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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I know athletes are disappointed when they lose.  Especially in the marginally popular Olympic sports — and women’s freestyle wrestling certainly falls into that category. A lot of these guys and girls have been training four years — or a lifetime, really — to get here, and their minds are filled with images of standing […]

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Great Britain was huge in the founding of the Olympic Games, right there with Baron de Coubertin, the French aristocrat who revived the Games back in 1996. The Brits did quite nicely for the first 36 years or so, when Olympic sports were still mostly gentlemen’s games. (Remember And then more professional-type athletes took over, […]

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The 10-plus days I’ve been here, we’ve had two types of weather. Rain. And smog-choked gloom. Ten consecutive days of one or the other. In both meteorogical conditions, the sun was basically a rumor. At best, making a short appearance before going behind the clounds (or gunk) again. Imagine my surprise when I walked outside […]

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If I understand any of the basics about modern China, two highly prized life commodities are 1) greenery and 2) space. I have both, in spades, at the place I am staying, the Beijing Conference Center. Yes, I do appreciate it. (I so rarely admit to appreciating anything.) And it’s growing on me as we […]

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Nastia Luikin and Shawn Johnson just went 1-2 in the women’s individual all-around gymnastics competition, which apparently none of you back home saw tonight. It was running just late enough in the day (midnight-ish, EDT) that it won’t be shown in the States till Friday night. (NOTE: I’m told this isn’t so … that it […]

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I’ve been occasionally asthmatic since I was 13. It is exercised-induced, and it’s worse when the air is cold. I also notice that, in recent years, it’s coming back a bit, after a decade or three of not being much trouble. And I notice it a bit more when the air is particularly foul. I’m […]

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Interesting woman. Touted for a medal in the women’s individual pursuit, which is just a lung-burning, thigh-busting drag race of a cycling event around the velodrome. Nobody much pays attention to track cyclists, not even at the Olympics, but Hammer and some of her teammates became infamous, for a day or three, when they were […]

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