, the president of John Hancock financial services was one of the International Olympic Committee’s most vocal critics.

On Thursday, David D’Alessandro signed a contract re-upping Hancock for another four years--from 2004 through 2008--as one of the IOC’s top sponsors. The deal reportedly is worth $60-$65 million.

Hancock earlier had signed an extension for its sponsorship through the Athens Summer Games in 2004. The new deal will run through the Winter Olympics in 2006, in Turin, Italy, and the Summer Games of 2008 in Beijing.

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The jumping half of the Nordic combined team event was postponed Thursday, after officials decided that swirling winds on the small hill at Olympic Park would have made for an unfair competition.

The jumping was rescheduled for Saturday, with the second half of the event--the 20-kilometer relay cross-country race on the Soldier Hollow course--set for Sunday.

More than 19,000 tickets were sold to the event.

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After watching a Venezuelan female luger crash once in competition and four times in six training runs, International Luge Federation President Josef Fendt has called for tighter qualification standards for Olympic luge competitors.

On her first run during Monday’s women’s luge finals, Iginia Boccalandro fell off her sled between curves 13 and 14 and could have been hit on the head by the 50-pound sled is not for prompt action by trackside workers. One volunteer who helped stop the runaway sled lost the tip of a finger in the process.

“We must prevent excesses like these,” Fendt said. “We still have to figure out how to address this, but it’s clear that we must do something.”

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Times staff writers Alan Abrahamson and Mike Penner and the Associated Press contributed to this report.