MEDALS TABLE
Olympics
BEIJING
TODAY
The excitement of my Olympic experience has been subdued with sad news from home.
BEIJING — The woman stood below a silhouette that made Liu Xiang appear larger than life. Perhaps even larger than China, and that’s saying something around these parts. She managed a smile although her heart ached.
BEIJING — It began with those McDonald’s scratch-off cards, the ones where each time the United States won a medal in the Olympics you were guaranteed something on the menu.
When she posed naked for Playboy last year, American swimming champion Amanda Beard started an Olympics tradition that deserves full disclosure.
BEIJING — What the United States boxing program has lost in skill, it has replaced with a longtime political maneuver: These guys assign blame like nobody’s business.
Think of history’s great architects: Michelangelo. Le Corbusier. Frank Lloyd Wright. Mike Brady.
BEIJING — He is difficult to distinguish now as cars rush by and tourists herd between one side of the street and the other. They were eager to chase the prospect of a better life back then, too. People forget that part. Massacres tend to have that affect.
BEIJING — Cheering from the pool deck, Michael Phelps won his record eighth gold medal of the Beijing Games today to become the grandest of Olympic champions.
I don’t care much for mascots beyond the dancing tree at Stanford, which is just bizarre enough to hold my attention for more than a second.