China mixed in a silver, in weightlifting. Within a couple of hours of me recommending they do exactly that, in a post two slots below this one. After winning six golds in six tries, China settled for silver in its seventh muscle competition. A chap named Li Hongli finished second to a Korean kid — […]

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Rolling down No. 5 Ring Road … a major freeway that circles (duh) the city … in the BOCOG bus, headed for the Main Press Center, and I look down to my left at the cars we’re passing. And there is a guy in a gray Passat, a fairly recent model, and he’s driving alone. […]

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I’ve been around the Olympic rings a few times now. I’ve seen Olympic powers come and go. I’ve seen athletes cheat and win (and later sometimes get caught). And I’ve long since decided that the one Olympic sport most susceptible to cheating is weightlifting. Hoisting massive amounts of iron has little to do with hand-eye […]

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The concept of Greco-Roman wrestling always amuses me, in a silly way. Sort of like the joke about “New Mexico.” If it isn’t new, and it isn’t Mexico, why do we call it New Mexico? What’s “Greco” about this sport? What is Roman? Have you seen any Romans around lately? So why is it Greco-Roman? […]

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I’m freelancing my way through these Olympics, and it’s a tough gig. Well, I knew it was, but it’s personal, now. The work to find clients, sell them on something they may not really want, may not be able to afford (especially now), then do the crash course on the topic/person so you can be […]

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This is all about me, and all about journalism. So it’s not entirely world-wide, no. But I am seriously impressed by the system Beijing organizers have come up with for handling security for credentialed journalists. What had become a tiresome and time-consuming hassle, since Munich and, especially, since 9/11 … has been streamlined quite cleverly […]

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The swimmers finally came through, racking up seven of a possible eight medals in four finals this morning, and for a moment the Yanks are back ahead in the medals chase. Someone wanted to know, in our previous “China Will Bury Us” post, how we could characterize the U.S. performance here as spotty. Well, consider […]

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It was Nikita Khruschev, former premier of the Soviet Union, who is credited with saying, “We will bury you!” to a group of Western ambassadors, in 1956. The idea being that the Soviet system — communism, in general — would out-perform the Western democracies and, eventually, “win” them over to socialism. Well, that burial didn’t […]

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China apparently is the spitting capital of the world. The expectoration citadel. Or was, anyway. If a guy (especially) had something in his throat he didn’t want to swallow … he just let it fly. It was a topic widely discussed by tourists in China. “Hey, those dudes spit more than baseball players!” When the […]

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Maybe it’s a function of the economy. Perhaps it’s about the availability, via the Web, of competition from seemingly any moment at any venue at the Beijing Olympics. Maybe it’s about family dynamics, or the ages of the competitors and their children, siblings or friends. But I have done stories on consecutive days on adult […]

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