Numbers game

The Chinese were pretty smart about this one. For a couple years, lots of folks were writing lots of stories about how China was going to eclipse the U.S. in the Olympic medals department come this year’s Summer Olympics. As the Games crept closer, The Chinese went into denial (okay, they’ve had lots of practice at it, but still). Oh, no, they said, it’s going to be very tough. We might do as well as the Americans.

Well, who’s laughing now. The pressure, we think, was somewhat reduced and now the Chinese are going gangbusters, leaving us to ponder what medals might be left for Canadians to win in 2012 or 2016 if the Chinese keep coming on. And at least we know that, barring a really big shift in the San Andres fault, they won’t be at the Toronto Pan American Games in 2015 should that come to pass, right?

The Canadian Olympic Committee, on the other hand, came out with a pretty aggressive stance; standing up at the Royal York Hotel and here in Beijing prior to the Games and suggesting that 13 to 19 medals might be in order for 2008. This despite the fact that Canada usually brings home 12 or 13 medals at Summer Games if you take Atlanta out of the equation as the “blip” it appears to have been.

A conversation with an Australian colleague the other night revealed that the Aussies also are coming up a little short. “The Australian Olympic Committee projected 45 or 48 but I think 38 medals is more realistic,” she told me.

Before you get sick to your stomach at the idea of so many baubles for a country about the size of ours, consider that the Aussies poured a ton of cash into sport prior to the 2000 Summer Olympics; something Canada has done to top the podium in Vancouver but not so much to do anything in China.

What might be more interesting is the politics behind the decision. My colleague suggested that the money going to sports in Australia hasn’t been increased to take care of inflation, which means the actual dollars have dropped since we saw those closing ceremony fireworks lighting up the Harbour Bridge. It’s possible that the Australian Olympic Committee knew that 48 medals was unrealistic, and that by suggesting that number they were setting themselves up to take a run at the government in Canberra to hike funding back to 2000 levels. Who knows if it’s true, but it would be an interesting strategy.

We wonder if maybe the Canadian Olympic Committee wasn’t doing the same thing. Somehow, though, we doubt it. And given the way the Canadian public back home  reacted to the lack of baubles hanging around Canadian necks over here for the first seven days of the Games, it would appear that setting high expectations didn’t exactly sparked a run on angry emails to all those hard-working MP’s – not to mention the over-burdened senators – in Ottawa.

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PIPE DOWN

There’s an old axiom in sports journalism: no cheering in the press box.

Folks from the outside at first don’t get it. But covering sports isn’t like watching sports. If you watch sports, have a beer and paint your face and yell and scream all you like. Maybe even throw some batteries if you’re from New York. But don’t do that when people are working and trying to write objectively about a sports team.

As a sports reporter, you naturally feel something when your team wins. It was a thrill to sit in the press box at the SkyDome and see Joe Carter’s home run against Philadelphia. It was heartbreaking to see Mike Weir lose to Vijay Singh at the Canadian Open. But there wee no outward signs of emotion.

The Olympics tend to be a little different. I remember calling home to talk with my family on the phone when Canada won gold in hockey at the Salt Lake Games. And I dashed down to the Canadian Olympic Committee office to shake hands with folks when it was over; mostly because I was surrounded by Americans in the main press centre.

But I’ve never seen Canadians jumping up and down when a Canadian wins an Olympic medal. It may happen, but I’ve never seen it.

A chap from the Globe and Mail and I were watching Carol Huyhn win her gold medal in wrestling on Saturday. Partly it was because we had to dash off words for our web sites, but when she won neither of us seemingly felt the urge to leap into the air and yell, “Go, Canada, go.” Instead, we smiled, looked up at Huyhn sobbing into her hands and said, “Awww, that’s nice.”

On the other hand, the Brits who sit near me in the press centre, most of them great guys from what I can tell, were going nuts watching their men’s four rowing team win a gold medal Saturday. True, it’s a great sport for Britain and we don’t know a lot about Huyhn. But I think some of the way we approached the Huyhn story has to do with being Canadian.

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WALL SIGHTING

There really is a great wall in China. The air was so clear today that when we left the Water Cube after filing reports on Michael Phelps’ seventh gold of the games, we looked up at the mountains (who knew they had mountains?) to the west of town and could see the wall snaking high up one of the peaks.

Truth be known, it gave me goosebumps.

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ANIMAL HOUSE

Colleague Dave Perkins mentioned something the other night that still resonates.

We don’t see any animals around here.

I’m staying in a media village, not a residential area with lots of locals. And the Olympic sports centre where most of the activities take place is closed off to people without tickets. But we haven’t even seen a bird floating in the sky since we got here, at least not that we can remember.

I did hear a dog barking in an apartment when I walked by one day a while back. But we haven’t seen any dogs or cats about, and nary a bird.

Kinda weird.

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2010 ticket warning

Besides warning folks about potential scams lurking on web sites across Canada, Vancouver 2010 organizers have been dealing with a raft of related issues.

One balancing act they’ve had to manage is that of trying to satisfy sports and community groups. When it comes to curling, for example, Canadians (we don’t know why, but that’s another story) seem eager to line up and spend perfectly good money to sit through hours of curling matches at the new arena being built near Nat Bailey Stadium, south of downtown.

VANOC probably could sell out a 10,000 seat stadium or even BC Place, where the BC Lions of the CFL play. But they promised the community around Nat Bailey that they wouldn’t be saddled with a white elephant and that the building left behind after the Games will be suitably-sized.

In other words, it’s supposed to be a community centre, not the Rogers Centre.

“There’s no question the curling people would like more seats, but we’ll have 5,000-6,000 and we have three sessions a day,” said VANOC executive vice president Dave Cobb. “We’re very fortunate because the big venues we have are for our most popular sports, like hockey and figure skating,” he said. “One of the issues in Turin at the 2006 Games was they had a big hockey arena, but hockey isn’t that popular there.”

On a related matter, organizers say they’re not worried about Canadians turning up their noses at sports like biathlon or Nordic combined when tickets go on sale Oct. 3 on the Internet.

“For Canadians, the experience is the most important thing,” said vice president of ticketing and consumer marketing Caley Denton, who just might be getting a lot more “How are ya, Caley” phone calls on Oct. 2 of this year than he has in previous years.

“Part of the fun is getting on a bus with 30 Finnish people to go to the ski jumping.”

The ski jump venue, for the record, will hold 10,000-12,000 people. Vancouver officials say they might sell out every ticket for the 2010 Games.

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NOT ALBERTA BOUND

Vancouver organizers say the biggest demand for 2010 tickets will come, naturally, from British Columbians. They expected the next biggest province for ticket demand would be Alberta, being next door and all. Instead, they say, Ontario residents have indicated the most interest in buying tickets.

However many are bought by Newfoundlanders or Saskatchewanians (Saskatchewanites? Saskatchewantonians?), you can bet that the Oct. 3 day for ticket sales will result in a crushing demand on Vancouver’s web servers.

How’d you like to be the tech support guy on call at VANOC’s office that day?

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CABBY BLUES

The cabbies here are as friendly as all get out. They all wear official uniforms with ties and yellow shirts. But how is it they don’t know their way around town?

I understand my Mandarin is worse than their English, but “Grand Hyatt Hotel” doesn’t sound like a landmark that’s easy to miss, especially when you’re pointing at it on a map that has Chinese lettering on it. Nonetheless, my morning cab to the Hyatt on Friday dropped me off four blocks away. No damage, and only a few dollars for a 20-minute cab ride.

On the way back, another cabby was shown another map with Chinese writing for the media village I was going to. The name of the village was there, and the name of the street. It’s clearly on Beichen Road East, not Beichen Road West.

But, sure enough, the cab pulled over to drop me off on Beichen Road West, right in front of the Main Press Centre and not at the media village where we lay down our heads at night. He kept trying to turn right into the Olympic Green, which was clearly closed by barricades and patrolling policemen. Finally, I convinced him with hand gestures to admit defeat and retreat all the way south to the Fourth Ring Road, then zip along below the Olympic Green to Beichen Road East, or a road near to it.

The traffic was so bad I had to get out and walk four blocks, but that’s not his fault. Still gave him a good tip, not a common thing in China. But, boy, can’t someone get these guys a traffic report or a good map and a listing of road closures or something?

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SLAMMIN’ SAMMY

Hard to believe, but a friend from Vancouver tells me he went to an International Olympic Committee function on Friday and part of the deal was an art auction. He claims someone was trying to start the price of an oil painting of former IOC chief Juan Antonio Samaranch at $388,000.

That’s even more than a Ted Rogers ducat for a Bills exhibition game, we think, and it seems a little high even for a man of Samaranch’s reputation.

Apparently, the auction was cancelled after nobody opened with a high enough bid.

Badminton magic on the streets of Beijing

Was walking home from a so-so dinner the other night and heard the sounds of someone playing an instrument off in the distance. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but it sounded a little haunting and full of chords that sounded quite Asian.

A Chinese soldier who stood stiffly at attention under a balcony at the Hui Yuan media village wasn’t impressed, but I was curious. As I got closer, I could see a man sitting on a bench playing the accordion, which was emitting all sorts of beautiful but slightly mournful sounds.

It was a hot, humid night, probably 30 degrees at 9 p.m. and there was a huge crowd in a plaza outside a restaurant. As I looked closer, I could see a group of figures bathed in orange and green neon lights cast by signs on some of the surrounding buildings.

It looked like they were playing with one of those hacky sacks, if that’s the right name, that kids in Canada and the U.S. sometimes kick around. But they were much too large. On closer inspection, they looked more like oversized badminton birdies.

The Chinese love badminton, and only a few minutes before dinner I had seen restaurant workers taking a break by playing a pickup game on the street, with the giant Birds Nest stadium looming in the distance behind them. But this looked like a combination of soccer and badminton and I was intrigued.

The next day, I asked one of the 14 billion wonderful volunteers at the Games what was going on and what the object was the youths were kicking. I suggested a badminton birdie, and he said it was something else. He said the bottom was made of cork. I said the top looked like a badminton birdie and I tried to draw a shuttlecock. He laughed and drew a picture of a chicken, a pretty good one, and pointed to the feathers.

“Tail feathers and cork,” he said. “We call it jianxi.”

So, now we know.

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Swimming Canada currently operates on a $3-million budget. Pierre Lafontaine, chief executive of Swimming Canada, would like to see his budget increased to hire more coaches and increase athlete support.

“People think support to athletes is dollars in your pocket,” he said. “It’s not. It’s more biomechanists, it’s the ability to go race against the best in the world.”

Lafontaine is currently trying to set up a swim meet with Russia.

He’d also like more video equipment and to add more therapists, strength and conditioning coaches and nutritionists to the staff.

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AT LEAST HE’S HONEST

Boxer Nordine Oubaali of France was asked about a win the other day. “I have one thing to say about strategy,” Oubaali replied. “I didn’t have any.”

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WAVE THE FLAG

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, in town to promote southern Ontario’s Pan American Games bid for 2015, wasn’t about to get drawn into controversies about whether athletes should be allowed to wave the Quebec flag as well as Canada’s flag at Olympic ceremonies. International Olympic Committee rules prohibit state or provincial flags from being flown. Instead, only national flags can be waved at official Olympic events.

“As a Canadian I’m immensely proud of my country and immensely proud of my flag,” McGuinty said. “I’m more than satisfied with that flag (Canada’s) being up there on its own.”

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WHEN THE RAIN COMES

Still can’t get enough of the Chinese volunteers. A couple of ink-stained (literally; the lanyard that hangs around a colleague’s neck got soaked in Thursday’s rain in Beijing and the red and orange colours ran into his shirt, so it’s a good thing the sports editor is paying our dry-cleaning bills) wretches got caught in a downpour after a press conference with Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty on Thursday.

We were standing in the security tent they use to keep us from bringing flagpoles and sharp knives and golf clubs (a guy who bought some knock-off Taylor Mades the other day couldn’t get them past the gate) into the media village when an eager young man came up behind us and put down a couple of chairs so we could wait out the storm. After we navigated the indoor passageway to the main lobby of the village, another worker held up umbrellas for us to get to the next security gate and then onto the bus to the Main Press Centre.

They also have volunteers, or workers, standing immediately outside the washrooms all over the press building. I swear, I think they’d come running if I told one of them I was having trouble with my zipper.

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WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

In case you missed it, a lot has been made in these parts about the Spanish basketball team posing for an official portrait that showed them all with their fingers pulling their eyes back. You know, the way four-year-olds in North America do if they want to pretend to be Chinese.

It’s quite the embarrassment, and the Spanish have apologized profusely for their embarrassing, amateurish, boorish behaviour.

Raptors’ point guard Jose Calderon even wrote about on his web site.

“We felt it was something appropriate, and that it would be interpreted as an affectionate gesture,” Calderon wrote on his ElMundo.es blog. “Without a doubt, some ... press didn't see it that way.”

Unfortunately, Calderon also added the following:

“Some of my best friends are Chinese,” he wrote.

We’re not kidding.

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IN THE PINK

The Canadian Olympic Committee hosted a lunch for members of the Pan American Sports Organization at Canada Olympic House on Thursday as part of the Toronto/Southern Ontario bid for the 2015 Pan Am Games. On the way out, a reporter noticed a big table covered with boxes of Immodium (for diarrhea relief) and Purell anti-bacterial liquid. Maybe not the message they wanted to send about the menu.

Vancouver's next

It might not have been the response he wanted to give.

Three or maybe even four times on Wednesday, Canadian reporters gave Vancouver 2010 chief organizer John Furlong a chance to say he wouldn’t duplicate the duplicity revealed in recent days by the folks behind the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony.

He never quite delivered the message he probably wanted to say. Or maybe he did.

Asked initially whether he would promise not to use lip-synching or other tricks when Vancouver unveils the 2010 Olympics to the world in 18 months (yes, it’s that close, folks), Furlong hemmed and hawed and talked about he hasn’t thought that far ahead. Later, he said much the same thing.

After a press conference that was held for the Olympic newsletter Around the Rings at a local McDonald’s (world’s largest free-standing Mickey Dee’s we were told), Furlong talked about how the ceremony has to be just right.

Finally, asked if he would at least tell people that they had to use canned elements, should that become necessary for technical or other reasons, Furlong said his intention was to be as open and transparent as possible.

We’re sure they won’t kick sand in China’s face, but wouldn’t it be great if they had a song delivered by the girl the Chinese rejected?

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THINKING BIG

As stated above, the McDonald’s on the Olympic Green (is that an oxymoron give the number of fast food wrappers that float all over the place?) in Beijing is said to be the world’s largest free-standing McDonald’s in the world. Next door is the official Olympic merchandise store, which probably also is the world’s largest Olympic store. You can buy Beijing themed Swatch watches and Lenovo computer gear, not to mention t-shirts, posters, ball caps, binoculars, fake tattoos, scarves, tea sets, coffee cups, pens and, of course, pins.

Olympic pin-trading isn’t what it used to be, but the cute girls who work at the McDonald’s in the basement of the Main Press Centre still like to hit up foreign strangers for the dollar-store Maple Leaf pins a bunch of brought over just for such occasions. And lots of folks still like to buy them, as evidenced by the thousands of them on sale at the Olympic Green shop. Some showed individual sports with the Beijing logo. Others were countdowns to the start of the Games: “30 days to Opening Ceremonies,” “10 days to Opening Ceremonies,” etc… We looked, but we couldn’t find any pins saying “10 days to lip-synch of the century.”

Sorry, folks. Promise that’s the last word on that subject. At least for today.

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LORDS OF THE RINGS

I lost track, but I think the media village I’m staying in is near the fifth ring road of Beijing. I honestly can’t tell. But if you look at a map, you see a whole bunch of giant rings encircling the entire city, providing people easy ways to bypass the downtown frenzy. They’re all crowded, so the Chinese keep building more ring roads. I swear, if you come here in 2012 there will probably be a ring road 23 or something. If you come in 2014, the ring roads for Shanghai and Beijing probably will intersect.

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EAU DE VIE

A nice young chap who gave some journalists a ride this morning introduced himself as “Water.” This took the visiting Canadians some getting used to. “You mean ‘Walter,’” they asked. “No, Water.” “Walter,” the visitors insisted. “No. Water.” Okay, that’s cool.

A  lot of Chinese people adopt North American names for the sake of us not-so-smart folks who can’t pronounce Chou En Lai or Li Ning. So “Water” it is, mate. On a golf visit to Shenzen, China last year (we know, tough assignment), there were caddies with names like “Daisy” and “Sunshine.” One even took the name of “Chocolate.” -

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WANTED: CUTE FILLY

There’s an incredible information system at the main press centre at all Olympic Games called INFO. You can get instant quotes, medal standings, results and press conference highlights at the click of a button. You also can get biographies of athletes and read about how they like kite-boarding or biking or what have you.

But I hadn’t noticed that if you click on biographies and look in one corner of the screen you can find the following entry “horse profiles.” You (well, maybe not you, but some of us) half expect one of them to say. “Born: 2005. Accomplishments: Second at Commonwealth Games. Hobbies: stud-farming and long walks on the beach.”

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BAD GUYS

Can't help wondering if the Canadians might have started better if fiery kayaker Adam Van Koeverden had gone out in one of the first events of the Beijing Games instead of bringing up the rear. A solid performance from Oakville's finest might have inspired his fellow Canadians the way the gold medal by cyclist Nicole Cooke seemingly fired up the Brits who are gathered here in China.

A buddy in the press room here, Andrew Longmore of The Sunday Times, was explaining how the British athletes in Atlanta felt pressure to win because they kept driving past a scoreboard that said "Britain - zero" in the gold medal tally column. Longmore said rowers Matthew Pinsent and Steve Redgrave felt pressured to win, and they did, because they kept seeing the stupid sign, and they said it definitely affected the other British athletes. The rowing gold from Pinsent and Redgrave was the only gold Britain got in 1996, Longmore said.

By contrast, he said, Britain got an unexpected gold from cyclist Jason Queally early on in the Sydney Games and won 11 golds in all. Four years, and a difference of 10 medals. Coincidence? You be the judge. All we know is momentum is a funny thing. And right now, the elevator's going down for the Canadians assembled here.

Lip-synching 'in the national interest'

First it was revealed that the “footprint fireworks” that people witnessed in Beijing during the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics weren’t shown live on TV, but that international viewers instead saw a digital reproduction.

Then came news today that the adorable Chinese girl who stood on stage during the ceremony and sang “Ode to the Motherland” was actually lip-synching because she was cuter than the girl whose voice organizers wanted to use.

Turns out someone from the ruling Chinese politburo asked for the last-minute change to match the perfect face with the perfect voice, as it seems the girl who actually did the singing, Yang Peiyi, has less than perfect teeth.

This being China, his wish was someone’s command.

“The audience will understand that it's in the national interest,” the ceremony’s chief music director, Chen Qigang, in an interview with Beijing Radio.

Maybe, maybe not. It almost certainly was in Chen’s best interest if the call came from the government.

The China Daily, the official English language newspaper of the government, hailed the (alleged) performance by Lin Miaoke and said she was an “instant star.” Sounds to us like maybe Lin “Karaoke” would be a better name for the girl, not that any of this is her fault.

Miaoke is something of a star in China, according to Associated Press, and she has her own blog (http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/indexlist_1321880115_1.html).

AP notes that this is the second straight Olympics where the opening ceremony had lip-synching. Luciano Pavarotti’s voice was pre-taped when he sang at the opening of the Turin winter games in 2006, reportedly because it was too cold for the famous tenor, who was sick with cancer at the time and died in 2007.

No word yet on what Vancouver 2010 organizers have planned, but this latest controversy will almost certainly have them thinking twice about pre-taping or pre-recording anything.

It's all a bit much, and we're starting to feel like all is not what it seems to be in China.

A reporter from the Sunday Times who sits nearby in the Main Press Centre turned to me during a discussion on the topic and said, without a trace of irony, "Maybe we're not really in Beijing."

For more on this story, check files by our Beijing correspondent Bill Schiller both at the star.com and in Wednesday’s Toronto Star.

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MAYBE NOT A GOOD IDEA

 

Upon arriving at the Main Press Centre today (imagine that), Toronto Sun good guy Rob Longley and I spotted an old Chinese army tank perched on the parking lot. Some folks were clambering on top and having their pictures taken, which is kinda fun I suppose.

Longley turned and said, “Hey, maybe you can take a picture of me lying down in front of it.”

Uh, I don’t think that would be particularly wise. The Chinese have come a long way, but I don’t think I’d tempt the gods – or the ghost of Chairman Mao - with that one.

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BUT IT’S LESS FILLING

China diver Huo Liang was savouring his victory in the men’s synchronized 10 meter platform event and decided to try the de rigeur photo op by putting his prize between his teeth.

“The gold medal, when we bite it there’s not much taste,” he said.

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ONE HUMP OR TWO

The Canadian Olympic Committee is giving out fun, little cards with pictures to show folks in China who don’t speak English. Most are obvious things like a picture of money or a doctor and such. But one section shows an international red slash symbol to show, apparently, to people in a restaurant.

There are pictures of things like peanuts and shellfish, but the weird item, as noted by fellow journo Josh Brown of the KW Record, was a picture of a camel. I don’t even want to know what restaurants in town would need to know about camel allergies. Or any places that serve them.

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TRICYCLE BUILT FOR TWO

Here’s something you don’t see everyday. Reports on the official Olympic News network say a 97-year-old grandmother travelled 2,400 kilometers on a tricycle to support the Chinese badminton team at the 2008 Games.

Xiao Xincui, who they call Old Xiao, apparently was pedaled about by her grandson, Liu Xianghui.

The story didn’t say how big the trike was, but apparently the grandson appreciated the way his grandmother took care of him when his father died and wanted to thank her with a trip to the Olympics.

The pair left Hunan on March 5 and arrived in Beijing April 11, the story said. Which seems pretty tough on a tricycle, but there you go.

Grandmother and grandson have been given tickets to see the 110 meter hurdles final later in the Games, where they hope to see Chinese star Liu Xiang.

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PAINT IT BLACK

American canoeist Benn Fraker finds himself a little bored some times. To pass the time, he has started painting his fingernails black.

“I spend that much time training, when I’m not paddling I like to spice things up a little,” he said.

It’s still early - sort of

It’s a little antsy for reporters gathered here in China. At least for those of us with Maple Leafs inside our passports.

While the Chinese and the Americans celebrate opening ceremonies and weightlifting and swim medals and bask in the glory of Michael Phelps, us folks from north of the border are getting pumped about merely making the finals of swimming events when we have no chance of winning them.

Yeah, making a final is no small accomplishment, and it looks better for us than it did in Athens, at least as far as the swimming pool is concerned. But it’s still pretty slim pickings for the Canadians, and nobody knows when our first medal will come.

More than 100 medals have been awarded to more than 40 countries after three days of the Beijing Olympics. But Canada’s medal count is still zilch.

The best news on Monday (our Monday, not yours) was a commanding show by the men’ s eights rowing squad. They bombed out in their qualifying race in Athens and never recovered; coming home with a fifth place consolation prize instead of a gold medal. This time, they powered out and finished first in their heat and advanced straight to Sunday’s finals.

Chris Cook of Toronto is in fourth place after six of ten sailing races, which is pretty good. David Ford of Edmonton had a bad day in whitewater kayaking but managed to sneak into the semifinals for Tuesday.

But there wasn’t much else to smile about over China way. The men’s 4x100 metre swim team did their best but finished sixth in the race won in the last split-second by the American squad. Susan Nattrass looked like she was on target for a spot in the finals of trap shooting, but collapsed in her third and final segment of firing and ended up missing the finals. Frank Dancevic of Niagara Falls got bounced in the first round of tennis. Later in the day, Daniel Nestor and Frederic Niemeyer lost in doubles, putting an end to Canada’s participation in the Olympic tennis tournament after just two days of play.

Canadians may have something to cheer about Tuesday, when the 10-metre synchro diving team of Meaghan Benfeito and Roseline Filion have a go of things (2:30 a.m. EDT start). But they’re not favourites. Alex Despatie and Arturo Miranda could pull off a medal in the three meter springboard synchro event on Wednesday, or perhaps Brent Hayden can get a medal in the men’s freestyle Wednesday night Toronto time. But Canada’s best medal hopes are still a couple days away, with appearances by the men’s eights rowing team on Sunday.

So if you’re anxious and sweaty and waiting eagerly for a Canadian medal, you might have to wait a little longer.  There will almost certainly be a medal won by a Canadian athlete sometime between now and 2010.

EXCUSES, EXCUSES

Boy, it’s too bad Curtis Joseph wasn’t an equestrian athlete. CuJo has always been known in some circles as a guy who likes to find excuses for things that go wrong; some guy drinking a beer too loudly behind him, a chip in the ice in front of the goal, whatever. It’s the way some athletes handle failure, we guess.

There are others, of course, who take all the blame even when they shouldn’t. Former Jay Pat Hentgen used to berate himself loudly in the clubhouse even if he gave up a couple unearned runs. Other guys insist it’s usually someone’s fault, and that helps keep their egos intact for the next match.

But if you’re an equestrian athlete, it’s even better. You don’t get to blame your racquet or the umpire or a fan yelling “You Da Man,” you get to blame your horse.

On Sunday alone, you should’ve seen the comments about the equine elements down in Hong Kong.

Sharon Hunt of Great Britain said her horse was spooked by flower pots in the arena. As if horses have never seen flowers before? What a wuss.

Phillip Dutton of the U.S. said his horse was distracted by having a flame burning in the background. Guess he’s not from Buffalo.

Finally, Tim Lips of the Netherlands said his horse, named OnCarlos, “has been afraid of the video screen since the beginning of the week.”

That is simply proof that horses are not athletes. I’ve been covering sports on and off for 16 years, and I’ve never once seen a ballplayer that doesn’t like staring at himself on the Jumbotron.

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FAKE JOB?

Not quite sure I understood the details, but a report by Sky News out of Britain said parts of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics were faked. The report suggested that television viewers who thought they were seeing a series of giant firework “steps” proceeding north from Tiananmen Square to the Bird’s Nest stadium were, in fact, witnessing a computer animation.

That issue aside, most observers loved the ceremony. Apparently, however, one of the architects who built the renowned Birds’ Nest isn’t among them.

“Writing on his blog,” Sky News reported, “Mr. Ai described the ceremony as ‘a recycling of the rubbish of fake classical culture tradition; a sacrilegious visual garbage dump and and an insult to the spirit of liberty; low-class sound play that’s just noise pollution.”

Ouch.

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OOPS

Boy, was he steamed.

A British journalist who was sitting not far from me in the press centre this morning was thinking about wandering down the road to catch the morning swim races at the Water Cube. But he opted instead to watch the eventing competition on TV from Hong Kong.

Then he found out a British swimmer, Rebecca Adlington, had won a gold medal in the 400 freestyle. And another Brit had won bronze. Notebooks flew, much rage was spewed and many swear words hurled.

“Eventing,” he shouted. “We win a f---ing gold medal and I’m watching f---ing eventing!”

It’s a fun story (well, not for him) but it illustrates just how tricky it is to cover an Olympics. There are 28 sports and dozens of disciplines and thousands of athletes, and you never know when a Chandra Crawford, to take one example, is going to jump up and win a medal in something you hadn’t planned on. But that’s what sports so much fun.

Unless you’re a British reporter who chooses to watch horses prance about in Hong Kong instead of walking 300 yards to watch your swimmers.

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POINTED STICKS

Canadian fencer Igor Tikhomirov had a tough time against Frenchman Fabrice Jeannet the other day.

“I don’t like his style,” said Tikhomirov. “It’s the style that always puts me in trouble: tall, fast, French guys who always control the distance; little blade work and lots of footwork.”

Yeah, and they’ve got big, pointy things in their hands that can really hurt.

Pan Am politics

They still have to get past Toronto city council; a group that can’t even stand still to get its picture taken. But we’re going to trust Mayor David Miller’s newfound control of his playmates and figure that a Toronto/southern Ontario/Golden Horseshoe/Dalton McGuinty/Stephen Harper bid for the 2015 Pan American Games is going to go ahead.

If we make that grand assumption, the next big questions are whether it’s worth the $1.7 billion cost of a bid and whether Toronto can actually manage to someday win an international sporting vote.

Dave Perkins in Sunday’s Star weighs in on the viability of the project in general and finds it generally favourable, and he’s the first to sniff out a deal where developers or owners of Toronto-based hockey/basketball/soccer teams (to pick a group at random) are trying to make a quick buck.

The last Olympic bid was something like $45 million, about half of which came from in-kind donations. They won’t say, but it’s likely that a Pan Am bid would cost a heckuva lot less. We’ll list it at $5 million for now; certainly not exorbitant and certainly not something Pan Am cheerleader and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty is going to lose too much sleep over. So let’s move onto the winnability issue.

Frankly, even with 20 years of off-and-on experience covering Olympic issues, this is hard to know.

A year away from the 1996 Olympic vote, Toronto seemed to be in the lead. Paul Henderson, the loveable (for most) plumber and International Olympic Committee member, had sussed out that Athens was no slam-dunk to win the 100th anniversary Olympics. But he hadn’t counted on being taken out at the knees by a waffling group of city council members and the Bread Not Circuses activists.

With a few months to go before the vote, the rumours that Atlanta was going to beat Toronto became stronger and stronger. I remember having lunch with a friendly journalist from Atlanta along with then Toronto Sun reporter and now Star writer Linda Barnard and hearing that then Atlanta mayor Andrew Young felt victory was his.

“They’re going to get the African vote,” our Georgia friend said. He didn’t know how they were going to do it, but that’s what he said. Sure enough, on voting day, it was a big win for the good old boys and a huge disappointment for Toronto.

Fast forward to the 2008 campaign, which was never going to be a Toronto win unless another kid stepped in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square. Toronto did its best, but there was no cataclysmic event in China that would topple the Beijing bid and the Ontario capital was once again sitting on the sidelines when the vote was announced.

All went to plan for China for 2008, but don’t forget Sydney was a surprise to beat Beijing for the right to the 2000 Games, and not a lot of folks thought London was going to win the 2012 Games a few days before the vote. And don’t forget how Pyeongchang almost defeated Vancouver in a campaign that some felt got rather dirty at the end.

So now Toronto finds itself once again begging for votes and relying on outside forces to help shape its future. And who knows what the Pan American Sports Organization is going to do?

Toronto bid types believe there are some 50 voting members of PASO. It’s hard to know for sure because it’s not a very media friendly bunch of folks. They don’t have a working web site that I’ve been able to find, and the head of the group, IOC member Mario Vazquez Rana of Mexico, doesn’t often stop to chat with the media at IOC functions.

Those who observe these things more than I do suggest that Rana exerts more control over PASO than former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch did over his former charges. And Samaranch’s influence was enormous.

It’s impossible to know exactly what Rana and PASO want for 2015, but Toronto/southern Ontario, (etc…., etc…..) backers think they’ve got a hint.

The 1999 Games were in Winnipeg. The next bunch was in 2003 in the Dominican Republic, which got pretty negative reviews from the press and some athletes. Things were better in 2007 in Rio de Janeiro, but still nowhere near Olympic standards. The 2011 Pan Ams are in Guadalajara, Mexico.

So the thinking up at Queen’s Park seems to be that PASO might want to move things up a notch in terms of prestige by going to a big, cosmopolitan city like Toronto, a metropolis that bid adviser Bob Richardson, the COO for Toronto 2008, calls a “tier one” city.

Certainly, as Mr. Perkins likes to point out, it never hurts to take your Games to a city where the elevators all run up and down. So that’s definitely in Toronto’s favour.

PASO is made up of representatives of all the national Olympic committees in South America, North America, central America and the Caribbean. It doesn’t take a guy who runs the table on the geography section of Jeopardy to figure out that there are a lot more countries in South America than North America, which doesn’t bode well for Toronto.

But Richardson points out that there are three South American cities in the race at this point; Lima, Peru, Bogota, Colombia and Caracas, Venezuela. It’s quite possible they’ll split theSouth American vote, which would open the way for some central American and Caribbean voters to make a real difference. And Toronto obviously has connections with the Caribbean, so that’s a help.

And because Chicago is busy bidding for the 2016 Summer Olympics, there’s no American competition for the Pan Am Games.

ASIDE HERE: Should the bid go ahead, Toronto actually would be wise to push for Chicago as American athletes would want to come to southern Ontario Pan Am Games as a 2015 tuneup/Olympic qualifier. You could argue Toronto should hold out for the Olympics, but that’s unlikely to happen for a long time given we already had Montreal in 1976, Calgary in 1988 and Vancouver coming up in 2010; all in a country with about the same population as New Hampshire.

Anyway, as I was saying before being rudely interrupted, there’s no American competition to deal with this time and no elephant in the room like China.

An IOC member I’ve met from Peru insists things are moving along nicely, but the outside image is still a little on the rustic side and Peru doesn’t seem like the most stable place on earth.

COC chief executive Chris Rudge points out that Venezuela has barrels of cash made from barrels of oil and that leader Hugo Chavez likely wouldn’t be shy about spending it in pursuit of a Pan Am bid. He’s probably right, but Chavez is likely not everyone’s cup of English Breakfast. A lot of PASO voters are conservative sporting types who might not want to support a chap like Chavez.

Colombia is said to have a leading light on the IOC in Andres Botero, but it’s also not a country with the greatest reputation in the world. Again, one has to caution that many voters don’t come from Rosedale and probably don’t worry much about a few guerrillas hanging out in the mountains here and there.

So, when all is said and done, it’s still hard to know exactly where a Canadian bid would stand. But this one certainly looks like less of an uphill climb than 1996, and obviously it’s a puny rise in the road compared to the 2008 Olympic bid.

They would never say it, but backers have to feel that if Toronto can’t pull off a win for the 2015 Pan Ams, we may as well pack our bid bags forever.

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ONE HUMP OR TWO

The Canadian Olympic Committee is giving out fun, little cards with pictures to show folks in China who don’t speak English. Most are obvious things like a picture of money or a doctor and such. But one section shows an international red slash symbol to show, apparently, to people in a restaurant. There are pictures of things like peanuts and shellfish, but the weird item, as noted by fellow journo Josh Brown of the KW Record, was a picture of a camel. I don’t even want to know what restaurants in town would need to know about camel allergies.

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IMAGE ISSUE

The China Daily, the official English language paper of the Chinese government, didn’t exactly play up the murder of an American tourist in their Sunday edition. The paper had only a short item on the front page that told readers to look for the story on page five. There were only eight or nine paragraphs on page five, without any picture from the scene.

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WEB WOES

It’s one thing for the Chinese to ban reporters here from checking out Falun Gong web sites. But it’s still impossible for us to view the Star’s blogs, even the Olympic ones, without going through a virtual private network and bypassing the government censorship. Okay, okay, I’ll stop with the Hu Jintao jokes.