Play Underway

After what seemed like endless buildup, the Games themselves finally begun!

I only came five days before the start of the actual competition, unlike most of my colleagues. Our team leader, Grant from Singapore, was here a couple weeks before. Lead editor Larry was here a week before me and Dan and Scott were here several days after that.. So they had even more seemingly interminable buildup than I experienced..

The very first event I ended up going to on the first Sunday of competition was the men's volleyball match between the U.S. and Venezuela. The venue was about a 20-minute drive and, as usual, we very nearly took out several locals on their motorbikes along the way. And when I say motorbikes, these things really look like the old-school 3-speed Schwinns with a motor attached somewhere. And there is usually a driver and someone precariously perched sidesaddle on the back, or a kid hanging on, or several giant plastic bags filled with who knows what bungee corded on on the back. We've already had several near misses. Whether it's driving, walking or crossing the road, there's not a lot of giving-way here; you take your chances...

But I went to the U.S.-Venezuela game because of an unfortunate incident the day before in which the father-in-law of the indoor volleyball head coach was stabbed to death at a tourist site near the Forbidden City in central Beijing. He was a huge supporter of the US volleyball programs -- his daughter played on the women's '04 Olympic team in Athens -- and traveled all over the globe to watch the teams play. His wife also suffered life-threatening injuries in the attack, but it turns out they weren't being targeted (they weren't wearing anything that would connect them to the U.S. or a team), it was just a random act of violence by a very depressed man who was recently divorced and hadn't been seen by his family members in months. The guy actually jumped to his death from the Drum Tower right after the attack. So... I was at the game to do a follow-up story on the emotional impact of the incident connected with the team's first game. Turned out to be a great game. I hadn't seen volleyball at such a high level in person. It was like watching a basketball game where every other play was a dunk in someone's face or a complete rejection. Great stuff.. And the U.S. ended up winning and I ended up getting unprecedented kudos from the head of our news organization for the story.



That same night was the first basketball game for the U.S. men's team. The latest Dream Team. Or Redeem Team, if you will, since they're trying to get back the gold they embarassingly lost in '04. Scott and I went over to the game about 3 hours beforehand knowing that it was going to be packed with media and that we had to get seats. We debated before leaving whether we should get dinner -- it was a 10:15 p.m. start in China, 10:15 a.m. on the U.S. East coast -- but Scott says, "Let's just get some hot dogs or something at the game."

Here's the deal: That ain't gonna happen in China. Oh, they had hot dogs on the sign at the arena, but as the Aussie behind me in line at the one concession stand we saw said, "If you troiy that, you're a gay-mah!" (It turns out he did say "gamer" and not "gay man"). The "hot dog" was some kind of unrefrigerated sausage-like meat, on a stick, that was vacu-sealed in a plastic casing. "You troiy that, you wownt be workin th' morrow," the Aussie offers.

Yeah, so we ended up skipping dinner.

The game itself was somewhat of an event: the largest global audience for a basketball game in history, with more than a billion expected viewers. George W was also on hand for the occassion and was sitting about 20 seats to my left. Of course my camera was still to weak to actually zoom in on him effectively, but that's him in the blue shirt leaning back to speak with who I believe is Henry Kissinger. There's also a secret service guy behind him trying to figure out what I'm pointing at them and an usher in the foreground sleeping, apparently.

The following day I headed over to the Water Cube, the giant swimming venue that glows blue at night and appears to be covered in bubble wrap. Yet again, a very impressive arena.

Across the street from the Cube, there's a series of fountains that shoot water up in sequence to music, which is pretty cool. Fans can run through 'em, dance in 'em, try to time the jets. Inevitably, there's a lot of yelling and people getting wet.

On this day I didn't actually go in, but hung outside to talk to fans for a story I was working on.

I couldn't have gotten in anyway because the media actually had to get ticketed for the swimming medal events because there's so much demand. But it would have been a great day to be there because this was the day that Michael Phelps won his second gold on the 4 x 100m freestyle relay in stunning fashion, beating the French team that had talked smack by the slimmest of touches, .08 of a second.

The Frenchman who swam the final leg was the world record holder at the distance at said the French team was going to "smash" the Americans at the Olympics. Instead, he lost almost half a body-length on the final lap to lose the race. It was an awesome scene, but unfortunately I was just outside the arena.

Will definitely get over to the Water Cube to catch Phelps in the next couple days though!