One of the entertaining things about the whole Beijing Olympics is that the time difference of 12 hours makes it confusing as to when what happened; Michael Phelps’ final rounds, for instance, occurred at 10pm EST, but actually the next day 10am local time. At least it was aired live (well, EST anyway; I don’t know if it aired live in the West coast).
The unfortunate story of Liu Xiang, the Chinese hurdler who couldn’t compete due to the injury. Time’s China Blog had at least one post. Newsweek’s Melinda Liu had her own observations. “Big Hope” – a lack of guarantees. Perhaps it’s a small consolation that it was a battle over body rather than the mind. George Vecsey of the NY Times with his own words of consolation to China.
The story on US’s Stephanie Brown Trafton, gold medalist discus thrower who has a real day job; she managed to end the American women’s lack of gold medals in the discus.
An interesting story on the many Olympians (once an Olympian, always Olympian, apparently) who live in the NY metro area, long after the Olympics were after.
And, the British are prepping for London 2012, with a pretty decent medals showing at Beijing. Loved these lines in the linked NY Times article; Peter Berlin writes:
Britain, which will host the Summer Games in 2012, may not be able to stage a no-expense-spared Olympics the way China has. The week before the opening ceremony, Tessa Jowell, Britain’s minister for the Olympics, said that the Bird’s Nest in Beijing would be the last “iconic” Olympic stadium. Organizers must already be wondering how to follow Beijing’s cast-of-thousands opening ceremony; re-forming the Beatles is not an option.
Yeah, I think it’s tough to get the Beatles for Opening Ceremony 2012, since half of them are in the afterlife. But, really, it’d be awesome to have Sir Paul and Sir Ringo there anyway!
Sooo… and how did the Jamaicans get so good at sprinting? Slate’s Explainer explains!
And, apparently, there’s confusion as to how to pronounce “Beijing.” “j” sound vs. “zh” sound is different; but I’m thinking you’d need a good ear to hear that anyway? Oh well. And least NBC’s Brian Williams aimed to get the pronunciation right.
Non-Olympic stuff:
The fear in upstate NY about windmills: not just that they may spoil the view (which to me is more the eye-of-the-beholder kind of thing; they don’t look that ugly to me) or that they may make noise (generating electricity ain’t without trouble of some kind) – but that getting at all runs the risk of corruption; what a sad story indeed.