What I want is a CCTV camera live feed from the ODA office in Stratford as they nervously flip their gaze from a modest 20inch LG second hand plasma (exhibition leftover?) to the accountant in the corner, sipping mugs of tea and politely debating who will get the last Dark Chocolate Digestive..."Did we get the RAF guys booked yet...?"

At least the Westfield mega mall is on track...Multi-level shopping will be guaranteed for 2012.

Who saw the Mens 4x100 Relay race? I knew it was going to be exciting, but that was just incredible.

To clarify, I mean the Men's 4x100 Freestyle swim relay.

Pairs Diving? WTF?

Did you guys know that this is the last year that baseball and softball will be part of the Olympics?

interesting, men's synchronized diving. I can't complain.

woman's beach volley ball....now that is where it is at....George Bush even thinks so....I'm so sad he left the Olympics to go back to running our country.....

2nd individual world record for Phelps! Three total this Olympics!!!! HOLY CRAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!

any body see the white-water slalom kayak races..... now thats a sweet sport, with a fairly sweet work of landscape Architecture as its field.

HOLY SHIT I thought guy before him was awesome but Justin Spring just BLEW ME AWAY on the high bar!!!! I haven't seen anything that close to Nadia and Mary Lou's brilliance in a long time! Amazing!!!

SSA - They are showing the white water kayaking??!?!? When was it on? I love watching that stuff. Probably during the day when I have no access to TV. Pooh

I was talking to someone yesterday about the opening ceremony, and we have a mutual Chinese acquaintance who didn't really care for the ceremony at all. I have no idea why, maybe simply to be contrarian, but all I'm saying is, YOU try to get 2008 dudes to do Tai-Chi in a perfect circle and get back to me. Seriously! In a circle! Amazing.

Anyway, loving the swimming. Also I like Michael Phelps but at last check we have about 670 people or so on the American team and I'm sure at least some of them are interesting....or maybe not, LOL.

And modern pentathlon is just crazy! They have to ride a horse! It seems like maybe a natural sport for, say, Hollywood stuntmen. Now THERE'S a story....."Brad Pitt shows up to Summer Olympics, competes in Modern Pentathlon..."

I'm concerned I won't have enough endurance to stay up and watch Michael Phelps win all 8 gold medals...there just isn't enough time between watching him win one final and watching him race in another preliminary round to recover, it is truly an exhausting schedule.

Tuna, I have no idea when anythings on TV i watch online @NBC

I've really been enjoying the Olympics... even though I have some reservations about China hosting the Olympics. The US swim team has been amazing - especially Phelps. The men's gymnastics last night had me sitting on the edge of my seat after they pulled ahead of China in the middle of the competition. It would have been awesome if they could have kept their lead or even came in second - bronze was still great. Looking forward to seeing more cycling, swimming and weightlifting and pretty much everything else.

Synergy - I've never heard of that modern pentathlon. I think it's actually kinda cool. Maybe it should be called a "gentleman's pentathlon" or "18th century pentathlon" instead.

I've never seen the competition for the modern pentathlon, I highly doubt it is televised. Apparently it is based on the ideal skills of a Cavalryman and is practiced almost exclusively by people from certain countries in Eastern Europe.

SSA - SHWEET!!! I checked out the website the other day but didn't actually have the time or patience to look all the way. Time to maybe watch me some kayaking. :o)

The men on the stationary rings still leaves me totally dumbstruck. I'm amazed at the strength they all have.

hi RoedGroed - hilarious portrayal of the upcoming 2012.

They just showed Phelps' daily schedule....did anybody catch that? Synergy? It was absolutely ridiculous! I am not even going to try to repeat it. What I will repeat is what they said yesterday about his diet.....apparently he is supposed to eat between 8000-10,000 calories a day. That's more than 5 times as many calories as I eat in a day!!! His breakfast consists of something like 3 fried egg sandwiches, an omelet, and 2 chocolate chip pancakes. I'm jealous....I should take up swimming so I can eat that much....

This just in! He may be "old" but he's the first swimmer in Olympic history to make it to the final in 4 Olympics.....



And he's still hot! (sorry, I'll stop putting up pictures of him now)

ok, i know nobody enjoys other people's whining, but i have to do this:

[whine]i am missing the f*cking olympics because whatever intl cable regulation nbc is being blocked both off the tv and off the internet so i only get to see the 10 minute synopsis that the local channel or cnn do a day and it really really sucks!!!![/whine]

ok, sorry. had to get that off my chest. carry on.

ps. thanks wK for the pretty pics

Wk, I use to have to drink this nasty stuff called Carbsomethingeranother once a day. A single glass was around 2500 calories. It was basically supplementing my diet from having to eat so much food. The alternative was eating constantly throughout the day. Most athletes at that level are eating machines, swimmers especially because of the calorie burn rate. At the height of let's say a distance/middle distance swimmer training schedule during the year, I would bet they are swimming between 16,000-20,000 yards/meters a day (at peak). That's roughly 10-13 miles a day.

DubK - I'm thinking of making that photo my new wallpaper ;o)

Thanks for the eye candy

Aw, aml - that does suck. I'm only catching little bits of it due to work/child-filled evenings but I get excited and teary at every bit of it.

Do keep in mid a lot of what you're missing though: twenty minutes on the volleyball player's lost wedding ring, for example. I wonder if they would have made such a big deal about it if a male volleyball player had lost his ring?

I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place: wife client wants bathroom to be pretty, husband is worried the design is too "metrosexual" (his word) for the son. Residential design is like marriage therapy 101!

Hmm, that last paragraph was supposed to end up on Thread Central. I'm out of it today.

US Men's Soccer team lost to Nigeria and is out of the tournament. Yikes. We Americans have a long way to go with the world's most popular sport. BTW, anybody know why Freddie Adu was suspended?

Yay for Kristin Armstrong! First American Gold medalist in road cycling since 1984! Hmmm, I think I may start training for time trial cycling. Probably not but sounds like fun....

aml you can you use a vpn to access nbc or bbc coverage. might help.

I'm a bit frustrated by the female Chinese Gymnastic teams' very likely use of underage athletes. I think Bela Karolyi is correct, in the interest of fair competition, in the future they should either get rid of the minimum age altogether or adopt a system that they actually have some ability to enforce. As it is right now it is absurd and very unfair for countries actually abiding by the rules

The entire evening last night I kept thinking to myself "there is no way in hell those girls are 16".

yeah, they have to be at least 26"

I have never once found a pommel horse routine interesting until the men's final when I saw the American named Sasha get up there and do stuff I've never seen before.

Can't wait to see him on it again tonight, he totally changed my mind about it! And I can't WAIT to see lovable Jonathan Horton bouncing his excessive happy energy all over the events and nailing EVERYTHING. Woohoo!!!!

I don't even know how to compute Michael Phelps. He makes my brain hurt.

They just said Phelps has not lost the 200m since he started swimming it, in 2000. Holy mother... Imagine if you had that kind of record when say, pitching ideas to clients? Or submitting proposals? Man.

Yeah, I think it's startling when you stop and realize that most of the records he breaks are his own records at this point. In the 200m freestyle his world record is 142.96. The interesting thing is he is the only swimmer to ever break 143......and 144. It appears he isn't just dominating and improving, he is actually furthering the distance between himself and the other competitors.

The Beijing Olympics are a joke.

2012 - Let's hold the Olympics in North Korea or Cuba, what do you say?

Yeah, Synergy, that's so incredible!

Jonathon Horton just did a beautiful still rings routine. He held everything for so long I thought his muscles were going to actually burst or something.

Have you guys seen these awesome interactive thingys on the NY Times? This medal count map is simply amazing....

A design history of the torch, how COOL!!! Thank you, NYTimes, and thank you, WK!

That medal count map makes me want to hand it to Japan, Australia, Great Britain, France, and Germany -- for being so much smaller in population than the Big Three and yet getting so many medals year after year!

yes great links WK, thanks!!

hmmm so it's phillipe starck who first started curving the torch?

its pretty f*ing disgusting that American Media will mostly showcase only the American Team. Come on guys, this is the only event all the countries in the world participate in...give up your stupid high-horse for once.
I, for one really wish China win at least twice the amount of Gold medals than the US (they are already). Oh but then you will complain that they have underage athletes. Yeah right. Its time the US learnt the meaning of the sportsman spirit.

and yes, enough of Phelps.

Er, I'm quite glad that the American media is covering our team so expansively. And I'm quite pleased with the amount of coverage it is giving to other countries as well. Besides the fact that you can see all of the events, in their entirety, on NBCOlympics.com, whereas in other countries (aml's, for instance) you can't see any of it.

Don't know what high horse you're talking about sameold....guess it's all a matter of perspective.

sameold, I think that NBC is showcasing American teams because, you know, they're our team. Don't other countries showcase their teams in their media? To get even more specific, I know the local (state) media here is carrying on and on about the couple-few Hoosiers at the games, just as I'm sure California is spotlighting theirs etc.

Such a nasty post from you, you're usually cooler (as in cooler-headed) than that.

i just have to say that the breast stroke is weird looking.

synchronized diving, on the other hand, is cool.

i've really only been able to watch the first 20-30 minutes of olympics each night cuz most of it is past my bed time.

the USA really put it to Greece this morning.

Sameold, that is an absurd position, of course the local media covers its own competitors. Not to mention, what have you actually been watching? I've seen much coverage of foreign athletes, of course our media can't do the little biopics on every single athlete in the olympics, there are thousand of competitors. The media simply doesn't have the time and resources to gather that much information about every foreign athlete, nor do they have the time to broadcast it. I am confident no other countries media is able to do much better.

Beside that, it isn't unsportsman like to call out another country for cheating, it is unsportsman to cheat. If you've read any of the other messages on this thread you would know that, by and large, a lot of us have been complimentary to China throughout the ceremony, competitions and performances. Do your homework and open up your mind a little next time before you go insulting everyone.