The Games In China: A Recap

As the Olympic flame is snuffed out at the stadium they call the Bird's Nest in Beijing, signaling the end of the 29th Summer Games, let's look back on what did (or did not) happen during the final week of competition.

• If your primary source of Olympic information was on NBC's telecasts, you got the Chamber of Commerce version of what really went on in Beijing. The Chinese government went right on jailing dissidents, harassing Western journalists (a British TV reporter was arrested while covering a demonstration), and discouraging its own people from attending events.
• The International Olympic Committee was exposed as the toothless organization they really are, although that might not be news to some people. Besides caving in to China on human rights matters, they took a pass on complaints that the Chinese women's gymnastics team had underage athletes. Mustn't offend the hosts, you know.
• The United States won the overall medal competition with 110 (36 gold, 38 silver, and 38 bronze). China, in its quest for world domination in athletics, impressed the most with 100 (51 gold, 21 silver, and 28 bronze). Are we at the point where caring about the medal count is more than just a Cold War thing?
• Eight of those golds were won by Michael Phelps of the United States, surpassing by one the amount fellow swimmer Mark Spitz hauled out of Munich in 1972. Some are saying Phelps is the greatest Olympic athlete ever. At the swimming pool, maybe. Better than Jim Thorpe, Paavo Nurmi or Bob Mathias (just to name a few)? Maybe not.
• Another candidate for Greatest Olympian Ever (outside the United States) is Usain Bolt of Jamaica, whose gold medals and world records in the 100 and 200 meter track events make him this year's Fastest Man In The World--at least until the drug test results are made public.
• The U.S. track team won gold medals in the decathlon, and in both men's and women's 4x400 relay events. That was after they bungled their way through the competition, either by dropping the baton or not running fast enough to qualify.
• The American men's and women's basketball teams (otherwise known as the NBA and WNBA All-Stars, respectively) faced little opposition on their way to gold medals. Although the Spaniards did give the men's team quite a scare before losing in the championship game.
• On a related note: Becky Hammon, a Russian basketball player by way of South Dakota, risked accusations of traitorous behavior to lead her team to a bronze medal.
• The IOC has dropped baseball and softball from the 2012 London Games, in part because of American domination in both sports. The gold medal in baseball went to South Korea. And the gold in softball went to Japan. So much for that theory.
• The Americans won the women's soccer gold medal with a goal in extra time to defeat Brazil. Which means only one thing--vindication for goaltender Hope Solo.
• The American duo of Kerri Walsh and Misti May-Treanor defeated their Chinese opponents to win the gold in beach volleyball. It was raining, and the women were wearing their bathing suits that passed for uniforms. The rest we'll leave to your imagination.
• NBC, when they weren't doing PR work for the state-run Chinese Tourist Bureau (or whatever it's called there) that Anthony Bourdain would have turned down, did a great job in keeping the maudlin to a minimum, and brought us more action than could reasonably have been expected with a 12-hour time difference to work with. While NBC deserves kudos for telling viewers that on events such as soccer, the announcers covering it are in New York instead of at the stadium (ESPN, which wants the rights to the 2014 and '16 Olympics, doesn't do that), they also get boos for telling West Coast viewers that what they're seeing live really isn't.

The Olympics take a break until the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, and the 2012 Summer Games in London. But 2014 is their next minefield. The site of the Winter Games is in Sochi, Russia. That's fifteen miles from the Georgian border.