By now we all know that China claimed the top spot of the Beijing 2008 medals table with a massive total of 51 golds.
OK, the USA disputes who the 'top nation' is; They prefer to count the total number of medals won rather than just golds. Surprise, surprise this puts the USA at the top of the table.
I'm sure they will argue that one for years to come but for me, the medals table gets a lot more interesting once you start taking into account the total population of each country competing.
Looking at the figures this way gives you a statistic of 'one gold medal for every _____ people' and it could be argued that the lower this figure is, the more of an achievement it is for that country.
A full medals table compiled using this method can be seen here: www.symworld.com
As you can see the nation that tops the table is now Jamaica with one gold medal for every 452,333 people.
Australia, in 7th place, finishes above Britain (the country viewed as its Olympic rival) in this table.
Great Britain is 15th (one gold per 3,052,632 people) and China... well, China languishes way down the table in 47th place with a statistic of one gold medal per 25,991,431 people!
The question, then, is China's medal tally less of an achievement when viewed in this context? Or is it just the final total that matters?
I'm sure there will be differing views but personally I think it's an interesting, alternative view of the medals table. At least it gives Jamaica some recognition for achieving what it did whilst having a relatively tiny population.
"The Olympic Charter ... bears increasingly little resemblance to the reality of the event. That does not mean that the charter is worthless. The values it defines are still worthy of aspiring to.
Article six reads: "The Olympics are competitions between athletes in individual or team events, not between countries."
Of all the sentiments enshrined in the charter, this is by far the most abused."
I don't know if this view is common amongst the foreign media but the writer is basically saying the Beijing Games have been swamped by a particularly stage-managed form of national pride that at times verges on being forced.
I don't entirely go along with the article; I don't remember any Olympic Games being particularly full of humour, and I think you have to allow for the fact that is a ground-breaking event for China - it has never done anything like this on the world stage - so perhaps the country is entitled to indulge in national pride. Maybe after four or five events of this magnitude, China can afford to be more relaxed and irreverent.
One thing I do agree with is that London does indeed seem like the perfect 'counterpoint' to Beijing and I do look forward to a Games that is different in style and atmosphere.
And yes, some funny banners wouldn't go amiss either.
From the article:
The Beijing Games are a place of steely schmaltz, where nothing goes wrong, ever... They are the place where the organising committee explained of the ordinary Chinese: "Everybody is happy. That is a fact."
It's basically like The Matrix, but with less cool clothes. And nothing makes you wish you hadn't taken the red pill like seeing volunteers, coralled into filling empty seats at a venue, unfurling a banner reading "Nothing can stop the power of China". By crikey, they need to work on their bannercraft. You just yearn for the sort of sentiment that can adorn the flags at England away games. "Don't go into labour Hayley" - that sort of thing.
For all their slick management and the great sporting display, it should be said that China's Games have been spectacularly, creepily humourless. There has been not one iota of good natured fun-poking in the national media, not a single comedy montage on the 18 state TV channels dedicated to reverential coverage of China's big moment. Nothing has been allowed to interfere with the official line. The effect is oddly static, as though the people's joy is being handed to them like a stone tablet, instead of being a democratised, roots-up explosion.
As we prepare to turn the corner into the next Olympiad, Britain is starting to look like the perfect contrasting destination for the old torch. These Games have provided in-stadia thrills, but how much richer the Olympics will be for taking place in a city of irreverence and cynicism, as well as enthusiasm...
We may not have 2,000 perfectly synchronised drummers, but we've got a nation of cussed folk dancing to their own beats.
If Beijing's Games were a state's Olympics then London's ought to be a democracy's - the chance to humanise them a bit more.
Okay, we (the Spanish national basketball team) are going to the Olympics in Beijing.
What can we do in our pre-Olympics photoshoot that will really set the right tone for our trip to China?
Nice. The photo was taken for an ad for a courier company, Seur, who are sponsors of Spain's basketball team and ran in the country's top selling newspaper.
There were reports that the Spanish team were loudly booed by normally respectful spectators during their game against China (which Spain won) and it's thought it was partly due to this story hitting the net.
Spain has something of a history when it comes to racial insensitivity in sport. Their national football coach made derogatory racial remarks about France's Thierry Henry for which he was heavily fined, and of course last year Spanish Formula One fans decided to welcome Britain's Lewis Hamilton to their country by blacking up their faces and wearing T-shirts that said 'Hamilton family'. What a funny country.
In an extra twist, it turns out that the Spanish basketball team is also part sponsored by Li-Ning footwear, the company founded by Chinese sporting legend Li Ning who lit the torch at the Beijing opening ceremony.
Apparently no official apology or comment has been forthcoming the Spanish team.
What must be one of the most eagerly anticipated Olympic Games ever is about to kick off.
What's unusual about Beijing 2008 and part of why these particular Games have generated so much interest are all the issues other than sport: Can China stage the Games successfully? Will the Games signal a change in China's social and political landscape? Is it right for a country with such oppressive human rights policies to bask Olympic glory? Will the Games be disrupted? Will the Games fail? Will the world change its view of China after the Games and will China change its view of itself?
For once, I think it's true to say that the world really will be watching at 1:00pm GMT.
In the meantime, here's a selection of recent Beijing 2008 articles:
MSNBC (amongst others) reports on the dress code that has been issued to Beijing residents advising them literally 'What Not To Wear'. The forbidden fashion list includes the ever popular wearing of white socks with black shoes, and wandering the streets in pyjamas. Trinny and Susannah would approve, I'm sure!
The New York Times reports on the explosion of advertising surrounding the Games in China and how local companies are having to up their game to compete with unprecedented levels of foreign ads.
The Guardian reports on one of the more contentious issues: The millions of Chinese who have been displaced to make way for the Games. There is no doubt that China has pulled out all the stops to makes these Games happen, but at what cost to ordinary, non-Olympian citizens?
The Times reports that top Chinese scientists will use the latest medical techniques to ensure that all female competitors in the Games are really female, putting paid to all those 'Surely that's a bloke?' type conversations.
The parade of the Olympic torch through London last Sunday turned into a debacle as several Tibet protesters broke through police cordons and managed to seriously disrupt the procession.
What was meant to be a brilliant public relations exercise designed to generate public excitement about the Beijing Olympics in 2008 turned instead into a chaotic mess that will be viewed as a success by pro-Tibet activists, and which has inadvertently managed to reinforce a negative image of China.
There has been a lot of disquiet expressed about the Chinese 'heavies' running alongside the torch during the parade and the manner in which they behaved when there was trouble.
Who were these mysterious men in tracksuits with earpieces shouting orders?
What jurisdiction did they have to manhandle members of the public, potentially causing injury to either themselves or others? Were they the ones running the show or was it the Metropolitan police, who were also there alongside them in great numbers?
Some observers felt that the altercations they witnessed on TV were a unpleasant taste of Communist China style policing taking place on British soil. And they didn't like it:
One protester who managed to break through the police cordon, David Allen said his anger at the parading of the torch through the capital flared at the sight of British sporting stars being guarded in the streets of London by Chinese security men. "What really got my goat was our sporting heroes being surrounded by the Chinese security heavies guarding the torch," he said. "It makes us complicit in the regime's repression. You have to ask, 'Where were these security men last week?' Beating up people in the villages of China, no doubt."
Well, that may be an exaggeration but according to Reuters, the specially selected 'torch attendants' were indeed hand picked from the ranks of the same armed police force that would have been patrolling the streets of Lhasa.
Employed by the Beijing Olympic Organising Committee (BOCOG), the "flame protection squad" was formed in August 2007 to safeguard the fire 24 hours a day on its 137,000-km (85,130-mile), 130-day relay, state media have reported.
Its members were picked from the ranks of the People's Armed Police, the security force spun off from the army that is responsible for riot control and domestic stability. Tens of thousands of "wujing", as they are called in Chinese, have been deployed to Tibet and neighbouring areas to quash recent unrest.
In an unguarded comment, London Olympics chief Sebastian Coe is reported to have said about the Chinese security guards: "One thing in Paris is to get rid of those guys. They tried to push me out of the way three times. They are horrible. They did not speak English. They were thugs."
A further sense of how some British people feel about this incident can be found on the Guido Fawkes blog 'Order Order', a well known political blog specializing in British parliamentary matters. It was especially critical of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's decision to be involved in the ceremony:
"Very worrying to see UK police surpressing protesters with the help of blue track suited Chinese special forces. The touch relay has nothing to do with the Olympics and everything to do with Chinese propaganda. We in the UK are somewhat free sometimes to protest, totally unlike those long hard suffering Tibetan people."
"The Met should have arrested one or two to make a point that the Chinese may be able to shove people around in Tibet but not in Downing Street. This whole debacle did nothing for this country"
"We were deeply ashamed to watch the whole damning episode on last night's news. There's really nothing even faintly amusing that can be said about seeing this embarrassing farrago and the disgusting sight of Chinese security men taking precedence in London streets and outside No 10."
"Why should I have to pay for some Chinese Properganda ON MY SOIL? Then to top it all off there was the sight of some Chinese stormtroopers marching in formation down Downing Street pushing people and ordering them about for a photo-op"
"I particularly liked the black leather gloves sported by the chinese secret police, all the better for smacking any protesters around."
Clearly the presence of the torch attendants did not go down well. So why wasn't the whole thing managed by the UK police? Well, in the aftermath the police have blamed the Beijing Olympic Committee for making many of the key decisions about the parade and the chaos that ensued.
I have to admit it's hard to imagine experienced, local London cops running an event in such a mismanaged and chaotic way as was seen that day.
In the latest high profile takeover of a British football club, Hong Kong billionaire Carson Yeung has bought a controlling stake in recently promoted Birmingham City FC.
Whilst the English Premier League has many followers in Hong Kong, this represents the first serious involvement of Hong Kong business (and Hong Kong money) in the game. Yeung had apparently tried to buy Reading before completing the Birmingham deal.
Little is known at this stage about Yeung's business background, although he is reported to have made his fortune initially through investments in the gas and electronics industries.
He has used Grandtop International Holdings Ltd, a small-scale clothing company with an annual turnover of less than £5m, to buy his shares in Birmingham.
According to reports in Hong Kong, Yeung acquired his 16.67 per cent stake in Grandtop only last Friday in a deal worth £4m. The shares surged by 25 per cent on the back of the purchase, making him an instant £2m profit.
Why he has purchased his stake in Birmingham through the clothing company, which is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, is at this stage unclear.
Yeung, who was previously chairman of Hong Kong Rangers, failed in a previous bid to buy Reading and had shown an interest in acquiring Sheffield Wednesday.
Exactly what role Yeung will play at the club also remains uncertain. A lot will depend on whether he goes through with a full takeover bid.
Much furore over the recently unveiled logo for the 2012 London Olympics, with the most common complaint being that "it's rubbish".
China has had its logo for ages now and that, too, was controversial, with some saying that its wood-cut style design is too old fashioned and not appropriate for the dynamic, forward-moving city that is Beijing (unlike the sweeping, ribbon design that was used during the bidding process).
Out of curiosity I thought I'd dig up a few logos from days gone by: Here we have London 1948, Tokyo 1964, and Seoul 1988 (my personal favourite).
Ah well, Sebastian Coe may have said that he doesn't want the logo to end up on t-shirts that people end up doing their gardening in, but I suspect that is the fate that awaits all Olympic clothing merchandise.
As the sporting world reels from suggestions that an international cricket coach might have been murdered by a betting syndicate, word comes from Hong Kong of more possible gambling-related murkiness.
Staff at Happy Valley racecourse have discovered an elaborate device planted in the turf on the racecourse that was apparently meant to fire tranquilizer darts into horses at the start of races. Quite bizarre.
The mass brawl that erupted during a football match between the China Olympic team (effectively the national youth team) and Queens Park Rangers was quite comical in a way, and I hope it was just a case of players winding each other up (aka 'sledging') and things just escalating and getting out of hand.
At least the BBC report above shows some of the lead up to the fight, and not just the Chinese player going mental later on.
My only slight reservation here is that three QPR youth players are currently facing charges over the death of a Vietnamese student, Tu Quang Hoang Vu, who was either pushed or dragged into the path of a Tube train during some alleged 'mucking around' at Earls Court station last year.
The chances are that the players on the pitch during the fight are friends with, or know, the guys who were arrested and I just hope that this didn't play a part in turning this into some 'grudge match' in the minds of some QPR players. It was supposed to be a friendly after all.
Anyway, the fighting was out of order from both sides, and both managers have promised swift action against any wrongdoers.
In the latest high profile takeover of a British football club, Hong Kong billionaire Carson Yeung has bought a controlling stake in recently promoted Birmingham City FC.
