2008 Olympics Updates

Have you ever invited people round and then worried beforehand that no one would show up, and that even if they did they would probably hate the food, criticise the carpets, break all your glasses, and possibly even throw up on your sofa?

That may be a little bit like what China felt before the Games began. Here’s a guess at the country’s worst fears as the Olympics approached.

* World leaders would boycott the opening ceremony. The VIP seats in the Olympic stadium would have to be filled with volunteers or with world-leader lookalikes to hide the embarrassment of so many no-shows.

* The city’s pollution would be so bad that the marathon runners would have to carry head torches and maps to make their way along the route. In the unlikely event that anyone actually finished the race, no one would be able to tell who won, since the photo-finish equipment would be unable to see through the smog.

* Pro-Tibet/democracy/Falun Gong protesters would rush onto the track in the final steps of the 110m hurdles and trip up Liu Xiang just as he was about to cross the line to win a gold medal.

* Chinese athletes would be attacked by nerves and fall off the diving board/crash off the uneven bars/drop the weightlifting bar onto their feet, and fail to win any medals.

But those worst fears have not been realised. Plenty of world leaders came to the opening ceremony. Not a single country has boycotted the Games. Beijing’s pollution hasn’t forced any endurance events to be postponed (thanks, in part, to a lot of rain). Protesters haven’t disrupted any Olympic events. Chinese athletes have won more gold medals than anyone else. Beijing has even hosted two of the most astonishing performers in Olympic history : Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt.

In other words, phew.

But, of course, there have been a few problems. Journalists arriving to cover the Games found that China was still blocking a number of news and human rights websites – breaking the Communist Party’s promise that there would be complete freedom to report during the Olympics (after a bit of a row, many of the websites were unblocked a day or two later).

In many venues there have been large numbers of empty seats – a puzzling contrast to the scenes of desperation we saw in the days before the Games when local fans queued in the heat for two days to get tickets.

Then, there was the revelation that the pretty girl who sang at the opening ceremony was actually miming to the voice of a not-so-pretty girl (there’s been a mini-campaign on the internet to persuade the Olympic organisers to allow the not-so-pretty girl to sing at the closing ceremony).

There’s also the case of the two grandmothers who have been sentenced to a year’s re-education through labour, after they applied to demonstrate in one of the parks set aside for protests during the Olympic Games. One of the grandmothers has no teeth and only one good eye – it’s hard to imagine how she could get by in a labour camp.

And one problem still lies ahead. The International Olympic Committee is investigating whether or not some of the Chinese female gymnasts who did so well during these Games were under age. If the IOC finds that China faked the age of some of its gymnasts, this country could lose at least two of its gold medals.

Do these problems – blocked websites, empty seats, a miming little girl, grannies sentenced to a labour camp, an investigation into gymnasts – overshadow China’s numerous triumphs at these Games?

It entirely depends on how confident China now feels. I’ve learned that this is a country which is acutely sensitive to any kind of criticism – however minor. But it also seems that China has gained a huge amount of confidence during these Games. Nobody has stopped this country from putting on its dazzling show. There’s been no international conspiracy to do China down. Everyone has come – and most appear to have been hugely impressed by what they have seen – the city, the architecture, the performances.

Still, every event has its mistakes. How this country handles criticism of its Games will tell us a lot about the confidence of a post-Olympic China.

All day, the omens had looked so good for Phillips Idowu.

The rain had fallen so heavily in Beijing that he could have been at home in London. His hair was dyed red, the same tone as the Chinese flag. He even had the same bib number, 1809, as Kelly Holmes had worn when she won 1500m gold in Athens – the same number, spookily, as the Olympic triple jump record.

But in the end, even for a man who had said a few weeks ago that he felt “bullet-proof”, who had gone all year unbeaten and who produced his season’s best in the Olympic final, it wasn’t quite enough.

This was one of those strange evenings where the disappointments almost overshadowed the gold medals.

Thursday night was meant to be the evening that Liu Xiang lifted the roof off the Bird’s Nest by retaining his 110m hurdles crown, the set-piece moment where the whole of China gathered round their television sets and celebrated victory for their favourite son.

Instead, with Liu’s Achilles injury forcing him out of Monday’s heats before he’d cleared a single hurdle, Dayron Robles’ fine win was greeted with generous applause but little more. It didn’t matter how beautifully Robles hurdled. In Liu’s absence, it could never be the same for the home crowd.

For Britain, Idowu’s near-miss was preceded by Goldie Sayers losing out on a javelin bronze by a single place, even after throwing a new British record – and declaring herself “sick as a dog” afterwards.

The highly-promising Michael Rimmer failed to get through his 800m semi, stricken by food poisoning, and Martyn Rooney ran more than half a second slower in the 400m final than he had in his semi, when a time even two tenths of a second slower would have won him an unexpected bronze.

The women’s 4×100m qualified for their final, but their male counterparts – the reigning Olympic champions – made a terrible mess of their last changeover and found themselves, correctly, disqualified.

For the American team it was even worse. First Jamaica completed its sweep of the individual sprint titles as Veronica Campbell-Brown blew away Allyson Felix in the 200m final.Then Darvis Patton and Tyson Gay dropped the relay baton with the race at their mercy, repeating the error which cost the US gold four years ago.

Just when they thought it couldn’t get any worse, Torri Edwards and Lauryn Williams then did exactly the same.

Against that, the solitary victory for LaShawn Merritt in the 400m didn’t really balance things up, particularly when reigning champion Jeremy Wariner ran so poorly behind him.

Unlike those relay teams, however, Idowu doesn’t deserve any opprobrium.

Two nights after another east London-born Brit won gold in the Bird’s Nest, he almost repeated Christine Ohuruogu’s trick of coming from behind to snatch an Olympic title.

Idowu had sought to brush away the pressure of being gold medal favourite by telling himself beforehand that he was dealing with “just another sandpit in another country”.

For the first three rounds, it looked to have worked. When Leevan Sands nailed a 17.59m to snatch the lead off Phillips, the Briton replied with 17.62m with his very next jump – the sort of response that his critics have often claimed is beyond him.

What none of us had counted on was that Portugal’s Nelson Evora would in turn respond to Idowu’s leap by producing a jump of 17.67m – his longest of the season by over 30cm – with just two rounds to go.

Four years ago in Athens, Idowu failed to land a single clean jump, exiting the biggest stage of all with three successive fouls.

This was different. He would have needed a personal best at the death to deny Evora, who hasn’t been in the world’s top 10 all summer, and PBs almost never happen in the last two rounds of a triple jump competition.

Five centimetres was all that stood between Idowu and gold in the final reckoning. Arguably, his rivals raised their game by a slightly larger percentage tonight than he did – but with margins that fine, it would be a harsh man who criticised him for that.

In case you hadn’t heard, Liu Xiang is out. China’s great Olympic hope – the country’s most famous athlete – pulled out of the 110m hurdles because he was injured.

I was in the stadium when it all happened – peering through a set of hefty binoculars from my seat near the finishing line.

Shortly after 11:30 in the morning, everyone in the Olympic stadium started looking towards the tunnel near the starting line. The athletes taking part in the final heat of the opening round of the 110m hurdles were escorted into the stadium. They were led out by the man in a red China tracksuit drawn in lane two – Liu Xiang. At this point, we all thought he looked fine – if a little subdued. Then, during the warm-up it slowly became clear that something was wrong. Liu Xiang looked like he was limping a bit – but it was hard to tell for sure. A friend of mine, watching on TV, then texted me: “the TV pics show him in huge amounts of pain.” But most of us in the crowd still had no idea how badly injured he was.

The runners settled into their blocks. The starter fired the gun – but it was a false start. Liu Xiang hobbled a few steps forward. Then he turned back and quietly took off the race stickers taped to his legs – this was the moment that he quit the Olympic Games.

He walked away from the track, and into the tunnel. Some people have since commented that there was a stunned silence in the stadium – perhaps in some seats there was. But where I was sitting there was just confusion. We looked around at each other – not sure of what we’d just seen. Had Liu Xiang just walked away from the Olympic Games? On the track, the runners took their marks again and they ran the race without him. At this point, it finally became clear to those of us sitting in the crowd – China’s Olympics was going ahead without its star attraction.

It’s hard to overstate how important Liu Xiang has been to this Olympic Games. In some ways, China has built its entire Olympics around Liu Xiang – and the hope that he would defend the Olympic title he won in Athens. You can barely go more than a few metres in Beijing without seeing a poster of Liu – advertising a selection of ice creams, soft drinks, credit cars, sports shoes, and fast cars. Those adverts may now have to be speedily re-done.

Why was Liu Xiang so important? He was the first Asian man ever to win a gold medal in an Olympic track event (in Athens 2004). “His achievement made us feel that we could achieve anything ourselves as well,” said one woman. So, Liu Xiang’s expected gold medal in Beijing was about Chinese national confidence – it was about China feeling that it could do anything that any other country could do.

Many people we’ve spoken to here in Beijing feel deeply sorry for him – and also slightly guilty that so much pressure was placed on one man.

“My heart aches,” one small boy said to me. “I’m so sad.”

Others are less sympathetic. This is what one person wrote on an internet chatroom: “As a Chinese athlete, if you know you’re hurt, you shouldn’t join the game, if you joined the game, you shouldn’t give up so easily, Liu Xiang you failed us all.”

What do you think?

Exactly one week to go before the Games begin.

So, it’s prediction time. I’ve come up with four questions which may define whether or not the Games are a triumph for China.

1) Will China win more gold medals than any other country?

One research team from Sheffield Hallam University predicts that it may happen. The team predicts that China will win 46 golds (more than the 32 it won in Athens – the USA came first with 35).

But China’s not so sure. Over the last year or so, I’ve been to a number of press conferences in which Chinese sporting officials have played down their gold medal expectations – pointing out at tremendous length how weak the Chinese team is in certain sports, and how much better the Americans, the Australians, and the Russians are all round. (It reminds me a bit of the brainy kid at school who always goes around saying how badly he/she’ll do at end-of-year exams and then goes on to get all the best marks.)

China’s most recent prediction is that it hopes to do better than it did in Athens.

2) Will Liu Xiang win the 110m hurdles?

I wrote recently that if Liu Xiang won the hurdles in Beijing (as he did in Athens) he could probably get the country renamed after him. A gold for Liu in the 110mh matters more to China than a gold in any other event.

This is what Liu’s coach recently told a newspaper: “Officials from the State General Administration of Sport once told us that if Liu cannot win another gold medal in Beijing, all of his previous achievements will become meaningless.”

So, no pressure then.

The problem for Liu is that he’s no longer the world’s fastest hurdler. Earlier this season, the Cuban athlete Dayron Robles broke Liu’s world record.

And, just to make it even more nerve-wracking for China, Liu’s coach has just said that Liu has an ankle injury and that “his current condition isn’t good.”

3) Will air pollution force some events to be postponed?

The International Olympic Committee says that it’ll monitor air quality every day during the Games – and if the air’s bad, it’ll postpone endurance events.

China says that it’s confident that its emergency air quality measures will clear the air in time for the Games. We’ve been testing the air ourselves over the last few weeks. We’ve found that the levels of airborne particles (PM10) have often been well above the maximum targets set by the World Health Organisation. But, as I write this entry, the sky outside is blue, and the pollution readings are low (helped by rain on Thursday). If the weather stays like this, Olympic events will go ahead as scheduled.

4) Will there be any protests inside Olympic venues?

The Olympic Charter makes it clear that any kind of demonstration inside Olympic areas is banned. The Chinese government plans to enforce this rule to the letter.

But what if someone manages to smuggle a banner into a stadium? Or what if an athlete decides to make a protest?

For China, the Beijing Olympics will be a success – even a triumph – if the answers to these four questions are yes, yes, no, no.

I’m keen to get your predictions…

This close to the Olympics, the athletics world picks over the bones of every performance with an obsessive eye.

At this stage of the game, it’s too late to squeeze in a life-changing block of training. It’s all about moving into top form, avoiding injury and maybe gaining a psychological edge over your rivals.

For all three of Britain’s big gold medal hopes, the London Grand Prix on Friday night seemed at first glance to fulfil that role.

Kelly Sotherton jumped a personal best in the long jump. Phillips Idowu extended his unbeaten run in the triple jump. And Christine Ohuruogu clocked a season’s best in seeing off Nicola Sanders in the 400m.

That’s how it appeared on the surface. The reality was somewhat dicier.

Sotherton, for starters, was left fuming after a shocking error from track officials saw the third set of barriers in her 110m hurdles race placed at least a metre out of position.

To an outsider that might not seem like much. To hurdlers, who thrive on rhythm and a set stride pattern, it could have spelled disaster – a pulled muscle, a calamitous fall, the end of the Olympic dream.

“I am totally fed up,” Sotherton raged afterwards. “The long jump went so well but they have ruined the hurdles, and now I’m just angry.”

For Idowu, who has said this season that he feels “bullet-proof”, there were initially worrying signs of the old inconsistency that used to dog him.

He failed to record a mark with his first and third jumps, striding over to coach Aston Moore in the stands in an attempt to work out what was going wrong.

Going into the fourth round he was trailing in third place. The Crystal Palace crowd were almost hushed as he tore down the runway for his next attempt.

When he sailed out to a mark of 17.41m, the roar told of relief – and a certain vindication of the confidence he’s shown all summer long.

“I didn’t know what the problem was at first,” he said. “I had to wait a bit to get going. But I’ve been saying all year that I feel, regardless of what anyone else does, I’m not going to lose. That’s a nice way to finish before Beijing.”

The positives for Ohuruogu were the win and the defeat of Sanders in the first race between the pair since they won gold and silver at the World Championships last summer.

What wasn’t so hot was the time. It was a good night for 400m running – 21 degrees, not too humid, no blustery wind – but neither Briton left satisfied with their performance.

“I’m not happy. I’ll go back and analyse things with my coach,” promised Ohuruogu.

“I’m not very pleased,” said Sanders. “It’s been three and a half weeks since my last race and I never really got into it.”

What did give cause for optimism was the memory of their preparations last year. Sanders had a stinker at Crystal Palace a year ago, trailing home way down the field, while Ohuruogu was yet to run competitively after her 12-month ban for missing three drugs test – and from that they went on to top the world.

Elsewhere, it was a good night for Jamaican sprinters and a bad one for Americans.

Asafa Powell’s 9.94secs victory in the 100m wasn’t a surprise in the absence of world champion Tyson Gay (injured) and world record holder Usain Bolt (entered only in Saturday’s 200m) but, following his defeat of Bolt in Stockholm on Tuesday, it did provide more evidence that he’s finally ready to take his first global sprint title.

What was a shock was the thrashing world champion Allyson Felix in the 200m. The favourite for gold in Beijing trailed home fourth behind Jamaican rival Sherone Simpson and left the track shaking her head.

Simpson, by contrast, knew what the scalp meant. “It gives me a lot more confidence going into the Olympics,” she beamed. “Having this win against this competition is a great boost for me.”

Form, injury-free and an edge. It’s what they’re all after.