| Salt Lake City |
 |
 |
| GER |
12 |
16 |
7 |
35 |
 |
| USA |
10 |
13 |
11 |
34 |
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| NOR |
11 |
7 |
6 |
24 |
|
| CAN |
6 |
3 |
8 |
17 |
|
| RUS |
6 |
6 |
4 |
16 |
|
| AUT |
2 |
4 |
10 |
16 |
|
| ITA |
4 |
4 |
4 |
12 |
|
| FRA |
4 |
5 |
2 |
11 |
|
| SUI |
3 |
2 |
6 |
11 |
|
| NED |
3 |
5 |
0 |
8 |
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Little blue USA hats are red hot
Long lines form to snap up the must-have beret
By Jeff Oliver
Deseret News staff writer
The hottest item in Salt Lake City isn't a ticket to see Michelle Kwan seek a gold medal in women's ice skating.
It's a little blue hat.
Like the furry Olympic mascots of the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano — which were snapped up quickly by cooing crowds — the peacock-blue beret has quickly become the must-have keepsake of the Salt Lake Games.
The hat, made by Roots, the official clothing supplier for the U.S. Olympic Team, provides more decoration the function. But 1,000 of the rare-to-find hats arrived at the Olympic Superstore Thursday morning only to disappear some 5 minutes after the store opened at 11 a.m.
The demand has produced a hat vacuum that is turning beret shoppers into Olympic competitors.
Ogden resident Stacie Haaser waited in line at the Gateway Roots store for two hours before coming away empty-handed. Shoppers like California's Mickey Durfee deserve hats — and gold medals — for their efforts.
Durfee has spent the last three days of her Olympic vacation waiting with her three children in a line outside the Gateway store.
When the hats ran out Wednesday, she was No. 13 in a line that began forming at 6 a.m. Thursday, she was third.
"I promise you I will be first in line tomorrow," she said. "I don't know what time I'll have to arrive; it may be something obscene like 3 a.m."
Durfee says high ticket prices have left her family without much of a connection to the Games. "I would love to be a part of the Olympic movement," Durfee says. "I'm not leaving Salt Lake without a hat."
The hats are also available via the United States Olympic Team Web site www.olympicteam.com. However, a message posted on the Web site warned online shoppers not to expect their orders to arrive anytime soon.
Besides, it's not the same as actually buying the hat at the Games, Durfee says.
Roots employees are sympathetic.
Tiffany Lam spent Thursday morning passing out Roots stickers to the surly — and at times angry — lines of shoppers. "We like to take care of our customers," Lam said.
Outside the store scalpers were also taking care of the customers, selling the hats for double and, at times, triple their $19.95 retail price.
Christine Cheong, a Roots employee from Toronto, sold her own hat at regular price to a customer from Ukraine.
"She doesn't have a Roots store at home," she said. It was the fourth time Cheong had sold the hat off her own head.
Liz Doggett, the store manager for Roots in Park City, said she will begin handing out tickets so shoppers can hold their place in line without wasting their day.
Thursday's line stretched for over a mile and a quarter down Park City's Main Street. Five police officers and five fire marshals were on hand to help control the crowd.
"We knew we had a hot item," Doggett says. "We didn't know it would be this insane."
Doggett expects a shipment of 1,400 berets Friday. From there, she says, the shipments will increase.
The hats, along with the rest of line, are made in Toronto at the Roots headquarters. "They're sending us everything they got," Doggett says.
The Roots stores in the Gateway also expected shipments Friday, as did the Olympic Superstore.
E-MAIL: joliver@desnews.com
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February 14, 2002
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