Olympics International Olympics

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Throughout my blogging career, I've been enamored ... no, in awe ... of Carl Lewis' "Break It Up" video. To me, there is nothing funnier that when someone tries to be serious and go outside his/her boundaries and completely make an ass of themselves. Please, go here to see the real version of the video.

Above is why YouTube is so great. Someone took the already hilarious video and mixed in Ice Cube's opening verse on NWA's "Straight Outta Compton".

This video has been in my cap for quite a while ... but far be it from me to not share.

With the opening ceremonies to this summer's Olympics just about 40 days away, Chinese officials have declared their National Stadium complete and fully operational. The impressive structure which holds 91,000 fans will play host to both the opening and closing ceremonies as well as track and field events.

The National Stadium is nicknamed the "Bird's Nest" for its resemblance to the twigs a bird piles together to form their nests. Ground was broken on the structure in December of 2003. There was a competition to select the design of the structure and the design you see today was done by Swiss firm Herzog and de Meuron and Chinese architect Li Xinggang.

In 2001, China was awarded the 2008 Olympics partly because they promised to give the media free reign to cover the Olympics. But now that the games are drawing closer China is kind of not cool with the whole censorship free thing.

Like most sports, you never know what the big story is going to be in the Olympics. Whether it be a surprise upset no one was expecting, or something beyond our worst nightmares, the coverage is dictated by the stories. While NBC can probably afford to have a full crew at every venue, I'm not so sure the rest of the world can. But even NBC will most likely want to do some shifting as the stories unfold. China, however, is making that pretty hard.

TV executives appear skeptical they will be able to deliver the kind of coverage they have in past games. Some say Chinese officials are requiring that forms be filled out specifying where satellite trucks will be each day of the games. The IOC says about 2,000 TV trucks usually go in and out of Olympic venues every day during the games.

These kind of restrictions could make it very difficult for TV crews to move quickly around the sprawling city to cover breaking news. Broadcasters also have been denied permits to record aerial views of Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City.

As much as it is a story, Tibet is not a story once the Olympics start. At least not pertaining to the events. Even if I don't like it, I can understand that Olympic coverage should be about the Olympics once it starts. So I can go along with Tibet being off limits. But any live coverage from Tiananmen Square or the the Forbidden City might be nixed. Those are two of the most iconic places in China. And if China, as a country, has a mood to capture, that is where you want to be. But the possibility of protests has the Chinese worried.

Several TV executives were upset there might be no live coverage from Tiananmen Square. This is a change from two months ago when IOC officials in Beijing said China had agreed to allow live coverage. Broadcasters also have been told there's unlikely to be live coverage from the Forbidden City. Chinese police fear both might be venues for activists' protests, which would be a public relations disaster if demonstrations - and police crackdowns - are beamed around the world.

But if it is something that effects the Olympics, something within the city, then I think it needs to be covered. While I don't think anyone believes the problems as they exist now are not fixable, the time before the Olympics start is shrinking fast. The networks need to make plans according to what they will be allowed to do and where they can go. And China seems to be trending farther away from what they promised as the games get closer. If that was the plan all along, it was very clever. But it will probably also cost them much more than whatever they try to hide.

(ht:Deadspin)

WANTED: One black-belt level computer geek to help decipher McDonald's Olympic tie-in promotion. Knowledge of mythology, numerology, and Esperanto essential. Single-minded obsessive streak helpful but not necessary. Must be willing to not relocate until start of Olympic Games in September. Send resume/c.v./documentation of non-existent social entanglements c/o this author.

I'd love to tell you I'm kidding, but I'm not. After several attempts to understand The Lost Ring, the aforementioned McD's promotional video game, I feel like somebody's been beating me on the head with a small pillow for the better part of an afternoon.

The Lost Ring is an "alternate reality game," which means it's an impossibly complicated contest designed for people who actually wish they were stranded on the island from "Lost," running from the Others and the Dharma Initiative. Except this time, instead of plane crash survivors, the characters are (so far as I can tell) ancient Olympic athletes who found themselves blinked into the middle of cornfields dressed in modern athletic gear, with cryptic tattoos on their forearms.

Of course the tattoos are in Esperanto. What were you expecting? And, since mysterious numbers are so important on "Lost," they're a big part of The Lost Ring, too. But this is more than just a "Lost" ripoff, right?

One of the more interesting dynamics (or exhausting rituals, depending on your perspective) surrounding this summer's Olympics in China is the near-constant songs of protest surrounding China's human-rights policies. Thrust onto the prominence of the Olympics' international stage, China suddenly faced criticism over its policies in Tibet, its approach to Darfur, and its sometimes-tyrannical approach to internal critics.

Then, you know, a devastating freaking earthquake happened, and as many as 50,000 of China's citizens were killed. Thousands more are injured. Even more are displaced. As the Wall Street Journal notes today, it's pretty tough to imagine criticizing China now:

"The tone of advocacy has to change because of the earthquake," says Jill Savitt, director of Dream for Darfur campaign, which has been protesting China's support of the Sudanese government. "It would really be unwise and unstrategic to continue to pound on China and not to realize that there have been hundreds of thousands of people who have been killed and wounded. It would be foolhardy."

There's nothing quite as annoying as a reformed smoker. They always walk up to you while you're having that one cigarette you set aside in the day for me time. Telling you how to fix your life by quitting. I'm sure it's true, but there's a time and a place for that kind of talk. And this isn't it.

Oddly enough, the International Olympic Committee might be having these same exact feelings following reformed steroid peddler, Victor Conte's latest interview.

"The Olympics are a fraud. It's all about money," Conte told BBC Sport. "Those who control the money, control the anti-doping policies. They are still inept to this day."

Yup, this is the same guy that served jail time for conspiracy to distribute and money laundering. And to be honest, he sounds a lot like Jose Canseco if you watch the video portion of the interview. I'm not knocking the guy. If he's out to clean up drug testing in sports, I'm all for it.

He did meet with former Anti-doping Agency head,....wait for it....Dick Pound. And gave pointers on how his operation worked. And he isn't afraid to call out Olympic officials in general.

"I have been told by Olympic officials that there have been positive drug tests that have been covered up," he revealed. "They (the officials) have direct knowledge of this and at some point this information will come out

I hope, unlike Jose Canseco, he doesn't start dropping names (oops!). It's enough that he inform officials about how to get around their testing practices. Even if he is exaggerating just a little, Conte doesn't paint a pretty picture of the competence of drug testing in Olympic and professional sports. And given recent events in baseball, it's not hard to believe. It will be interesting to see a response from the IOC or any professional sports. Or if any respond at all. I would like to know the sports I follow are clean. Even if that meant a reduction in performance. And if you see me off smoking a cigarette by myself, how's bout you give me a few minutes peace.

In an interesting logistic choice, the torch relay for the 2008 Beijing Games will head through controversial Tibet not once, but twice, during its trip to the opening ceremonies in August. China, currently engaged in a constant struggle with the Dalai Lama and his non-violence, has OK-ed the torch to pass through Tibet on its around the world journey, and likely create a lightning rod for protest as it traverses the Himalayan countryside. A second torch will be lit from the flame and set to climb Mount Everest in order to ... well ... just because we suppose. Way to use Tibet for PR when it suits you, China.

(HT: The Guardian)

This is likely a last-ditch solution, but we think it may have to come to that for the nice industrialists in Beijing. MSNBC is reporting that the city's air pollution is causing a number of athletes, especially marathon runners, to withdraw from events. With the games 5 months away, months not years, we're scratching our heads as to how the People's Republic plan on scrubbing away their smog. However, they have some big plans that only centralized government could pull off:

The measures include requiring Beijing and Tianjin cities and Hebei province to temporarily suspend emissions from some of their most heavily polluting plants, which include cement, steel and coke [sic] factories.

The provinces of Shanxi and Shandong, along with the huge Inner Mongolia region, will also be required to restrict their coal-fired emissions, Zhang said.

Zhang said he expects that "by June, we will complete all tasks necessary" to ensure the city will have the required clear air.

We've wasted more of our lives playing Sim City than we'd like to admit, but we do know that pollution is one bad mother. For Beijing, we'd build one of those super sweet fusion plants and hope for the best.

We've had our fair share of complaints with the IOC over our brief history at Das FanHaus, but this is quite possibly the most illogical argument we've ever seen. Women's ski jumping is being blocked from joining the 2010 games in Vancouver. The sport fits every one of the IOC's criteria for qualification, with competition on 3 continents, world and junior championships, and more athletes than other accepted sports. In addition, the sport is not a new event, but the addition of women's events to an existing competition. The IOC is simply bowing to the International Ski Federation (FIS), whose president, Gian-Franco Kasper, believes that ski jumping is too dangerous for women "from a medical point of view."

The entire situation reeks of good old-fashioned discrimination. Until someone points out some evidence to the contrary, we would like to direct everyone's attention to the official petition over at Womens Ski Jumping 2010. Head over there to learn more about the cause, including this educational video.

The riveting arguments come at the :05 mark from Mr. Kasper and IOC member Dick Pound (sic).

While its not the first time we've made blatant 1984 references to England or their Olympic games, but reports out of London yesterday point out that we aren't that far off the mark. The BBC has relayed estimates that the host city will have upwards of 500,000 security cameras scoping out the proceedings. Plans also include the division of the city into three separate security zones, enhanced biometric fingerprinting, automatic license plate detection, and a ticket tracking system that takes GPS to an entirely new level. Metropolitan Police claim that tickets will be able to track visitors from the venues to their homes. We couldn't dream up these kinds of measures if we tried, but it all paints a very stark image of modern sports security.

While we agree that the the addition of cameras is much better than having a bobby stationed every meter, such specific measures always make us raise the usual rhetorical red flag: What happens to all of the added security once the games are over?