Remember when Sarah Hammer of Temecula and three other U.S. track cyclists got off the plane in Beijing last month wearing protective masks? And do you remember how they were trashed by their own Olympic Committee? Which released an abject “apology” under their names? Now the USOC is going to apologize to the cyclists, conceding […]

[Read more →]

Been meaning to write this, and just now thought of it, about 10 minutes before kickoff here at the Rose Bowl. Anyway, if you’re a decent athlete and the Olympics is your Mt. Everest … some free advice.

[Read more →]

No list of “big winners” from the Beijing Olympics is complete unless it has the name “Kobe Bean Bryant” near the top of the list. Olympic gold usually isn’t something that defines an NBA player’s career. Since the pros began showing up at the Summer Games, in 1992, a gold medal was assumed, and having […]

[Read more →]

I never look at the sportsjournalists.com site … which I believe is sj.com, if you want to peruse it. It’s pretty much sports journalists discussing (or arguing about) events in sports journalism. But I know people who do look at the site, and occasionally they will tell me about how my name sometimes comes up. […]

[Read more →]

I promised I would get to the bottom of this, and it took a while, and I almost forgot, too, but … Back on my first full day in Beijing I noted a weird reality of the brand-new Main Press Center building — the signs posted in the men’s and women’s toilets asking users not […]

[Read more →]

We need to build some new stuff. And by stuff I mean … roads, mass transit, airports, bridges, public buildings … I’ve just been somewhere that, allegedly, only recently escaped Third World economic status. And everything there is newer, shinier and, more important, works better and is easier to use than just about anything we […]

[Read more →]

I’ve been to 13 Olympics. Have I mentioned that? Oh, I have. And one of the human-behavioral realities you can count on … almost set your watch by … is the breakdown of discipline by just about everyone involved with the Games in the final hours, before and after Closing Ceremonies.

[Read more →]

I actually did something in Beijing that had nothing to do with sports. Which is the upside to staying here one full day after the torch was doused.

[Read more →]

Nothing taxes sports journalists the way an Olympics does. Nothing. The Super Bowl, Final Four, World Series, World Cup … none of them compare. The Olympics lasts seemingly forever — three weeks, counting the run-up to Opening. It’s results, results, results everydamnday — no days off for travel, or rest, whatever. It’s enormous — 302 […]

[Read more →]

The guys at madmariner.com, which bills itself as the internet’s “daily sailing newspaper” … commissioned a wrapup story on the U.S. Sailing effort here at the Beijing Olympics. The sailors were down at Qingdao, 300 miles away, and the Yanks managed only a gold and a silver, which apparently has agitated some folks in the […]

[Read more →]