Beijing Beat: A Blog of the 2008 Olympic Games : Featured

Beijing Sports Wrap: My Top 20

Mark Starr — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 02:32:02 GMT

The closing ceremonies. Photo: Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

Much as in the run-up to the Beijing Games did, the aftermath will focus on the impact of the Olympics on China as it defines its path in this emerging Chinese Century. But nobody who was here or watching at home will soon forget the sensational sports competition that took place. My top 20 sports stories (from a decidedly American vantage point):

1) Eight for Eight: Nobody doubted that Michael Phelps could win each of the eight races—five individual and three relays—he entered. But could he win all of them in the Olympic hothouse, a feat that required him to swim 17 times over nine long days? Turns out he could—seven of them in world record times. But he needed a miracle relay leg by a teammate in one race and had to survive a photo finish (and Serbian protest) in another. The biggest record—eight gold medals in a single Olympics—should stand forever. Phelps’ total of 14 Olympic gold medals is the most by any athlete in history.

Photo: Mike Powell for NEWSWEEK

2) Bolt of Lightning: The Phelps saga may have been the only thing Usain Bolt couldn’t quite catch and even that is debatable. The Jamaican youngster—he turned 22 during the Games—almost singlehandedly ended American claims on sprinting supremacy. He won the 100 and 200 and ran a leg on Jamaica’s gold-medal 4X100 relay team. In a meet where world records are scarce because of summer swelter and multiple heats in each event, all three gold medals were in world record times. Unusually tall for a sprinter with a remarkably graceful gait, Bolt was a hot-dogging champion. He incurred the wrath of the straitlaced 10C when he celebrated his 100-meter victory with some chest-thumping before he even crossed the line. But most fans saw him as a breath of fresh air in a sport ravaged by scandal—and it’s everybody’s hope that Bolt runs as clean as he does well.

3) China’s Gold Rush: It didn’t exactly come as a surprise. China almost caught the United States in gold medals in Athens and had pointed to Beijing as the Games in which they would assert their athletic supremacy. The results of world championships during the years from Athens to Beijing gave fair warning. Still, nobody was quite prepared for the landslide win, as China netted 51 gold medals to America’s 36. The U.S. still topped the charts in total medals (110-100), but with China’s population, the state sports system and unstinting investment, that seems unlikely to hold at the 2012 London Games. What keeps China-U.S. from becoming a great rivalry is that China excels at sports—table tennis, weightlifting, shooting, diving—in which American isn’t very competitive and which evoke little interest in our country. In the one sports, woman’s gymnastics, we do care about, there was plenty of consternation about the result, complaints about favorable “home” judging and allegations that the Chinese cheated with underage gymnasts.

4)Tragedy/Triumph: The tragedy at a popular Beijing tourist attraction was almost unimaginable—an attack by a knife-wielding Chinese man on the in-laws of U.S. men’s volleyball coach Hugh McCutcheon. His father-in-law Todd Bachman was killed and Bachman’s wife, Barbara, seriously injured. The killer committed suicide so it is unlikely there will ever be an explanation for the bizarre crime in a city considered highly safe for tourists. Win it for the coach never had to be said out loud. But while McCutcheon was away from the Olympics with his family (he resumed coaching duties after four games), a U.S. volleyball team that hadn’t won a medal since a bronze in Barcelona back in 1992 caught fire. It went undefeated throughout the tournament, climaxing with a comeback win over defending Olympic champion Brazil. When McCutcheon called his wife back home in the States wand heard her, she exclaimed, “You won, you won!” Then he told reporters, “There was nothing left to say. We were just kind of listening to each other smile into the phone.” We smiled too. Maybe even cried a little.

5) Ballet on Bars and Beams: For a reporter a few stories become more personal. Years ago I became captivated by a 14-year-old gymnast who performed with a lyrical beauty that I had never seen from an American.. For NEWSWEEK’s annual, year-end “Who’s Next” issue, I am responsible for picking one young athlete who will make a splash. In 2006 I picked Liukin. But she was beset by a series of nagging injuries, and an Iowa sparkplug, Shawn Johnson, became America’s new gymnastics darling and the Beijing favorite. The American duo went 1-2 in the all-around in Beijing, but it was Liukin’s balletic performance that landed her on top. Johnson, with three silver medals already in hand, finally won a very happy gold on balance beam. But it was Liukin who went home to Texas with the biggest prize (as well as five Olympic medals).

6) The ‘We’ In American Teams: There has been a sneaking suspicion that American athletes had lost their grasp on the team thing. In recent years, our all-star teams have been humbled by international losses in sports that we dominate: basketball, golf and baseball. But in Beijing, most American teams excelled. Both men’s and women’s basketball, volleyball and water polo teams made it to the gold-medal games, as did the U.S. women’s softball and soccer teams. The U.S. went 4-4 in those finals, but this mother lode of team golds and silvers demonstrated that when they put their minds to it, Americans still know how to play well together.

7) The ‘Redeem Team’: The U.S. men’s basketball team had a lot to make up for--two miserable performances in the last two world championships and a dismal bronze at the Athens Olympics. But Kobe and company proved up to the task, thoroughly dominating the competition until the finals where they met defending world champion Spain. In a game far closer than the final scored indicated, the NBA stars responded to every Spanish challenge—and used their speed advantage and some clutch outside shooting to squeeze out a 118-107 win. They celebrated the gold medal with all the excitement of high-school kids who had won the state championship. Beyond the court, the NBA stars treated the competition with the respect the rest of the world gives it—and were goodwill ambassadors all over the Olympics, cheering on Americans from the women’s basketball team (undefeated gold medalists also) to Michael Phelps.

8) Going Solo: Even with the basketball team’s Olympic revival, there was no better tale of redemption than that of Hope Solo. Solo was the starting goalkeeper for an unbeaten U.S. women’s soccer team in last year’s World Cup when the American coach inexplicably benched her for the semi-final against Brazil. After Brazil thrashed the Yanks, Solo went off on him and, far worse, suggested she would have performed better than her replacement. It was an unconscionable moment by the sisterhood standards of American soccer and Solo was kicked off the team and sent home. But the new coach convinced reluctant team members—“Do you want to win? she asked them—to let Solo return for the Olympic run. Against, of course, Brazil in the finals, Solo was the standout star, shutting out a superior attack until the Americans muster a goal overtime. A jubilant Solo explained afterward that she had broken a new barrier in women’s sports: “we don’t all have to be friends.”

Photo: Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

9) China Beach: Just as it has been since beach volleyball was introduced to the Olympics, the rhythm of the beach was decidedly American—from the rock and roll to the Chinese cheerleaders in tiny bikinis. The results went America’s way too. Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh won gold in the pouring rain and extended their astounding unbeaten streak to more than a year. The next day, the sun was shining on Phil Dalhauser and Todd Rogers, who completed the American sweep.

10) Butterfingers: There was, of course, one mortifying exception to all that good American team play: track’s 4X100 relay teams. The U.S. era of sprint dominance is clearly over and the Americans would have been underdogs to Jamaica in the relays anyway. Still, you don’t have a chance if you don’t get the baton around the track. And in the first preliminary heat, both the U.S. teams dropped it before the final leg. It is the third straight Olympics in which the American women have bungled the handling of the baton. If USA basketball can command Kobe Bryant and LeBron James to training camps, then USA Track and Field can force its sprinters to convene and practice their relay skills before each Olympics. It’s either that or more embarrassments on track’s biggest stage.

11) Tears and More Tears: One of the problems that led to the IOC booted softball out of future Olympics, was that the American women were simply too dominant. It certainly looked to be true as they went undefeated into the finals, including two victories over Japan. But for Japan, the third time was the charm and they beat the Americans 3-1 for the last Olympic gold medal (with the faint hope that the IOC will reconsider and reinstate softball for 2016). The U.S. women aren’t counting on it, but the loss may actually help the cause. Still, a handful of American softballers poignantly left their cleats on the field as they left the Olympics for likely the final time.

Photo: Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

12) 400 Strong: Track and field was a very mixed bag for the Americans with some notables flopping big-time and a few surprise winners. But the surest thing for the U.S. team is the 400 meters for men—be it runners, hurdlers or relay tams. The American men went 1-2-3 in both individual events and won the relay handily in Olympic record time. The women didn’t far quite as well at the distance. But in the relay, Sanya Richards, who had taken a disappointing bronze in the 400, ran down the Russian in the stretch to claim the gold medal.

13) The Straight Dope: Hard to imagine any Olympics in which doping wouldn’t rate a spot in the top ten. But only five athletes in Beijing have been caught doping to date. And frankly it’s hard to know if that’s good news or bad news, if the testing advances have begun to scare the cheats off or of if the cheats have become too sophisticated for the dope police. The biggest name nabbed here was Ukraine‘s Lydmila Blonska, who forfeited her silver medal in the heptathlon and faces a lifetime ban for her second offense. That is if you don’t count Yelena Soboleva, the leading 800 and 1500 runner in the world this year and one of seven Russian track and field athletes banned from Beijing before the Games even began. Athletes got sent home for other misdeeds too. A Swedish Greco-Roman wrestler lost his bronze after he tossed it on the ground to protest a refereeing decision. And a Cuban in taekwondo was banned for life when he kicked an official in the head.

14) World’s Greatest Athlete: Perhaps no title has been depreciated more than “world’s greatest athlete”. It has been the legacy of the Olympic decathlon champion since the 1912 Stockholm Olympics when King Gustav V told the American legend, Jim Thorpe, “You, sir, are the greatest athlete in the world.” Since then it has been held by some storied Ameican names--from Bob Mathias to Rafer Johnson to Bruce Jenner to Dan O’Brien. But today we Americans are more likely to consider Kobe Bryant or Tiger Woods as “the greatest” and Bryan Clay ran away with the decathlon here in virtual anonymity. Clay was the first American to win since O’Brien a dozen years ago in Atlanta So at least let it be said here: Bryan Clay is the world’s greatest athlete.

15) Lezak’s Leg: Very few athletes are destined to be remembered very long for a single relay leg. But Jason Lezak may be the exception. Lezak’s extraordinary anchor swim in the 4x100 meter freestyle relay—catching French world recordholder Alain Bernard from behind—kept Phelps’ record chase alive. They don’t hand out assists in swimming’s record books, but nobody who watched Phelps’ set his record will ever forget Lezak’s critical role.

16) Liu-sing: Ever since his breakthrough gold medal in Athens, hurdler Liu Xiang has been the face of China’s Beijing dream (and the face of all the global companies hoping to cash in on that Olympics dream). To win the most gold medals, China had to excel in sports at which they had never before competed successfully. His final was regarded as the single most important athletic moment of the Games, a national coronation of its hero. But while Liu got into the starter’s blocks, he never ran the race, pulling out with an injury. China’s sensational Olympic showing likely spared him much harsh criticism as well as tough questions about why he even stepped on the track in the first place. Still, some wondered if that was a gesture to his homeland or to his sponsors.

17) Sabre Rattling: Women’s sabre debuted in Athens and American women usually seem to get a jump-start on new sports and new disciplines in old sports. The U.S. took gold and bronze there, but here in Beijing upped its reach. Mariel Zagunis reprised her gold-medal performance, Athens bronze-medal winner Sada Jacobson took silver and newcomer Rebecca Ward completed the sweep.. This was one of the rare Beijing occasions when the parts were greater than the sum: the three women combined only to take a bronze in team saber.

Photo: Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

18) Muhammad Ali weeps: This was supposed to be the Games when an American revival honored the nation’s extraordinary Olympic boxing legacy, from Floyd Patterson to Muhammad Ali to George Foreman to Sugar Ray Leonard to Oscar De La Hoya. But the Beijing team’s two amateur world champions went out early and the only medal, a bronze, went to an overhyped, underexperienced heavyweight who scored just s single point (and that in the final seconds) in his semi-final bout.

19) The ‘X’ Game: Those ‘X’ sports, the TV-friendly games invented in the U.S. and new to the Olympics, are very good to the American medal count, both summer and winter. In Beijing, making its debut was BMX, bicycle motocross, an event that figured to follow the success of snowboarding’s wild-and-wooly cross event. Americans didn’t win any gold in the two races, but they did win half the medals.

20) Marvelous Messi: Argentina wanted its brilliant forward Lionel Messi to lead its attack in Beijing. And Barcelona, his professional team, wanted the young superstar to stay with the club for Champions League contests. Barcelona went to court and won, but eventually relented. And everyone who got to watch his dazzling play here is grateful. Messi was brilliant throughout the tournament, leading Argentina to a 3-0 romp over arch-rival Brazil and then to the gold medal with a 1-0 victory over Nigeria. A happy Messi should ultimately redound to Barcelona’s benefit.

Closing Ceremony Extravaganza: Revenge of the Nerds

Melinda Liu — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 16:44:47 GMT

Photo: Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

Some people predicted the 2008 Olympic spectacle would be worthy of Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's favorite filmmaker whose theme for the 1936 Games was "Triumph of the Will". Instead, for the dazzling closing ceremony which brought the Olympics to a close tonight, we got Busby Berkeley reincarnated as an engineer. How else could you think up 60 furiously pedalling cyclists in glowing tracksuits propelling giant "light wheels" precisely 2.008 meters in diameter, symbolizing "the collision of time and space and the human spirit of constantly surpassing oneself and never giving up".

Or a massive 23-meter "Memory Tower" -- think Tower of Babel built with erector sets -- rising out of a pit in the ground, suddenly swarmed by 396 nimble climbers (in mountaineering kit) clad in tracksuits that are red on the underbelly and silver on the back, enabling the men to create visual images, like the "sacred flame" and the "running man" symbol of the Beijing Games, by gyrating as they clung to the girders or scuttled scarab-like over the structure and abseiled down its sides?

Or a slick 53-page media guide deconstructing "every aspect of the closing ceremony of the XXIX Olympiad -- both protocol and creative -- that might be of interest and relevant to the public", chock full of factoids like 20 tons of steel were used to construct the "Memory Tower" or the electricity load totaled 10,500 kw or a year of rehearsals took place in a 1,750-square-meter temporary gym? The only thing missing was a slide rule.

This is a country where eight out of nine of the country's most powerful people -- the nine men who make up the communist party's Politburo standing committee -- are trained as engineers (as are 17 of 25 Politburo members). Sure, the opening and closing ceremonies were both the brainchild of famed film director Zhang Yimou, whose ability to mesmerize movie audiences is well-known. But in tonight's case the script was about a resurgent, rising China -- and its mandarins are celebrating every twinkling bulb and length of electrical wire that powered their achievements (which, in the case of the closing ceremony, was 2,583 lights and 160 kilometers of cable).

And now they're one happy bunch of engineers. Despite some tragedies and disappointments, the Games were perceived by Chinese and overseas participants alike to have been a sporting and organizational success, enhanced by the magnificent venues that have made the Bird's Nest and Water Cube familiar around the world. Human rights monitors had warned that the Games would be marred by massive rights violations -- and in fact a number did take place, as we have blogged on earlier.

But on this balmy (and not even that polluted) Beijing night, in this place, with this relaxed and cheering crowd, the main violations that spectators witnessed were a systematic defiance of laws of gravity. Limber spacemen emblazoned with what looked like white Christmas-light strips on their helmets and suits were slowly raised and lowered on invisible wires as they executed lazy mid-air back flips or froze in athletic poses like glowing man-sized arachnids -- Charlotte's Web on acid. Performers in red fluorescent leotards attached to the end of six-meter-long "rotating poles" soared and swiveled in seesaw arcs, as phalanxes of Day-glo performers -- wearing gimmicky extreme sports' "bounce shoes" -- bounded high above the ground like alien kangaroos.

For those who were feeling a bit blinded by all those kilowatts of costume lighting, something of a respite came when it was time for London, host of the 2012 Games, to put on its own 8-minute show. (Remember when 7 used to be a lucky number? That's all different now -- like so many other things that have changed inexorably due to China's rise. Look out, world, now it's 8.)

A shift in mood and iconography was signaled by the appearance of an old-fashioned British double-decker bus rolling slowly into the arena. The London chapter in the media guide began to sound like it was shaped less by engineers and more by your normal public relations message-meisters: "We demonstrate why London remains the coolest place on the planet."

Then the crowd gasped as the bus suddenly peeled itself back -- al la Transformers -- to reveal a rising stage that featured singing star Leona Lewis and iconic Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page doing "Whole Lotta Love" followed by football super-celebrity David Beckham kicking a soccer ball into the audience to the adulation of screaming fans. Along the way, dancers holding large umbrellas pranced around the bus.

Just when you began to wonder if that self-deprecating gesture towards London's weather was a bit too mundane, suddenly the opened brollies transformed into a phalanx of LED lights flashing colors and symbols in a sychrony that even China's Politburo would have been proud to have wired.

All in all, it was a glittering finale to Beijing's big show (and we have yet to discover the manipulative wizardry behind the scenes, like the lip-synching and CGI effects of the opening ceremony). To those who have portrayed the Games' visual extravaganzas as Hitleresque in proportion and impact, I say this: tonight in the Bird's Nest it didn't feel like Springtime for the Politburo, but more like a triumph of the techno-geeks.

UPDATE: Later my colleague Mary Hennock, who's British, said the scene in which the bus unpeeled itself was in fact somehow related to a privet hedge -- a quintessentially British icon that most people in the audience neither knew nor cared about. Which all goes to show that you don't have to be Chinese to be self-absorbed.

China: New King of the Rings?

Jonathan Ansfield — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 02:16:55 GMT

Leading up to the Games, Beijing's tsars of sport took pains to lowball medals projections in the conservative fashion of its economic planners. In the end the Chinese squad far outstripped its softly stated goal of 40 golds. With 51, China is the first nation to crack the 50 mark since the USSR won 55 in 1988. It's a phenomenal achievement, but what to make of it? The host nation's sweet showing was undercut by bitter controversy over its female gymnasts' ages, the numbing disappointment of its sole track star Liu Xiang, and the perennial critique that Team China is just the latest gargantuan image project - if the Party builds it, the medals will come.

It therefore seemed fitting that China's last couple golds came in the embattled event of boxing. I spent much of the weekend in the circular gallery of the Workers Gymnasium, a musty gem of Soviet-inspired monumentalism. There I saw China's fighters scrap their way on up from a single bronze at Athens to one bronze, one silver and two gold medals in Beijing. One of those two golds, the country's first, was won by the reigning world champ without much of a fight. The other came courtesy of a dark horse with a motivational tattoo of a winged Pegasus on his left arm, not to mention a major boost from the crowd and the benefit of the doubt from the judges. If you think the regurgitated debate over medals rankings is going to be a tough one to ever resolve - given America's historic focus on cumulative medals versus China’s (and many other nations') on gold - try judging the victor of an Olympic boxing bout.

In the light heavyweight final, Zhang Xiaoping outmaneuvered Ireland's Kenny Egan by a tally of 11-7. It was Zhang's second straight upset, and if conventional wisdom in our press section was any indication, the scoring was dubious both times. In the semifinal on Friday, a timid-looking Zhang scrapped to a 4-4 tie with Kazakh Yerkebulan Shynaliyev through four rounds, forcing a decision on countback. Shynaliyev had whipped Zhang by 13 points in the quarterfinals of the world championships in Chicago late last year. When the referee hoisted Zhang's hand this time, even the home crowd sounded mildly flabbergasted, releasing a wondrous roar. Another journalist and I turned to one another and shook our heads. Afterward Shynaliyev insisted that he would have won had he not developed pain in his shoulder in the second round. Zhang just pointed to his Pegasus tattoo. "People have been calling me a dark horse, but I will fly higher."

For Egan on Sunday, it took square blows to the head or torso to score points, while Zhang racked up many of his off his back foot. In a couple cases Zhang scored after he and Egan were entangled or had barely brushed at all, making it hard to discern where the points came from. But points are points. After getting out in front early, Zhang stood rounds two and three before pussyfooting the final minute. As the clock ticked down a red sea of Chinese fans were enrapt, while a rowdy pocket of Irish among them were livid. “Over the past two weeks I don’t think anyone’s appreciated how hard it’s been,” Egan winged afterward. “Shoulder slaps get scored.” He was accepting of silver - "brilliant" he called it. But in a very awkward moment on the medal stands, he peered up at Zhang, clutched the gold slung from Zhang’s neck and kissed it, as though claiming it were his. Twelve hours later, around 3 a.m., I would spot Egan blowing offf steam nearby at the raucous Irish-style pub Paddy O'Shea's. Ah, the luck of the Chinese. What's a brawler to do?

In fact it was just part of the bargain in Olympic boxing. The scoring system has been shrouded in scrutiny for decades now, and the International Boxing Association has been subsumed in a perennial state of reform since the Roy Jones, Jr. fiasco in Seoul in 1988, where a number of protested decisions nearly got the sport booted from the Games. Now, under an electronic scoring system first implemented after Seoul to improve transparency, at least three of the five judges must ring in within a second of a punch for the boxer to tally a point, while the judges and referees of each match are randomly assigned by computer. But the boxing world’s efforts at house-cleaning sort of remind one of China’s Communist Party’s never-ending war on corruption. With so much money and glory riding on a match, the risk of fixing is endemic.

The AIBA revealed that two months prior to the Games it was informed of “a possible attempt on the part of certain individuals, both within the organization and within the competition officials, to manipulate the competition.” The revelation came after Rudi Obreja, a technical delegate and president of the Romanian federation, called a spur-of-the-moment press conference to accuse colleagues of meddling in the process of selecting match officials. The AIBA responded by suspending Obreja for breaking protocol and announcing an investigation.

After watching Zhang's unlikely win and a couple other close contests, I sat in on another a predictably heated presser. AIBA bosses vehemently defended efforts to democratize the scoring, while journalists clearly frustrated from covering the event pressed them to explain why even they couldn’t agree consistently how bouts were being scored, let alone the average spectator. Disciplinary commission chair Tom Virgets acknowledged the system remained less-than-perfect but maintained the better fighter won 90 or 95 percent of the time. An AIBA communiqué stated, as evidence of the improvement, that in 249 fights to that point only four boxers had filed protests. The reason so few countries had protested, one journalist contended, is that they know it's no use.

Fortunately, there was no disputing China's 50th gold. Light flyweight Zou Shiming is the world's premier amateur in the 48 kg class and represents a feel-good argument for how the state's largesse can produce a new breed of model sports hero. What a compelling story Zou is, having taken up wushu to toughen up as an adolescent after his mother raised the boy as if he were a girl. Foreign press have given him nicknames like the "fox" or the "pirate", a bit pettily, for his elusive style of snatching points. In the end his Olympic conquest proved more anticlimactic than he himself had wished. Mongolian Serdamba Purevdorj retired with a hurt shoulder 20 seconds into Round Two. But Zou delivered the moments of raw emotion afterward. After telling himself he could not cry on the podium, he choked up one verse into the playing of the Chinese national anthem. Then the easy-going Guizhou lad, who could soon turn pro, declared to reporters that he had "shown the whole world the strength of the Chinese people."

Asked what food had fuelled him during his Olympic campaign, Zou said he'd been on a steady diet of Western fare such as burgers and pizza, particularly pizza (his favorite), explaining that he had missed Chinese food when fighting at the championships in Chicago, and hence vice-versa in Beijing. "Plus Chinese food can be very greasy, and I have to control weight." No one quite got that remark but everyone including him laughed. Zou, who had to settle for the bronze in Athens, also took some credit for Purevdorj's early exit. In Round One, he sprayed the Kazakh with upper cuts. Zou said his coach sensed Purevdorj's shoulder was vulnerable and advised him to go for a "pre-emptive" strike. "Maybe it looked easy, but in fact there was a lot of preparation behind it." The same could be said for many of China's Olympic champs.

2016 Games: Cleaner Air, Less Commuting, More Fun?

Manuela Zoninsein — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 19:04:40 GMT

                 Representatives of the four cities campaigning to host the 2016 Olympic Games — Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo— are were out in force during the 2008 Games, promoting their respective candidacies. Generally speaking, they're prohibited from commenting on or criticizing each other or the current host. So its been something of a lovefest -- even as reps of aspiring host cities highlight their own advantages and try to address the lessons learned from Beijing. "The Chinese people have done alot for us to learn from," was how Chicago 2016 Chairman-CEO Pat Ryan introduced his city's initiatives at Saturday's 2016 Bid City press conference on the Olympic Green (sponsored by McDonald's). Carlos Nuzman, President of Rio 2016, stressed that his team would "look at Beijing as a model for what they've done, and then consider how we can best address these questions for our city."

                  While criticism has been muted, there's no escaping the fact that the 2008 Games have been the most controversy-wracked Olympics in a long time. As they draw to a close, you can read between the lines of what the 2016 crowd is saying to discern the types of headaches they're resolving to avoid. Recently Madrid launched a promotional campaign suggesting it'll open its arms to all ethnic groups ("Whoever you are, from wherever you are, how you are. Welcome.") which could be read as an oblique comment on China's much-criticized handling of Tibetan riots which erupted in March. Asked about the evident analogy, Spanish IOC member Juan Antonio Samaranch -- a close friend of Chinese leaders -- told the Associated Press that the ads are "certainly not a reaction to Beijing."

                Still, a long-running history of violence by Basque separatists is seen as one of Madrid's weakest points. Faced with internal regional divisions and an influx of immigrants, the Spanish government clearly hopes to promote an open-minded and multi-cultural image. And, of course, to signal a departure from the way Beijing handled the Tibet issue, which triggered such intense protests during the Olympic torch relay through London, Paris and San Francisco that they threatened to tarnish the Olympics brand itself.

                 In terms of stunning venues, modern infrastructure and related hardware, Beijing's a hard act to follow. But a look at the 2016 pitches reveals other ways in which wanna-be Olympic hosts hope to bring the Summer Games eight years from now cleaner air, shorter commutes and more fun:

                1) Environment, especially air quality, is instrumental for any city hoping to get the IOC's nod for 2016. Madrid claims one of the lowest pollution levels by European standards, as well as "sustainable transport" for those commuting between venues, says Mayor Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon. The city's existing metro system will be the primary mode of transport, but if buses must be used, they will be electricity-powered. Rio de Janeiro intends to implement the model rapid-transit system developed in the Brazilian city of Curitiba. A quarter of Tokyo's 2016 initiatives focuses on environmental issues -- a five-foot-tall digital globe highlighting areas suffering from high levels of global warming is featured at the Beijing-based Japan House, which looks after Japanese nationals in town for the Olympics.

            2) Future hosts say they'll strive for shorter transport times and tighter venue clusters -- in contrast to sprawling Beijing and its far-flung Olympic sites which demand lengthy commutes. Tokyo vows that 95 percent of all athletic facilities would be located within an eight-kilometer radius. Madrid promises a maximum 10-minute car ride between two clusters of competition sites. Chicago would base the Athlete's Village and Olympic Green in Washington Park and the near South Side so that athletes could walk no more than 15 minutes to reach nine-tenths of their competitions.

            3) 2016 should be more fun. Chicago's "compact Games" also envisage that Olympic-related activities would be located in an "entertainment city", which places a premium on the enjoyment of the athletes. For 2016, "it's all about the athlete," explained Pat Sandusky, VP of Communications for Chicago. "They will get to enjoy the city, in the heart of the city." To support their bid, representatives of Rio's 2016 bid pointed to the energy of the fans inspiring athletes during the 2007 Pan-American Games, held in their "Marvelous City". Meanwhile Dr. Ichiro Kono, Chairman and CEO for Tokyo 2016, said he "enjoyed the size [of Beijing] very much—but in our plan, athletes can enjoy their travels, because they will be in the center of the city."

                Such declarations are a tacit critique of the security-conscious isolation that many athletes and others felt during these Games in terms of, well, simply meeting ordinary Chinese. Beijing's jitters led to such tight restrictions -- especially after a U.S. coach's relative was killed by a lone Chinese assailant -- that most grassroots citizens were barred from the Olympic Green, which in past Games has been open to the partying public. Though undoubtedly more secure, visitors feel out of touch. So in 2016, fun is consciously on the agenda -- and not just for athletes. Chicago highlights its reputation as a festival city. Rio points to its annual Carnaval celebration. And Madrid now hails its boisterous "Latin" culture -- despite years of discrimination against South American immigrants -- as a gauge of the spirit that should be affiliated with the Games.

                  The Olympics provide an opportunity for host cities to invest in infrastructure and social projects. That's one argument for awarding the Games to a developing country, and in this regard Rio is unique among the 2016 contenders. (Seoul, Barcelona and now Beijing are prominent examples of cities that the Olympics helped re-make.) But that also makes it even more important to stress that renovation and construction must be completed on time. Each of the 2016 bidders promise the IOC that all loose ends would be tied up well before the Games. Tokyo is already partway through a 10-year revitalization project, due for completion in the summer of 2016. Rio claims it'll be ready by 2014, when it's slated to host the World Cup. Madrid's metro already stops at all but one of the wanna-be Olympic venues. And Chicago says it's almost ready right now, with little need to build new facilities other than temporary archery fields.

                 2016 Bid City representatives were unanimous in their congratulations to Beijing in one particular regard: the energy and ubiquity of China's young Olympic volunteers. (Then again, it probably helped Beijing to have a ruling party accustomed to mass mobilization exercises -- and to have more than 1.3 billion people to mobilize.) Rio sees the Games as a unique chance to encourage more youth to experience the Olympic spirit and participate in sport. "[It's] very important to work closely with volunteers, and to bring the same atmosphere to the Games in Tokyo," said Masanori Takaya, International Communications Manager of Tokyo 2016.

He pointed to the "Cutting Edge Technology" booth at the Tokyo House, where foot-tall robots were engaged in various physical tasks such as exercise pull-ups and picking up objects. His colleagues are working on integrating such toys to aid the 2016 Games, he said. Technology will be part of the answer for helping make 2016 a success, no question about it. But another part will be more opportunities for the Olympic family to party with just plain ordinary folk.

Soccer Footnote: The U.S. Team's 'Stupidity' Problem

Mark Starr — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 08:21:41 GMT

Watching Nigeria play Argentina in the men’s soccer final this afternoon at the Bird’s Nest reminded me of a grievous oversight. Sitting in the stands, I was so appalled by the U.S. team's early departure from the tournament last week—2-1 at the feet of Nigeria—that I forgot to vent publicly.

The American team is good enough to compete with most anybody in the youth ranks—the Olympics is a under-23 affair (with three ringers). But it’s not nearly good enough that it can afford the kind of stupidity that in Beijing assured it wouldn’t survive the qualifying round.

Coachs’ sons are expected to be savvier than the average player. But the first dim-witted play came in the game before Nigeria against the Netherlands. In the waning moments, Michael Bradley, son of the coach of the U.S. senior men’s team, took an unnecessary and, even worse, futile, yellow card for delay of game. Granted it might not have mattered had the U.S. hung on to its lead, punching its ticket to the quarterfinals. But the Dutch scored in the final seconds and Bradley, thanks to his second yellow in two games, had to sit out the critical showdown with Nigeria. The 21-year-old is a key cog in the midfield, good enough that a week later he was in the starting lineup for his dad when the U.S. opened World Cup qualifying in Guatamala.

Still, Bradley’s stalling ploy classifies as genius next to the bone-headed retaliatory elbow that got defender Michael Orozco ejected just three minutes into the Nigeria game. The Americans, needing only a tie to advance, were game, but outmanned. And when a late rally fell short—a header clanged off the post—they were headed home.

Orozco compounded his sin afterwards by refusing to express a modicum of regret for his costly foul. But far worse was how coach Peter Nowak praised his team’s efforts in Beijing, acting as if U.S. soccer was still an interloper in the world’s game and couldn’t reasonably be expected to produce anything more than a first-round ouster. Nowak must have been sleeping through his team's brilliant performance against the European U-23 champ Netherlands, when his team looked the equal of any.

Fans of American soccer are used to folks around the world denigrating our game. But it's particularly galling when it comes from our own coach, who should know better. There is no longer any reason to have such meager expectations for a country that, despite its minimal traditions, has usurped Mexico as the leading soccer power in its region. The American game may not yet be at the level where we can expect the team to get out of the qualifying rounds, but it certainly is at the level where we can be disappointed when it doesn’t. While there may still be Pyrrhic victories to come for American soccer, losing in a preliminary round will never again produce one of them.

As for the Nigerian team that the U.S. barely lost to, it proceeded to beat Ivory Coast 2-0 in the quarters and to thrash Belgium 4-1 in the semis before it lost 1-0 to the defending Olympic champion Argentina. Who knows what the United States might have done if it had played with as much brains as it did heart?

The end of the U.S.-Nigeria soccer match. Photo by Mike Powell for NEWSWEEK

On China Beach, Americans Party

Jonathan Ansfield — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 04:39:16 GMT

Good thing the IOC killed Beijing’s idea, back in 2000, of Beach Volleyball on Tiananmen Square. It would never have been such a blast. Who could fathom the centerpiece of the 1989 carnage sandboxed for a fortnight a la playa? Who spiked Beijing boss Liu Qi’s tea before he had that idea, for that matter? As twisted and tactless as Liu's proposed site in the Square came off globally when the story first broke, it would not have played any better domestically today (even as memories of the 1989 crackdown fade from many Chinese minds, or never entered them in the first place.) That's because the whole uptightness of the place could never have hosted flouncing beach gals in string bikinis, patriotic odes remixed to techno, and the favored Americans emerging triumphant in a sweep of gold: dude, not in the square. Chairman Mao would have been bummed.

In the end Games organizers picked a substitute locale, deep inside Chaoyang Park. It’s the capital’s biggest, least historic and most artificial park, known almost solely for the bawdy nightlife around it. And so it became an natural destination for the varied elements of beach volleyball: white sand brought in from Hainan island, blaring dance mash-ups spun by DJ Stari (an Athens vet from Austria), and the frat-boyish emcee “Geeter”, of the U.S. pro tour, firing up the crowd.

At each break in the action, on came the aforementioned beach girls, the most shapely of all the cheerleaders at these Games. The rich-poor gap in flesh and moves, from venue to venue, has not been lost on the spectators. It appears clear that the cheerleaders -- unlike the food concessions, security lines, mascots and volunteers -- could not have been centrally planned.

Two days, two U.S. golds, under divergent conditions. The weather Friday, like five or six other days during this distinctly un-Beijing-like August, was postcard-perfect: authentic blue skies, 77 degrees Fahrenheit - 76 on sand – and manageable 73 percent-humidity, with a cooling mist bestowed by blowers in the grandstands.

Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser certainly took their time soaking it up. The world champs had received a welcome wakeup call in their opening match, a shock upset to the next-to-last seeds from Latvia. But from there they pretty much coasted. In the final, though, they faced upstarts Marcio Araujo and Fabio Luiz Magalhaes of Brazil, who in the semis had upset compatriots Emanuel Rego and Ricardo Santos, holders from Athens.

The Brazilians pushed the Americans to three sets. Careless American setting and Marcio’s dipping serve helped them claw their way into serious contention. But the Americans finally began to look serious themselves in the decisive set. Dalhausser was a beast, smacking a rash of blocks and spikes. Up 9-1, Rogers flattened out for a dig but couldn’t elevate on the kill and netted it.

No matter. Dalhausser cleaned up for him, stuffing an authoritative block to end the tourney. Before they were garlanded with gold, the ladies in red (red bikinis, red cowboy hats) jiggled forth a 15-minute encore to fill the setup time. This helped keep people around for the medal ceremony. The P.A. announcer (Aussie accent) summoned a stirring round of applause to send them off. “They were the real stars of Beijing 2008,” he opined.

By contrast Thursday’s women’s final was, duh, no day at the beach. It was played under a relentless downpour. But the match was a showdown: China versus USA. Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh came in the top ranked women in the world, but they were up against the top seeds in the tournament: China’s queen of the sand, Wang Jie, and her nimble 19-year-old partner Tian Jia. The storm did not deter the crowd. In fact, the stands appeared fuller than under the splash of sun on Friday. Never underestimate the will of Chinese to witness their athletes take gold. As an esteemed American colleague of mine observed, “It’s more evocative when everyone’s wet.”

Cool-colored rain ponchos were issued (one size fits all), and DJ Stari played a set to uplift us from dampened straits – no Creedence Clearwater Revival. He led off with the Pointer Sisters’ “It’s Raining Men.” Actually, it was raining women. In the presser afterward, Misty took dig at the skimpy swimsuit debate: “This is just another reason why we play in bathing suits.” (See Ashley Harris’s related piece on this topic).

If the U.S. and China could confine their rivalry to beach volleyball, this would be a very fun century indeed. Revving everyone up pre-game was Geeter, who shielded himself from the rain under a kitschy cap with a Manchu queue – the braided-pigtail emblem of Han Chinese submission to Manchu rule under the Qing Dynasty. Geeter tested his lungs and the limits of his Chinese. Geeter: Zhong guoooo (China). Crowd: Jia You! (“Add Fuel,” i.e. “Go!”). Geeter: “USA”. Crowd (almost as loudly): Jia You!.

During warm-ups, Stari played a Mandarin hip-hop number looping in the notes of that old revolutionary number, “The East is Red”. Early in the match, we heard the sped-up dub n’ bass version of another beloved Mao-era classic, “Ode to the Motherland” (the same tune at the center of a lip-synching imbroglio from the Opening Ceremony). The five-starred red Flag is flutters in the wind/ bright is our song of victory... A journalist from a major Chinese sports tabloid expressed mild surprise at what he was witnessing. But people bounced and swiveled to the retro techno as though it was the most natural instinct in the world. Yet more good reasons this wouldn’t, couldn’t, and didn’t go down at the Square.

The sopping crowd was rewarded with a topsy-turvy contest, which matched Chinese spunk and guile versus American strength, size and experience. The score was knotted numerous times in each set, climaxing at 17-17 in the first and 18-18 in the second. But Misty and Kerri gutted out all the pivotal points, and won convincingly in the end.

The home crowd could not be disappointed, though. The Chinese women took the silver and the bronze in the event, another in a run of medal breakthroughs for China in a number of events (including a gold in women’s wind-surfing). Walsh was effusive about China’s progress at the news conference afterwards. “These girls are so young and they’re so good”. Indeed the Chinese volleyball federation’s influx of investment in the softer surface has paid off very fast, and Tian’s a symbol of that. Rather than being plucked from the six-person game, she was drafted virtually straight into beach volleyball duties, as she explained, in part because her home region of Xinjiang, where the majority of residents are of the Muslim Uighur minority group (though she’s Han Chinese), has no provincial squad. What Xinjiang does have, I might add, is sand.

So does a lot of the country, as matter of fact, and we’re not talking about desertification, but rather beaches. The often cheaply developed strips of Hainan still suggest otherwise. But lily-white skin is not the sole standard of beauty in China any more. Tourism to Thailand and Bali is big, and tanning-booth bronze is in with some fast-moving city lasses. Some are predicting beach volleyball fandom will be a boon to the hang way of life.

In a column on Friday in The Beijing News, China Central Television announcer Han Qiaosheng was particularly bullish on the significance of the women’s medal feat: “Our country has a long coastline. As the economy develops at breakneck speeds, the vacation and beach businesses will be an added growth factor in the coastal economy, and beach volleyball will certainly become a attractive slice of the beach business. Beach volleyball will make a giant contribution to the development of the vacation business, and the promotion of health for the masses.”

Wei Hanfeng on Liu Xiang: "50 Medals Can't Make up for This"

Jonathan Ansfield — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 02:44:38 GMT

Many Chinese kids are in the market for a new idol. Even a lot of adults just can't get over Liu Xiang's dramatic withdrawal from the Games. China's champion hurdler showed in Athens that, as he put it, his “yellow” race can both run and jump, and do them both to precision. So the sight of him staggering off moments after stepping onto the track at the Bird's Nest was simply unfathomable. It's the nightmare Chinese sports fans will take away from an otherwise dreamy Games. My Chinese nephew, a 19-year-old jock, questions why Liu kept groping his thigh if his coach said the problem was his heel. Was the real problem his head?

In a cover story published Friday, the Chinese edition of Sports Illustrated reports that Liu's Achilles tendon inflammation was not only real, but that it was clear for some time that he would have difficulty competing. But that fact was handled in a less-than-transparent fashion. While his nagging injuries were not completely kept from the press, Liu himself was. Even his own family remains out of the loop, the magazine's account suggests. Asked about her kid’s condition after the race, Liu’s mother Ji Fenhua was quoted as saying: “It isn’t good for me to pry into his personal affairs. Right now he’s the son of the country. Wait a few years until when he’s returned to me.” On Wednesday, I spoke with SI China’s executive editor Wei Hanfeng about how the one gold medal Liu was expected to win meant more than the record haul of gold that Team China won. Excerpts:

Q: Press and television in China have been overwhelmingly sympathetic to Liu, but on the streets and the Web there’s a lot of cynicism and speculation. Is there any pressure or guidance from authorities on you regarding how to cover this story?

Not for us. In fact, the only direct pressure we had was from sponsors and advertisers. I wouldn’t really call it pressure. But they did ask the magazine to dilute our story somewhat, to soften it. But we are independent media, and we have to operate based on our values of independence.

Q: So you’ve felt a market backlash against Liu?

Yes, at least initially. Before this race, a slot [in the publication] beside Liu Xiang was such an honor. But now certain advertisers are asking specifically not to be placed near stories about Liu Xiang. There were at least two or three.

Q: But Nike has taken the opposite approach. Their ads embrace Liu’s situation as a fundamental part of sports.

For Nike, there’s no way to avoid it. They had to face up to it. They did the right thing. But there's been a lot of talk of several other sponsors pulling Liu Xiang’s ads for the moment. We’ll see.

Q: Why is there so much skepticism over what happened?

From what we know and reported, well before the race Liu Xiang’s heel injury was too serious for him to run. If that’s case then the question is why did he even take the track. Some people are comparing this to Ronaldo at the World Cup in 1998. In the final against France, people said Nike pressured Ronaldo to play on his bad ankle. Now you hear Chinese people who suspect it’s the same kind of thing here. They’re saying all sorts of things on the Internet -- about how Liu Xiang had to come out and at least show his face before going down. That’s the basic theory.

Q: If Liu’s camp had failed to alert people to the extent of his injury, he wasn't exactly left with many choices.

Yes, you could say that. If he had dropped out of the race ahead of time, people would suspect him of being one of two things: a coward, or a doper.

Q: If Liu's injury was real, why would he and his coaches and federation feel such pressure?

The pressure, direct or indirect, came from all sides: from the country, from the sponsors, from the officials and coaches, as well as from his own personal desire for success. We feel that all these factors combined bore down upon him.

Q: A lot of people still don’t believe that he was as badly hurt as he appeared. Was it the pressure, or the pain, that caused him to pull out?

Liu Xiang definitely would have run if he could. But China has some very strange history here. Back in 1962, the ping pong player Han Yuzhen was facing a big match in Japan. But she suffered a deep cut in her left hand and had to pull out. She claimed a Japanese attacker broke into her hotel room [and wounded her]. But then it was discovered that she took a knife to her own hand. Why? She did it because was afraid she was going to lose and bring shame upon the nation [On returning home Han was banished to reeducation through labor on a farm; she was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution and died of cancer in 1979, aged 38] Today the times are completely different, but Liu Xiang is under just as much pressure. This is just an ordinary injury. But it’s become a major event for society.

Q: Liu Xiang is not just an ordinary star.

Of course. He’s conscious of that that. He’s got something like 14 different sponsors. If he were just an ordinary sports star, it would have been easy for him to say, “I’m injured and I’m not racing.” It seems the most innocent thing. But for him it’s a scandal.

Q: But why did he have to apologize?

That’s his Chinese subconscious talking. They knew what people might start to say: That for example they covered up the injury in order to keep his ad deals going this year. If the sponsors knew long ahead of time that there’s no way he would be Olympic champion, then what? That’s how people tend to think. His partnership with Cadillac, for instance, only began this year. And what do you say to the country? [In March, Chinese leader] Hu Jintao passes you the torch to start Olympic torch relay. And now you’re not ready to go? The state attached so much importance to him, and the people pinned their Olympics hopes to him.

Q: Still, China is going to end up with 50 gold medals, the highest number of any country. Doesn’t that make up for the loss of one?

Sure. But you could say that a lot of these other medals are cheap. The governments invests so much into the minor sports, and in a sense the results sort of trick the people. But when you win a medal in the so-called big sports – basketball, soccer, or track – that’s really something. People know the difference. So that’s why people had their hopes riding on Liu Xiang. Nothing can really compensate. Another fifty gold medals cannot make up for this. We’d won so much gold [the first week], but then this. People were completely caught off-guard. The way it happened, it was like Heaven was playing a joke on China!

Q: Do you feel everyone’s making too much of this?

No. It’s a huge story. To tell you the truth, when I watched it, my tears were uncontrollable. But I also felt very conflicted about it. On the one hand, here you have just an injured athlete. But on the other, he’s a symbol of the country. His image was completely one of health, vigor, and omnipotence. We put him on such a high pedestal. He basically became a spokesman for the new generation of Chinese people. So the feeling is, “how could this happen to him? This is always our nation’s bad fate.”

But that’s the other problem. Why must we feel this way? Chinese people have such a drive to win. Other nations know what sports they can play and what sports they can’t. But we feel we should be able win at absolutely everything – in soccer, basketball, everything. Maybe part of it’s because as a nation, we were bullied around for too long -“100 years of humiliation,” and so on. But then this ambition culminates in misery, because you see the result. We cannot always break through, cannot accomplish it all. So in the end you just feel hurt. This is what I feel inside, as a Chinese citizen.

Q: But your work is sport.

Yeah. And right now, at least, I feel that [Liu Xiang’s withdrawal] is the biggest sporting event in my life. The Beijing Olympics, that’s an intangible sort of thing. But Liu Xiang, that you can deeply feel. You can feel what his mom is feeling. You can feel the pain in his foot.

Q: What if he had raced and lost?

No problem. That would have been normal. Didn’t [former champ] Allen Johnson fall down in Athens? The 110-meter hurdles is a very tough race. Everything has to go righ [for an athlete] to win. Not a lot of people realize that. But his pulling out so suddenly, after all the buildup, struck some sort of nerve in the self-esteem of the Chinese people. This reaction is really quite vain.

Q: Yao Ming was injured earlier this year, too. Why was that handled so differently?

China’s expectations of Liu Xiang and Yao Ming are very different. They want Liu Xiang to win gold at the Olympics, but they only hope Yao Ming will win an NBA championship. Some fans even said they would rather that Yao not play at the Olympics, because they were scared he’d aggravate his injury. Yao Ming was injured, the Rockets announced it, and everyone moved on. But Liu Xiang trained behind closed doors, the Chinese way. And everyone was preparing for him. Even Newsweek was preparing for him. You put him on your cover.

Q: In his CCTV interview [broadcast the day after his pullout] Liu himself seemed shocked by the injury.

It’s as if the whole world was preparing a banquet for you and you didn’t show up. And you didn’t even bother to call and tell them ahead of time. Or you just stopped by for a minute and then left.

Q: Yet it seems Chinese media are standing firmly behind Liu Xiang. Why is that? What other considerations go into your treatment the story?

Obviously it’s hard to be too critical. That would not be fair. The issue’s so complex. And when the nation’s Vice-President [Xi Jinping] sends official condolences and understanding, you have to take note of that, too. Our original headline was “Liu Xiang: A Nation Dumbstruck”. But we decided that was too strong for the cover. So we changed it to something simple: “Liu Xiang: 8.18” [the date of the race].

Q: The state runs competitive sport in China and raises all the athletes. But Liu Xiang transcended the system and became something much more. How hard is it for China to produce more stars like him?

You are lucky to have grown up with sports stars you can really love. China now has so much money and so much status and everything else but we have no sports stars whom we can really extend our love towards. Maybe if there were ten Yao Mings and ten Liu Xiangs, the disappointment over Liu Xiang would be minimized and our drive to win would be diluted. But for now there’s only one Yao Ming, only one Liu Xiang.

Chinese Athletes Pierce the Propaganda Curtain

Melinda Liu — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 17:03:12 GMT

Duncan Hewitt in Shanghai reports on a new trend in Chinese media, which has begun revealing personal stories and quirks of Olympic athletes:

We all know Chinese authorities are just a tiny bit concerned about how their country is perceived, both by foreigners and their own citizens, as a result of these Olympics. “We are an image-conscious nation – we do house-cleaning when guests visit,” announced the official China Daily in an angry editorial denouncing foreign criticism of the Games last week. This ‘image-consciousness’ has been a sub-theme of everything from ultra-tight security to politburo-level intervention in the choice of the little girl who sang at the opening ceremony. And state media are of course doing their bit to paint their portrait of a harmonious, confident, and increasingly important nation: “Beijing brings happiness to the world,” and “Beijing has made the Olympics more genuinely global in nature” are just two of the burbling front-page headlines run by the always on-message tabloid The Global Times over the past fortnight.

China’s official broadcaster, CCTV, has done its best to reinforce the harmonious mood as well -- by ignoring all protests, broadcasting endless repetitions of the gruesomely banal video for the Olympic song ‘Beijing Welcomes You’, and running news stories about folk dance troupes from China and around the world performing in Tiananmen Square, “showing the friendship between China and foreigners”. There are other unique gems, such as the show I saw featuring a woman in army uniform surrounded by dancers in ancient Chinese costume, singing a song in English that praised the Olympics to an audience of uniformed police officers. (Words hardly do it justice, but the phrase ‘Confucio-militarist kitsch’ does spring to mind…)

Add to this the fact that China’s sports system is well-known for being one of the least reformed parts of the bureaucracy, and it’s perhaps inevitable that some foreign media coverage has portrayed China’s ever-more successful athletes as faceless cogs in a giant propaganda machine. “The state broadcaster is interested in Olympics but not Olympians. Not for CCTV the looks at individual athletes' back-stories which are commonplace to those who watch sport in the west … The Chinese are not presented with the athlete's journey to gold. It is as if the only narrative that matters is that of China's. Hence endless focus on the medal table,” wrote one visiting journalist.

Now it’s clear that the nation’s sporting success fits into an important narrative for the government (when you hear commentators using the phrase “a historic breakthrough for China” to describe success in beach volleyball you know that something’s going on.) At the same time, what’s actually been striking in Chinese media coverage of the nation’s athletes at this Olympics has been the amount of focus given to individuals. The idea of stony-faced medal-winners parroting official slogans and dedicating their success to the motherland may (perhaps) have been true a few Olympics ago. But this time things have been very different and a lot more complex.

Yes, we did have the female windsurfing champion who couldn’t stop thanking her ‘leaders,’ but she also thanked her family and friends. And in general there’s been a lot of coverage of athletes expressing their own feelings and showing a lot of emotion, from the weight-lifter who greeted his gold medal by saying he couldn’t wait to get back to his family now that he didn’t have to train anymore, to the badminton duo shown weeping in an Olympic car park after failing to repeat their gold medal success at Athens.

It partly reflects a generational change – as their trendy hairstyles and willingness to ‘open up’ in front of the media reminds us, many of these athletes are in their teens or early twenties. And a media which now increasingly reflects the interests of younger viewers – and younger journalists – is keen to lap up the human-interest stories (provided these don’t break any propaganda taboos of course). And so we got the air-rifle marksman who broke down on camera, apparently inconsolable about how he’d let himself down by ‘only’ winning a silver medal. There was the medal-winner who appealed via the media for her long-lost father to get in touch with her.

There was the enfant terrible of Chinese badminton, Lin Dan, with his popstar looks and sports star girlfriend, defying the odds and the critics who’d written him off, to win a gold medal - and then pumping the air, hurling his shoes into the crowd and leaping into the arms of spectators in the front row, much to the irritation of the security man trying to usher him off the court. “I won this to show people what kind of a person I really am,” he said on TV afterwards, before bursting into tears.

And of course there was Guo Jingjing, the diving champion with the ‘film-star looks’ (as the Chinese press like to put it) , whose private life is of so much interest to the media that one questioner at her news conference asked whether her gold medals were a revenge against media intrusion into her life; Guo simply ruffled her long hair, looked away from the camera and appeared rather disinterested.

It may often be pretty sentimental stuff, but it’s certainly all about personalities - which are now the stuff of the media (particularly print and local TV) in China nearly as much as they are in many countries. Liu Xiang, whose Olympic dream ended so forlornly in Beijing, played a large part in stirring this frenzy when he exploded onto the scene in Athens four years ago.

Hence at this Olympics we’ve had even the staid central sports broadcaster CCTV5 trying to get in on the personality act, with a nightly chat show where medal winners and their coaches come on and talk, at sometimes embarrassing length, about themselves, their careers, and their feelings, before placing their handprints on gold stars on a ‘wall of fame.’ American gymnast Shawn Johnson got on the show too, with her Chinese coach. Host Cui Yongyuan, one of China’s best known celebrities, did his best to keep it informal – trying to persuade medal winners to propose to their fiancées live on air, dancing with embarrassed female gymnasts and asking their male colleagues to teach everyone the names of complicated gymnastic moves, so viewers could impress their friends in the bar. Cui also had a long discussion with a Chinese swimming coach who spent years in Australia learning a different approach to training, then set up his own club in China as an alternative to the official sports ‘machine’.

And there was space for the losers too. Talking to one female gymnast -- who was near to tears as she described how upset she was after falling and losing out on a medal, and how she felt sorry for all the people who’d supported her -- Cui suggested that as China’s sporting prowess has matured, “our fans have grown up too. We know now that sport is about success and failure and how to deal with them.” It was a timely reminder that, for all the propaganda, a more human, thoughtful and down-to-earth side of China and Chinese has also been on view at this Olympics. (It’s been on view too in the calm, non-jingoist and very well-informed commentary regarding many sporting events on some of China’s more ‘modern’, less centrally controlled TV stations, such as Shanghai’s sports channel) In a society where the official line and an often more complicated social reality often coexist, it’s quite possible that – as paradoxical as it may sound -- both these aspects will turn out to have been boosted by these Games.

Going Solo: An American Soccer Triumph

Mark Starr — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 18:32:40 GMT

An 'I' in Team: The U.S. women celebrate. Photo by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

Despite how often Mia Hamm was reminded that she was the singular face of American woman‘s soccer, the “I” word never escaped her lips. Until the day she retired after the Athens Olympics, Hamm as well as her teammates always talked about “we.” And they insisted that the bonds of sisterhood, as the women struggled together to put their game on the American map, were as essential to their success—two World Cup triumphs and two Olympic gold medals—as their considerable playing skills.

That notion was supposed to be at the core of the next generation of U.S. women's team players. But the 2007 World Cup in China revealed that it had never completely taken hold. The implosion came after starting goalkeeper Hope Solo, who had backstopped the team without a loss to the semi-finals, was benched against Brazil in favor of the veteran, Briana Scurry. Scurry was hardly the only problem that day when a quicker, more talented Brazilian team kicked the U.S. women 4-0. But afterward, Solo mouthed off, indicating not only her displeasure at being sidelined, but insisting that she would have fared better than Scurry, a hero of the ’99 World Cup triumph.

Trashing a teammate and a coach was something a man would do and the team reacted with predictable fury. No longer was Solo just benched, she was booted off the team and on her way home before the U.S. team, with Scurry in goal, won the bronze medal game. The loss and the subsequent mess cost coach Greg Ryan his job. His replacement, Pia Sundhage, a Swede and the first non-American to coach the U.S. women’s national team, faced a lot of resistance when she invited Solo back. But she insisted that Solo was critical to the team's Olympic hopes. “Do you want to win?” she asked the players.

And last night with Solo in the nets, the United States—in the kind of delicious irony that sport so often serves up—faced heavily favored Brazil again, this time for the Olympic gold medal. Could the woman who had so recklessly shed one legacy be the mainstay in rescuing another—winning?

For 90 minutes, the 27-year-old Solo did everything possible to keep the United States in the gold-medal chase. She gobbled up balls without a stumble or a fumble, executed perfectly timed dashes to beat the speedy Brazilian forwards to the ball and punched out several dangerous corner kicks that she couldn’t snare. And in the 72^nd minute when the brilliant Marta dribbled through two U.S. defenders and fired inside post, Solo knocked away what looked to be a sure goal with her right forearm as she was falling to her left. The Brazilian coach would say later he was already getting to his feet to celebrate.

In the 89^th minute, U.S. forward Amy Rodriguez had the fairytale ending on her foot. After a game in which Brazil had frequently looked dangerous—it had 14 corner kicks to the U.S.’s 3 and possessed the ball 58 percent of the game—and the U.S. hadn’t, Rodriguez slipped through the Brazilian defense and went in alone on the goalkeeper. But rather than try to go around the keeper, who had ventured out, she tried to loft the ball softly over her and didn’t get it above her fingertips.

Sometimes you just have to work overtime for redemption. While Solo remained unflappable, keeping the potent Brazilian attack at bay, the ball finally took a big bounce America’s way in the sixth minute of the 30-minute overtime session, This time when Rodriguez got the ball at the top of the box, she knew exactly what to do with it. She slid it over to midfielder Carli Lloyd, the team’s best outside gun and the one player who had been outspoken in defense of Solo. Lloyd fired a left-footer, diagonally from about 19 yards out, and the ball just slid past the outstretched left hand of the sprawling Brazilian keeper.

The Brazilians never stopped threatening and fired away on Solo throughout the second half of overtime. But their shots were always just wide or just over the net. On one free kick from 30 yards out, Solo appeared to be screened because she never moved on the ball, but it skittered wide right. In the final minute, Brazil had two more golden opportunities; Solo punched one out of danger and sprawled to deflect the second wide. When the final whistle blew and the U.S. had held on for a 1-0 victory, Solo raised her arms in triumph and charged upfield and into the middle of her jubilant teammates.

Welcome: Solo after the match. Photo by Donald Miralle for Newsweek

But soon she was alone at the end of the field, talking on a cellphone to her brother back home in Washington. Later when she was asked if she felt fully part of the team now, she suggested that maybe she had been a pioneer—like Hamm, though she never suggested that—in changing roles in women’s sports. “We don’t have to be best friends,” she said of her and her teammates. But she clearly felt some burden had been lifted. “I can be myself now without looking over my shoulder,” she said. “I’m free to be myself now.” Asked if she felt vindicated, she simply said, “I feel amazing.”

Nobody will ever know if Solo would have made a difference against Brazil in the World Cup a year ago. And maybe her decidedly unsisterly comments were bad form. But in old-fashioned parlance, if she talked the talk back then, tonight she certainly walked the walk. Solo was all the difference. And thanks above all to her heroic efforts, the United States women’s soccer team has added another gold medal—probably the most surprising in its storied history--to its vast treasure trove.

A Day at the Beach

Mark Starr — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 08:51:48 GMT

It’s hard to explain to friends back home, deeply envious of my privilege to go to any Olympic event I choose, why sometimes I prefer to watch the events in my office on the closed-circuit Olympic broadcast rather than watch them from prime press seats in the stands. The answer in a word: rain!

When my pal Filip woke me early this morning to tell me not to worry, that he had already confirmed that the beach volleyball final would be played regardless, I sensed that I wasn’t hearing entirely good news. I pulled back the shades in my room, glanced out the window and made the kind of spur-of-the-moment decision the truly great journalist must always be prepared for. Misty and Kerri had no choice but to play in a downpour—“that’s another reason we wear bathing suits,” Misty May-Treanor told reporters—but I could opt to stay dry back at the Main Press Center.

Apart from the comfort of dry clothes, there are certain professional advantages to staying away as well. Even with a bus system that, in my long Olympic tenure, deserves the gold medal for both efficiency and courtesy, the rigors of traveling to and fro pretty much limit you two events a day. But sit in front of the tube, with its 39 Olympic channels and a grandmaster like Al on the clicker, and you can see virtually every play of every game of every sport. At one point, Al was going back and forth so fast that I thought our heavyweight wrestler had just spiked a winner on the beach through the Chinese pair.

The biggest bonus today was that a time when I would have been riding the bus back from the “beach”, I got to see the a real volleyball game instead. Now I am not so old that the appeal of beach volleyball is lost on me. With all due respect to our women's gold-medal duo, May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh, who are not only sensational athletes but among my all-time, favorite Olympians, beach volleyball would not rate NBC prime-time live if not for the dimensions of the uniform and the hardbodies that are uncovered by them. (That is equally true for the men’s game.) And while the downpour might render me a sodden mess, it certainly had the players’ bodies glistening—sweat to the nth degree. (I am told that the Chinese were at first appalled by such immodesty among its athletes, but, with two duos in the women’s final four, they have obvious adjusted to our dubious Western ways.)

I know it is heresy to say this, but absent the titillation (and the rock and roll that punctuates the game), the beach version is simply not as interesting a game as traditional indoor volleyball. The six-on-a-side game has longer, more spectacular rallies and more variety in both play and strategy. Frankly, I had kind of forgotten how compelling the old-fashioned volleyball can be. I suspect that’s because we journalists are parochial and U.S. teams haven’t been serious medal contenders since both the men and women took bronze in Barcelona back in 1992.

But in Beijing we have witnessed an American revival. The men’s team is undefeated and will play Russia in the semis tomorrow. And today the American women played almost the perfect game to reach the finals, sweeping a Cuban team that had shut them out three sets to none just 10 days ago. These women sweat too, but it is not a sideshow; the rivulets simply disappear into their uniforms rather than their bellybuttons. They also leap, dive and sprawl with precious little regard for their bodies, the floor being a bit less forgiving than the sand.

Chacun a son gout, but I’m going against the flow and casting my lot with our indoor volleyballers. Frankly, it was such a pleasure watching the American women’s combination of power and precision, grit and finesse that it was like a day at the beach.

Human Rights: Geriatric Gulag?

Melinda Liu — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:52:25 GMT

We all knew China's population was graying rapidly, but Wednesday authorities drove home the point by sentencing two elderly women to the gulag. Wu Dianyuan and Wang Xiuying are both citizens in their late 70's who walk using canes; Wang is partially blind. They'd applied for permission to protest in one of the three government-designated "protest corners" in Beijing public parks. Their grievance is a common one: that they received inadequate compensation for their homes which were demolished in a recent pre-Games wave of urban redevelopment. Permission to protest was not granted; none of at least 77 applicants have received permission, in fact. Then the two elderly ladies each received a suspended sentence of one year of "re-education through labor", an extra-judicial punishment that doesn't require the decision of a court judge.

Other Chinese activists have been held incommunicado since the onset of the Games. Dissenters and the lawyers who represent them have been detained, even beaten. The Foreign Correspondents' Club of China reports that, in less than a month, members have encountered reporting interference by authorities on an average of about two cases per day. Meanwhile foreign critics of Beijing's policies in Tibet have been playing a cat-and-mouse game with Beijing police, launching guerrilla protests of various sorts on an almost daily basis—only to be swiftly arrested and deported. (A recent protest near the Bird's Nest stadium, involving activists holding LED lights that spelled out "Free Tibet", lasted just 20 seconds, according to Students for a Free Tibet; the exile group said that on Tuesday half a dozen "citizen journalists, videobloggers, and activists" were detained, including Brian Conley who created the well-known videoblog "Alive in Baghdad".)

For more background on this behind-the-scenes tussle, Newsweek.com interviewed Minky Worden, media director for Human Rights Watch China. Worden recently edited the book "China's Great Leap: The Beijing Games and Olympian Human Rights Challenges". She talks about the recent failures and hopeful future for human rights reforms and extended press freedoms in China. (The contributor who talked with Worden requested anonymity for fear of retaliation). Excerpts:

In the short term, what do you think the impact of the Olympics has been on human rights?
     This year a chill descended and it started almost exactly with the one-year countdown on August 8, 2007. This was entirely predictable, but it was also against the backdrop of a pretty rough year -- with the 17th Party Congress in October, the freak snowstorms earlier this year, the Tibet protests, and the Sichuan earthquake.
     It's important to remember that 2008 is not just an Olympic year. It's also the 30th anniversary of Deng Xiaoping's opening and reform policy. In the past ten years, there have been important reforms for the rule of law and human rights. And the Internet means people have a lot more access to information than they had before, even though it's not total access.
     This year, there's been a marked deterioration [in the human rights situation]. But this is a very Darwinistic Communist party: there are elements within that recognize the need to change, not the least to hold on to their own power. We're hopeful that after the Olympics the Chinese government will move on vital legal reforms, including [changes to] the criminal procedure law, to reeducation through labor, and to due process checks on death sentences that could radically reduce the numbers of executions.

Temporary regulations, due to expire October 17, have allowed foreign journalists to interview anyone they'd like, as long as the
interviewee gives permission. These represent a liberalization compared to the old 90's-era rules. What do you think will happen in the
future?
     Some public officials have publicly mooted that these temporary rules could be extended past October 17. If they were extended and made permanent--as Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protect Journalists have requested--it would create a two-tier system [with the Chinese press having less freedom that foreign press]. We don't believe that would be sustainable.
     If the rules were extended to Chinese journalists, that could be a dramatic move for human rights in China. If environmental catastrophes and human rights abuses could be covered by Chinese journalists in advance, before they become global crises, that would be much better for the government and the Chinese people. The number-one beneficiary would be the Chinese people.
      But that's still an open question. There are still more journalists and Internet writers jailed in China than in any other country. The Foreign Correspondents Club of China has documented cases of abuses, harassment, and detention almost every day--some of them very serious.
     The hope is that the government will see that 20,000 journalists fanned out over China and there were no lasting bad effects from allowing journalists greater ability to report.

What are some of the cases of jailed activists that you're most concerned about?
      The saddest cases of all are the domestic lawyers and activists who probably wouldn't been in prison if they hadn't taken the government at its word that there would be more freedom. Hu Jia, an AIDS activist and human rights advocate, gave phone testimony to the EU Parliament last year. He was arrested in December and sentenced in April--while the IOC was in China. Right before the Olympics began, his wife, Zeng Jinyan, disappeared and we don't know if she was arrested or fled with her daughter.

       And then there are the people who tried to use the protest zones set up by the government for the Olympics. You have to register to protest, but anyone who's tried to register has been arrested. It's so cynical of the government to set up these parks and use them to round people up. They're like Potemkin protest zones--they exist in name but not in practice. The idea that you would set up something and not allow people to go--that's not in keeping with the Olympian spirit.

Why do you think the situation got worse this year?
      It's an impulse to control that predates the Olympics. Whenever there's a big event, there's this impulse. And the negative press is principally because of this. China would have gotten a lot of credit if it had allowed the protests.

You recently criticized the IOC in an op-ed you wrote in the International Herald Tribune. What do you think the IOC's responsibility is?
It's important to step back and remember the "why" and "how" China got [to host] the Olympics. 1989 was the Tianamen Square crackdown. In 1990, Deng said, "China should apply for the Olympics." At that time, China was in a global diplomatic deep freeze. They needed something to sweep away the images of Tiananmen Square. That bid [for the 2000 Olympics] failed, probably because China was not prepared to host the Olympics.
In 2001, the bid guaranteed human rights improvements and complete media freedom. My favorite line is, "China will live up to its words and turn its words into deeds...The government will honor the promises and commitments made during our bid to host the Games." It highlights how Beijing made these pledges voluntarily. A confident and modern government lives up to its own promises--including those to its own people.

Hurdler Liu Xiang's photo on the book jacket

     Richard Pound, who writes a chapter in the book, was there in 1993 and 2001 [for China's two bids]. What was different in 2001 was the inclusion of human rights, which provided an irresistible opportunity, they thought. And he's not an activist--he's a 30-year member of the IOC. It's fair to say that the IOC failed because they were advised well in advance by HRW and others and had numerous opportunities to raise issues about human rights. They could've made the host city contract public. Past contracts have been made public--particularly in the wake of the Salt Lake City bribery scandal. There's no reason the world should not know what China agreed to.
     They also wasted an opportunity not to put into place a human rights mechanism that would hold the host country responsible for abuses. We're pushing for that before the 2014 Sochi [Winter] Olympics in Russia. It needs to be statutory: if the IOC is going to continue to award the Games to human rights abusing countries then there need to be some checks in place--like there are for doping and bribery--so the human rights concerns don't overwhelm the Games.

Did you ever consider a boycott of the 2008 Games?
     HRW did not support a boycott for two reasons. One was practical: so many of the Chinese people support the Games. The other was tactical
because China had made so many pledges to support the human rights and this was an opportunity to try to hold them to it.

HRW's website was recently unblocked in the Olympic media center. How long had it been blocked for?
      Our website was always blocked in China until the Olympics [began].

I found I could access the English-language version--and every language except Chinese.
     At some level, who cares if the English version works? They haven't unblocked the most important part. For starters, it's a violation of the pledges of journalistic freedom. What about journalists who are part of the Beijing press corps? It shows there was a specific effort to block only the Chinese version. It also means the Chinese people are missing an opportunity to see how a human rights organization works. If that site was unblocked, they could see that we also cover human rights violations in the U.S., Russia, and 80 other countries.

What do you think the long-term outlook is for China?
     I think the sad thing is China has done well in showcasing its modernity and architecture. But it missed the opportunity to show what transformed the country and that was reform. China's not going to close up again--the Chinese people won't allow it. The question is, what is the pace of reform?
     The great hope is that once the pressure of the international spotlight is off, reform can continue. Reformists will move forward with processes that have already lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.

Bolt of Lightning

Mark Starr — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:59:02 GMT

On the Run: Bolt wins the 200 meters. Photo by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

It has not been the best of summers for the legacy of Michael Johnson, the greatest American track star of the previous decade. Earlier he lost a gold medal, the inevitable outcome when Antonio Pettigrew, one of his relay-mates on the U.S.'s winning 4X400 team in Sydney, admitted he had been using performance-enhancing drugs. Then Wednesday night, Usain Bolt broke Johnson's record in the 200 meters, a record that had seemed built to last.

When Johnson set his record at the '96 Atlanta Olympics, he staggered in disbelief after the finish line when he saw his own time of 19.32. Almost immediately the stadium loud speakers blasted a pop song with the refrain "Unbelievable." And there was really no other word for it. Johnson had shattered one of the longest surviving records in his sport--and by a margin of more than a half second.

Bolt only shaved .02 seconds off Johnson's mark, but "unbelievable" seemed the right word choice once again. When Michael Phelps closed out his Olympics with a record eight gold medals, it was hard to imagine any other Olympic athlete giving a performance to rival his. Phelps remains the standout of these Games, but Bolt is giving him a run for his money--at the very least a #2 with a bullet on the Olympic charts.

The Jamaican flash, who is essentially a rookie at the elite levels of sprinting--he turned 22 years old a few hours after his gold-medal race--had already broken the world record in the 100 meters last Saturday. The Olympics, with multiple heats in both the 100 and 200, is supposed to be a challenging place in which to set a world record let alone two. In his winning 200, he ran .35 seconds faster than his own personal best and more than a half second faster than the second-place finisher, Churandy Martina of Netherlands Antilles. America'sWallace Spearmon finished third. Later, both would be disqualified for running out of their lanes, and Americans Shawn Crawford and Walter Dix were awarded the silver and bronze medals.

But numbers don't quite tell the story of Bolt's magical runs here. Just like in the 100, there was remarkably little appearance of effort in his race. Bolt appears to glide over the track, as sweet a stride as the sport may have ever witnessed. If he ever decides that the 400 meters is a good race for him, Johnson's last world record would almost certainly fall quickly.

Then again neither the records nor his running style quite explain why he has emerged here as such a monumental star. Bolt has a playful quality--he danced and mugged and "I'm numbered oned" during his victory lap--and celebrated his latest victory with such infectious joy that not only the Chinese, but fans from every nation seemed to embrace him like a fellow countryman. The two universal rhythms of Jamaica: reggae and now Bolt.

At a press conference in Beijing before the Games, Bolt said he didn't know if he would run both races. When reporters informed him that his coach had already said he would, Bolt wasn't the least non-plussed. Apparently he likes surprises. So do sportswriters and Bolt delivered a beauty tonight. ("No way, no how," was my prescient pronouncement before the race on his prospects for another record.)

In a sport plagued by doping scandals, Bolt appears a breath of fresh air. But after his stunning performance every true fan, burned so many times by champions who turned out to be cheats, offered the same silent prayer: "Oh God, I hope he's clean."

U.S. Women's Teams Are the Bomb

Mark Starr — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:37:25 GMT

After the bronze-medal disaster of the U.S. men's basketball team in Athens four years ago, there was a consensus that the American men seem to lack some fundamental understanding of the concept of T-E-A-M. If you wanted to see American squads with real team values, you went and watched our women play sports. While Kobe and company have done much to rehabilitate our nation's basketball reputation here in Beijing, the American women have been the absolute bomb. And Thursday will witness perhaps the biggest day in Olympic history for the American women's teams. From 9 a.m. to midnight, six women's teams—beach volleyball, volleyball, water polo, softball, soccer and basketball—will play for gold medals or to reach the finals and the chance to play for gold medals. Here's a preview of those six contests in Beijing chronological order:

11 a.m.—Beach Volleyball: U.S. beach queens Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh face a home-sand disadvantage when they play China's favorite duo of Wang Jie and Tian Jia for the gold medal. The Chinese got the #1 seed here, which is a bit of a puzzlement since the California gals are defending Olympic champions and haven't lost a match since Aug 19th—of last year! Their winning streak now totals 106 matches and they have plowed through the Olympic field without losing a set. (The Chinese, by contrast, have been pushed to a third set three times in six matches.) Misty and Kerri may be the most well-respect and -liked athletes by the press. They are courteous to opponents, thank every official after each match and are exceptionally patient with the press, acutely aware that they are both building their brand and their sport. I wrote a NEWSWEEK article on them before the Athens Game and, after their gold-medal performance, they sent me a signed card thanking me for the coverage and with a pouch of sand from the Olympic beach attached. That is unprecedented—the “thank you" as well as the sand—in my experience through 10 Olympics. Beach volleyball is "hot" and is the only one of the Thursday's six contests that will rate live coverage on NBC prime time.

12:20—Volleyball: Women’s volleyball has been contested at the Olympics since Tokyo 1964 and the Americans have a silver and bronze to show for all their floor burns. But after a fifth-place finish in Athens, the volleyball brass brought in a living legend to coach the team—at least a living legend in China. “Jenny” Lang Ping was known as the “Iron Hammer” when she played on the 1984 Chinese Olympic team in Los Angeles, where China defeated the United States for the gold medal. She returned to the States 12 years later, for Atlanta ’96, as coach of the Chinese team that won a silver medal. Now she is trying to take the Americans to new heights. The dream final would be the United States vs. China. But first "Jenny" has to get the American ladies past Cuba, the only team to beat them in the preliminary round.

6:20 p.m.—Water Polo: Coach Guy Baker won a host of national collegiate championships at UCLA before taking over the women’s national water polo team for the first Olympic competition in Sydney. In a thrilling and controversial ending, the team lost to Australia 4-3 on a goal in the final second. Four years later, the U.S. got its revenge on Australia 6-5—but that only garnered the team a bronze medal. But last year the U.S. women’s team won the world championship—beating Australia in Australia. So guess what country the undefeated Americans have to beat to win the gold medal Thursday night? Probably not. That’s because the American women already dispatched Australia 9-8 in the semis and now will face the Netherlands, the country where women’s water polo was first competed a little more than a century ago.

6:30 p.m.—Softball: No matter the result, this will certainly be the most emotional of all these games. It may be the final softball game in Olympic history. The powers that be have thrown softball out of the Games for sins both real and imagined. One of its concerns is apparently the lack of top-flight competition to challenge the Americans, though American domination in women’s basketball is at least as pronounced. And as the ladies point out, nobody gets upset when Michael Phelps dominates. The softballers will be bidding for a clean sweep of the four Olympics in which the sport has been competed. In Beijing, the team is undefeated and has allowed only two runs in its eight games. Next year softball will apply to the International Olympic Committee for reinstatement for the 2016 Olympics, competing against six other sports for a coveted spot in the Games. It can’t hurt that IOC president Jacques Rogge was in the stands Wednesday for what turned out to be one of the most dramatic days in the game’s brief Olympic history. First the United States and Japan played eight scoreless innings—regulation games are seven—before the U.S. won 4-1. Then Japan, which could still reach the gold medal game with a win over Australia and leading 2-1 in the top of the 7^th, one out away from a rematch with the Americans, surrendered the tying run on a homer, then had the winning run thrown out at the plate in the bottom of the inning. Australia went ahead 3-2 in the 11th, but Japan tied the game in the bottom of the inning before winning it in the 12th. Now it can try to end America's softball dynasty on a doubly sour note.

8 p.m.—Basketball: Much has been made of the show being put on by the American men’s team, with Kobe and company winning its first five games by an average of 32 points. But those are close games by the standards of the undefeated American women who have won all six of their games by an average of 42 points. The U.S. has not lost a single game since the Barcelona Olympics in 1992--30-0 with three gold medals--and this may be its strongest squad yet. The Beijing team combines Olympic veterans like Lisa Leslie and Diana Taurasi with a pair of dynamic, young WNBA superstars—Candace Parker, a two-time national player of the year at the University of Tennessee and 6’6” former LSU star Sylvia Fowles, who is leading the team in both scoring and rebounding. The U.S. faces Russia in the semis and, if victorious, the winner of China-Australia in the finals. While the men's team could still get clipped by a Spain or a Lithuania on an off day, there is no team that can stop this American juggernaut.

9 p.m.—Soccer: Women’s soccer captivated American fans in one glorious summer fling back in 1999. Five years later in Athens, Mia Hamm and her soccer sisters left the Olympics and the game on a high—with an overtime victory over Brazil. Tonight the U.S. women will play Brazil again for the gold medal, but the shoe is decidedly on the other foot. In truth, Brazil was the better team in Athens and the American team needed all its savvy, pluck and opportunism to escape with the gold medal. With the exodus of the starry veterans—Hamm, Julie Foudy, Kristine Lilly—and an injury to the team’s high scorer, Abby Wambach, the U.S. team is a big underdog to the speedy and creative Brazilians. (The Brazilian women play a far more “beautiful game” than the Brazilian men’s team, which resorted to total thuggery to try to slow down arch-rival Argentina in their 3-0 semi-final defeat.) In the 2007 women’s World Cup, Brazil eviscerated the Americans 4-0 in the semis, a loss that cost the U.S. coach his job, before losing to Germany in the finals. Here in Beijing they mauled Germany 4-1 to reach the finals. The Americans had a much softer path to the final and had it not been for a bizarre Japanese 5-1 romp over favored Norway would have met Brazil—and likely its demise without a medal—in the quarterfinals. In the semis, the U.S. team played its best game of the tournament, ousting Japan 4-2. The team now plays a far more attractive game under its new coach, former Swedish star Pia Sundhage, with fewer long, futile boots and more ball control through the midfield. But it has not found a breakout star who can change the game with a single rush or a moment of creative genius. At last year’s World Cup, starting goalkeeper Hope Solo was benched for the Brazil game in favor of the veteran Briana Scurry. After Brazil's victory, Solo violated all the sacred trusts of the soccer sisterhood by not only grousing about it, but by insisting she would have done better in the nets. The comments got her booted off the team and she was reinstated for the Olympics over the objects of some teammates. We will all get to see if she does any better. Actually, better may not be good enough.

National Houses: Where the Parties Aren't

Melinda Liu — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:53:45 GMT

Contributor Jennifer Conrad ran into Michael Phelps, posed for photos with a Ferarri, and didn't eat Italian food while doing a circuit of the National Houses. Her report:

At each Olympics, governments set up National Houses to provide a home base for their athletes and supporters. Some are frenetic party zones where medalists stop by to scribble autographs for adoring fans. Others are showcases for their respective nations. Some are pretty dull venues for networking. And while some let just about anyone (me) breeze through the door, others are almost impossible to access. Still, I did my best to check out the Olympic action.

Let's start with the good ones: The Heineken-sponsored Holland House, a tradition since the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, served up one of the best parties, with Dutch food (weird croquettes and fries with mayo) and hordes of orange-clad Dutch fans (seriously, for a small country, they have a lot of people in town). The tricky door policy means that if you get there early enough, you can enter by showing your passport. Once it gets too crowded, only Dutch passports are allowed in. Set up in the massive Agricultural Exhibition Center, besides big indoor and outdoor party spaces, there was a small area with exercise equipment. Which made it possible for my friend to get a computerized health analysis while I was taking a photo with a Chinese visitor who asked if I were an athlete.

Right up the street, Club Bud isn't associated with any nationality—and maybe that's why it brought in the most mixed crowd. According to Bruce Hudson, senior director of sports marketing, Budweiser has a relationship with 25 national Olympic committees. The first Club Bud, in Torino, was in conjunction with the US Olympic Committee and outside the USA House. Needing a big space this time, Bud decided to go its own way. (They also created a rooftop deck for the USA House that's called the Bud Party Deck.)

...Club Bud promotes the five elements of feng shui

      Entrance is invite-only, but making it through the door scores you free-flowing Budweiser and the chance to rub shoulders with medalists and minor celebrities like David Schwimmer. The club holds parties every other night, which according to the press release, are "built around the five elements of feng shui, local culture, and Olympic themes." Passes were given to Olympic teams, sponsors, and Chinese clients, and were passed out to locals through bars, restaurants, and hotels. Groups were also flown in from Shanghai and Guangzhou to watch an Olympic event, party at the club, contemplate the fengshui of beer, and spend the night in Beijing. "We wanted to make a big impact in China," says Hudson. "Budweiser is considered a super-premium beer here. It's a little more expensive. So we're targeting the crowd that's a little more contemporary, a little more cutting-edge."

       The first party, with MTV China, drew a crowd that was about 80 percent Chinese. Lately, locals have comprised a third of the crowd, Hudson estimates. When I visited it was "Fire Night" (fire is one of the five elements but as far as I could tell it translated into red decor and girls dancing on platforms). The place was packed with people drinking Bud from plastic cups. "Why is there only beer?" more than one ungrateful visitor whined. Duhhh. I ran into a couple of Chinese friends who'd purchased tickets (apparently resold) through zhaopin.com. One said she thought the place was really fun, but could've used more entertainment. Suddenly, an American friend ran up and announced, "PHELPS IS HERE!!!!"

       The rock star of the night was swimmer Michael Phelps (I didn't even find out until much later that Chris Tucker, Evander Holyfield, and Carl Lewis were also there). Phelps was ushered into a VIP area and immediately became swarmed with people trying to take his photo. When he was later escorted to a second VIP area, people jostled for a chance just to touch the eight-time gold medalist. Lotta good fengshui there.

As much as I could see Phelps, which wasn't a whole lot, he seemed good-natured about the attention, smiling with his baseball cap cocked to one side and taking pictures of the crowd taking pictures of him. Still it must be surreal to experience that sort of adulation. One of his friends (who I'd met a week earlier when we were seated together on a Newark to Beijing flight) told me Phelps hangs out with Kobe Bryant these days. Now there's a dynamic duo of feng shui. When I walked past the second VIP area, I saw a female gold medalist waiting outside (no idea who she was — they're so hard to recognize in regular clothes).

Lucky for the Danes, there's already a place in Beijing called the Den. The Workers' Stadium-area bar obliged them by adding M-A-R-K to their sign to make it the Denmark House. Although I'd heard the entry policy was Danish-passport only, we walked right in but found that the only Danish attractions were a few people draped in flags and Carlsberg on tap.

...The Den conveniently transformed into the Denmark House

      The Jamaica House was...surprising. Last Thursday night, when I walked into CJW, a swanky jazz bar in the upscale mall the Place, I thought I was in the wrong place: raised booths, dim lighting, and $10 cocktails didn't fit my idea of Olympic revelry. It was only on our way out that I noticed a display of Jamaican rum in a corner and a modest sign—the only hints of the Jamaican contingent, who must have been partying elsewhere. (Apparently, they do have invite-only parties for the Jamaican team on other nights. Probably, for such a tiny nation, the most flamboyant partying at any given time is wherever Usain Bolt is -- if you can catch up with him.)

     Casa Italia is advertised as open to the public, so I thought it would be a promising place to visit on Saturday afternoon—according to a local website, I'd get a taste of the country's art, music, and architecture. When I arrived at Haidian Exhibition Center, the young woman at the security check started speaking to me in Italian. She seemed surprised when I said I wasn't Italian but had heard that the house was open to other nationalities. "I don't know why anyone else would want to go in there. It's just a bunch of Italian stuff," she said, revealingly. I couldn't help thinking that the only people who might want to go in there would be people who weren't going to be back in Italy in a week.

        Inside, I realized that there's no reason why anyone would want to be there at all — Italian or not. There were espresso machines on display, but they weren't brewing anything. There were a few displays for sponsors (Italian exercise equipment?!) and a booth about Italian food—with no samples. Most Chinese visitors were having their photos taken with a Ferrari, which had been parked in the middle of the hall. Yup, it was the kind of place where a car is the star of the show. (Still, there is some logic as to why Italians would put a Ferrari on a pedestal, so to speak. Its an iconic status symbol for Chinese, and one hugely successful local entrepreneur has signalled his achievements to the world by buying a dozen of them.)

      I walked to the restaurant in the back and was told in Chinese that I couldn't go in. It seemed odd, since a good Italian meal could've been the only drawing point for this dreary place. "Is the restaurant only for people associated with the Italian team?" I asked at the front desk. "WHAT?! YES!!!" the attendant snapped back at me. So I left with a book about agriculture and a pamphlet titled -- what else? -- "Italian food: The natural winner."

     Next came the British Columbia-Canada Pavilion, which promotes the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver. Connected to the Beijing Urban Planning Exhibition Center, the pavilion requires a 30 RMB entry fee. Now, if you think that sounds like a really dull event inside a really dull venue, you're wrong: the urban planning exhibition center is actually an undiscovered gem of a museum about Beijng's history, complete with a 3D film. Anyway, I walked past someone dressed as a Mountie and plasma screens showing different aspects of the culture of British Columbia.

...Canada Pavilion celebrates the culture of British Columbia

Um, exactly what that culture consists of escapes me now but I can tell you the two highlights of one display were a hollowed-out western red cedar tree and a large hunk of jade flown over from Canada. As if China doesn't have enough jade of its own? More in tomorrow's blog, including where not to get stroppy with the security guards.

Olympic Volunteers' Real "Coming Out" Party

Manuela Zoninsein — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:34:35 GMT

One of the biggest cliches related to the Beijing Olympics is how they're China’s “coming out" party, a celebration of the country’s acceptance into the ranks of big world powers. The phrase has been used so many times by so many media that one website lists (and ridicules) such citations. But the Beijing Games truly are a debut for an important subset of the Olympic community. Beginning in June 2006, the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) has combed through two million applicants to find the best 70,000 volunteers to support their official Games effort.

For many young Chinese volunteers, these 17 days are an adrenaline-infused inauguration into the grown-up world of long hours and high-profile event management. The stint will look good on any job resume -- and, more importantly, they give Chinese youth a chance to contribute to their nation's historic er, um, "coming out" party.

Olympics volunteers pose in front of a pre-Games count-down clock.

A year ago, Eleanor was a recent high school graduate in nearby Tianjin municipality, about to enter the English-language track at the China Foreign Affairs University which is affiliated with the Chinese Foreign Ministry. (Because many of these students aim to become Chinese government officials, only their first names are used here; they have not received official permission to talk with foreign media.) Today, she's volunteering at the Traffic Police Hotline: a toll-free hotline foreigners can dial when they're lost or in urgent need of a translator. One of the main reasons she decided to be a volunteer -- rather than seek out a paying job, or stay home studying to get ahead on her schoolwork—is to prove to her country that her generation is ready for greater responsibilities. "It's time for us to make some contribution to our motherland. We’ve never worked before now—so it’s a good chance to tell our nation that we will be useful.”

For China's mostly young volunteers, this is an entry-level introduction, or internship, leading towards China's job market. Linda, from Shandong Province, is a "transport service assistant", which means she occasionally accompanies Olympic visitors from one site to another but more often hangs out in a Beijing parking lot, smiling and waiting. She'd wanted to work in the Language department to utilize her English skills and interact with foreign visitors, but confessed, “unfortunately, I’m not that professional yet.” She says her work is “ordinary and basic; not very exciting." But she gladly accepts it, “because I’m only a student.” Another volunteer named Eleanor echoes such modesty, “To be honest, I’m not capable enough to get a job now...Maybe I'll find a job one or two years later.” University student Sliva, a volunteer from Shanghai, also admits her current stature in Chinese society “is very weak.”

Which brings us to a more sobering reality behind all those bright, chirpy young smiles. China's job market is notoriously fast-paced and competitive. For a new generation of well-educated but mostly pampered Chinese single children, the thought of clawing your way to the top -- or losing tremendous face if you cannot hack the Darwinian process -- is often terrifying.(The majority of urban Chinese married couples have a single kid, due largely to the legacy of a stringent and controversial post-Mao family planning policy, initiated about three decades ago, that restricts most city-dwelling families to one child only.)

So volunteering to assist the Games even in small ways makes good practical sense, as well as good patriotic sense. For most young volunteers, previous work experience is sparse or nonexistent and initial confidence levels are low. “If I did more challenging work, it would put more pressure on me," explains Linda, the transport service assistant, "And I don’t know if I could do it very well.” For Sliva, volunteering is a first step towards becoming more professional; she cites an old saying "the beginning is the hardest part". And she admits that on the first day, "I was very nervous and didn’t know what to do or how to do it. So that day was a terrible day.” However, her confidence grew day by day as she became accustomed to how her department worked.

Some lucky students actually found paying jobs at the Games. Jacky, also from Shanghai, was selected to work in the iconic Bird's Nest National Stadium for the sports presentation department. It's an exercise in multi-tasking; he works as an English-language announcer, records voice-overs for video clips, and helps with translations. Though his is a paid position, Jackie also sees it as a pre-game warm-up for his eventual career, since the experience brings “more confidence, responsibility and cooperation through working.” He takes pride in his ability to bear the pressures of the job: "We're responsible for the entire sports presentation for the stadium -- and if we fail, everything fails here."

Because volunteers are not yet what they consider "professionals", many feel pressures to perform. “If you love your work, you must keep working hard every moment so people who're supporting you won’t be disappointed," says Linda, who comes from a small town where becoming an Olympic volunteer was a distant dream for most local residents. Even before she began college, teachers encouraged her to seek out such a position, and her parents also advised, “If you go to Beijing, you'd better become a volunteer in 2008." She admits that living with the burden of "everyone else’s expectations, you feel pressure.”

Most young volunteers are working tirelessly to prove themselves. Eleanor talks about the camaraderie and support volunteers feel for one another in their determination to do their jobs well: “All the volunteers feel it. No matter how hard [the task], they’ll spare no effort to do it.” Sliva says that her colleagues all “work very hard...Though we met and will meet many difficulties, we always work together.”

Upon completion of this job, Linda thinks “it may look good on your resume -- and be good for future job-hunting, as it shows you can be responsible.” However Jacky's more skeptical of the tendency to see volunteering for the Games as a way to “make the CV more beautiful.” Once these students graduate, “like everyone else, they will have this experience on their resume, so it won’t make that much of a difference,” he argues. In other words, 17 days of work in 2008, no matter how prestigious, will not guarantee a cushy job in China's ruthless job market; there's still a hard slog ahead.

But at very least, these priveleged members of China's "only child" generation will have gained some teamwork skills and maturity through working with their colleagues and bosses.And by rubbing elbows with the rich and famous (well, maybe with the chauffeurs and P.R. aides of such celebrities, actually), some volunteers are having their eyes opened to a more sophisticated and international world, a vast contrast with what they knew back home or in the university dorm. Sliva hopes the achievement of a successful, safe Olympics will help prove that her cohort, “has grown up.” Okay, we won't use that old "coming out" party cliche again. But that's precisely what this unique experience is proving to be for many of Beijing's young volunteers.