Eideard

November 18, 2009

In August, the Pittsburgh Penguins captain paraded the Stanley Cup through the streets of Halifax, just a few kilometres away from his home town of Cole Harbour, N.S.

Yesterday – November 18th – Sidney Crosby returned again to Halifax, this time to jog a 300-metre leg of the Olympic Torch Relay through the city’s downtown core.

For Crosby, it was a chance to take advantage of what he afterward called a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to share the Olympic spirit with his fellow Nova Scotians.

“I just got really lucky that we weren’t playing on this night and that we were heading somewhat in the direction of Halifax,” he said, in reference to Pittsburgh’s game in Ottawa tonight. “It’s something I felt fortunate to be able to do, and I didn’t want to pass the opportunity up…”

As an 18-year-old rookie in 2006, Crosby was considered too young by Canada officials to join the veteran-laden squad in Turin. Though he was in the midst of what would be a 102-point campaign, Crosby sat on the sidelines watching an offensively challenged Canadian team sputter to a seventh-place finish.

But Canada’s figurative torch has now been passed. In Vancouver, Crosby will be expected to provide both scoring and leadership in his first Olympic tournament. On top of that, he will be performing in front of Canadian fans demanding nothing less than a gold medal…

“It’s easy not to think that far out, to be honest,” he said. “This is something where you’re in the moment, and you’re just proud to experience it.

“We all realize as Canadians that there will be expectations, but I just really tried to enjoy this moment.”

Today, Sidney Crosby scored the winning goal – in overtime – to give Canada the Gold Medal in Olympic Hockey.

Not too shabby for a kid considered too young to be on the team, last time round, eh?

When the Olympics hosted by Beijing ended, a collector snapped up the 5,000 condoms left over from the 100,000 distributed free to athletes.

The collection has now been put up for a one-off auction, with a starting price of one yuan 15¢ each.

Each condom wrapper carries the motto of the Beijing Games – faster, higher, stronger – in English and Chinese.

The entire lot of 5,000 must be purchased by one buyer at the Exceptional Auction of China Sport Collection on 29 November…

Condoms have been handed out to Olympic athletes since Barcelona hosted the Games in 1992.

“Faster, higher, stronger” – include “bigger” and you have the makings of a successful infomercial.

Memorial lanterns on the Motoyasu River below the Atomic Dome
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Hiroshima and Nagasaki are launching a joint bid for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games.

Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s Tomihisa Taue are founding members of the Mayors for Peace 2020 Campaign, advocating for a global ban on nuclear arms, and they want to use that to springboard the world’s largest sporting event into their two cities.

The Japanese cities were the site of the 1945 atomic bombings that closed out the Second World War in the Pacific.

“The Olympics symbolize the abolition of nuclear arms and world peace, and we want to work to realize our plan to host the games,” Akiba said…

Although the two cities that the United States dropped nuclear bombs on share a tragic bond, they are quite a distance apart on a map. Hiroshima is in western Japan, about 650 kilometres from Tokyo. Nagasaki is on the island of Kyushu, roughly 320 kilometres from its fellow Olympic aspirant.

Hiroshima has held a large-scale event before, hosting the 1994 Asian Games. The competition brought 7,300 athletes from 42 countries and regions to western Japan.

Concern over the distance between the two cities is a red herring. One of the most successful World Cup Finals competitions was held in 2002 over a summer month in Japan and South Korea. They utilized facilities in a dozen-and-a-half cities as much as 1200 kilometres apart.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Did Chicago lose the chance to host the 2016 Olympics because of airport security issues?

Among the toughest questions posed to the Chicago bid team this week in Copenhagen was one that raised the issue of what kind of welcome foreigners would get from airport officials when they arrived in this country to attend the Games. Syed Shahid Ali, an I.O.C. member from Pakistan, in the question-and-answer session following Chicago’s official presentation, pointed out that entering the United States can be “a rather harrowing experience.”

That’s putting it politely.

Mr. Obama’s assurances may have not been enough to assuage critics like Mr. Ali. A few hours later the Games went to Rio de Janiero.

The exchange underscores what tourism officials here have been saying for years about the sometimes rigorous entry process for foreigners, which they see as a deterrent to tourism. Once the news came out that Chicago lost its Olympic bid, the U.S. Travel Association didn’t miss an opportunity to point that out, sending out a critical press release within hours.

“It’s clear the United States still has a lot of work to do to restore its place as a premier travel destination,” Roger Dow, U.S. Travel’s president, said in the statement released today. “When IOC members are commenting to our President that foreign visitors find traveling to the United States a ‘pretty harrowing experience,’ we need to take seriously the challenge of reforming our entry process to ensure there is a welcome mat to our friends around the world, even as we ensure a secure system.”

The blogosphere is filled daily with predictable examples of innocent people being harassed at some port of entry. Yet, GAO inspectors move imitation bombs through our airports whenever they feel like it.

The disaster called TSA runs the gamut from underpaid, underqualified and incompetent to poorly trained. They are there to satisfy a paranoia which has lasted among politicians much longer than the populace in general. Real security systems needn’t be run like the Toonerville Trolley.

Thanks, Uncle Dave

Some athletes borrow to fund their training, others depend on supportive family.

Logan Campbell, a New Zealand taekwondo champion has chosen a more unorthodox way of funding his bid for the 2012 London Olympics. He has opened up a brothel in Auckland, NZ’s largest city.

The 23-year-old, who finished in the top 16 in the taekwondo featherweight division at the Beijing Olympics, turned pimp after funding dried up and he feared he was in danger of missing the games in 2012.

The Beijing campaign cost around $NZ150,000, most of which came from his parents. His father, Max, an auctioneer, worked two jobs to get him to Beijing and Mr Campbell said he was sick of being a burden on his parents.

His new venture, he hopes, will earn him the $NZ300,000 he needs to be a serious medal contender in London after being beaten in Beijing by eventual bronze medallist Sung Yu-Chi of Taiwanto…

His parents were supportive, he said. “Mum was hesitant but she met the girls, a couple came over to her house and she was sweet as. She realised they were just normal people supporting their kids and stuff,” he said.

Licensed prostitution is legal in New Zealand…

It is not the first time the Olympics has been linked with the sex industry. In 1999 it was revealed that Sydney Olympic hopeful Nicole Tasker, a cyclist, was lap dancing at an Auckland strip club to raise money.

It’s OK if you’re pimping for McDonald’s or Nike, Citibank or Chevrolet.

Sex is the only problem. As it often seems to be in English-speaking nations.

New satellite data revealed that air pollution controls during the Beijing Olympic Games did have a positive impact, leading to sharp decline in certain pollutants, U.S. scientists said this week.

During the two months when air pollution restrictions were in place, levels of nitrogen dioxide in Beijing’s air plunged nearly 50 percent, Jacquelyn Witte, an atmospheric scientist NASA, told the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

Their analysis of data from NASA’s Aura and Terra satellites also showed levels of carbon monoxide in Beijing’s air fell about 20 percent during the period, Witte reported…

Such models are important for understanding the integrated Earth system and aiding policymakers considering ways to reduce pollution.

The reports will also provide guidance for longer-term solutions both for local officials in Beijing and cities with similar problems – and national administrations that commit to solving environmental degradation.

Traffic restrictions have been re-introduced in China’s capital Beijing, in an attempt to bring back the clear skies seen during the Olympics.

Each car must spend one day a week off the road, in a scheme based on registration numbers.

The new rules are expected to take some 800,000 cars off the road every day, according to the Beijing Municipal Committee of Communications. “It’s expected to reduce Beijing’s average road traffic flow by 6.5%,” a committee official told the state news agency Xinhua.

During periods of exceptionally heavy pollution, the restrictions will be increased so that half of Beijing’s 3.4 million cars will be taken off the roads.

They’ve seen what success the most drastic measures produced. Now, being politicians, the process will begin all over again – rather than investigating methods and means of furthering the original success.

Doesn’t the mayor of every big city in the world aspire to be president?

China isn’t the only country to fake a musical performance during an Olympic opening ceremony. It turns out that Australia knows a thing about miming music, too.

Eight years after Sydney hosted what was dubbed “the best Olympic Games ever,” officials with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra acknowledged their stirring performance at the 2000 opening ceremony was entirely prerecorded. And perhaps even more cringe-inducing for Sydneysiders: some of the music was recorded by the orchestra of Sydney’s rival city, Melbourne.

The revelation of the mimed performance — which both orchestras have defended as a necessary precaution against embarrassing flubs — followed an international uproar over China’s decision to pass off the voice of a 7-year-old singer as that of another girl at this year’s Olympic opening ceremony.

“It was all prerecorded and the MSO (Melbourne Symphony Orchestra) did record a minority of the music that was performed,” Christie told The Sydney Morning Herald. “It’s correct that we were basically miming to a pre-recording.”

Christie said the Sydney orchestra rarely used recordings in place of live performances, but did so during the 2003 Rugby World Cup in Sydney. Green said his orchestra had also used a backing track at the opening ceremony of the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.

Cripes. Can’t people sit back and enjoy an event without all this neurotic hyper-analysis?

Dongyuan, a mountainous small village in Rui’an County in the eastern Chinese Zhejiang Province, could never have expected the Beijing Olympics to bring so much toit.

In the wake of the 17-day Beijing Games, tourists flocked into Dongyuan to take a look at the age-old wooden movable-type printing technique since this village is the only one in China where people still apply the technology.

At the opening ceremony of the Beijing Games, spectators and TV viewers around the world were thrilled by a four-minute performance showcasing the movable-type printing technology, with a formation of some 900 men imitating the operation of a printer and creating the image of the Chinese character “he” — meaning harmony and peace — in different calligraphic styles.

The technique of making wooden movable-type and then using it to print has been passed down from generation to generation in this remote village, making this ancient craft a living example of China’s ancient civilization. It has been listed as one of China’s national intangible cultural heritages.

Every creative moment of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics was without peer. As a student of history, the segment representing the invention of movable type was especially stunning – and meaningful.

After two weeks of watching Olympic commercials on “the networks of NBC Universal,” as the employees of General Electric so grandly put it, it is time — at long last — to present imaginary medals in a post-Games advertising review.

Most of the thousands of spots that ran on networks like CNBC, NBC, MSNBC and USA expressed sentiments familiar to viewers of so-called big events on television. Patriotism is good. Striving for athletic achievement is noble. The world would be a better place if we all drank the same beverages, drove the same cars, shopped at the same stores and bought things with the same credit cards…

Here are some examples, in alphabetical order, of how advertisers fared:

COCA-COLA More hits than misses as the Coca-Cola Company celebrated “the Coke side of life” with commercials infused with eye-catching animation. In one, birds use soda straws to make a replica of the Beijing stadium known as the Bird’s Nest. In another, members of the Chinese and United States basketball teams pause amid their rivalry to refresh together. Gold.

EXXON MOBIL Employees of Exxon Mobil fight malaria. And they help schoolchildren learn math and science. When did the company sell its oil and gas holdings and become a philanthropic organization? Tin.
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