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BEIJING – Shawn Johnson had spent a week smiling her way through the gymnastics hall. No close defeat, no age controversy, no puzzled judges score could stop her. Where human nature said her face should relay some of her internal emotions – disappointment, frustration – she just kept smiling. Tuesday she beamed after beam. On her fourth and final chance, Johnson won her gold medal with a nearly flawless routine on balance beam, outpacing teammate Nastia Liukin and China’s Cheng Fei. At the end she unleashed a smile as big as Beijing itself, a glorious conclusion to a competition that...

BEIJING (AP)—Yelena Isinbayeva got the Olympic gold and a world record; American Jenn Stuczynski got the silver and a lesson in humility. And we now have a new rivalry that should make woman’s pole vaulting fun to watch for many more years to come. Big poles and big mouths don’t go together. Stuczynski knows that now. Pole vaulting isn’t basketball or boxing. It’s far too graceful of a sport for the kind of trash-talk she doled out before the Beijing Games. “I hope we do some damage,” she had said, “and, you know, kick some Russian butt.” Big mistake.

Not that there was any doubt that McCain walked away the winner from Rick Warren's forum, but when David Shuster cracks that Obama was lucky not too many people were watching . . . Subbing for Chris Matthews on this evening's Hardball, Shuster kibitzed Saddleback with Dem Steve McMahon and Republican Todd Harris. Shuster made his surprising remark at segment end. DAVID SHUSTER: I think it also revealed that John McCain's going to be a much better debater than a lot of people think. And maybe also in some sense, Barack Obama is lucky in a way that Saturday night...

A photo showing four members of Argentina’s Olympic women’s football team making “slit-eyed” gestures has emerged on the internet, just days after two Spanish sports teams were criticised for pulling similar poses. The image shows players Maria Potassa, Eva Gonzalez, Fabiana Vallejos and Andrea Ojeda smiling broadly as they pull back the skin on the side of their eyes, in a crude impersonation of Chinese people. There is no suggestion that the four footballers intended to cause offence. The photo was published - without provoking controversy - in the Argentine sports newspaper Ole on Aug 5, to accompany a preview...

NBC Questions Kobe Bryant’s Pride of Being on Team USA 2008-08-17 -By Warner Todd Huston In a recent interview with USA Olympics basketball team member Kobe Bryant, NBC Sports reporter Chris Collinsworth seemed to question Kobe’s patriotism when the player said that he was proud to wear the team USA uniform. Wondering if it was “cool” to be proud of being on Team USA, Collinsworth seemed to surprise even Bryant with the temerity of the question. Why Collinsworth wouldn’t think it would be “cool” to be proud to be on the American Olympic basketball team is anyone’s guess. In a...

BEIJING, China (August 16, 2008) - The U.S. Shooting Team added to its medal count at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing today when 19-year-old Pfc. Vincent Hancock (Eatonton, Ga.) captured the gold medal in Men's Skeet. Hancock of the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit, a world champion and world record holder in Men's Skeet was in first place going into the final after hitting 121 out of a possible 125 targets in the qualification round, which is a new Olympic record. Hancock shot 24 targets in the final to finish tied with Norway's Tore Brovold, who shot a perfect 25,...

BEIJING, China (CNN) -- Four members of a Christian group from the United States are refusing to leave an airport in China after authorities confiscated their 300 Bibles, the group's director said Monday. The four members of Vision Beyond Borders -- based in Sheridan, Wyoming -- arrived in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming on Sunday. Customs officials discovered the Bibles during an X-ray scan of their luggage, said Pat Klein, director of the group, which supplies Bibles and other Christian material to people in China and other countries. Under Chinese law, it is illegal to bring printed religious material...

"We always knew they were under sixteen years old," a group of Chinese students told me yesterday. "We had no idea that there was an age limit for gymnastics in the Olympics. If there really is, then China did break the rules." We were discussing the real possibility that three members of China’s gold medal winning Olympic gymnastics team did not meet the minimum age requirement of sixteen years old to compete. Chinese students and other friends of mine have said that as late as last week, Chinese state run television had admitted that Yang Yilin, He Kexin, and Jian...

It is 8pm on a Tuesday evening, and I am busy annoying the Olympic associations of various Caribbean countries by asking them which national anthem will play if one of their athletes wins gold in Beijing. "You want to know what?" asks the receptionist at the Meat Market - a butcher that happens to share the same phone line as the Virgin Islands Olympic Committee. "I just want to know if your athletes would listen to the US's anthem or that of the Virgin Islands." "I don't know, son," she says. "All I know is we ain't gonna win no...

Chinese coaches tried to hide the ages of the girls with “enough makeup to shame a drag queen,” but no amount of lipstick and eyeliner can hide the fact that the American gymnasts have curves and breasts and the Chinese ones don’t. On average, the girls on the Chinese team are 3.5 inches shorter and 30 pounds lighter than their American counterparts....

Chinese customs officials confiscated more than 300 Bibles on Sunday from four American Christians who arrived in a southwestern city with plans to distribute them, the group's leader said. --snip-- "I heard that there's freedom of religion in China, so why is there a problem for us to bring Bibles?" Klein said. "We had over 300 copies and customs took all of them from us."

Pity poor Tan Zongliang, the latest victim of China Central Television’s relentless demand for perfection. Before its interrogators got to him, Tan was feeling fairly pleased with himself. After failing at three previous Olympics, he had just won his first medal, a bronze in the men’s 50m pistol competition. He had forgotten, though, that every time a competitor secures anything less than gold for the Motherland, a CCTV journalist is dispatched to find out what went wrong – and if a self-flagellating apology is elicited in the process, then so much the better.

Michael Phelps News *****Spoiler alert****

So affecting is his sincerity that we got three separate requests for this last night within minutes of it airing, one of them from MKH. As for Collinsworth’s question, I don’t know how to take it, frankly. From the transcript it reads like he’s making a neutral point about how American culture views patriotism, but watch his expression as he asks it. Clearly he’s not trying to get him to say, “Yeah, you’re right, it’s stupid to be proud of your country� in the middle of their Olympics coverage, but … weirdness. Good work by NBC, though, in dousing a...

The Kung Fu pupils in the opening ceremony of the Olympics have spent the last year cooped up in a military camp outside Beijing. Conditions have been bad. "They weren't even given enough food," says their trainer. This news adds to the criticism of the Beijing Organizing Committee. Viewers from around the globe marvelled at the Opening Ceremony last Friday. One of the most spectacular features was the martial arts display by 2008 pupils from the famous Shaolin Centre in Henan province. With coordinated movements, they showed the Tai Chi variant of Kung Fu; a popular way to relax for...

BEIJING – The ancient Drum Tower, or Gulou, rises majestically from a gray sea of crumbling brick homes and meandering alleys in central Beijing. It was built in the 13th century and sits on the sacred north-south axis of the city, or dragon line. Giant drums were once sounded from the 153-foot-tall red and green tower so residents could tell time. Todd Bachman and his tour group probably learned this from their English-speaking guide Saturday afternoon shortly before a Chinese man fatally stabbedhim. Bachman's wife, Barbara, also was stabbed when, family members said, she went to her husband's aid. Barbara...

Wow! Amazing! http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/multimedia/photo_gallery/0808/oly.phelps.sequence/content.1.html

Broadcaster Avi Lewis on Canada's Olympic team? A great idea, and not as bizarre as it seems. Let me explain. The government announced last week it would cut a grant scheme whereby various alleged artists and intellectuals were given the tax dollars of non-artists and non-intellectuals so as to go on expensive overseas trips and pretend to be, well, artists and intellectuals. That so many of the recipients of this largesse were left wing, anti-American and so on was a pure coincidence. Just as is the fact that so many magazines, authors and performers who receive other tax-dollar funding are...

Food Cited In Illnesses That Hit Track Team By GINA KOLATA and JASON STALLMAN BEIJING — Several members of the United States track team became ill at the team’s pre-Olympic training center in Dalian, about 300 miles east of Beijing, and food poisoning was the likely cause, according to a coach for three Olympians. “When we were in Dalian, a lot of guys got sick — five or six every day,” said John Cook, who coaches the runners Shalane Flanagan, Shannon Rowbury and Erin Donohue. United States Olympic officials, who had acknowledged concerns about food issues in China leading up...

Jang Miran of South Korea sets a world record of 186kg in the women's +75kg Group A clean & jerk weightlifting competition at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games August 16, 2008. REUTERS/Nir Elias (CHINA) Jang Miran, of South Korea, lifts 140 kilograms in the snatch, to set a new world record in the women's over 75 kg of the weightlifting competition at the Beijing 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Saturday, Aug. 16, 2008. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton) Jang Miran of South Korea listens to her national anthem after winning the gold medal in the women's +75kg weightlifting competition at the Beijing...

Some Olympians Dissatisfied With Religious Center By Ariana Eunjung Cha Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, August 14, 2008; A13 BEIJING, Aug. 13 -- The Olympic Village's religious center has become the target of a quiet protest by athletes, coaches and other delegates who say its staffing and services fall woefully short of the promises made by Chinese organizers. Previous Olympic hosts welcomed foreign chaplains, but China has banned them from living with the athletes. It has instead pledged that it will provide equivalent services from its pool of state-employed pastors, imams and other clerics. Josh McAdams, 28, an American athlete...

Olympic artists angry The Kung Fu pupils in the opening ceremony of the Olympics have spent the last year cooped up in a military camp outside Beijing. Conditions have been bad. "They weren't even given enough food," says their trainer. This news adds to the criticism of the Beijing Organizing Committee. Viewers from around the globe marvelled at the Opening Ceremony last Friday. One of the most spectacular features was the martial arts display by 2008 pupils from the famous Shaolin Centre in Henan province. With coordinated movements, they showed the Tai Chi variant of Kung Fu; a popular way...

Last week, the two erstwhile communist superpowers were in the spotlight. Starting on Aug. 8, China staged the Olympics -- an event on the schedule for years. Also on Aug. 8, Russia invaded the independent republic of Georgia -- which apparently caught our government flatfooted. George W. Bush remained in Beijing watching the Olympians, while Vladimir Putin, making no secret of who is in charge, went to the Russian borderland with Georgia to supervise. There are echoes of history in all this. Echoes that remind us in one way or the other of Berlin. China's Olympic extravaganza -- and its...

The Kung Fu pupils in the opening ceremony of the Olympics have spent the last year cooped up in a military camp outside Beijing. Conditions have been bad. "They weren't even given enough food," says their trainer. This news adds to the criticism of the Beijing Organizing Committee. Viewers from around the globe marvelled at the Opening Ceremony last Friday. One of the most spectacular features was the martial arts display by 2008 pupils from the famous Shaolin Centre in Henan province. With coordinated movements, they showed the Tai Chi variant of Kung Fu; a popular way to relax for...

Rain and lightning bring delays to Games Agencies Posted online: Thursday, August 14, 2008 at 1609 hrs IST Beijing, August 14: Heavy rain and lightning badly disrupted Olympic Games action on Thursday with rowing and canoe events put back to Friday and the tennis quarter-finals seriously delayed. The women's semi-finals in the kayak and the double canoe final were put back to Friday after violent storms battered the venue at Shunyi, just to the north of Beijing. Only semi-finals of canoe doubles were completed before weather worsened and schedule was halted for security reasons. The semi-finals of rowing, due to...

We should not be surprised to hear that three of China’s women gymnasts are not actually old enough to be participating in the 2008 Olympics. After all, the Chinese are good at cheating and they will tell you so unabashedly. Some months ago, I wrote an article entitled Cheating in China — It's an Epidemic in which I explained how cheating is viewed as a way to survive in China. I have had dozens of Chinese students and adults alike tell me that they have cheated often and that they will cheat again if it means that they could 'get...

One week after Barbara Bachman's husband was killed in a random knife attack in China that also hospitalized her with life-threatening injuries, she is back in her home state of Minnesota to continue her recovery. Bachman arrived at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester late Friday morning, where she is listed in fair condition and hospital officials said she was alert, talking and had good memory function. Bachman was stabbed in the abdomen at a popular Beijing tourist attraction last Saturday. Her husband, Todd Bachman, died at the scene. The assailant, Tang Yongming was identified by police as a distraught unemployed...

"Did you notice that Michael Phelps wears earphones and is listening music just before his every Olympic start, at Beijing's Olympiad Water Cube pool deck, be it finals or semifinals? I first noticed that before his first gold swim on August 10: Phelps removed earphones 2 minutes before the start, and he was the only swimmer who worn earphones at the pool deck. Intriguing scientific evidence testifies: Listening to music improves blood oxygen capacity and is a performance enhancement." "So what? Can one call listening to music shortly before entering the swimming pool for competition a performance enhancement? Yes, say...

BEIJING (Reuters) - American Rebecca Soni broke the world record to win the women's 200 meters breaststroke final on Friday to collect her first gold medal of the Beijing Olympics. Soni surged to victory in two minutes 20.22 seconds, wiping 0.32 off the previous world record set by Australia's Leisel Jones at the 2006 Commonwealth Games. Jones, who won the 100 earlier in the week, faded on the last lap to finish second in 2:22.05 while Norway's Sara Nordenstam was third in 2:23.02. Soni became just the second American female swimmer to win gold in Beijing after Natalie Coughlin won...

Phelps ties Spitz's with seventh gold By Steven Nelson Posted Friday, August 15, 2008 6:38 PM ET BEIJING -- Move over Mark Spitz. Michael Phelps won his seventh gold medal of the Beijing Olympics on Saturday, edging Milorad Cavic by .01 of second in the 100m butterfly. Spitz won his seven gold medals at the 1972 Munich Games. Phelps will try to beat the record in the 4x100m medley relay Sunday. "I've always marveled at the fact that in the last four years (since Phelps won six golds in Athens), he has had to live with a lot more expectations...

I have an 8-year-old daughter. I know what 8-year-old hands and feet and hips and teeth look like. They look a lot like the hands and feet and hips and teeth of the purported "teenagers" on the gold medal-winning Chinese girls' gymnastics team. The two pounds of frosty blue eye shadow and Bubblicious pink blush that the ChiComs piled on the cherubic faces of their gymnasts backfired. Rather than masking their youth, the pedo-friendly makeup made them look even younger, like 5-year-olds dressed up for a Beijing Halloween Gone Wild. One of the Chinese team members has an unexplained missing...

Fake fireworks, a fake singer and now fake children at the Olympics opening ceremony. Organisers of the Beijing Games admitted today that the children dressed in various ethnic costumes from around China who carried out the Chinese flag at the August 8 opening ceremony were not actually from those ethnic groups.

The NBC family of networks has no problem showing viewers how to save the planet. But if it is a muggy, smoggy 85 degrees, as is the forecast for Beijing this week, consider looking elsewhere for eco-inspiration. WHTR, the NBC affiliate for Indianapolis reported from Beijing and described the NBC set used for the networks two highest rated news broadcasts, “NBC Nightly News” and “Today,” as air conditioned – even though it is outdoors. “The set is outside, but air conditioning vents make the weather bearable,” Anne Marie Tiernon wrote for WHTR Eyewitness News on August 14.

BEIJING, Aug. 15 -- In a hallway of the Beijing Workers Gymnasium on Friday night U.S. boxer Raynell Williams buried his head in a towel, leaned against a door and wondered just what it was he had done so wrong on an evening when he appeared to do everything right. A few feet away, his coach Dan Campbell, gnawed on a toothpick and glared. "I just called back to the people in the tape room and everybody said it was (expletive)," Campbell said after Williams lost a second round fight he looked to have decisively won against France's Khedafi Djelkhir....

The world was stunned by last weekend's suicide knife attack in Beijing, in which the father-in-law of an American coach was killed. But the I-Team has learned - that wasn't the only American death at the China games. A woman from Chicago died first. The first American died in China more than a week ago - five days before the games began. Twenty-five-year old Ann DeWaters of Chicago was killed in Beijing Monday, August 4 in an incident that went unannounced and is still unexplained by both U.S. and Chinese authorities and the American relief organization she was working for....

Soldiers operating the huge scroll that formed the centrepiece of last week's Olympic opening ceremony had to stay hidden under the structure for up to seven hours, wearing nappies because they were not allowed toilet breaks, state media reported on Friday. Nearly 900 soldiers were hidden underneath the scroll, many of them moving giant printing blocks with Chinese characters, the Beijing News reported. "The performers for Chinese character parts went into the models underground at 2 pm, and after getting in there they could not come out," the newspaper quoted choreographer Han Lixun as saying. "The underground area was so...

<p>The 33-year-old immediately announced his decision to retire from wrestling....</p> <p>Abrahamian, who won silver at Athens four years ago, had high hopes of winning the gold in the 84kg competition...but was beaten in the semi-final by the eventual winner Andrea Minguzzi of Italy.</p>

A second group of Spanish Olympic athletes has been photographed making “slit-eyed” gestures, threatening to overshadow the Beijing Games with a row over racial stereotyping. The latest photo to emerge shows Spanish women tennis players pulling the pose, apparently in anticipation of their Federation Cup match against China in April. Pictures of the Spanish men’s and women’s basketball teams making the gesture, a crude impersonation of Chinese people, were published in adverts in Spanish newspapers earlier this week. The photos, which were reprinted around the world, added to Spanish sport's poor reputation for racial sensitivity.

The summer games are underway in Beijing after no small amount of debate over whether the United States should participate due to China's human rights violations. That debate is over now, but controversy continues. Foreign journalists have gotten a first-hand taste of China's Internet restrictions, one American tourist was murdered and another injured by a Chinese madman who then killed himself, and three Americans protesting religious oppression have been detained and then ejected from the country. However, for some DUmmies, the real controversy is how doggone good the United States is at winning medals, as you will see in...

Holden Caulfield, call your office. I have discovered the promised land of phoniness. During Friday's opening ceremonies in Beijing, a 9-year-old girl named Lin Miaoke sang a ballad to a packed stadium and a billion TV viewers. But the voice coming out of our TV sets wasn't hers. It belonged to a 7-year-old girl named Yang Peiyi. The Communist Party decided Peiyi had the better voice, but Miaoke was better looking -- so they created a phony hybrid of the two. "The reason was for the national interest," said Chen Qigang, general music designer of the opening ceremonies. "The child...

The Communist regime has spent billions on lavish sports venues, the world's biggest airport terminal, and a huge security operation. All this while sweatshop conditions are widespread and millions are still homeless after May's deadly earthquake in the region. Of course, the official line is the country’s 1.3 billion people are delighted that the Games have arrived.  And the groundswell of pride and nationalist fervour in China is obvious. But privately there is anger from some that the leadership continues to declare that running a successful Games is its "number one priority". Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of...

A source in Beijing says that the murder in Beijing of American Todd Bachman and the wounding of his wife Barbara and their Chinese tour guide were committed by someone other than the individual identified in China’s state-run press. The three were attacked on August 9 while visiting the Drum Tower, a popular Beijing tourist site. The next day, Xinhua reported that they had been murdered by a 47-year-old factory worker named Tang Yongming who had recently been thrown out of work. Tang was said to have committed the murder out of hopelessness and rage at society, and then to...

Another gold another world record!

President George Bush (C), first lady Laura Bush (L) and their daughter Barbara (R) gesture as they watch the swimming events at the National Aquatics Center during the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, August 11, 2008. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates (L) shakes hands with U.S. President George W. Bush as first lady Laura (bottom L) and their daughter Barbara (bottom R) look on at the National Aquatics Center during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, August 11, 2008 Secret service agents assist U.S. President George W. Bush as he stumbles in the spectator stands at the National Aquatics Center before the swimming competition...

When I first heard the news that Mao’s workers’ paradise, China, was chosen to host these Summer 2008 Olympic Games, I had a slight laugh before grabbing the smelling salts. Could the IOC possibly have done more, in a single swoop, to render itself a laughingstock? Ever wonder why Western athletes aren't defecting to the Communist paradise?

"Abrahamian threw down his 84kg greco-roman bronze in disgust after his shot at gold was ended by a decision denounced by the Swedish coach as "politics". Abrahamian took the medal from around his neck during the medal ceremony, stepped from the podium and dropped it in the middle of the mat before storming off. The Swedish wrestler had to be restrained by team-mates earlier as a row erupted with judges over the decision in a semi-final bout with Andrea Minguzzi of Italy, who went on to the take gold. Abrhamian, who won silver at the Athens 2004 Games, shouted at...

First, it was the Milli Vanilla moment at the opening ceremonies, now this. I think they should forfeit the Gold and give it to the Americans. Cheaters.

BEIJING (AP) - Just nine months before the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese government's news agency, Xinhua, reported that gymnast He Kexin was 13, which would have made her ineligible to be on the team that won a gold medal this week. In its report Nov. 3, Xinhua identified He as one of "10 big new stars" who made a splash at China's Cities Games. It gave her age as 13 and reported that she beat Yang Yilin on the uneven bars at those games. In the final, "this little girl" pulled off a difficult release move on the bars known...

 Saudi Cleric Muhammad Al-Munajid Slams Beijing Olympics: Nothing Makes Satan Happier Than The 'Bikini' Olympics Sheikh Muhammad Al-Munajid is a well-known Saudi Islamic lecturer and author. He frequently appears on Saudi TV channels and is known for issuing controversial fatwas. He previously worked in Washington, D.C. at the Saudi Embassy Islamic Affairs Department but was stripped of his diplomatic credentials. [1] In an August 10, 2008 interview with Al-Majd TV, Al-Munajid was highly critical of the Beijing Olympics, which he called the "bikini Olympics," referring to them as "satanic." Al-Munajid is known for his criticism of other sporting events....