Olympics – Britain’s First medals

Nicole Cooke won the Women's road race in awful conditions

The women have kicked off the Olympics well with Nicole Cooke winning gold in the cycling road race yesterday and Rebecca Adlington and Jo Jackson taking Gold and Bronze respectively in the swimming – 400m freestyle at the Water Cube. This is Britain’s first women’s swimming gold since the days of Anita Lonsborough in the 60s.
I’m also enjoying the fact that the host nation are currently leading the medal table with 9 golds in Diving, Weightlifting, Judo and Shooting. They will soon be overtaken but it’s good that they’ve had a fair start.




Adlington and Jackson celebrate in the pool



Adlington shows off her Gold Medal

Olympic Openers

U.S. Swimmer Michael Phelps demolished his own world record to take a first gold on Sunday in the quest for an unprecedented eight wins. Listening to hip-hop on headphones as he walked to the block, Phelps went on to win the 400 metres individual medley at China's futuristic and full-to-capacity Water Cube. His time was 1.41 seconds quicker than a previous best he set just six weeks ago.

After the first race of a thrilling morning at the pool, Phelps raised his arms to celebrate triumph in what he calls his weakest event. He was watched by President George Bush and cheered by flag-waving compatriots and thousands of Chinese. Even if the lanky 23-year-old with the perfect swimming physique wins only half his eight race competitions, he will hold more Olympic gold medals than any other athlete. But he looks in great shape to match his own six golds at Athens 2004 then maybe go one further than Mark Spitz's 1972 record of seven wins at one Games.

After Phelps thrilled the Water Cube, Australia's Stephanie Rice followed suit to smash the world record and win the same 400m individual medley event for women.

Park Tae-hwan won the men's 400m freestyle to give South Korea a second gold while Zhang Lin became the first Chinese man to win an Olympic swimming medal when he grabbed the silver.
With 14 golds being awarded on Sunday, the hosts were well-placed to add to their first-day tally of two, with favourites in shooting, fencing, judo and diving.



Chinese diving queen Guo Jingjing, the supermodel and local airhead, steps up to the springboard to defend her 3-metre synchronized title. China dominates world diving and has a reasonable chance of winning all eight golds in the discipline. Chinese fans are also focused on Sunday's basketball blockbuster between the hosts, led by 7ft 6in NBA player Yao Ming, against a star-studded United States still smarting from their bronze in Athens 2004. It could be the most-viewed sporting contest ever in China.

Women cyclists face a tough but shorter road race on the same route between Beijing's Forbidden City and the Great Wall that the men had on Saturday. A third of the men withdrew from their race, blaming suffocating heat, humidity and pollution. The agonies endured by the men's cyclists bode ill for other endurance athletes, such as marathon runners.

The Real World

I plan to do some blogs about the Olympics over the next fortnight but in the meantime the 'real world' carries on regardless of the attempt by sport to bring peoples together...

10th August - Russia bombed a military airport outside the Georgian capital early on Sunday and Tbilisi said Moscow was massing troops in a second breakaway region of Georgia as fighting raged for control of South Ossetia. There were signs of a second front opening in the conflict, with Georgia accusing Russia of sending troops by sea to the larger rebel region of Abkhazia on the Black Sea. A U.N. peacekeeping official also warned of an imminent military offensive by the Abkhaz who, like the South Ossetians, broke with Tbilisi in the early 1990s after a war.

Russia bombed Georgia's military airport 12 km (8 miles) from Tbilisi early on Sunday, the latest target in a Russian air assault on its small neighbour following a Georgian push to re-take the pro-Moscow enclave of South Ossetia. A Georgian ceasefire offer went unheeded by Moscow and separatists in the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali reported that Georgian forces, dug in on high ground outside the town, were continuing to fire on the town.

Russia poured troops into Georgia on Friday, dramatically upping the stakes in a long-running stand-off with the ex-Soviet republic over its pro-Western policies and its drive for NATO membership. The confrontation has sparked alarm in the West and led to angry exchanges at the U.N. reminiscent of the Cold War.

Meanwhile, in China itself, the Games' Day Two was spoiled by pre-dawn blasts and a shootout in Xinjiang, some 3,000 km (1,860 miles) west of Beijing. State media said "lawbreakers" tossed homemade explosives into local government buildings. Five attackers were shot dead by police, and two officers plus a security guard injured. Suspected Muslim militants killed 16 police in the same region a week ago. It was not known who was behind Sunday's attack.

Beijing says it has foiled past plots to sabotage the Olympics by separatists in Xinjiang. Critics accuse China of exaggerating the threat to justify repression of dissidents. Chinese authorities hope the Games will finally put the spotlight on sports after a build-up dominated by accusations of rights abuses and concerns over pollution despite Beijing's desire to showcase its modern face and economic might.

On the first day, though, a Chinese man stabbed to death the father-in-law of a U.S. men's volleyball coach at a tourist spot.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose...

Robbie Keane

There seem to me to be two types of figure that news media never agree upon - the number of people killed in a disaster and the amount paid for transferring football players. This week saw figures raning from £18 mi;llion to £20.3 million as the price of Robbie Keane's transfer to Liverpool. But what's a couple of million here or there?



However much he cost, Robbie Keane has completed his move to Anfield earlier this week, simultaneously calling curtains on his impressive six-year spell at Tottenham Hotspur. The Irish striker scored 107 goals in 257 games for Spurs and effectively established himself as the club's de facto skipper given Ledley King's consistent absence through injury. Now the 28-year-old has embarked upon a new journey with the Reds, and Torres believes a player with such a track record in the Premier League can only be a hugely positive addition to the squad. Keane will wear the number 7 shirt made famous by such stars as Keegan, Dalgleish and Fowler.



He has already made his debut in a friendly against Villarreal. The team from the land of Yellow Submarines played in grey against the Yellow Submarimes (Villarreal's nickname) so-called for their habit of bobbing up and down the Spanish league. Liverpool’s Spanish contingent were kept on the bench for the start of this pre-season friendly with former Villarreal keeper Pepe Reina returning to his ex-club just days after the birth of his second child. The match was part of the deal which took the Spanish keeper to Anfield. Prior to kick off Liverpool’s Spanish quartet of Reina, Alonso, Arbeloa and Torres showed off the Euro 2008 trophy and received a heroes welcome, along with Villarreal’s three Spanish internationals. Rafa Benitez handed Liverpool debuts to forwards Robbie Keane and David Ngog.

A Ten Day wonder

Unless you were one of the millions of Chinese affected by it, the Great Sichuan earthquake was another of those ten day wonders in the news. Here are some of the statistics at the end of June.

The 2008 Sichuan earthquake measured at 8.0 Ms[6] and 8.3 Mw[7] according to China Seismological Bureau (CSB), and 7.9 Mw according to USGS, occurred at 14:28:01.42 CST (06:28:01.42 UTC) on 12 May 2008 in Sichuan province of China. It was also known as the Wenchuan earthquake after the earthquake's epicenter in Wenchuan County, Sichuan province. The epicenter was 80 kilometres (50 mi) west-northwest of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, with a depth of 19 kilometres (12 mi).
The earthquake was felt as far away as Beijing (1,500 kilometres (932 mi) away) and Shanghai (1,700 kilometres (1,056 mi) away), where office buildings swayed with the tremor. The earthquake was also felt in nearby countries.

Official figures state that 69,185 were confirmed dead by late June, including 68,636 in Sichuan province, and 374,171 injured, with 18,467 listed as missing. The earthquake left about 4.8 million people homeless, though the number could be as high as 11 million. It is the deadliest and strongest earthquake to hit China since the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, which killed at least 240,000 people. Approximately 15 million people lived in the affected area.

On May 25, a major aftershock of 6.0 Mw hit northeast of the original earthquake's epicenter, in Qingchuan County, causing eight deaths, 1000 injuries, and destroyed thousands of buildings. On May 27, two more major aftershocks, a 5.2 Mw in Qingchuan County and a 5.7 Mw in Ningqiang in Shaanxi Province, led to the collapse of more than 420,000 homes and injured 63 people.



And for most of us in the Western World that’s all this disaster was – another set of statistics. In the Eighteenth Century the church would have initiated a Fast Day a few weeks after the disaster to remind people of the event and to allow for money to be collected for the victims. Perhaps we need to go back to something like that before the news media make us too inured to the hardships of others.

Spain win Euro 2008

I watched the Euro 2008 Final – the only match of the tournament I’ve watched though I glanced at one of the semi-finals. Fernando Torres (the Liverpool striker) scored first for Spain. That turned out to be the only goal. Bye, bye Germany,

Javan Rhino, Grey-faced Elephant Shrew, and a Long-eared Jerboa

Remarkable images of the world's rarest rhino species, the Javan rhino, have been caught on film. A mother and her calf could be seen grazing in Ujung Kulon National Park in Java, Indonesia. But when she spotted the hidden camera, she charged and sent it flying.

Meanwhile, a bizarre-looking mammal called the grey-faced elephant shrew has been discovered in Tanzania. It didn't charge the camera...



A desert 'Mickey Mouse' has also been caught on film. The first known footage of a long-eared jerboa in the wild was filmed in the Mongolian Gobi desert.