The Lure

First it was the swimmer Ryan Lochte waxing lyrical about his penchant for hamburgers, then Usain Bolt took over with his nuggets fuelled sprint world records.

The overt suggestions finally got to me and I succumbed to the lure of the corporation.

But rather than a fast food outlet, I opted for another trip to look at the shiny watches. There was an ulterior motive this time.


As I’ve walked past the Omega pavilion these two weeks, their first floor terrace balcony has been crying out to me to come and lounge.

But it’s not an open to the hoi polloi. You need an invitation.

The Belgian spinter Kim Gevaert, the Russian polevaulter Yelena Isinbayeva and the American speedster Tyson Gay were all I needed as the passport to gratification.

They were there as guests of Omega and they were talking about their time in Beijing. While they were showing off their pictures of their moments in the city to an adoring public, I was wandering around the mezzanine level, looking down on the well-buffed watch cases and athletes.

Of the trio, Isinbayeva wins the gold medal for imaginative pictures. But that’s not a surprise because she is a keen photographer in her spare time when she’s not breaking pole vaulting world records.

Once the champions had been taken into a special room, I thought I’d make the most of the comfy seats.
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Most of them were taken but I spotted a spare one opposite a couple. I asked if I could sit down and they said yes.

Just after I’d sunk into the leather cushion, the woman asked if I was from Switzerland as I was wearing a watch based on the Swiss Railway clocks.

And we got chatting. We spoke about the games and they told me a bit about their life in Beijing as opposed to Switzerland and so on.

Forget fast food restaurants, this was more my speed.

While we talked, attentive staff brought drinks and appealing snacks and - this was the best bit – waited for you to finish before asking if they could take it away.

Urs and Steffi looked as if they were installing themselves for the evening. The lounge lizard in me was jealous but there was the small matter of going to cover the evening’s athletics at the Bird’s Nest.

As I was leaving, Tyson Gay was without the earlier phalanx of corporate PRs around him. With Bolt like speed I enjoined him in conversation.

“It’s been the best experience I’ve ever had in my life,” he told me of his Beijing sojourn. “I really enjoyed it.”

Gay has been a bit part player in these Olympics, the antithesis of the Usain Bolt success story.

The American was supposed to be one of the protagonists but he never made it through to the finals of the 100 metres and a bungled baton change in the 4x100 metres relay semi-final robbed him of the chance for redemption there.

But it’s just part of a process.

“Even though I’m going home with no gold medals,being around all my friends and family, having support through the bad times has been amazing,” he added


“The hardware is good but no one can take this moment away from you.”

Casting his eyes around the lounge, he added: “It’s just been great being around all these people, you see I don’t have any gold medals or nothing but I’m still getting a lot of love and attention and it means a lot to me.”

Time well spent then.

The Sexing-Up

I have wondered many things since the Olympics started. Things such as: What’s Beijing like? And why is beach volley ball an Olympic sport?

But I’ve never mused on why table tennis should be made sexier.

Maybe it’s because I don’t play the sport. But clearly the bigwigs of the International Table Tennis Federation have been exercising their minds on this issue.

And the ITTF’s vice-president, Claude Bergeret, has come out and said the girls should be urged to wear skirts and more alluring shirts.

“Not the shirts that are made for men,” he advised. “But ones with more curves.”

Ooh la la.

Ana Ivanovic, the women’s world number one, is a Slavonic rhapsody of a looker. The Serb could more or less wear anything on the court and look dynamite.

Over in the men’s the top player Rafael Nadal sports a sleeveless shirt that accentuates his Uberhombre upper torso.

At the French Open you can just hear the women in the stands swooning as the Spanaird packs off a pheromone-filled forehand past the latest hapless sap on the other side of the net.

And not to mention the clenched fist: “vamos” following an important point. Indeed Nadal screams sex.

Not so China’s Wang Liqin, a top table tennis player he may be but he’s not going to leave the girls gaga.

No robust musculature on this one. He’s simply a wiry lad with regular features who plays a good game. True, just like his lawn tennis counterparts, there are plenty of clenched fists after crucial points but the game’s not built around expansiveness.

And as we all know, no matter what the therapists say, size does matter when it comes to sex in sport.

Table tennis is a compact, intense game. And its appeal lies in the fact that ordinary, even diminutive physiques seem to be able to excel.

It doesn’t appear to be the case in tennis. The players there are, for the most part, bigger;

Nevertheless some of the table tennis fillies feel it’s time to project lubricity. Japan’s Ai Fukuhara opted for a “skort” – a tight skirt with cycling shorts underneath - for her last 16 match against China’s Zhang Yining who faced off against her opponent in black shorts and a shirt which was emblazoned with a yellow dragon on the front.

That doesn’t seem to me to ooze sex appeal, it's perhaps better suited to dazzling the adversary into errors.

Have to say during the quarter final match between Liquin and the Croatian Tan Ruiwu on Friday afternoon at the Peking University Stadium, the crowd seemed to be getting into it.

They were shouting between and during points and Tan had to put his finger to his lips.

The spectators responded by lowering the decibels but it didn’t make much difference, Tan lost the second game 11-7 which prompted another barrage of flag waving and screaming.

During the pause before the third game, the crowds continued to brandish their flags and chant in unison to a derivative of the Human League’s Don’t You Want Me Baby.


It might not be sexy but they seemed to be having fun.

And we can never have enough of that.

The Olympian II

Praise the Lord for he hath cast upon us a Lightning Bolt to save our firmament.

Yea, for the second time in four days one man has electrified the Olympic Games. Cue one Usain Bolt.

The godsend celebrates his 22nd birthday on Thursday as the undisputed head honcho of world sprinting. His scattered foes can do no more than pay tribute.

Shawn Crawford, the 200 metres defending champion, said he went up to him after the race and informed him that he was a bad (in the colloquial sense of outstanding) man.

“I told him: ‘You the man. I told him he was a bad, bad man.”

Jive and high fives aside, what we’d just witnessed in the stadium was pretty good (in the conventional sense of word).

Bolt had become the first man in 24 years to complete the 100 and 200 metres sprint double at the Olympic Games.

He’d also beaten a world record set 12 years ago by Michael Johnson at the Atlanta games.

The American Carl Lewis was the last lad to achieve the 100 and 200 metres feat. Bolt becomes the ninth man in history to do so, joining legends such as Jesse Owens.

But with all the hullabaloo, Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee has added a word of caution.

Bolt must be a bit more respectful towards his peers both in his pre and post race actions, says Rogge. Less of the pre-sprint dancing and more of the post stroll handshakes.

There seems to be a standard question from journalists covering the Olympics for a publication that we’ll call Sports Psychology Today.

“Who is Michael Phelps?” cropped up a couple of times as the American swam his way into glory during the pool party he was having.

Sure enough after trouncing his rivals for the second time in an Olympic final, we got: “Who is Usain Bolt?”

Bolt responded: “Did you see me before the race? That’s me.”

Well the message coming from Rogge is: it might be you but it’s not Olympian.

Bolt says it gets the crowd going. And he’s got a case because the intensity and atmosphere in the stadium after his two victories have been spectacular.

His wins have also underlined the demise of the United States as the dominant track power.

Jamaican women took the first three positions in the 100 metres sprint. Unprecedented that.

The American men only claimed silver and bronze in the 200 metres after two disqualifications. Crawford and Walter Dix being the beneficiaries of Wallace Spearmon and Churanda Martina’s misfortunes.


Martina lost his place after the Americans appealed Spearmon’s removal. The US delegation accepted that Spearmon had strayed from his lane. But the tapes also showed the silver medallist Martina doing the same.

And the appeal jury agreed.


Needless to say,this has not gone down well in the Dutch West Indies who were busily celebrating their first Olympic track medal.

And from having just the bronze. The United States had engineered silver and bronze.

Omayra Leeflang, the minister of sports, of the Dutch West Indies says the Americans aren’t being very Olympian about the race. But this is all about medals. China’s dominance in the table is proof of that. Lots of mileage here in the fact that they’ve eclipsed their tally in Athens four years ago.

There was a furore about having the swimming finals in the morning, apparently to satisfy the cravings of US TV networks.

The swimmers weren’t happy but they all turned up and world record after world record fell.

I’m not entirely sure whether the women’s beach volley ball was programmed for the early morning to assuage the voracious demands of US TV networks.

Even though the American pair of Kerri Walsh and Misty-May Treanor hadn’t been beaten for 107 matches, let’s say – because I’m a philanthropic kind of chap – no, the timing had nothing to do with the networks.

But let’s also state that the gold medal match was played in the driving rain (rather than the traditional sunshine associated with the sport) with the Chinese and American players in skimpy bikini and sun cap combos.

It looked ridiculous. Barely Olympian.

The Choice

An invitation turned up on my desk sometime last week for an evening with Olympians on Wednesday night organised by the International Sports Press Association. Would I contact the following email for further details.

Contact was indeed established and I was told that the American swimmers Michael Phelps, Nathalie Coughlin and Katie Hoff would be at the China Club.

Better still the legends Alex Popov and Ian Thorpe would also be there.

A shoal of talent indeed. Only snag was that they were going to be at the same time as one Usain Bolt would be trying to write himself into legend in final of the men’s 200 metres

Just my luck a chance to go to one of the swishest venues in town and I have to watch people running around a track.

Redemption is mine though because there’s another rendez-vous with titans of yore on Thursday afternoon. The hurdler Edwin Moses, the sprinter Cathy Freeman and the decathlete Daley Thompson.

This might be more feasible as the association is laying on transport from the press centres to the venue, the Casa Italia.

This is a concept aimed at promulgating all things Italian. Mamma mia. Just what I’ve come from Europe for.

But as the saying goes when in Beijing….drive a Ferrari.

There’s been an absence of ostentation within the hotel – venue- hotel vortex. If there are high ranking officials from national Olympic committees cruising around in smart cars then I haven’t noticed them.

That might be due to the fact that I’m either watching the action or writing about it in an underground ice box.

One luxury brand that has been quite salient is Omega. The firm has a temporary pavilion which I’ve been passing regularly en route to the various venues.

It became even more prominent for me just after Michael Phelps’s victory in the 100 metres butterfly final when the Serbian swimming delegation contested the split of a split second victory over their swimmer Milorad Cavic.

After the delegation had a look at the tapes of the race they could see it was all fine. Their man had got silver and Phelps had won gold.

Doubting the veracity of the official timekeepers is quite rare and it all came about because the cameras which are shown to the crowds aren’t the one’s used for timekeeping.

The crowd’s cameras suggested that Cavic had touched first. But Omega has got high speed cameras. This is a system that links four high speed video recording cameras and allows judges to have real time views of the images captured by the cameras even while they’re recording.

It’s possible to see the action recorded by all four cameras at once or to select any of them individually for a full screen view.

That’s all very well and good and we rightly hail an association with the Olympic movement that goes back to 1932.

But what about watches on your wrist rather than the ones in the water?

Well they’re quite spectacular. Quite a range is on show at the pavilion including the Omega Speedmaster Professional.

This comes with the tag of the first and only watch worn on the moon.

And then there’s the Beijing Olympic Collection Minus 88 Days Double Eagle which hasn’t been worn on Mars.

It’s limited to 288 pieces and can be snapped up for 219,800 yuan.

The dials within the face are in the figure eight which as we all know is the lucky number in China because the word for eight sounds like the word for prosperity.

Phelps has come away from Beijing with eight gold medals but that’s got nothing to do with luck. It’s down to timing

The Slip

Of all the stories I read before I travelled to Beijing, I can't remember one touching on the Chinese sense of humour. They were usually about lack of freedom, shady political practices and economic hegemony.

But anything about what makes people chortle? Nichts.

A sense of humour does exist. For example: the army of volunteers who have been helping us around the Olympic sites have been instructed to smile at every opportunity possible.

I also need look no further than the manufacturers of the scones available in the press centre cafes. Well the makers must be having a laugh on the poor saps who buy the scone to find that it crumbles into a thousand pieces when it’s cut or bitten.

And whoever decided to dream up cheerleaders for entertainment must be laughing all the way to somewhere.

I spotted a few on Monday night at the Natonal Stadium in the mixed zone - the area where the athletes come and chew over their performances with the media. I noticed them because they were carrying green frills rather than clunky camera combos.

On Tuesday morning I went to see the reigning Olympic champions Germany take on New Zealand in the men's hockey.

There waas an edge about the final Group A match as both sides needed to win to go into the last four.

Germany scored two early goals and went into the half-time break nursing that advantage. As the players walked off the pitch, blaring music went on and spectators started moving towards the refreshment booths. So far so usual.

And then on came 12 young women in red bikini tops and red skirts. They formed two ranks of six either side of the half way line and snapped to attention.


Silence. Then on came a sort of pumped up Bollywood tectonic. The troupe shook the necessary areas of their bodies as they were intertwined and waved their tambourines and frills.

They must be volunteers, I thought, because they’re smiling.

But I would imagine cheerleaders are supposed to look joyous.

The girls gambolled awhile and in truth it was the most flair I’d seen for a good 20 minutes as a technically efficient German side ground down their opponents.

Sadly the cheerleaders finished their routine just I was starting to fully appreciate their artistic interpretations.

Shortly after the last of the tambourines jingled off, the water fountains came on to spray the pitch.

Sigmund Freud would have chuckled at that one.

The Disappointment

Just after the American swimmer Ryan Lochte had won gold in the 200 metres backstroke, he was asked about his eating habits. He mentioned pizzas and products from an American fast food chain. I thought McLochte was alone. Far from it.

Just after destroying the field to set a new world record in the 100 metres on Saturday night, Usain Bolt was asked what kind of day he’d had.


“I never had breakfast,” he said. “Actually I woke up at 11am, sat around watched some TV..then I had lunch....some nuggets…and then I pretty much went back to my room.....slept again for three more hours and then, went back and got some more nuggets and then I came to the track.”

On such a regime McBolt registered a time of 9.69 seconds to become the first Jamaican winner of the title.

These kind of statements should come with the kind of warnings that used to precede TV episodes of Batman: “Don’t try this at home, kids.”

Bolt qualifed for the second round of the 200 metres today just before China went into national mourning over the non-qualification of the golden boy Liu Xiang.

The 25 year old Olympic and world champion in the 110 metres high hurdles pulled up with a gammy ankle during heat six. This is bad news as he was the big hope for a Chinese gold medal at the stadium.

He’s a good looking boy and his face has been plastered everywhere. There was a hastily convened press conference to discuss why the king had left the building.

I’m surprised that there hasn’t been an emergency cabinet meeting. I’d personally impose martial law.

But then I am known to overreact.

I’ve been looking at some of the news agency wires and they’re quoting fans of the man saying the Olympics are over for me.

I personally have seen few signs of self-immolation.

Only yesterday I was musing on how the exploits of Bolt and the American swimmer Michael Phelps had helped the Olympics to emerge from the negative cloud surrounding the prelude to the games.

In essence Liu’s departure won’t diminish it from a sporting point of view as gargantuan feats have already been achieved.

Liu was only mentioned in the same breath as the world record holder Dayron Robles because the so called “Shanghai Express” was the defending champion. Injuries have kept Liu out of action for much of the season.

The saying goes that class is permanent while form is temporary but we all know that excellence nevertheless needs to muscle its way to the top. Eventually it will out.
Since huge marketing campaigns have been launched around Liu, there must be a squadron of executives now flying by the seat of their pants.

He, along with the basketball player Yao Ming, was one of the human product placements of these Olympics.

Liu’s main coach, Sun Haiping, twice broke down in tears during the press conference. While I don’t think he’s going to be taken away and consigned to the salt mines, the outburst underlines the immense pressure that both had been living with.

There was a sense in the press conference that the true extent of the injury had been hidden from the Chinese people. If that’s the case, then that’s just stupid. Injuries are as inevitable to athletes as defeats and victories.

Terrence Trammell, the American contender for the 110 metres high hurdles, pulled up in heat five. Even though he was wearing sunglasses, you could see the pain in his eyes as he beat his fist.

It’s bad luck. It happens and you just have to recover and conquer anew.

We’re on the cusp of a perception here. If the crowds now don’t turn up to the events because their one true hero is defunct, then the Shangri-la promoted since the opening ceremony nine days ago will be exposed as a sustained deception.

Chinese athletes have so far garnered 35 golds – already three more than at Athens four years ago. With seven days of competition still left they’re on target to head the medals table

But if they collect all the golds, silvers and bronzes available from this point and the masses still consider the event not to be a success because their champion has gone, then the International Olympic Committee executives who decided to place the Olympic product here will be shown up to be as lame as Liu.

To cite a phrase from an Australian swimmer, we’re in a moment.

The Legends

What a whirlwind. I’m not sure if it can be classified as 24 hours that changed the world but it was certainly a period of time in which the games emerged from the shadow of their location.

If the event is ultimately deemed a success then two men should be given the keys to Beijing.

On land and in the water Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps respectively have probably injected these Olympics into the consciousness of a generation.

I grew up in Britain watching sports on TV and especially the Olympics with the commentary of David Coleman. And in these moments of competitive drama on the track, it’s his voice that I often hear.

It wasn’t simply the 100 metres. He had to say something like: “The race to determine the fastest man on the planet.”

Give or take the hyperbole, he made it compelling stuff.

Well, taking a leaf out of Coleman’s high octane descriptions, Bolt didn’t win Saturday night’s 100 metres race, he destroyed the field.

Or as I think I said when I was commentating on it: “There was space.”

That’s the thing that I remember. Bolt had time to look around. He was that far ahead.

It wasn’t quite in the league of waving to special fans in the crowd - that would have been disrespectful - but he could have done.

Richard Thompson, the silver medallist, from Trinidad, put it succinctly.

“I felt as if I was with Usain up to 50 metres and then just felt him pulling away after that. I felt I was in a comfortable second position. I just tried to stay relaxed and I felt myself pulling away from the rest of the field and I could see him slowing down and I’m still pumping to the line…

“He’s a phenomenal athlete and I don’t think there’s any way anyone would have beaten him with a run like that.”


In his quest for eight golds Phelps has given us the knife-edge of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. And, as in the best of all the Master of Suspense’s stories, there have been twists and turns.


Phelps had already been anointed the greatest Olympian of all time after collecting his fourth gold medal here – and 10th overall - when he won the 200 metres butterfly.

That put him ahead of the golden gang of nine which included the the Finnish athlete Paavo Nurmi, the American athlete Carl Lewis and the Russian gymnast Larissa Latynina.

Next up was would he equal the seven gold medal haul of the American swimmer Mark Spitz from the 1972 Olympics in Munich.

He did that on Saturday with the fingertip win in the 100 metres butterfly. On Sunday? Would he surpass Spitz and be hailed as lord of all games?

Oddly enough for this he had to rely on others. But the medley relay team of Aaron Peirsol for the backstroke, Brendan Hansen for the breaststroke and Jason Lezak for the freestyle combined to realise the dream.

Five on his own – three with others.

Quite a few of the swimming medallists have been asked to comment on Phelps. And to a man and woman they’ve all essentially said: “Wow.”

They talk about his focus, his consistency and his work ethic.

Grant Hackett, the Australian swimmer who narrowly failed on Sunday to win a third successive Olympic 1500 metres title said: “The level of achievement that he’s done here is phenomenal. In my opinion we’ll never ever see it again. I just don’t think that can be emulated or beaten.

“In this day and age when the sport is so competitive and so close...I said I thought he could win six or seven..... with a little bit of luck.....get eight. And I think in that 100 metres butterfly the way he got on that wall in such a close race everything lined up for him perfectly. He’s done a wonderful job.

“He’s an incredible racer and good on him for what he’s achieved. He’s a nice guy and a good bloke and over the past few years I’ve never seen him change - which is nice.”

Endorsements don’t come bigger than that.

Hackett should know. He said he needed five hours a week of physiotherapy and massage to make sure he can do the kilometres of training needed to be competitive.

At 28 with a couple of Olympic golds and now one silver, no one is really going to tell him he can’t go the distance. But he did sound as if the end was nigh.


And his explanation gave a tiny insight into the lives these athletes lead. But there’s also something at play which goes beyond the everyday discipline of weights and circuit training.

One of the American network camera men who I’ve been chatting to as we’ve been following the agony and joy of the swimmers quipped that Phelps should name his first born son Jason.

It’s not that the other members of the relay teams have done poorly, far from it, it’s just that Lezak has been titanic.

Veteran swimming correspondents spoke of Lezak’s swim last Monday in the freestyle relay as one of the most incredible they’d witnessed.

Lezak jumped into the pool a body length behind Alain Bernard – the second fastest man over 100 metres – and a swimmer who routinely betters him.

Lezak caught him and beat him.

The US team was elemental in its celebrations. Over the next few days every US swimmer would spoke of Lezak’s anchor leg in a race that simply became “the relay”.


Phelps himself has habitually said: “I’ve been speechless since Monday....” And we all know what he is referring to.

Four days after the relay, Bernard won gold in the 100 metres freestyle coming in ahead of the Australian world record holder Eamon Sullivan and Lezak. It was Lezak’s first individual medal in three Olympic games.

Even Bernard talked about how the relay made him reassess and refocus.

On Sunday in the medley relay Lezak plunged into the water with a lead of 0.81 seconds on Sullivan.

Afer the race Lezak said that before he went in he told himself that if he could catch a man that usually beats him then Sullivan, who also usually beats him, could rein him in.

He added: “Obviously I wanted to take it out hard and hold on as strong as I could.”

Lezak touched first with 0.70 of a second to spare.

So are legends spawned.