Category: Olympics

The voice of Beijing’s ‘Smiling Angel’

When Lin Miaoke, 9, belted out “I Sing for My Country” as the Chinese flag entered the national stadium, she became an instant celebrity and was quickly dubbed a “smiling angel.” The image of her dressed in a pretty red dress appeared around the world.

But she apparently wasn’t the one singing. Chen Qigang, the ceremony’s music director, told state broadcaster CCTV that the voice hundreds of millions of people heard was that of 7-year-old Yang Peiyi. Yang had the voice and was supposed to perform but was yanked at the last minute because she had crooked teeth.

Los Angeles Times

Here’s the video of the song.

The Olympics Sap-o-Meter hits a record high

Undaunted, the Sap-o-Meter stayed up late churning the treacle, and it’s got a new record to show for it: an inspirational 38 Sap Points.

If you watch enough NBC, you know that there’s a flag-waving mom behind every extraordinary achievement. Well, supporting last night’s record-breaking performance were a remarkable 13 mothers—that is, 13 mentions of the words mom or mother. NBC also continued to dream big, with a robust six mentions for the second consecutive night.

Slate Magazine

This and that

School starts this week in Albuquerque — Wednesday is the first full day. NewMexiKen never started school before Labor Day and none of my kids did either. What’s with this August-to-May school year anyway?

I bought regular gasoline yesterday for $3.58 (I’m rounding off the tenth of a cent from now on). I was thinking I shouldn’t fill up (that is, I should buy short), because the price will continue to drop at least until election day.

What percentage of time during the Olympic coverage on NBC is actually spent watching athletes do athlete stuff? 10 percent? 15 percent?

There are rumors that McCain will pledge just one term to offset the age issue. I know an even better way — no terms. The Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch tells us Why McCain would be a mediocre president. “A careful look at McCain’s biography shows that he isn’t prepared for the job. His resume is much thinner than most people think.” Amazingly, McCain is even more of a dilettante than W.

Remember my rant about Comcast and the comment from a representative of Comcast? Well, it seems the outreach is real:

From a sparse desk dominated by two computer screens in the new Comcast Center here, Mr. Eliason uses readily available online tools to monitor public comments on blogs, message boards and social networks for any mention of Comcast, the nation’s largest cable company. When he sees a complaint like Mr. Dilbeck’s, he contacts the source to try to defuse the problem.

“When you’re having a two-way conversation, you really get to clear the air,” Mr. Eliason said.

The New York Times has more — Complaining Bloggers Have a Cable Company’s Ear.

The iPhone is great except for battery life, which is OK at best.

Before Phelps

During an Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) swim meet, Duke Paoa Kahinu Mokoe Hulikohola Kahanamoku broke the world record in the 100-yard freestyle swim by 4.6 seconds in Honolulu Harbor on August 11, 1911. Officials were so incredulous at his time that the AAU would not recognize his feat until many years later. Duke Kahanamoku swam using a unique combination of an Australian crawl stroke with a flutter kick to add speed.

Known as Duke, or the Duke, he was a three-time Olympic gold medal winner. He broke another record and won a gold medal for the 100-meter freestyle swim at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics where he also won a silver medal in the 200-meter relay event. The 1916 Olympics were not held because of World War I. Kahanamoku broke his own record at the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, winning gold in both the 100-meter freestyle and as a member of the U.S. 800-meter-relay team. At the 1924 Olympics in Paris, he won a silver medal in the 100-meter freestyle (his brother, Samuel Kahanamoku, won the bronze medal and Johnny Weismuller captured the gold). Kahanamoku also was an alternate member of the U.S. water polo team that won a bronze in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics.

The Library of Congress has more on Duke Kahanamoku, the Father of Surfing.

I like to watch

Don’t like the Olympic coverage that’s on? Try watching online.

There’s nothing on as this is written because it is the middle of the night in China, but at times you can watch full live coverage of any event without commentary.

The same link will let you find customized TV listings for your location and cable provider. At least NINE channels are carrying events! NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, USA, Universal HD, Telemundo, and more.

Did you know handball was an Olympic event?

“Chauvinism” and Olympic TV

Again, James Fallows with some Olympian insight.

This is normal! I switched just now to Korean TV, where I saw the Korean team playing soccer. Then NHK, the Japanese network, with a badminton doubles match involving a Japanese team.

The Olympic Games are for “the youth of the world,” but they’re organized and scored by countries. It’s no surprise that countries treat them as vehicles of national pride, and assume that their people will be most interested in their own athletes. So anybody who was saving up to write an angry letter, blog post, or op-ed about NBC’s chauvinistic coverage: don’t bother! They’re actually more above-the-fray than most.

WiiBowling, WiiTennis, we ready?

Anyone up for a more modern pentathlon?

As in an Olympic event combining something more 21st century than the current combo of fencing, shooting, swimming, horseback riding and running.

“Its replacement could be WiiSports, a pentathlon of tennis, bowling, golf, baseball and boxing,” wrote Lorne Chan of the San Antonio Express-News. “There’s plenty of skill involved with perfecting the tennis power serve or getting the right spin on a bowling ball.

“There would also be the added joy of seeing a 9-year-old win the gold medal.”

Sideline Chatter

Disturbingly comprehensive

Want to get in shape for next month’s Olympics? You need Olympics Statistics and History:

First off, we have not only every medalist ever, but every one [of] the known 110,000+ athletes has their own page from Paavo Nurmi and Boris Shakhlin to Sabine Bau and Knut Johannesen. 24,000 of them even have a brief biographical snippet as well.

There are results for each Summer and Winter Game including the disputed 1906 games.

There are summaries for each sport, each country, each country by sport and each country by event. For sports, we also have a summary of each sport by game.

For each event that has taken place, we have a listing of the medalists for each game (including all participants) and for all games.

A Lesson In Watching Out What You Wish For

An excellent look at China and the upcoming Olympics from Functional Ambivalent. Good stuff.

An excerpt:

The Chinese wanted the Summer Games for the same reason everyone else does: the P.R. value of having everyone in the world stop by when the house is clean and the kids are in their Sunday best. The Chinese government promised, in effect, to not be itself — abandoning it’s longstanding policy of horrifying oppression and cruelty in pursuit of a perfect society. Landing the games was a triumph, but I wonder now if there aren’t a few high in the bureaucracy massaging their foreheads and asking themselves, “What were we thinking?”

Olympic heroes

“In his first interview since the Olympics Bode Miller says that he has received many letters calling him a disgrace to the country. To give you an idea of how bad it is — most of the letters came from Tonya Harding.”

Conan O’Brien

What she said

And NBC can blame only itself. For years it has packaged the international sporting event as a made-in-America variety show, so overselling the personalities and melodrama that it is sometimes hard to distinguish the Games from any other prime-time fare. The weepy triumph-over-adversity vignettes (mothers with failing kidneys, dead grandmothers, home schooling in New Hampshire) are now so common on television that NBC’s profiles of athletes, minireality shows tarted up with gauzy camera work and stirring soundtracks, look like something on ABC, “Extreme Makeover: Turin Edition.”

Alessandra Stanley in a review of the Olympic coverage entitled, ‘Idol’ Is What the Televised Olympics Try to Be, and There’s No Curling.