When Olympics junkies and Internet fanatics collide, it's a beautiful, Web-a-rific occurrence.

The Internet is a haven and resource for the Olympics-obsessed as well as the mild-mannered casual viewer.

Want to know what time the first round of men's and women's table tennis airs on TV or via online video? Need to find out U.S. soccer star Freddy Adu's hometown or the basics of the trampoline?

Want to find out who set the Olympic record for the 100-meter women's freestyle in the Stockholm 1912 Olympic Games or try to find a place in Beijing that makes good lv da gun?

The Internet has the answers.

Most Olympics-related sites include news, event results, details of each sport's history and rules, athlete biographies, profiles, features, event schedules, TV schedules, online schedules, photographs, video clips and Olympic history.

www.NBCOlympics.com

This site should be a first stop for all things Olympic, big and small. Thus far, it's the most-visited Olympics-related Internet site and had more than 4 million unique U.S. visitors on Aug. 9 -- the first official day of competition, according to Nielsen Online. Want to see the awe-inspiring pageantry of the opening ceremonies or see a video replay of the heart-pounding gold-medal U.S. men's 4x100m free swimming relay?

The site has a billionaire's wealth of information for casual spectators and hard-core fans, including news, features, medal counts, athletes' biographies, games, polls, histories of each event, live streaming video of events and video of already completed events.

More than 436,000 unique viewers watched video on the site Aug. 8, the day of the majestic opening ceremonies, and more than 858,000 watched video on the site Aug. 9, Nielsen Online reported.

"With the ubiquity of broadband and the breadth of available content -- combined with the time difference between the U.S. and Beijing -- this truly is the first online video Olympics," said Jon Gibs, vice president of media analytics for Nielsen Online. "With the unique audience to NBC's Olympics video section doubling from Aug. 8th to Aug. 9th, and overall traffic to NBC Olympics growing by 50 percent, it will be interesting to track video usage trends throughout the games."

The Web site and the NBC Universal TV networks -- NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, USA, Oxygen, Telemundo and Universal HD -- are slated to offer more than 3,400 hours of programming during the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, with each event getting some degree of TV/Internet coverage.

There's even a link to a Spanish-language version of the site.

en.beijing2008.cn/

The official Web site of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games -- in addition to the traditional scores, schedules, photographs, video, athletes' bios and event histories -- also is an excellent resource for someone actually visiting the Games, with information on transportation, tickets, event venues, food, hotels, sightseeing, shopping and other leisure and cultural activities.

For example, one can learn that lv da gun, a jelly roll-like cake that's nicknamed Rolling Donkey, is made with soybean flour, water and brown sugar.

"At the end of preparation, the bean-flour cake rolls in the soybean flour ... [and] looks like a donkey rolling over in dust," according to the site.

In addition to Chinese and English, there also are French, Spanish and Arabic versions of this site.

www.olympic.org

The official site of the Olympic Movement originates in the United Kingdom and is about all things Olympic -- and not just Beijing -- from antiquity to today.

Get the latest news from the International Olympic Committee. Search a complete list of medal winners going back to 1896. Find out current Olympic and world records in a variety of events and how those records have evolved over time. Take a virtual tour of the Olympic Museum Lausanne in Lausanne, Switzerland. See and rate pictures and videos at the site's multimedia gallery.

www.infoplease.com/sports/olympics/2008/

Trivia fanatics will thoroughly enjoy this encyclopedic site filled with tons of Olympics factoids as well as quizzes and crossword puzzles on everything from Olympic mascots to the Ancient Greek Games and Olympic sports.

Want to know which country has won the most medals at the Olympic games without ever hosting the games? Whether you want to know the history of the Olympics dating back to antiquity or who has won the most gold medals in Olympic history, this site has it.

This list is far from complete, and if you discover other especially informative, interesting or off-the-beaten-track quirky Olympics-related Web sites not listed here, e-mail a link of the site to ljohnson@post-gazette.com.

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Aside from the special Olympics coverage you can find at the Post-Gazette's Web site, here are other popular Web sites:

sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing

sports.aol.com/olympics

www.nytimes.com/pages/olympics2008/index.html

sports.espn.go.com/oly/index

www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/beijing/default.htm

news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympics/default.stm

sportsillustrated.cnn.com/olympics/2008/