2008 Olympics Updates

The Beijing Olympics was always going to be different from any other recent Olympics.

None of the usual questions that tend to surround an Olympics mattered here: money, organisation, level of government support and the public’s enthusiasm – or indeed lack of it.

Instead, the question China faced was: should a regime like this have the honour of the biggest gathering of people in peaceful sporting competition without agreeing to change its authoritarian ways?

This issue was presented very clearly seven years ago when the International Olympic Committee voted for Beijing.

The leader of the rival Paris bid said China should get the Expo but not the Olympics. China’s human rights record, he argued, ruled it out for the Olympics. Even though he himself was one of many businessmen who believed engagement with China was a good thing, giving it the Olympics was held up as an endorsement the country did not yet deserve.

In ignoring that advice, the IOC took the view that the Olympics simply had to come to the home of nearly a quarter of the world’s population.

True, it nodded in the direction of human rights with its then director general Francois Carrard saying the IOC would monitor human rights in China.

But, as President Jacques Rogge put it to me, while China has had to open up as a result of hosting the Games, it was unrealistic to expect the Games to go where world leaders had failed.

It was always fanciful to expect that this 17-day festival of sport would completely change China, or that China would change a sporting system invented by a French count and now run by a Belgian count. Not in any fundamental ways at least.

Indeed, as Rogge also points out, the IOC came to China for its own reasons related to the Olympics.

It took the decision in the summer of 2001, when both the organisers for the 2004 Athens summer Games and the 2006 Turin Winter Games were suffering seemingly insurmountable problems.

Athens, having messed up its structure, was so behind schedule that there was real fear it might not be ready.

Turin, whose choice as the 2006 Winter Games was an unintended consequence of the Salt Lake City corruption scandal, did not have adequate facilities, needed more funding and was not certain the Italian government could or would help.

In contrast China simply told the IOC: “Give us the Games and we will do whatever you want.”

And that is exactly what has happened.

China has given the IOC great venues – there can be nothing more iconic than the Bird’s Nest, a true “object for the world” exactly as Ai Weiwei, its Chinese architect, intended.

The infrastructure development has been amazing, as anyone who has used Beijing’s new airport will testify. The transport plan has also worked, making Beijing’s previously impossible traffic more than manageable.

And the venues have provided some of the most memorable sports seen in many an Olympics.

We had a first week so dominated by Michael Phelps that we had to scurry through the record books to ask if he was a greater Olympian than Carl Lewis or Jesse Owens.

Then Usain Bolt stole the show in the second week, making the 100 metres once again magical and worthy of a race to decide the fastest man on earth.

And alongside all this, Team GB has broken free from the rather depressing British history of failing to deliver by enjoying its best Games for a century. In doing so, athletes have created some truly great sporting moments, which have been surprising and stunning in equal measure.

Many other countries have also had Beijing highlights to treasure. India, the world’s most underachieving sporting nation, won its first ever individual gold, as did Panama and Bahrain, while Mongolia, Afghanistan, Togo, all won their first medals.

The Beijing Olympics will also have an impact on the United States. Since the collapse of the Wall and of the old Soviet Union, its dominance of the Games has not been challenged.

But China will top the gold tally this time round. And that has prompted Americans to ask whether their athletes should get government funding – the US is the only nation that does not provide it.

Indeed, as China and Asia continue to grow as world economic powers, America’s sway over Olympic finances may also come under pressure.

Many in the Olympic movement feel that if the 20th century was Europe and America’s great century of sport, then the 21st century might belong to China and Asia.

While China’s presentation at many of the sporting venues was a pale copy of what you might get in the NBA or at a baseball game, the Chinese have been determined throughout the last two weeks to show they can do sport like the West.

And there can be no doubt that the Beijing Olympics have done just that.

Chaoyang Park Beach Volleyball Ground & Capital Gymnasium, Beijing

According to the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB), beach volleyball was first played in California as a bit of light relief during the Great Depression.

And, having watched my first slice of the ball-and-bikinis game on Thursday (a day that Manchester in February would be disappointed with), I can confirm beach volleyball has mood-enhancing qualities.

But volleyball’s bosses are probably over-egging it to suggest the sport was born for any historical reason. I think people started playing beach volleyball because they could – which reminds me of that old joke about dogs and certain parts of their anatomy.

Quite simply, beach volleyball is fantastic. It’s old-school indoor volleyball I’m not so sure about. But before I get to that, let’s have some background.

A New Yorker called William G. Morgan invented volleyball (although he called it “mintonette”) in 1895. A year later, another American, Alfred T. Halstead, saved the sport from ridicule by coming up with the name of volleyball. This was a huge step as there is no way the International Olympic Committee (IOC) would have agreed to beach mintonette.

The next half-century saw the sport slowly spread to most corners of the globe, and by 1947 it was time for FIVB to spring into life. World championships followed but it wasn’t until 1964 that the sport took its Olympic bow.

Recent years have seen the volleyball tweak its rules to make things a bit more exciting and the inexorable growth of its sandy offspring. The key date is July 1996, when beach volleyball packed them in at the Atlanta Games.

It was even more popular in Sydney, no doubt helped by Australia’s run to gold in the women’s event, and it was soon clear the student had outgrown the master.

In many ways, the strangest thing about beach volleyball as an Olympic sport is that the IOC agreed to it. This is an organisation, after all, that thinks dressage (Strictly Come Prancing) has a place in an international multi-sports event in the 21st century – and before you email in, I’m not knocking it for equestrian competitions, I know it is a supreme test of horsemanship.

By saying yes to beach volleyball, the IOC wasn’t just agreeing to a few tonnes of sand and a hundred extra athletes: it was giving the green light to cheerleaders, loud music and a running commentary from a bilingual Ali G. I’m not sure this is entirely what Baron de Coubertin had in mind.

But beach volleyball’s biggest weakness is also its biggest strength: the game is played by fit, young things in their swimming costumes. Actually, that’s wrong. The game is played by fit, young women in their swimming costumes. The men get to dress like Australians.

This has led to some critics suggesting the sport is more suited Club 18-30 than the Olympics, and many Islamic countries have chosen not to embrace it for precisely this reason.

That, of course, is their prerogative but for the rest of us I’ve got news – beach volleyball is no more salacious than half a dozen sports here (have you seen women’s high jump or pole vault recently?). Not only that, the sporty bikinis make complete sense for what they are doing, namely, flinging themselves around in the sand. The women, in fact, can wear less revealing, one-piece costumes if they want, but choose not to.

And what all of this completely obscures is that we are talking about highly trained, incredibly talented, full-time athletes. The feeling that you have wandered into a party at the Playboy Mansion by lucky accident doesn’t last long and you’re soon wrapped up in the ebbs and flows of a dynamic sport.

The game I watched – the women’s final - had a bit of everything as it pitted the defending champions, the US partnership of Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor, against the coming force in beach volleyball, the Chinese pairing of Tian Jia and Wang Jie.

It was the first time at these Games that teams from the US and China had met in a gold-medal match, and it was played in a deluge. So we had the surreal scene of a packed Chaoyang stadium, clad entirely in pastel-coloured pac-a-macs, watching four women in bikinis attempt to recreate Santa Monica.

“Everybody in Beijing wants this ticket!” screamed the Ali G-alike in English and Mandarin, before reacting to a blocked spike with the immortal putdown, “Not in my house!”

The scoring was tight, with the American pair opting for power (particularly the long-limbed Walsh), while the Chinese duo mixed up their spikes with some angled dinks. Tian, playing in her third Olympic competition, was having a blinder, repeatedly retrieving lost causes or setting up her taller partner Wang at the net.

But it was the Americans, unbeaten for 107 matches, who came up with the big points when it mattered. And before too long they had wrapped up a 21-18 21-18 victory and a second Olympic title.

In the run-up to the final Walsh and May-Treanor hadn’t always sounded as gracious as they might but in the post-match press conference they were politeness personified. Beijing was neat, the fans were wonderful and their opponents were great and will get better. They even had a quip about the weather.

“That’s another reason we wear our swim suits,” said May-Treanor.

The Chinese started off a bit glum but cheered up as the compliments came in from the champions. They also spoke about this being a breakthrough tournament for the sport in China – their second team beat Brazil to the bronze medal – and I think they might be right. There was a full-page, colour advert featuring Tian and Wang on the back of China Daily’s main section today – I can’t remember anything similar for the country’s numerous winners in shooting or weightlifting.

I also can’t imagine anything similar for their indoor volleyball compatriots, who lost their women’s semi-final in straight sets to Brazil later on Thursday. It’s not there was any disgrace in that defeat, the South Americans are a fine team and got better as this match went on, or that the players on the squad are any less lovely than Tian and Wang. It’s the sport, that’s the problem.

Indoor volleyball is a great game to play (many are the rainy Wednesdays I remember playing volleyball, or something similar, in the school gym as a youngster) and it’s an OK game to watch. It’s just not as good as beach volleyball.

It’s almost as if the game Morgan invented was meant for the beach, not the hard floors of a gymnasium. Cricket, football and rugby on the beach are a laugh but they’re not improved as contests by the shifting surface. Volleyball is, though. Being able to dive head-long at the ball without fear is liberating.

A player as skilled as Tian is too short for indoor volleyball, with its near total focus on height, but can operate on sand. And May-Treanor was a superb indoor player before quitting the national team because it wasn’t “fun anymore”.

The pace of beach volleyball is better too, and the players don’t seem to feel the need to get together for a hug every 30 seconds, although I suppose with just two of them it would get a bit odd.

No, I’m a beach volleyball man all the way. And not for the reasons you think. That’s what the cheerleaders are for and they appear every five minutes. Even in the rain.

Ukrainian heptahlete Lyudmila Blonska was exposed five years ago as a drugs cheat.

If she were British she wouldn’t have been at the Beijing Games, because the British Olympic Association’s bye law, still intact after Dwain Chambers’ recent challenge, would have prevented her.

The lifetime ban which will now surely follow once the IOC and IAAF have concluded the disciplinary process against her will hopefully bring to an end a career built on a lie.

Sources say this latest infringement is another steroid case, just as it was in 2003, when she was first banned for two years.

Steroids allow you to train harder, build more stamina, add bulk, improve performance. They also threaten your heart, screw your hormones and can shorten your life.

The IOC’s perspective has changed from shuffling embarrassment at positive drug tests during the Games, to unequivocal opposition to cheats. They’ve carried out 4,133 tests to date, 840 of them blood tests, the rest urine.

They take a while to process, 72 hours or so.

To date, four athletes have been disqualified: Greek hurdler Fani Halkia, North Korean shooter Kim Jong Su, Spanish cyclist Isabel Moreno and Vietnamese gymnast Thi Ngan Thuong Do.

Thirty-nine others have been caught in the lead-up to the Games, in tests carried out by international federations, and other national anti-doping agencies.

Athletics govening body, the IAAF, in particular are on the offensive. They really understand the threat to the credibility of athletics posed by cases like Blonska’s.

British heptathlete Kelly Sotherton, who finished fifth in Beijing, has suggested that once the due process is followed, the re-allocated heptathlon medals ought to be presented to their rightful owners again at a proper ceremony in the stadium.

I think it’s a great idea. It would underline the point that the price of cheating is disgrace.
The more deterrents the better, as far as I’m concerned.

Every four years, during the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games, the President of the International Olympic Committee calls on the “youth of the world” to gather in the next Olympic city.

Presumably, it’s a call addressed specifically to the athletes, because there isn’t anything particularly youthful about the audience.

The average age of TV viewers for the Athens Games was 46! So the challenge for the IOC is to keep the Games relevant to a younger audience.

When I was a teenager, the Olympic Games were one of the most important things in my life. Once every four years, I would sit down for two and a half weeks and not move from in front of the TV. When I was 16 I even opted out of a family holiday to watch the LA Games in 1984.

Now I’ve got a mortgage to pay and kids to feed, the Olympics aren’t quite the central feature in my life that they used to be, but they’re still certainly one of the main highlights.

Capturing the attention of a younger audience is something every organisation, every business and every sport needs to do, because if you catch them young you’re halfway towards keeping them onside as they grow older.

The My Games team bumped into Michael Phelps’ mum the other day and asked her how old her son was when he started to take an interest in the Olympics. She’s probably a major reason he’s now the most successful Olympic gold medallist of all time.

One way the IOC hopes to capture the youth market is to stage an inaugural Youth Olympics. They will take place in Singapore in 2010, and will have the same 26 sports as London 2012, but with fewer disciplines.

As well as BMX cycling, which is making its debut in Beijing, there will also be some innovative events such as beach wrestling. Excuse me? You mean what teenagers do on the beach every summer? That’s an Olympic Youth sport? Apparently so, and to go with the Youth Summer Games, there will be a Youth Winter Olympics, and both Games will follow the traditional four year cycle.

It’s all the brainchild of the IOC President Jacques Rogge, but can it work? Will a younger audience be attracted to the Youth Games? Tell us whether you think the Olympic Games are relevant to the “youth of the world” or whether the IOC is fighting a losing battle.

On Friday’s edition of My Games we’ll be looking into these issues and speaking to some young(er) webcammers to get their thoughts.

You can participate via this blog or you can e-mail us at mygames@bbc.co.uk.

Beijing’s Olympic Green Tennis Centre

There were perhaps 200 people watching the first-round match between Andy Murray and Lu Yen-Hsun of Chinese Taipei (that’s “made in Taiwan” to you and me but not the IOC and certainly not our hosts) on Monday, and, to be honest, I have no idea why any of them were there.

OK, I can guess why Judy Murray was there – she was probably killing time before her elder son Jamie had his big moment in the doubles tournament.

Lu seemed to be enjoying himself too but then he had only won seven of his 19 previous matches in 2008.

But the rest of us? Murray the younger was clearly experiencing the same confusion.

He turned up, fresh from a superb (British) win in the US, under the illusion he was a rising star, playing an unheralded also-ran for a place in the last 32 of the most important, most ancient, most magnificent event in the sporting calendar.

Sadly, it seemed to dawn on the (by now) Scot he was miserably out of sorts and probably wasting his time against a mediocre but far more up-for-it opponent, in an event he shouldn’t be playing in anyway when the US Open is only a fortnight away.

“The US Open?!? Why didn’t you tell me?” I imagined Murray to be muttering when the game against Lu started to go down the toilet.

“That’s one of the four biggest events in my sport and if I win that I’m made for life. It will be a glorious new start for British (again) tennis and my name will be up there in lights with Roger’s, Rafa’s and Novak’s. What on earth am I doing in Beijing?”

The list of names finding reasons not to be here was growing right up until the tournament started on Sunday. It seemed getting the sport’s biggest stars to come to Beijing was no guarantee they’d actually take part in the tournament.

Federer and Nadal (the two names are just said together now) played and won today, which frankly saves the tournament as a serious competition, and the Williams sisters appear to be up for it. But what about the others?

Former world number one Andy Roddick made it clear his priority was the US Open, his national championship, and not the Games.

Ana Ivanovic, Amelie Mauresmo, Maria Sharapova and former champion Lindsay Davenport have all made their excuses, and defending champion Justine Henin-Hardenne would not have risked aggravating her asthma in Beijing even if she was still playing the game.

At least the women’s event has a grand slam-calibre honours board – since its Olympic comeback in 1988, the female champions have been Steffi Graf, Jennifer Capriati, Davenport, Venus and Henin-Hardenne.

The current Olympic men’s champion anybody?

It’s Nicolas Massu, in case you’d forgotten: before him the winners include Marc Rosset and Miloslav Mecir.

Massu had to be given a special invite to be able to defend his title, so bad has his form been since Athens. It was Mardy Fish he beat in the final in 2004, by the way, but he’s stayed at home with Roddick.

The debate about what should and what shouldn’t be an Olympic sport has been going on so long it’s almost an Olympic sport itself, but it is actually quite simple.

If winning an Olympic gold medal is not the highest accolade in your sport, you’re playing a non-Olympic sport. Tennis fails this test by some margin – are the Games even the fifth biggest event on the sport’s schedule?

Watching Murray throw away a winning position in the first set, sulk his way through a tie-break and then battle the voice in his head telling him to give up in the second set was actually quite depressing.

Depressing because I didn’t really blame him. If I were struggling with my game and not really feeling the Olympic buzz, I would have started thinking about Flushing Meadows too. It is about priorities.

Of course, the equation is a little different for doubles specialist Jamie and there is a school of thought that says the pairs format should be spared from any Olympic chop, the rationale being doubles is a neglected event that needs the Games’ exposure.

It’s an interesting idea but I’m not sure I buy it. Would that really raise doubles’ profile (Massu and Fernando Gonzalez won the men’s doubles in Athens, in case you were wondering)? Wouldn’t we just be left with a tournament with even fewer top players?

I think there is a chance that would widen the gap between the two formats, effectively creating two sports: a popular/professional one called singles, and an Olympic one called doubles. Players who chose the latter would probably need funding.

Hold on a minute, this sounds a bit like that other great Olympic anomaly, “amateur” boxing. Best not go there, we’ve got medal hopes.

The really annoying thing about the inclusion of tennis (and basketball and football, to name two other star-studded but distracted “Olympic” sports) is that it queers the pitch for those sports that really do need and value the Games.

It was interesting to see how the TV cameras kept picking out the tennis players, NBA superstars and top footballers during Friday’s opening ceremony. Most Olympic athletes are totally foreign to us; the International Olympic Committee and the people that pay for this whole shebang know that.

I would be surprised if the man on the Clapham omnibus could identify more than a dozen of Team GB here in Beijing (I think most sports journalists would struggle to get more than 50 of the 313).

But that is precisely why these four-yearly gatherings are so precious for the archers, badminton players and canoeists – this is their life’s ambition and shop window rolled into one. And I believe the viewing public gets that.

The IOC and ad-men need not fear our lack of familiarity with the back stories of the boys in the coxless four or girls in our 4×200m freestyle team.

Which is why tonight I will be raising a glass to our real Olympic stars Nicole Cooke, Rebecca Adlington and Jo Jackson, and doing my best to forget Andy Murray’s tennis campaign.

He won’t lose too much sleep over it. He’s got his sport’s fourth and final big event to look forward to in New York in a couple of weeks.