The 2008 Beijing Olympics

Hats off to China

2008-08-25T10:07:16Z

So farewell, Beijing - next stop London, and here's hoping Mayor Boris Johnson has been paying attention to China's almost flawless organisation of the past fortnight.

In a crowded city of 17.3 million people, nine million bicycles and too many cars, the buses have run on time to the minute and special Olympic lanes on major roads have ensured that everyone gets to their sporting venues punctually; if BoJo thinks a Circle Line train every 12 minutes in rush hour will be sufficient in 2012, he'll be back on Have I Got News For You before you can say P45.

Apart from unsmiling, dogmatic dope testers who frogmarch medallists away from informal press briefings in mid-sentence, the army of volunteers who have staffed events, shops, hotels and help desks have been unfailingly polite and cheerful; we shall need a bigger charm offensive than a few hundred sullen, grunting, adolescent burger-flippers who wouldn't know good manners if they jumped up and bit them on the backside.

And as for all those scare stories about smog choking athletes to death in Beijing and seaweed snarling up every sailor's rudder in Qingdao... how is BoJo going to make sure London's famously hospitable weather behaves itself four years from now? Hosting the Olympics will require more than parking a sandwich board in Stratford High Street proclaiming 'Village fete this way - if wet, in Hackney Empire.'

It's not just Team GB's 19 gold medals which have set the bar so high for London: against many expectations, Beijing will be a hard act to follow. Never mind the Forbidden City - this has become the Forgiven City.

Among this blogger's personal highlights were Nicole Cooke winning Britain's first gold medal in a monsoon up on the Great Wall of China, which made the utter drenching we all took that day at the women's cycle road race so memorably worthwhile; the procession of track cycling golds which followed; walking into a bar in downtown Beijing and finding Kevin Pietersen and Freddie Flintoff smashing the South African attack on TV - I never knew cricket was so big over here; and winding up the Aussies about the medal table.

Strewth, talk about dishing it out and not being able to take it. In a fabulous country full of wide-open spaces and a great outdoor culture, the people who talk about Team GB beating Oz 19-12 in gold medals (and 47-45 overall) as the tipping point for becoming a republic should stay indoors more. In padded cells with no sharp objects.

I was lucky enough to witness the Brits' first gold medal in Beijing and the last, when middleweight boxer James DeGale survived his love-bite from a Cuban vampire on Saturday night. In between, I suspect the last two weeks have reawakened the nation to the fact that sport does not begin and end at Old Trafford, Stamford Bridge, the Emirates or Anfield - a celebration for which all concerned with Team GB deserve our thanks.

Well done, China, you throw a swell party. Now, about those human rights....

Is there anyone in Australia who can play sport any more?

2008-08-21T08:55:40Z

First their rugby team lost to England in two consecutive World Cup tournaments, and now they trail Great Britain in the Olympic Games medal table. Is there anyone in Australia who can play sport any more?

No Thorpedo, no Cathy Freeman, no Dawn Fraser, no chance. After 20 years of Aussies wiping the floor with us, at everything from cricket to wrestling crocodiles, the Brits look like finishing above the old penal colony for the first time since 1988 in Seoul - and we are loving every minute of it.

Ever since John Coates, chairman of Australia's Olympic committee, unwisely sneered that Britain is a country of "very few swimming pools and no soap" these Games have been re-christened the ABA Championships: Anyone But Australia.

Now, before our convict descendents accuse me of xenophobia and tipping a barrel of oil on the flames of Anglo-Oz rivalry, let's put some cards on the table.

However many Test wickets Muttiah Muralitharan takes with his corkscrew, Shane Warne will always be the greatest bowler of all time. Sydney Harbour knocks spots off just about every other urban vista in the world. And any country that sends us tennis prodigy Laura Robson, and only gets football genius Terry Venables in return, deserves our gratitude.

But sometimes the strewth hurts - and right now, the Olympic medals table is the finest sight in British sport since Michael Vaughan rode around London in an open-topped bus showing off a porcelain urn.

Every time we think Team GB's supply of gold has run out, another crock of bullion appears from nowhere like Christine Ohuruogu in the home straight of the women's 400 metres - Freeman's former domain.

Yes, we are loving our moment of sporting superiority over over distant Commonwealth cousins. Let's be honest, we've had to wait long enough for it.

Four years ago on the cycling track in Athens, it was all Aussie, Aussie, Aussie on the podium; in Beijing, it's been Hoy, Hoy, Hoy. But the admiration society does not appear to have been entirely mutual - where Brits once acknowledged the procession of medallists in green and gold with tacit admiration and quiet envy, there have been whispers of Aussie sour grapes at our success here.

In sport, where success can be a fickle companion, the old adage is often true that what goes around, comes around. Aussies are never happier than when they are beating the Poms, and for two decades they've had plenty of practice. Five years ago, in especially lean times, England's footballers were even ripped apart at Upton Park by Harry Kewell - how did we manage to stoop so low?

But if I may have the temerity to offer the good people of Oz just a smidgeon of advice, it would only be this: if you can't take it, don't dish it out.

Humility is an asset easily mislaid, as anyone who saw former First Lady of Downing Street Cherie Blair's performance in Beijing will attest. Mrs Blair and her husband, who won us the 2012 Olympics but lost his game of hide-and-seek for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, popped into the Laoshan Velodrome to see Chris Hoy lead Team GB to seven out of a possible 10 cycling gold medals.

One wag unkindly called it a meeting of the Flying Scotsman and a lying Scotsman - this blogger will plead the Fifth Amendment on that score, you can make up your own mind.

But as Hoy collected his third gold medal, you could only cringe at the execrable sight of Mrs B singing God Save the Queen with the exhibitionist flourish of a parishioner showing off for the cameras when Songs Of Praise comes to her local church.

The following day, she was spotted in the Olympic village with a couple of well-stocked shopping bags. Please, please, please, please tell me those souvenirs weren't freebies...

HAVE YOUR SAY: Are you Austrailan? Can you play sport? Let us know below...

Conspiracy mounts over Michael Phelps's golden touch

2008-08-20T12:01:58Z

Further proof of Michael Phelps arrival as a worldwide superstar - he’s now the subject of an internet conspiracy theory.

Website 001ofasecond.com has called into suspicion the American swimming sensation’s hair’s breath victory over Serbia’s Milorad Cavic in the 100-meter butterfly final.

The site argues that Cavic was the race’s true winner, and questions the role of the event’s official timekeeper Omega - a company that just happens to be a major sponsor of Phelps.

Meanwhile, the New York Times Olympics blog adds fuel to the fire by revealing FINA, the international governing body of swimming, refused to release official wall touch images of the race’s finish to the press.

Big business interference in sport, or just an attempt to take the shine off an incredible sporting achievement?

Judge for yourself with our image gallery of the race’s closing stages here.

Wash your mouth out with soap, young lady

2008-08-20T09:52:46Z

Emotional medal winner Bryony Shaw grabbed attention for more than one reason today - declaring "I am so f***ing happy" on live television.

The windsurfer swore during a BBC interview after clinching a bronze in a dramatic race in Qingdao.

After the race, Shaw told the BBC: "I am just so happy. It was such a hard race and I had such a hard week. It's the best thing in the world.

"I love my mum and dad so much, they are so supportive. And my boyfriend Greg. My coach Tom is such a legend. I am so f***ing happy."

Whoops!

On the fast track to beat the Aussies

2008-08-19T09:11:05Z

Do you know who I had on my shuttle bus from the Laoshan velodrome back to the Olympic village last night? Only that bloke who invited us to shoot him if he ever climbed into another boat, Sir Steven Redgrave.

Apologies for that variation on the London taxi driver's stock-in-trade small talk, but a knight of the realm with five consecutive Olympic gold medals is not the kind of passenger you would normally expect on the MB05 limited stop service in Beijing.

Most of our gilded sportsmen normally swan around town in chauffeur-driven gas guzzlers or armoured tanks with blacked-out windows, so it was rather refreshing to see Redgrave exercising his common touch on public transport.

Redgrave remains the only sportsman who has made me jump out of an armchair and break into applause at one o'clock in the morning - when he crossed the line in that coxless fours final in Sydney eight years ago.

His tap on the shoulder with a ceremonial sword at Buck House was inevitable after that incredible feat, but there are still no airs and graces about Redgrave.

He's just a top geezer who made a 90-minute round trip by bus in the hope of seeing cyclist Bradley Wiggins equal his record of six Olympic medals. Wiggo, who idolises Redgrave - even though the pair have never met - duly obliged with a world record time and Britain's sixth cycling gold in Beijing.

After another day and another gold for our cyclists in clingfilm, somehow it seemed appropriate to toast their achievement downtown, so in the finest traditions of investigative reporting your correspondent swayed down the Dongzhimen Dajie to blow the froth off a couple of Tsing Tao shandies.

As luck would have it, the night ended in the Den Mark pub near the Workers Gymnasium, which my colleague Oliver Holt reviewed last week with Britain's Olympic boxing fraternity.

And the rumours about Den Mark's steak and kidney pie are true - in fact it's so scrummy that Wigan and Bolton, the Premier League clubs whose hospitality is never better enshrined than in their half-time meat pies, had better send a fact-finding delegation to China to check out the opposition.

The clientele is truly multi-national, and on this occasion the Danes and Russians were in particularly fine voice, as well as the David Price fan club from Liverpool, who have made the Den Mark their social headquarters.

Probably the most voluble exchange was between a Brit and an Aussie over the biggest talking point of the Games: who's going to win the most gold medals.

As I write, it looks like it's going to be us, cobbers. And half the medals Australia have won have been in obscure sports of which the British have little experience, like synchronised possum mating and the modern triathlon: playing football badly, calling your children Shane and wondering which end of the didgeridoo to blow.

Already outgunned in the intellectual stakes, our Aussie chum turned round to a bystander and asked: "Do you hate the Poms as much as I do?" - only to be silenced by the retort: "Not really, mate - because I'm English."

With the friendly exchange at match point, our man flying the flag finally delivered an unplayable serve: "Our Queen is your Queen and our flag is on your flag, so **** off."

Mmm... next summer's Ashes series should be interesting.

Is Team GB's Olympic success making you proud? Or are the Olympic Games leaving you cold?

2008-08-18T14:15:56Z

Team GB have got their biggest medal haul since 1920 and are riding high at third in the medal table,

Cycling, swimming, rowing and sailing have produced golden showings from the Brits, with Becki Adlington, Bradley Wiggins and Chris Hoy joining an elite band who have won two gold medals at the same Games.

And with 12 golds already in the bag and the likelihood of more to come on Tuesday in the velodrome and in the sailing, with Wiggins and Hoy bidding for a hat trick of medals, things could get even better. We're even beating our traditional sporting nemeses Australia and Germany at the moment.

So are you loving the exploits of our new British sporting heroes and feeling proud of the Union flag?

Or are you not bothered about the latest bulletin from Beijing?

Is it whetting your appetite for London 2012 or dreading the way it will take over everything for the summer?

How does this Games compare to Olympics of the past - and what are your favourite memories? Or what would you rather be doing than watching another medal ceremony?

Have your say below.

What it feels like to touch gold

2008-08-18T09:04:58Z

It's not often that you get to hold an Olympic gold medal, sit in Bill Clinton's cable car and watch Blackburn beating Everton in a downtown Beijing bar in the space of 24 hours.

But on an unprecedented weekend of British success when it was raining gold, the Mirror's attache for cultural affairs in China finally got his mitts on sport's most revered fashion accessory.

Sitting in the Press tribunes at the Laoshan velodrome, moments before Chris Hoy led Britain's team pursuit team to victory, who should slip quietly into the chair beside me but Nicole Cooke, the road race queen who set the ball rolling for Team GB in a monsoon along the Great Wall last weekend.

Batting off all the usual corny questions about whether she sleeps with her gold medal, Cooke reached into her rucksack and produced one of those large chocolate coins in gold foil that your kids scoff by the dozen at Christmas.

On closer inspection, it turned out to be you-know-what, and she passed it around three boggle-eyed hacks like a new mum introducing her baby to the family.

Apart from being gold, the most noticeable thing about it is its sheer weight. If medallion man John Travolta had dangled one of these things around his neck when he was pointing at the ceiling and strutting his stuff in Saturday Night Fever, he would have been the funkiest hunchback on the New York disco circuit.

Press box impartiality bit the dust as Cooke cheered compatriot Wendy Houvenaghel into the women's pursuit finals, but nobody complained - especially as some of us had been giving it large ones when she crossed the line up on the Badaling Expressway a few days earlier.

While Cooke is flying home shortly to the Vale of Glamorgan, where hers is the only gold medal in the village of Wick, yours truly returned to the Great Wall to find out what one of the seven wonders of the world looks like when there aren't any cyclists pedalling along the ramparts.

In a nutshell, pretty spectacular. The Mutianyu section of the 4,200-mile tribute hod carriers is accessible by cable car, and it somehow there was a slightly smug sense of VIP superiority when our pod No.7 bore the inscription: "President William J. Clinton took this car on his state visit to China on 28 June 1998." Well, if it's good enough for Bungalow Bill...

Back at ground level, and a hatful of British gold medals later, there didn't appear to be any screens in the main Press centre showing live Premier League football, so in a blaze of spontaneity I headed into the night to find a bar showing the world's most exported, and over-rated, weekly fix.

Now, after the Great Wall of China, Everton v Blackburn is a bit of a reality check, but near the Workers' Gymnasium - where David Price has been leading British boxing's medal hunt - they were showing it in a lively pub heavily colonised by New Zealanders celebrating the All Blacks' 19-0 defeat of South Africa.

Just to show I was paying attention, Everton should have won after Yakubu headed them 2-1 in front - but that will teach them to switch off faster than I could this morning, when I woke up to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in Chinese on TV. How can anyone keep a straight face when confronted with dubbing about oompah roompahs?

Chinese TV doesn't like our badminton players

2008-08-15T09:59:47Z

One-cap wonder Alan Butcher, briefly an opening batsman for England, once told me how he watched his son Mark score the winning runs in a Test match down at his local in Essex.

In a tight finish, England scrambled home by three wickets against the West Indies in Port-of-Spain 10 years ago and Butcher only restrained his cartwheeling, whooping and fist-pumping when he realised his celebrations were at odds with a solemn funeral wake across the bar.

Nobody likes gatecrashing a funeral - although in the case of mixed doubles badminton pair Gail Emms and Nathan Robertson, we'll make an honourable exception.

Emms took her final curtain on the Olympic stage when the Torvill and Dean of British badminton lost in the quarter-finals to a Korean pair called Lee and Lee. To be honest, Emms' parting shot in the big time was an anti-climax because, for once, she and Robertson played more like Peters and Lee, the memorably drab 70s crooners.

As a snapshot of her distinguished career, however, she does not deserve to be remembered for subsiding to a rather melancholy defeat; my abiding memory of her came 48 hours earlier, when Emms and Robertson sent a partisan crowd of 7,500 Chinese cheerleaders into mourning and caused a state blackout on TV.

Such was the shock of Emms and Robertson beating the much-fancied No.2 seeds Ling Gao and Bo Zheng in their own lair that Chinese TV bosses could not bring themselves to show it on the box here.

And anyone scouring Chinese newspapers for the barest mention of Gao and Zheng's unfortunate demise would have found only a couple of lines referring to them being denied a hat-trick of Olympic gold medals.

Can you imagine the BBC refusing to show Torvill and Dean, or Jamie Murray's mixed doubles alliance with Jelena Jankovic at Wimbledon last year, just because they had lost?

That badminton blackout was just one example of the Chinese authorities making sure their 1.3 billion population only sees what the Communist Party's high command wants them to see. There has been little mention over here, for example, of the singers faking it at the Olympic opening ceremony last week.

Western encroachment on Chinese TV screens may be subject to government censorship when the Brits are beating their national heroes at badminton, but at least there are one or two familiar faces: British media colleagues surfing on the remote control in an exotically-named hotel called the Foreign Experts Building were surprised to find Mary Poppins in Mandarin - and chimney sweep Dick Van Dyke's Cockney accent sounds just as dreadful in oriental tones.

You can learn a lot about a country just by switching on the telly for half an hour. But to be honest, half an hour of Chinese TV is quite enough, thanks.

It's much more interesting in the world outside, not least the zeal with which the Chinese have adopted recycling. To widespread horror, patrons of washrooms in the main press centre are encouraged not to flush used toilet paper but - if I can beg your pardon - to place it in the cubicle recycling bins.

Even more shocking was to wake up this morning to genuine BLUE skies. That's not what it says in the brochure - who took away all the smog?

And on that bombshell...

Chinese enjoying high strike rate on the 50-50 decisions

2008-08-13T09:33:25Z

Home-town decisions have always been, and remain, both the great bane of sportsmen and an infallible source of bar-stool conversation.

If Cristiano Ronaldo goes down in the box at Old Trafford, he is more likely to win a penalty than opponents felled by an identical challenge at the other end. That doesn't make referees biased towards Manchester United, but it is human nature that they do not want a blow-dry off Sir Alex Ferguson's hairdryer, not to mention upsetting 75,000 fans.

If Muttiah Muralitharan, the Sri Lankan spinner with rubber wrists and double joints, corkscrews a sharply-turning delivery out of the rough, statistically he is more likely to extract a favourable lbw decision from the umpire in his own back yard. That is not to impugn anyone's integrity, it is hard fact.

And as if the Chinese were not already stockpiling enough medals at their own Beijing party, the circumstantial evidence is beginning to mount up that they are enjoying, shall we say, a high strike rate on the 50-50 decisions.

Now, at a sporting event of Olympian magnitude, you would normally expect a faint whiff of favouritism towards the hosts - that is par for the course. What you don't want, however, is for the faint aroma to become a stench. We are not reaching for the air freshener yet, but keep an aerosol handy just in case.

Britain's head boxing coach Terry Edwards fired the first shots about home-town decisions when his bantamweight prospect Joe Murray lost heavily against Yu Gu here. Make no mistake, the best fighter won, but even the most sanguine impartial observers were embarrassed by the judges' 17-7 verdict.

It was by no means as flagrant as the scandal in Seoul 20 years ago, when South Korean Park Si-Hun won a ridiculous majority decision despite being beaten up by Roy Jones Junior, with a punch count of 86-32 in the American's favour. That decision prompted the International Olympic Committee to change the scoring method at their boxing competitions, although the IOC's official investigation into Jones' mugging incredibly uncovered no evidence of corruption.

But Yu Gu's generous winning margin has not been an isolated case. The Ukrainians lodged a protest after one of their boxers also lost to a Chinese figher, and in the men's double trap shooting, where Britain's Sydney gold medallist Richard Faulds finished sixth, China's Hu Binyuan claimed a surprise bronze medal in an intriguing final.

On one occasion, Binyuan appeared to have missed one of the two fluorescent orange moving targets until, a second later, it disintegrated almost as an afterthought. Even the partisan Chinese crowd were surprised by the frisbee that can apparently self-destruct in five seconds like Mission Impossible tape recording.

When Andy Murray lost in the first round of the men's singles - which was a fair cop, because he looked jet-lagged and weary after a long journey from the Cincinnatti Masters - he could have been forgiven for looking back wistfully at the first-set tie-break.

Having saved three set points, at 6-5 down Murray's nervous second serve crept over the net cord and landed desperately close to the tramline, only to be called out.

Murray invoked one of his challenges and waited for the giant screen verdict from Hawkeye, only to discover the gadget had suffered an untimely blip, that the technology was "temporarily unavailable" - and that the original line call would stand. First set to Lu Yen-Hsun, a Taipei Chinese enjoying partisan support - how convenient.

Throw in dark mutterings from the badminton court that Chinese players appear to be delivering serves from way above waist-high with impunity, and you get the picture.

Systematic cheating it ain't - and I would never level such a charge without hard evidence, especially after the Chinese authorities parked a tank outside the main press centre here yesterday. But for level playing fields, you might be better off on Hackney Marshes.

Andy Murray turns into a night owl

2008-08-12T11:54:39Z

Quiet, please - some of us are trying to sleep in the back row. Tennis was surely meant to be a sport played in daylight, or at least in the daytime, but increasingly it has become the province of night owls.

The clock was striking midnight in China when Andy and Jamie Murray completed their gutsy first-round doubles comeback against fancied Canadians Daniel Nestor and Frederic Niemeyer, and matches were still in progress on the outside courts half a hour later when play was suspended by a torrential shower.

Fair play to Andy: he had flown through 13 time zones to Beijing from his triumph at the Cincinnatti Masters, only to fluff his lines in the first round of the men's singles to Lu Yen-Hsun, a Taipei Chinese who isn't even a household name in his own household. It was a commendable effort to shake off the jet-lag and pull through two matches in the space of six hours.

But it was still an early night compared to some graveyard shifts in tennis - at the Australian Open earlier this year, Lleyton Hewitt clinched victory at the bewitching hour of 4.38am. Don't tell Premier League chief Richard Scudamore, or he'll have us playing football at that hour before we know it.

And at least tennis matches don't start in the middle of the night, unlike championship boxing - where the first bell is timed to suit prime-time audiences in the States.

Ricky Hatton was once asked by the American boxing press corps whether he was worried about fighting for the world title at 2am in the MEN Arena because of the effect on his body clock. "Not at all," replied the Hit Man. "Everybody in Manchester fights at two in the morning."

So the graveyard shift isn't all bad. It must be said, however, that the Brothers Murray did not escape controversy in their late-night performance. More than once, Nestor - the world's No.1 doubles player - was narked by the indiscreet patter of BBC 5 Live commentator Jonathan Overend.

Don't get me wrong: Overend is a fine broadcaster, if not yet as accomplished as his Beeb colleagues Pat Murphy and Mike Ingham, who remain a cut above 5 Live's regiment of conformists on Radio Mate.

But just imagine the furore if he had piped up when golfer Colin Montgomerie was at the top of his backswing, or if Ronnie O'Sullivan was lining up the final black for a 147 at the Crucible.

And there can't be too many Olympic tennis matches which have been decorated by the world's best doubles player angrily swatting a ball at the man from the BBC (he missed, but not by much) and the umpire in his high chair asking a rights-holding broadcaster to tone down his careless whispers.

Perhaps the moral of the story is that commentators should be heard and not seen - except at sporting events where silence is mandatory for those not insulated by sound-proofed broadcast boxes.

As for late-night tennis... the genie is already out of the bottle in Britain, where Rafael Nadal's five-set epic against Roger Federer at Wimbledon two months ago went on until almost 9.30pm.

When the Games come to London in 2012, here's my big tip for punters attending evening sessions. Bring a sleeping bag.

Spanish Olympic team caught in controversial ‘slitty-eyed’ pose

2008-08-11T15:23:15Z

Spain’s male basketball team opened its Olympic account yesterday with an 81-66 victory over Greece.

Before heading to China, however, the entire squad posed for the above picture on behalf of a courier company who are also an official sponsor of the Spanish Basketball Federation.

The photos, in which every member of the squad pulls ‘slitty-eyed’ faces while wearing the country’s full Olympic kit, then appeared as full-page advert in Spanish daily sports newspaper Marca today.

The controversial ad is unlikely to go down well with Olympics hosts China, and could well spoil Spain’s hopes of hosting the Olympic Games in Madrid in 2016 or 2020.

What do you think? Is the advert inappropriate? Racist even? Or simply a piece of harmless fun. Have your say below.

The Great Wally Of China: Another brick in the Wall

2008-08-11T09:17:10Z

Three decades have passed since Ron Atkinson led West Bromwich Albion on a pioneering end-of-season trip to China and their hosts organised a photo opportunity for the squad which has become part of tourist folklore.

As we all know, footballers can be a dull lot by nature, but although the trip was optional, Big Ron thought his players would jump at the chance to enjoy a spot of culture at one of the seven wonders of the world.

Surprisingly, however, midfielder John Trewick decided to stay behind, even though such works outings were a rare treat for western tourists in a country hermetically sealed to outsiders by Communist rulers who operated under the maxim that if you open the windows, you let in the flies.

Now, Trewick was a tidy passer with an eye for goal, and his worthy career included winning the League Cup with Oxford 23 years ago, while Hereford have won two promotions under his tutelage as coach.

But his trite reason for giving the Great Wall of China a miss remains one of the classic one-liners of his era: "Once you've seen one wall, you've seen them all."

Go to the back of the class, John, and see me after school. So the Kremlin wall, the Wailing Wall, the walls of Jericho and the Great Wall of China all deserve to be bracketed with Walls ice cream, do they?

Trewick's incomparable comment sprang readily to mind on Sunday, when I ventured into the hills north-west of Beijing to watch Nicole Cooke claim Britain's first gold medal at the Olympics in the women's cycling road race.

In teeming rain of biblical proportions, Cooke took the chequered flag with a gutsy sprint uphill over the last 400 metres along the Badaling section of the Great Wall - one of the most exotic venues imaginable for any Olympic race.

And repeatedly the same thought ran through my head: How can anyone in their right mind spurn the chance to take in one of the GREAT attractions and grab snapshots a cut above your average photo album?

Even when it was raining stair-rods, and Cooke was going for gold in conditions better-suited to canoeing, the walkway snaking over mountain tops and into the clouds was a truly breathtaking sight.

In Britain, we perform cartwheels about Jubilee Line extensions and pedestrian bridges across the Thames, but this was a feat of engineering - more than 1,000 years old - to make a bricklayer's eyes water.

Upon West Brom's return from the far east, an eager radio reporter asked Big Ron if he had managed to see the Great Wall of China on his travels.

Quick as a flash, Atkinson - never slow with a quip from the Bob Monkhouse school of comedy - replied: "See it? Did we SEE the Great Wall of China? Mate, we practised bending free-kicks around it."

Cooke will be back at the scene of her golden triumph on Wednesday for the women's time trial. West Brom fans, meanwhile, will hope Arsenal's defences will be easier to crack than the Great Wall on the opening day of the Premier League season this weekend.

The Great Wally Of China: Lost in translation

2008-08-11T09:14:57Z

In the original film version of Lost In Translation, Bill Murray played a jet-lagged visitor struggling to come to terms with the cultural gap between the West and an oriental metropolis.

And this morning, Hereford United will know how Murray felt - they lost at the Orient on the opening day of the football season.

One of the joys of bluffing, blagging and blundering your way around a foreign city where nobody outside the Olympic village - apart from pushy market traders trying to flog you fake Rolex watches - speaks English is hamming it in downtown Beijing armed only with sign language and a beginners' phrasebook.

Thus, when ordering chicken from the menu, the stark choice is either to flap your arms and make a clucking noise, or to scramble hurriedly through your pocket bible, only to produce a phrase which sounds like the Mandarin translation for "I will not buy this gearbox, it is scratched."

And so it came to pass, on a steamy morning at gas mark eight in the Chinese capital, that your correspondent set the satnav for the Forbidden City (otherwise known as holding the map the right way up) and dawdled through the cultural treasure trove which is a must-see for tourists.

At least the mission brought me into contact with the Chinese populace, to all intents and purposes, for the first time. The previous night, by far the saddest sight of these Games to date was my walk through the Olympic complex 30 minutes before the opening ceremony.

While the streets around the Birds Nest had been cleared by police of everyone without accreditation, leaving six-lane highways eerily deserted, locals barricaded into their tenement blocks behind high wire fences strained for a glimpse of the fireworks and cavalcades ferrying the platoon of foreign dignitaries to the bash.

Back in the Forbidden City, we found what appeared to be China's tribute to Fleet Street - the Palace of Literary Excellence - and toasted the monument with a can of that well-known Chinese beer, Budweiser.

But it was over lunch, when it came to ordering food without a clue what it would look like, that the voyage of discovery took on a comical twist.

Following exhaustive research, and hopeless phonetic recital, I can confirm the following phrases were of absolutely no use whatsoever:

Ching gay wo shyo ee-shya zeu-shing-che, hao ma? (Can you mend my bicycle, please?)

Wo zy shway-sheeao sheu shway-gwoe, ke-sheu shyen-zy doe wang le (I did it at school, but I've forgotten everything)

Yoe jeun ywan-ee wanr shyang-chee ma? (Is anyone up for a game of chess?)

Wo shyang my woo gwang-dong shyang-chang (I'd like five Guangdong sausages)

Jeu yao an ee-shya je ge an-nyo jyo shing le (You just have to press this button)

Bill Murray, eat your heart out. Beijing is for linguistic bravehearts only. In his callow youth, this blogger used to chat up Germans by announcing he was a stick insect who lived in a delivery van, so Mandarin holds no fears.

This is a fascinating city - and a spotless one. No litter, no graffiti and no binge drinkers puking on the pavement at chucking-out time.
But somehow, it is incomplete - nobody here plays cricket.

Does anyone know the Chinese for what's the latest score in the Test match?

Team GB Sprinter Jeanette Kwakye: Letter from Macau

2008-08-08T13:59:56Z

I write this blog to you from the not-so-sunny shores of Macau, a small Island just one hour south of Hong Kong. This is the Team GB holding camp for most of the athletes that will be competing in Beijing. All teams and staff stay together in a hotel resort to get ready for the Games.

The British Olympic Association have made an excellent job of making sure that we are as comfortable as possible and this includes having all our home comforts and entertainment - Including plenty of ways to wind down after hard training sessions! Pool tables, football tables, computer gaming... you name it, it's here. They even have a special night arranged for the Community Shield match!

So far I have attended a Question Of Sport night held by the BBC - my team mates were four-time Olympian 400m runner Donna Fraser and my coach Michael Afilaka. I know nothing about other sports so I was actually quite useless. I have also been entertaining myself with speaking to the locals and winding up fellow team mates with practical jokes.

I think it is best I have my majority of fun here at the training camp, as the serious business begins as soon as I land in Beijing, where I hear the final preparations have been put in place.

I am aware that quite a few people around the world are concerned about the pollution in Beijing. I’m not too sure how the pollution issue will affect me, but I am confident things will run very smoothly once the world’s athletes descend on Beijing.

I think the most exciting thing apart from competing at the games is all the different cultures and people that I am going to come across. Unfortunately one of the things that we brought from the British shores to China was the rain…

It has rained and rained and rained some more while we have been here. In fact there was a small typhoon in the mid-week, so we were not allowed to leave the team hotel. This is pretty bad for the endurance athletes who need to run everyday, so it was almost a cabin fever situation for us.

Nonetheless, we have maintained high spirits and some of the athletes have left for Beijing and will be attending the opening ceremony today.

Unfortunately, the timetable for athletics does not allow us to take part in the ceremony. However the whole team will be watching on the big screen in Macau and cheering on Olympic swimming legend Mark Foster as he brings in the Union Jack.

No doubt we will all be there for the closing ceremony and to ensure the world knows the next Olympics will be in London 2012.

3pm at the Olympics: The Opening Ceremony Blogged

2008-08-08T12:22:18Z

5.05pm And finally, it's all over. London 2012 will be hard-pressed to master the magic of the first hour. I reckon we can more than match the tedium of the last three though. See you in the days ahead for more from Beijing.

5pm More amazing sights as veteran Chinese Olympian Li Ning - I can strongly recommend his Italian restaurant, Li Ning's Tower Of Pizza - picks up the Olympic torch, rises hundreds of feet in the air, then runs suspended on wires around the top of the stadium's bowl.

4.53pm Here comes the torch! Where's Konnie Huq when you need her?

4.40pm The interminable parade is over and now, after some fireworks, the interminable speechifying begins. We've had Jacques Rogge, President Hu and an official Oath Taker. Not many gags out there - it's crying out for a Michael McIntyre or Frankie Boyle. Not

4.10pm The China team finally turn up, over two hours into the parade. If everyone had followed the examples of Nauru and Dominica and just had one athlete each, this would all have gone a lot smoother.

3.47pm It's STILL going. Meanwhile captain Kevin Pietersen's got a ton in the Test and there's a van parked outside our office bearing a large advert featuring Linford Christie and a suggestive slogan about his package. He's clearly not so sensitive about it these days, now there's cash involved.

3.26pm The parade is STILL going on and there's a hearty cheer for Russia and, in the stands, a beaming Vladimir Putin. It's probably not coming from the Georgia fans.

3.13pm Here come the Brits! And we're wearing Roger Federer blazers! "Wouldn't it be great if Paula Radcliffe pulled over and had a piss," says a source close to the Mirror.co.uk sports editor.

2.57pm Cursory research reveals that the Brazilian is, in fact, called Robert Scheidt. Never mind. He'll always be Shite to us.

2.52pm As Rafael Nadal waves his straw boater while walking past with the Spanish team, we're still only a little over halfway through countries ranked by the number of strokes needed to make up their names in Chinese. Perhaps the last few countries will be known as the 'vinegar strokes'. Or perhaps not.

2.46pm Here's Ghana, with boxer Prince Octopus Dasani. I'd like to see him in the ring with Robert Shite.

2.36pm Best contigents so far - Palestine's team of four, East Timor's team of two and Brunei's team of none. They were banned from the opening ceremony for failing to register on time.

2.30pm It's Brazil, and "our old friend, Robert Shite". Magnificent work from Hazel.

2.22pm Meanwhile, as the world celebrates the new, open, liberated China, our reporters inside the stadium are having problems sending attachments via email. Funny, that.

2.19pm "The Belgians have arrived!" shouts Huw, channelling Stuart Hall.

2.09pm And now here come the athletes. Sensibly, China have dispensed with the tradtional method of having them all come out in confusing alphabetical order. Instead, they'll emerge in the order of strokes it takes to write each name in Chinese. Much clearer.

2.03pm Who'd have thought the woman who once sang I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper and once shagged Andrew Lloyd-Webber could bring things down? But she does

2.01pm A spaceman, a giant globe, thousands of tiny lights, an awed silence in the stadium. And then... Sarah Brightman!

1.57pm Well done to former BBC News Beijing correspondent Carrie Gracie too, for having a right old pop at China's horrendous crimes against the planet. I am loving this opening ceremony but it is rather like attending a really good party thrown by someone you dislike.

1.53pm Some white-clad dancers arrive, apparently to warn us about the dangers of the polar ice caps melting. Well done to Huw for pointing out China's less-than-stellar record in matters environmental down the years.

1.51pm The illuminated volunteers climb on each other's shoulders to form a mini-Bird's Nest stadium. This is the most spectacular opening ceremony I've seen since Super Bowl XXVII, when Michael Jackson danced on top of two giant Jumbotron screens at the Pasadena Rose Bowl before singing Beat It, Billie Jean and Black & White. How we cheered as he disappeared into a crowd of adoring children. Hey, it was 1993... who knew?

1.48pm Volunteers with lights stuck to their clothes form a giant dove of peace, intended to symbolise the "openness and liberation of so many areas of modern Chinese life". Ahem.

1.43pm "China's most famous pianist" tinkles the ivories and, for a worrying moment, a small girl appears to be rooting around inside his trousers. It's not quite Kylie and the Sydney Olympics, but even this Mancunian must admit it's a step up from S-Club and Russell Watson at the 2002 Commonwealth Games.

1.37pm A bit of Chinese opera (not recommended), a touch more fake calligraphy and now Huw is preparing us for "something very special". Which tuens out to be, as Hazel Irvine informs us, "a parade of serene women and fierce warrior men", all dressed to the nines - not entirely dissimilar to Mirror.co.uk on a Friday night, apart from the serenity, fierceness and dress sense.

1.34pm Not content with inventing the heavy paddle, the Chinese also invented the compass. "It really is something," marvels Huw.

1.33pm Some blokes with oars emerge, apparently to symbolise Chinese maritime inventions. "Those paddles," intones Huw Edwards portentously, "are very, very heavy".

1.30pm Harmony turned out to be represented by peach blossoms, which is nice. Next there's a disturbing puppet/bagpipe interlude, followed by a dancer/glowstick interface. Still spectacular, but drifting towards the usual opening ceremony fare.

1.26pm: This bit, says the commentary, "is designed to remind us that harmony is precious" - as the Chinese government have proved so consistently over the years.

1.23pm: Now we're in an extended sequence inspired by Confucius. Feudal warriors dance and bow as scores of printing blocks rise and fall. This is, to be fair, very good indeed.

1.10pm: A giant illuminated scroll is unveiled across the stadium floor, upon which dancers scrawl a drawing which then rises into the skies. It’s hypnotic, strangely beautiful and, of course, utterly mystifying.

1.01pm: And it is a spectacular start. There’s 2008 drummers with illuminated drums. A mini-firework display, sending yet more smoke up into the Beijing skies. And, for some reason, a nu-rave tribute with glowsticks aplenty. Still no sign of Altern-8 or giant tubs of Vick’s, however.

12.49pm: Huw Edwards warns the masses to look out for something “very spectacular” and “really spectacular”. It’ll be spectacular, then.

12.48pm: After excellent Jamie Hewlett/Damon Albarn cartoon intro, Sue Barker tells viewers to prepare for “something truly spectacular”.