Feels in some ways like we just said farewell to Torino/Turin, and here we are getting ready for Beijing; ordering cell phones, filling out endless forms for Games organizers in China (hey, honestly we don't mind, we love you guys; please don't put me in the long line at customs), typing out preliminary schedules for our staff of 11 reporters/photographers (and a videographer; a first for the Star, so watch for some really cool videos on life in Beijing and at the Olympics), plus raiding the home office larders for batteries and notepads and hitting the local drug store for everything from advil to air masks (hope we don't need them but those pictures of the athletes village and L.A 1966-style visibility were pretty scary). It's wheels up on Wednesday, at the back of the plane next to the big guy who snores, no doubt. But you can never really complain when you get to go to possibly the biggest event of the year on the world's calendar, second only perhaps to the Steelers-Bills preseason game in Toronto.
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There doesn't seem to be a huge buzz about the Olympics right now. But it's always this way for Canada and the Summer Games. We are an ice and snow nation for much of the year, after all, and we don't exactly burn up the medal standings in the Summer Olympics. The other issue, of course, which Oakville kayaker extraordinaire Adam van Koeverden was saying the other day, is that the athletes aren't yet competing and all we media folks can write about is doomsday scenarios and problems that are cropping up in China. It was the same way in Athens - will things be finished on time. For the most part they were, and the Athenians gave themselves a little dig at the end when the opening ceremony featured a guy with a tool kit on hs belt making last minute adjustments to the stadium. In Sydney, there were massive protests about how the beach volleyball stadium would ruin legendary Bondi Beach, which doesn't appear to have happened, and worries about sharks taking a nip out of triathlon swimmers. Only a half-dozen or so got shark bites as I recall. It's simply the way things are with the Olympics. Once the Games begin and the first hammer is tossed and the first tiny gymnast (albeit, possibly underage) takes to the balance beam, most of the focus will be on sport and the Chinese will be able to relax. There will still be daily questions about smog and Tibet and terrorism, but at least for the host nation they can count on a few sports queries to balance things out.
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Here's a trivia question. There's only person ever to have an Olympic gold medal in baseball, a World Series ring and a U.S. College World Series ring? That would be former Stanford player and one-time Blue Jays third baseman Ed Sprague. Given this could be baseball's last year as an Olympic sport - it's up for review in the fall of 2009 by the International Olympic Committee's tall foreheads and it looks like golf is putting on a big-time push to take its place - Sprague might forever be the only person in that category.
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It's a lovely day in Toronto, sitting in the backyard tapping out some thoughts in the bright sun and admiring the flowers and greenery that a warm, rainy summer has provided a hack gardener in the north end of the city. Figure it's good to soak in a little nature while we can, although the photos of the media village near the Olympic Stadium look pretty decent. The media usually in ensconced in small apartment units not far from the main village. In Sydney, the media village was a former insane asylum, and you can fill in the rest of that your joke yourself. In Salt Lake, most of us had innocuous but tidy hotel rooms near the airport (and if you think downtown SLC is lacking in nightlife, hoo boy). In Athens we snagged a few media rooms within stumbling distance of the main press centre and the main stadium, while the rest were a 15-minute bus ride away. And in Turin the Star was about 20 minutes from downtown in a dreary suburban zone, but the rooms were fine. The Beijing options look quite nice and they're close to the action as far as we can tell, so thanks to the organizing committee for that. It's always good, after all, to take care of the people who send reports back to readers around the globe. One of the reasons Atlanta ran into trouble was that media people were taken for spins around the Georgia countryside by bus drivers from Alabama who'd never been to the big city and didn't know their way around a city where every other road is named Peachtree.
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Restaurants in Beijing have been told to take dog meat off their menu for fear of offending foreign visitors. Personally, I had no intention of sitting down at Beijing's version of Chez Panisse and ordering up a dish of Chihuahua surprise. But there's something disturbing about seeing the Chinese "clean up" all areas of their city to impress visitors and journalists. I remember four years ago, at the end of the Athens games, writing a small item decrying reports that the Chinese were tearing down their historic, crowded hutong neighborhoods in favour of new and improved buildings that look like they could be in Toronto or Fresno or Dubai. I got an angry email from someone accusing me of being anti-Chinese. In fact, I think the Chinese people I've met are pretty cool. I just don't understand their rush to tear down everything that a westerner would want to see when they visit. If I want cool, modern highrises I'll go to Frankfurt or Dallas. But if I go to China, I want history. My god, it's an incredible civilization with history that dates back centuries and centuries. Westerners want to see that, feel it, touch it, and taste it. Maybe not the dog, thank you very much, but that doesn't mean you should take it off the menu. We want to go and marvel at the things the Chinese people eat that we waste or that we turn our Western noses up at. That's the fun of travel. Maybe they're doing what they think is best, but from this perspective, it's positively befuddling.
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