BOCOG Wants You to Know
Tuesday, 17th June 2008 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (0)
A favorite template of the BOCOG online photo gallery: Bureaucrat, surrounded by fascinated guys in uniform, pointing.
Call us party poopers, but we at China Sports Today don't get very excited about most of the news that comes out of BOCOG (Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad). There's just so much interesting actual sports news in China, that praise of Olympic venues and statistics about how huge these games are sort of fade into the background.
But there's actually some mildly interesting stuff there, so here's a roundup of the recent BOCOG chatter:
Banned: A couple of weeks ago, BOCOG published a list of legal guidelines for foreigners coming to the games. At least originally, it was only published in Chinese. But it was translated by plenty of media outlets right away. This sentence from Danwei sums it up well:
"So it's pretty clear: No hookers, pimps, dealers, terrorists, activists, revolutionaries, missionaries, demonstrators, pornographers, gun nuts, maniacs, sufferers of mental diseases, carriers of infectious diseases, poisonous snake collectors, beggars or drunkards."
Planned spontaneity:
Image: People.com's illustrated guide to the cheer.
Ever green: BOCOG says its efforts to improve environmental issues in Beijing have aims beyond the Olympics. Here's hoping.
Neighborhood watch: The catchphrase "People's Olympics, green Olympics, high-tech Olympics," was adopted early on by BOCOG to express three things the committee wants these games to be remembered for. "Safe Olympics" hasn't been officially added to that list, but the words have certainly been used a lot recently. There's this release about Beijingers' responsibility to keep their neighborhoods safe. Then there's this Xinhua story, which looks distinctively like a BOCOG press release, about the breaking news that a Communist Party Central Committee member cares about security at the games.
Operator: The Olympic Call Center will launch July 1 to answer questions in "many languages" about Olympic match schedules, venues, tickets and cultural activities.
Relay reroute: The torch relay route has changed. Instead of going through Tibet and Qinghai as scheduled, it is headed to Xinjiang Autonomous Region this week. BOCOG has released news about the Xinjiang leg, but has not mentioned the Tibet/Qinghai leg, nor addressed whether the torch will pass through the region at a later date.
UPDATE: The torch will make an abbreviated one-day stop in Lhasa Saturday June 21.
Image: BOCOG
Tags: BOCOG, environment, security, torch relay
Yi Has Big Night in Third Win Over Croatia B
Tuesday, 17th June 2008 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (0)
China's men's basketball team went 3-0 over its exhibition games with Croatia's B team, winning the third contest by a narrow margin of 80-76. Yi Jianlian scored 26 points, including a 17-point torrent over an eight-minute period in the second and third quarters.China also went 3-0 in exhibition games against the University of Memphis/Conference USA a few weeks ago. But three-win sweeps of a college team lacking its best players and a second-string national team are hardly a promise of great things in the Olympics in August. If Yao Ming is healthy, Yi has a strong performance and one or two other players step up with big nights, the team could pull off a surprise or two. But a trip to the bronze medal game is highly unlikely this year.
Yi improved with every game in this series—or, more accurately, he became more integrated into the team's offense. After scoring 8 points in the first contest, he got 18 the second. With 26 last night, he improved to about 17 points per game.
Related:
Yi gets double-double in Team China win
Wang and Yi back in action as China beats Croatia
Tags: basketball, Croatia, Olympics, Yi Jianlian
Yao Returning in July?
Tuesday, 17th June 2008 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (0)
The wires are blowing up with a rumor that Yao Ming will return to play with the Chinese national basketball team against Iran in the Stanovic Cup in Hangzhou July 17.This report from the Houston Chronicle, which probably has the best bead on the Houston Rockets center's status, is more skeptical.
Tags: basketball, Hangzhou, Stanovic Cup, Yao Ming