Olympics are here - hope everyone is watching

WOW, last night was the first finals session (remember the finals are in the morning in Beijing, which is 12 hours ahead of us). From what I can see, finals start about 10am, Beijing time which is 10pm the night prior East Coast Time. As I was watching some of the prelim interviews after the actual swims, the American swimmers are still getting used to it it; if you watched any of the prelims yesterday (last night in Beijing) every one of the swimmers that was interviewed talked about “getting it done this morning” and “looking forward to tonight” so yes the athletes themselves are still getting accustomed to this new setting. I do remember when I was in Rio (2 years ago at the Fina World Youth Championships), the meet was set up as evening finals, and the country of Brazil had been running their meets in this set up for the last 8 years, so several of the countries in Beijing should have no problem with evening finals, but the USA athletes will have to make an adjustment, which it seems several of them have been doing. If you have not been to nbcolympics.com, it is a great web site to catch up on all of the video from prelims and everything not shown late at night.

From some of my contacts in Beijing with Team USA, here is some of what has been going on:

**Sightings included Bill Gates, Henry Kissinger, President Bush, and about five hundred secret service. Bush was flanked by brother Jeb, wife Laura, and daughter Barbara. I’m not sure if he has ever been to a swim meet but he looked to be enjoying himself: waving the flag, smiling huge.

**During the medal ceremonies, information for the crowd scrolls across the scoreboard: They list the award presenters, the athletes, they show the event results, tell when you to stand up for the national anthem, etc. and even crown instructions such as "SIT DOWN, PLEASE"

**The music in the swimming venue is so strange. It is primarily inspirational/elevator music sung in Chinese. They have five or six songs on rotation. And then, everyone now and then, Toby Keith’s “How Do You Like Me Know” comes blaring over the loudspeaker. Renegade country music-Dixie Chicks haters over here in China.

Garrett from Floswimming is in Beijing, and has been getting some nice interviews with the athletes either before the swimmers get into the water cube, or as they are departing the bus. As NBC paid almost $1 billion for the broadcast rights to the Olympic games, getting into the actual water cube and capturing content is very hard, and Garrett does a great job on the side streets getting video of what the swimmers are doing. Kudos to him for flying over there and giving us video of the good stuff.

As I continue to watch video and see pictures that are emailed to me, check out the smog . Here is a picture of what I believe is the athletes village and you can see how horrible the smog in Beijing looks to be. In Athens the pool was outdoors, but in Beijing, the pool is indoors which looks to be a good thing .

Continue to enjoy the great coverage of the swimming events. You can really see some great underwater coverage, and I am even detecting several of the athletes had some first night nervousness, which is to be expected at this level.