2008 Olympics Updates

China showed overall dominance in table tennis event at Beijing Olympic Games, winning eight gold medals. Chinese men and women earlier confirmed their gold in team events. Later on, Chinese women kept hundred percent success rate in singles two days ago. On the last day of Beijing Olympic, it was men’s turn to prove their dominance in men’s singles. Actually, Jorgen Persson from Sweden was not only player outside China in men’s gold medal round, but he was easily outclassed by Wang Liqin in the singles.

China is always a big name in table tennis, but winning eight gold medals in one single Olympic Games has been something special for the Chinese. In fact, this has been the first time a team sweeps eight gold medals in table tennis in the history of Olympic Games.

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International Herald Tribune

National Stadium, Beijing

With one spontaneous gesture, a nervous tic really, Boris Johnson signalled exactly how London should attempt to follow the glitz and grandeur of the Beijing Olympics: don’t even try.

The London mayor’s comedy salute as he set foot on the red carpet at the Bird’s Nest was a late bid for my moment of the Games.

It encapsulated what many British observers here have felt throughout these Games: we’re all pretty blown away by the show the Chinese have put on, and we certainly can’t afford anything as fancy as this, but we’ll muddle through in 2012, and we’ll try to put a smile on your face while we do it.

And did I really see him shout “I want the flag!” to Olympic impresario Jacques Rogge before it was his turn to do the ceremonial swirling bit? If so, I apologise for voting for Ken: you are a legend, even if you don’t know what to do with your hands.

So that’s that then. They are sweeping up around me after the most spectacular closing ceremony I can remember, and there really is no getting away from it – we are the next hosts of the summer Olympics. Gulp.

It’s a huge challenge – make no mistake – but also a massive opportunity. And in some ways the Chinese have made it slightly easier for us. Hold on a minute Chinese bloggers, let me explain.

The closing ceremony was absolutely in keeping with everything I have seen in Beijing over the last three and a bit weeks: staggering in scale, perfectly choreographed, visually stunning and absolutely on time.

The drum carts, the heavenly drums that looked like giant cheeses, the acrobats on rotating poles, the “memory tower” with its 396 performers on wires, the fireworks, Jackie Chan’s singing (especially that), will live long in the memory. I really can’t imagine London, or any other city, topping that.

And it was also done with genuine enthusiasm and sincerity. London should take special note of that.

But these were also emphatically China’s Games. The ambition and expense on display here is pretty unsustainable, if not for China, then certainly for the rest of the Olympic movement. And the International Olympic Committee knows that.

The magnificent venues, the remarkable infrastructure improvements, the stuff-the-expense measures taken to improve the city’s air quality, the mobilisation of an army of smiling student volunteers: China has risen the bar to such a height that I don’t believe any other city in the world could or should try to reach.

So that bar must remain where it is. The records these Games have set should be Beijing’s forever. It deserves them, as London 2012 boss Seb Coe said on Friday, it is difficult to know what more the Chinese could have done.

But now the Olympics must draw a line under the big studio era and think humbler, smaller and smarter. The Olympics needs to think about the footprint it leaves behind when the circus moves on, and it needs to reassess what it is trying to celebrate.

That is London’s opportunity. The budget will be under half what they have spent here and that is only right and proper. Every host city has a story to tell when they bid to stage a Games, London’s story is different to Beijing’s. Not worse, not better, different.

And we got an early glimpse of just how different that story is during the eight-minute handover segment. I’m not entirely sure we nailed it but it was a good first stab. I’m glad we realised there was no point trying to match the hosts’ Cecil B. DeMille meets Cirque du Soleil approach. After all, it’s not our party yet and I don’t think we do that kind of thing very well.

So what we offered up was a Carry On caper with added cheese and a dollop of celebrity. I have a feeling it will get crucified in the papers on Monday but I hope not.

If I had a criticism it would be that it was a bit too knowing at times, a bit too cute. And because it was on such a small scale, it lacked impact in this arena…but then, what could we have really done in just eight minutes?

On the positive side, Jimmy Page’s opening riff was the loudest thing we heard here all night, “Whole Lotta Love” was the best song (“Beijing, Beijing, I love Beijing” being the worst) and Leona Lewis looked lovely, if a little precarious on that pole.

And David Beckham got the biggest single cheer of the evening, and the dancer who caught the football he somewhat shanked into the crowd will have the greatest story to tell his grandchildren. But I do wish we wouldn’t play up to the “it always rains in London” stereotypes so much. It’s the same weather as Paris!

But for me, the real highlight of the closing ceremony was watching the athletes, which, if you think about it, is only right. Watching Yao Ming being hounded by the other Olympians for a group photo was one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long time. It’s not like he could hide.

I was desperately trying to pick out the Brits but it was tough, there were at least a thousand dancers between me and them. I did spot Chris Hoy, though, wandering about with his camera looking a bit embarrassed, and it was good to see Shanaze Reade chatting and smiling, despite her crutches.

She was supposed to be one of the London commuters that overtook the bus on their bikes but knowing her luck a white van would have pulled out of the mixed zone and sent her flying into the bus stop.

It was also great to pick out little vignettes on the stadium floor – three tall Sudanese distance runners chatting to a group of blondes from Ukraine, tipsy Aussies clowning around with the dancers, Tom Daley sitting on somebody’s shoulders like he’s a 14-year-old boy…oh hold on, forget that one – because it helped remind me that the athletes are at the heart of all this. They’re the real stars of the show.

So well done, Beijing. You’ve put on an amazing spectacle and I think you’ve helped change your country’s story for the better.

But, in the words of the man I thought Boris was trying to impersonate on the red carpet, don’t panic, London! Just remember to keep it simple and keep it fun and we’ll be all right on the night.

And with that I’m off to pretend to run through the finish line like Usain Bolt.

It seems a little unfair when you had 10,708 athletes competing for 906 medals in 28 different sports, but the Beijing Olympics will mainly be remembered for the deeds of just two young men – a 22-year-old sprinter from Trelawny, Jamaica and a 23-year-old swimmer from Baltimore, USA.

In the space of a few weeks here in China, Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps transformed themselves from notable names within their own sports into global sporting superstars.

One was fuelled by chicken nuggets and yams, the other by fried egg and cheese sandwiches with extra mayo, but on track and in water, they each made the impossible seem easy.

Bolt was born for those sorts of nights in the Bird’s Nest. The gold medals alone were reason enough for hero status, but the times he ran and they way he did them – gliding gloriously clear in the 100m, working his golden spikes off in the 200m – and the poses, dancing and celebrations before and after were like nothing else athletics has ever seen.

Phelps’s relentless brilliance in the Water Cube defied history and science.

As the seven world records and eight golds piled up, each swim trumped the last – the astonishing comeback in the 4×100m freestyle relay, the margin of victory in the 200m individual medley, the almost unbelievable push to snatch the 100m butterfly title off Milo Cavic’s fingertips.

So dominant was he that one wag suggested we must have mistaken singular for plural – that there were eight men called Michael Phelp, competing together as Phelps, rather than one indefatigable swimming machine.

Britain had heroes of its own whose deeds weren’t far behind, led by the beautiful brutality of Chris Hoy and his relentless, robotic velodrome victories.

Hoy began the Games by admitting in his BBC blog that other athletes in the Olympic village kept staring at his massive thighs. He ended it as Scotland’s greatest ever Olympian and the first Briton in 100 years to win three gold medals at the same Games.

If his best nickname was the cause of much debate – for me, His Royal Hoyness just takes it from the Hoy Wonder and the Real McHoy – one quote above all others summed up his displays.

“It’s like he has swallowed a motorbike,” said his Dutch rival Theo Bos.

While Hoy’s triumphs came as no surprise to Dave Brailsford and his team, no-one could have predicted that a 19-year-old from Mansfield would eclipse established icons like Roger Federer and Ronaldinho.

In winning Britain’s first female swimming gold since 1962 and then powering to another a few days later, Rebecca Adlington did exactly that.

Everywhere you looked, however, there were British athletes waving from the top of podiums.

Wiggins, Pendleton and the rest kept the National Anthem on an almost perpetual loop in Laoshan. Ben Ainslie made it three golds in three Olympics. Christine Ohuruogu saved athletics blushes and the latest incarnation of the men’s foursome led the way at the rowing.

If Team GB’s 19 golds and wholly unexpected fourth place in the medal table caused delight at home, China’s unprecedented place at the top of the pile sent waves of national pride surging through the host nation.

Even the absence of golden boy Liu Xiang, who silenced the Bird’s Nest when he limped away without clearing a single hurdle, failed to dampen the mood for long.

As China dominated six medal-heavy sports – weightlifting, diving, shooting, table-tennis, gymnastics and badminton – other homegrown heroes stepped forward to fill the gap left by Liu.

Yang Wei led added gold in the men’s all-round final to the victories in both men and women’s gymnastics team events. Guo Jingjing became the most successful woman diver in Olympic history by winning gold in the individual three-metre springboard.

For the USA, dethroned after three successive Olympiads, consolation came in the team events rather than from individuals. Jamaica’s excellence on the track meant the former kings of the sprints failed to win an individual sprint medal for the first time since the boycott of 1980.

At the other end of the scale, Rohullah Nikpai won Afghanistan’s debut Olympic medal when he took bronze in the taekwondo men’s 58kg category. India’s Abhinav Bindra took his country’s first ever gold in the 10 metre air rifle event, and even Iraq sent a team, albeit a late, denuded one.

Sometimes, being at these Olympics felt like you’d been invited to the best house party in the world. While it was great wherever in the house you found yourself, there was always the nagging sense that it might be even better in a different room.

You’d be at the most exciting boxing bout possible when news would break about a world record at the Water Cube. Just when you’d settled into your seat at the velodrome, rumours would start flying about an astonishing race up at Shunyi Lake.

Then there was the joy of the random sports you’d never seen before – popping in to the fencing or handball for 15 minutes between trips elsewhere and becoming so engrossed that within moments you’d be shouting tactical advice at athletes who’d been doing it all their lives.

New sports like BMX and open-water swimming made a big splash. Old favourites like diving and ping-pong were revitalised. Everywhere you went where smiling volunteers, outnumbering actual local fans by five to one in many venues.

The stadiums ranged from space-age spellbinding – the Cube, the Nest/Ball of Twine, the velodrome – to the stern stone edifices of the Peking Workers’ Gymnasium.

The atmosphere inside swung from cathedral quiet (Olympic Green Tennis Centre) to caterwauling (Peking University Gymnasium whenever a Chinese table-tennis player picked up his bat).

Soon we learnt the definition of a Sino-sell-out – all the tickets gone, only half the seats taken.

Of the much-feared, much-discussed pollution, two separate days of thunderstorms did more than any closing of factories to clear the air. When it was bad, in the first week, the organisers told us it was only mist, anyway.

Five positive drugs tests failed to overshadow events, even as slower times and the failure of a few big names suggested anti-doping measures might be starting to bite.

If it depressed some that several horses were found to have been doped, the slew of jokes that followed – an-neigh-bolic steroids, hay and B samples – secretly tickled others of us pink.

There were tears, plenty of them, most memorably from giant German weightlifter Matthias Steiner, who held a photo of his wife Susann aloft on the podium just a year after she died in a car crash while on the way to see him compete.

Georgia’s Nino Salukvadze and her Russian rival Natalia Paderina tried to end one war by embracing on the podium after their shooting final, even as the bullets were still flying back home.

Cuba’s Angel Valodia Matos almost started another one when he kicked a referee in the head after disagreeing with the judging during his +80kg taekwando bout.

Some athletes helped each other out, most memorably the Croatian sailors who lent Denmark a boat when their mast split seconds before the 49er-class medal final.

Others did what they had to do to win that precious gold, even at the risk of causing offence. “I went after him because he was the only one who could beat me,” said British sailor Paul Goodison, after shepherding Sweden’s Rasmus Myrgren out of the race and thus the medals rather than risking him steal an unlikely win.

“I feel sorry for him but there can only be one winner. It is just sport and you have to do what you have to do.”

As with any good party, you’re left afterwards feeling tired, a touch emotional and rather sad that it’s all over. Four years seems a long time to wait until the next one.

There’s also the regrets.

At the Bird’s Nest on Saturday night, long after all the action was done and dusted and the crowds gone home, stadium officials were amusing themselves by running down the home straight and posing for photos on the finish line.

I can’t do that, I thought, as I watched them strike Usain archer poses on the podium. I work for the BBC. Standards of decorum must be maintained.

In retrospect, I was an idiot.

China’s Olympic team has done so well that it’s beginning to suffer from the Brazil football team syndrome. When you expect to win every time you turn up, it becomes a national tragedy when you happen to lose (parliamentary inquiries, coroners’ inquests, calls for the immediate exile of the coach, etc).

The Chinese diver Zhou Luxin was expected to win a gold medal in the men’s 10m diving on Saturday night. A victory for him would have given China all eight gold medals in the diving at the Beijing Games.

But Zhou came second. Not a good move.

An interviewer from Chinese state TV asked Zhou why he hadn’t performed well enough. Commentators said his failure had cost China its chance at perfection.

I’ve just had a look at some comments on Chinese online chat rooms (we’ve translated them into English)…

“Very disappointed! Everyone expected Zhou to get the 50th gold. But he lost, he is the criminal of our country. We lost the most important gold medal in men’s diving event. It is a huge shame, Zhou Jiehong, the team leader of China’s diving team, should quit her post!”

“What Zhou lost is not a gold medal. He disappointed the hopes of the entire country. Hosting the Olympics is the dream of several generations.”

Some are more sympathetic …

“Every Chinese athlete knows how important the Beijing Olympics is, and they have much more pressure than the foreign athletes. Zhou is still young and has lots of chances. It is okay not to win a gold at this Olympics. He has done really well. The failure can get him to work harder in the future.”

“Those people criticising our athletes are so bad in their attitude! Is it necessary for them to do that? Why should our athletes be regarded as medal machines? If they can’t get gold medals, they will be criticised, if they get golds, everybody says loving words. These people are so nasty!”

Can two weeks and several bagfuls of gold medals change the way an entire country sees itself?

I’ve written here before that China often sees itself as a victim. Generations have grown up learning about this country’s century of humiliation – how the West and Japan once bit chunks out of China, and how they still want to keep China down.

But does China now have to get a new national story?

The success of the Beijing Olympics may make China reassess its belief that it is a victim. It may also have to re-think its view that the West is determined to stop China from retaking its rightful place as a world power.

Here’s why…

• Everyone has come to Beijing. 205 nations were invited to compete at these Games – and 204 showed up (Brunei managed to get its paperwork in a muddle and failed to register its athletes on time). So, there were no boycotts. The most important world leaders even came to the opening ceremony as well (one of the only ones who didn’t, Gordon Brown, has now arrived in Beijing for the closing ceremony).

• China is winning more golds than anyone else. Before the Games, China played down its gold medal chances – saying that it was just a minor, second-rank, developing country which would probably be annihilated by the sporting powers of the world (and would be lucky to rub two bronzes together, that kind of thing). But, in the end, it’s come out ahead. So, the next time that China plays down its chances, no-one will believe a word.

In the end, it’s pretty hard to carry on feeling like a victim when every country on earth comes to your party and proceeds to watch you win.

“Now we can say goodbye to our image as the sick man of Asia,” said Shen Ming, a Chinese fan watching the final of the women’s beach volleyball told my colleague.

“Hosting the Olympics means that China’s power has grown,” said Hao Ning at the final of the men’s springboard diving (which China won).

On to the next question then. What does China do when it no longer feels picked on by the rest of the world?

Here are the most outlandish fears of the lying-awake-at-night-worrying-about-China club (slightly exaggerated for effect): China will go ahead and conquer the world, raise the red flag over Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower, and make the rest of the world come to Beijing every once in a while to prostrate themselves and generally grovel in a humiliating way.

China says that no-one has to worry about anything like that. People here tell me they just want to be respected and taken seriously as equals – nothing more.

What do a billion people do when their country finds its confidence?