ZappOlympics was the name of ARD's official online game for the Winter Olympics 2002 in Salt Lake City. Everything at the ZappOlympics is about Zapp Maier. Zapp has disconnected the telephone and doorbell and reduced his metabolism to a minimum (crisps, sandwiches and beer) for the duration of the Winter Olympics. For 17 days Zapp concentrates on Martin Schmitt, Martina Ertl, Gerd Rubenbauer and Waldmar Hartmann - and, accompanied by his slowly freezing goldfish, experiences 17 crazy online games in an off-beat Flash environment. After "Vision 2040" (winner of the German Multimedia Awards 2000) and "Azubeats (short-listed for the German Multimedia Award 2001), Bavarian Radio again requested a multimedia production from die vision digital AG to add the missing fun factor to the range of information and services on the ARD Olympic website and to create more traffic.The whole ARD Olympic Game 2002 is just as off-beat as the fictitious Hannawald headline from the no less fictitious ZappOlympics "Gold Newspaper". Ski jumpers prepare for landing using their jet-propelled backpacks, ice-skating judges whose grades mutate into maths sums, bobsleighers who land in the desert - an online game with brains and humour, a world away from the boring ones normally served up.