Right about now is when people involved in the Olympics are afraid they will last forever. I know some people not here feel the same way. Those who don’t like their network programming pre-empted for girls on the parallel bars, or are sick of insta-experts at the water cooler talking about Michael Phelps and Shawn […]

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The MPC, to remind everyone, is the Main Press Center, where the non-TV journalists work. Michael “Eight Is Enough” Phelps was just in here, in the big conference room. He not only had some energy left, he actually had some interesting things to say — fairly amazing, considering he’s probably been interviewed as much as […]

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I’m in the Main Press Center, where most of the regulars have settled in to something vaguely resembling assigned seating. Same folks in the same area, basically, day after day. And the guys directly across the table from me have been, in recent days, Germans. So, I’m sitting here, getting oriented after a late night, […]

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Well, I believe what I saw. What I don’t believe? That Usain Bolt, a 100-meter nobody barely a year ago, could get to the finish line in 9.69 seconds — a world record — without the aid of unnatural substances that ought to get him banned from the Olympics. If the dope cops were as […]

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OK, apropos of nothing. Other than showing we’re beginning to get a little crabby a week into the Summer Olympics. Right on schedule. Anyway, I’m on a crowded bus heading over to the wrestling venue. A couple of clods from, I’m gonna say, Romania are taking up two seats with their equipment, and the bus […]

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I’m at the Laoshan Velodrome to see Sarah Hammer in the women’s cycling individual pursuit qualifying. And just now I was proud of myself for picking her parents out of the crowd, before racing begins. (OK, Sarah’s mother, Randi, looks a lot like her daughter, but still, there are a lot of non-Chinese here …) […]

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