2008 Olympics Updates

Relaxed and ready is the mood in the ParalympicsGB camp on Thursday in the athletes’ village.

With the start of the Beijing Paralympics just a couple of days away, final preparations are being made - and there is an air of confidence around the team.

The likes of four-time Paralympian Jody Cundy are old hands at Paralympic villages, but for wheelchair basketball player Helen Freeman it is a whole new experience.

18-year-old Freeman (above left), from Watford, is the youngest member of the women’s team. She has been training hard for her Paralympic experience while studying for her A-levels.

A place at Reading University, studying Biochemistry, awaits Freeman when she gets back to London later this month - but she wants to make the most of her first Games.

“It has been an amazing experience so far. I now just want to get out there and play,” she told BBC Sport.

“I’ve been excited for months and now I can’t wait for it all to start.

“It was a bit of a culture shock at first to see so many disabled people together in the village, but after a few days I’ve got used to it and there is a special atmosphere around.

“The food hall is the biggest I’ve ever seen. It’s like a school canteen but on an extreme scale. I reckon it’s about the size of two football pitches!”

Freeman’s team-mate Ann Wild, who plays alongside her at club level and will be playing in her fifth Games, has been offering hints on the temptations in the food hall - like eating grilled meats, and avoiding fast food.

“It’s good to be able to get help from people like Ann, who has so much experience and it’s all good advice,” she said.

And with comfortable beds, so much food that there are tough choices to be made, and every facility on your doorstep, what does Helen appreciate most?

“The kettle - that’s been most important in the apartment I’m in,” she replied.

“There’s been plenty of tea drunk - my team-mate Helen Turner normally plays mother and makes it, but we’ve all enjoyed it.”

Freeman, Turner and the rest of the 206-strong team are now gearing up for Saturday’s opening ceremony.

Then Sunday sees the start of action in basketball, boccia, cycling, equestrian, five-a-side football, judo, shooting, swimming and table tennis.

Chief executive and chef de mission Phil Lane described this 2008 crop as the best prepared athletes he’d ever seen, and the team are delighted with facilities on offer at the athletes’ village.

Lane explained: “It’s the first time we have gone straight into a facility used by a GB Olympic team, and we worked with the British Olympic Association to share as much equipment as we could. The hard work has paid off.

“Our athletes have sofas, chairs, tables, televisions and DVD players in their apartments as the Olympians did, to give them home comforts and a place they can call their own.

“In Athens we had just one spare bed - not even a spare room. Here we have room so if people need their own space for whatever reason, it is available to them.”

The vast majority of the British team are already here in the village - the equestrian riders and sailors will join them after their events in Hong Kong and Qingdao.

All eyes will be on Michael Phelps in Beijing’s Water Cube as he attempts to eclipse Mark Spitz’s record of winning seven swimming gold medals at one Olympic Games.

But the 23-year-old American could be forced to share the limelight at the Games of the 29th Olympiad with a team-mate old enough to be his mum, in fact, a team-mate who he indeed calls “mom”.

Dara Torres has been breaking records for longer than Phelps has been alive, and at the age of 41, has just become the oldest American swimmer to qualify for an Olympics, and the first to reach a fifth Games.

Torres, who has a two-year old daughter, won the 100m freestyle race at the US trials over the weekend, beating 25-year-old Natalie Coughlin who won bronze in the same race in Athens four years ago, in a time that was just 0.36 seconds outside the world best.

Remarkably, Torres then set a new American record in the 50m freestyle, 26 years after first breaking the record as a 15 year old.

She has decided to drop the 100m to focus on the 50m free and possibly two relays in Beijing.

If you want more perspective on Torres’ achievement, she won her first Olympic gold in the 4×100m relay team at the 1984 Los Angeles Games, one year before Phelps was born.

She competed against the likes of British swimmers June Croft in 1984 and Karen Pickering in 1992.

Three more relay medals followed in 1988 and 92, but she retired after the Barcelona Games.

Torres was 29 when the Atlanta Games came around in 1996 and went to the Games as a spectator, but did not attend the swimming events.

The lure of the pool proved too strong though and she returned for the Sydney Olympics where she won two more relay golds and three individual bronze medals in the 50m and 100m freestyle and 100m butterfly.

At the age of 33, Torres was the oldest swimmer on the US team but she again quit following the Games,

The Athens Olympics in 2004 were spent commentating and when her daughter Tessa was born, in 2006, her Olympics days appeared over.

But Torres, breastfeeding between events, was still swimming fast and went on to win her 14th US National title in 2007.

For those of you thinking drugs, think again. Torres has signed up for extra testing and anyway, with nine Olympic medals to her name, it’s not like she has anything to prove.

Throughout this countdown, I’m come across a few athletes who have excelled at their sport for over a decade, one who proved you can compete as a mother, and one other who proved you can compete over seven Olympiad.

But Torres’ feat in the pool is truly astonishing, Phelps would have to be breaking national records to qualify for the 2024 Games to match her longevity.

What do you make of her achievements?

With the British show jumping and dressage teams for Beijing announced this week, I am quietly confident about the chances of Team GB’s equestrians at the Olympics.

Starting with the three-day eventers, it was obviously a shock when Zara Phillips had to pull out but I still think we could win the team competition. William Fox-Pitt is in particularly good form with three horses to choose from, all of which could win him the gold.

This will be Mary King’s fifth games, so she has the most experience out of the eventers and, like William, her horses are top notch. I spent the day with Mary and her daughter recently while filming for Sportsround, and she sounded really up for another Olympics. Mary is such a professional, she always puts in a great performance.

It’ll be a first Olympics for Sharon Hunt and Lucy Wiegersma although they’re both very experienced in the sport. I think they’ll do a great job helping the team to top honours. Zara Phillips’ replacement will be announced in around a week’s time.

For the show jumpers, I was really pleased to see Tim Stockdale’s name on the list. He’s the nicest man in the sport and has saved his wonderful mare Fresh Direct Corlato (above, with Tim) for this, his big Olympic dream.

Tim qualified for the Rolex Cup Final this year with Corlato, which was a huge achievement, but he decided to pull her out because he wanted to make sure she was perfect for Hong Kong. He actually told me later that it wasn’t a difficult decision because riding at the Olympics is his dream, and he wants to do everything possible to make that happen.

Regarding Ben Maher, I’d heard from a few in the know last week that he might be picked for the team, but I was still a bit surprised to see his name on the list. He’s been doing really well recently with his top ride Rolette and won the famous Hickstead Derby in 2005, but still most people outside the sport won’t have heard of him. This will be Ben’s first Olympics and undoubtedly the biggest event of his career so far.

That just leaves the Whitaker brothers, John and Michael. With a collective age of 101 they’re absolute legends in the sport. Collectively they’ve won just about everything there is to win in show jumping, but I know adding an Olympic gold to their collection would be the icing on the cake.

Now to the tough job of predictions… I actually think the show jumping competition is harder to win than the three-day event - there are probably more top combinations capable of winning the show jumping and there’s less room for error.

The American-born German team rider Meredith Michaels-Beerbaum would be my favourite for the Individual gold with her amazing ride Shutterfly. The pair won this year’s Rolex World Cup final and the horse is one of the best the sport’s ever known.

With that in mind Germany will probably win the team gold, too, so I think Team GB will be left battling it out with the USA for silver.

If I had to choose the Brit to win an individual medal it would be John Whitaker on Peppermill but I’d love Tim to bag one too.

On to dressage, and there seems to be more positivity around British dressage.

Many of our riders are regularly getting in the top ten at major international shows now and, as such, I think if all goes well we could sneak team bronze. It would be our first ever Olympic dressage medal which would give the sport a fantastic boost.

Out of the three combinations going I would predict Laura Bechtolsheimer (right) has our best chance of a medal with her fantastic horse, Mistral Hojris. It’s her first Olympics but the pair have done a lot together and “Alf”, as she calls him, is a class act.

Laura’s dad, Dr Wilfried Bechtolsheimer, represented Britain at dressage in the 1950s, so top class sport is obviously in the genes - and one of Laura’s brothers, Felix, is in a rock band.

The other riders are Emma Hindle, who’s based in Germany, and Jane Gregory. I predict Holland’s Anky Van Grunsven to win the individual gold and Germany to win the team competition.

Finally the para-dressage team has a great mix of youth and experience. It would be easy to be over-confident given their previous success - Team GB’s para riders have won every international honour there is. So arguably the likes of Lee Pearson and Anne Dunham have the most pressure on them out of all the equestrian riders in Hong Kong.

They’ve been so successful in the past, can they keep up the good work? The answer is hopefully yes. Other nations have been catching up a bit recently, but I still think our team will bag the majority of the golds once again. Good luck to everyone!