More medals for China today in weightlifting, diving, shooting, and gymnastics, traditionally strong events. The diving competition seems a bit of waste of time, just give the Gold to China and play for second. The womens (or rather girls) team followed on from the men to win the prestigious team event in the gymnastics. Yesterday evening had another entertaining weighlifting event, this time the Mens 77kg, with a Korean coming from nowhere to beat the Chinese into second place. The Chinese and Koreans have won more medals than the Armenians, Azerbaijins and Kazakhs in the weightlifting, so a lot of face gained there.
However, these events aren't the most popular. Football features prominently, despite everyone being disappointed with the Mens team constant rubbishness. True to form, they went out at the group stage. The women's team are fairing better, however. Similar story in the basketball, with the men just about to beat Angola to squeak past the group stages,with the women already qualified. Badminton and table tennis are bankers for a few more Golds.
Yesterday saw some strong performances in the swimming pool from China, an event targeted for improvement since 2000. In Syndey, 21 of China's 28 Golds came in just 5 events - table tennis, badminton, diving, weightlifting and gymnastics. The efforts to improve in other events, like swimming, fencing, rowing, hockey, and cycling, to name a few, appear to be paying off. More on that, and about the mega-mega superstar-cum-hurdler Liu Xiang, here -
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/sports/playmagazine/803HURDLER-t.html?_r=2&ref=playmagazine&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
The Gold Medallists are treated like heroes. On the CCTV website (Chinese BBC), people have written love letters proposing marriage to their favourite champions. However, of more interest, and easier to understand that Chinese, is this selection of photos of George Bush pulling more faces. One of the captions reads 'On leaving the Opening Ceremony, Bush doesn't forget to pull a face'.
http://news.cctv.com/society/20080813/106976_10.shtml
Last week, I made an Olypmic-related gaffe. Someone was asked me about Tian Liang, which I pretended to half- know. I said what's that again, turned out to be the name of an athlete. A woman? No, a man. Gymnast, yeh? No, diver. Famous? Very, won a lot of gold medals, now retired. Oh, that Tian Liang, yeh all comes flooding back now...
To help avoid appearing like the stupid laowai (foreigner) at dinner, here's the three most popular Chinese athletes.
1) Yao Ming(姚明）; basketball; 7ft6; flat head possibly caused by cot being too small and head pressed up against the end。
http://image.baidu.com/i?ct=503316480&z=0&tn=baiduimagedetail&word=LIU+XIANG&in=28079&cl=2&cm=1&sc=0&lm=-1&pn=16&rn=1&di=1777786728&ln=100
2) Liu Xiang （刘祥）; hurdler; Athens Gold medal; first Gold ever for China in running events, proving Asians can compete with the rest (his words).
(see above)
3) Guo Jingjing （郭晶晶）; diver; loads of medals; as prettiest member of female Chinese Gold medallists has right to appear in copious number of Coke adverts.
http://image.baidu.com/i?ct=503316480&z=0&tn=baiduimagedetail&word=%B9%F9%BE%A7%BE%A7&in=19981&cl=2&cm=1&sc=0&lm=-1&pn=21&rn=1&di=2262713140&ln=2000
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