Olympics

Have you noticed those women who carry the medals on a tray to the podium for the guy to drape over the winning athletes' heads? Those women have been coached relentlessly at a school.

For example, you might think that a smile is a natural thing. Think again. They have been told that the perfect smile shows exactly eight top teeth and no bottoms. No more or less. They have worked to get that down.

It's just another example of what extent the Chinese have gone to to make these Olympics as close to perfect as possible.

These women, who are all to be roughly 5-foot-4 and between 18 and 25 years old, have to bow at a perfect 45-degree angle, and then to a 15-degree bend, holding the tray at exactly 90 degrees.

The precision of the Opening Ceremony was almost scary. It was sort of an artistic perfection in so many things they did.

``Once, we trained for 48 hours (in the Bird's Nest stadium),'' said Fan Weipeng, a 19-year old Taiji martial arts performer. ``It rained while we were training. We trained until three in the morning and then we all fell asleep in the audience seats. When we woke up, we continued. So we trained for two days and nights.''

Xue Mingrui, a martial arts official, said that during practice in the rain, 16 performers got hurt one day. One, he said, ``fell down with his head touching the ground and lost consciousness, but his fellow players helped him up and he sustained to the end. All of the players stayed at the rehearsal and did not go for medical treatment until they finished the training.''

 Also, I wrote yesterday about Michael Phelps, wondering if his chills and then his iffy relay mean that there might be something wrong with him. After watching him today, I'll just say this:

  Never mind.

Not to panic anybody, but I'm starting to wonder if something is wrong with Michael Phelps.

Sure, that 4X100 Monday morning (Sunday evening, Chicago time) was one of those special Olympics moments. Two teams smashing a world record, trash-talking, a U.S. victory by less than one-tenth of a second over France. 

He has two golds in two events, so maybe it's a little weird to think he might have a problem. 

But he said that before his race a day earlier, the 400-meter individual medley, he had inexplicably gotten the chills.

``I was not that comfortable in the first 200.''

No one cared.

On Monday, he finished third in a semifinal race for the 200-meter freestyle. It was good enough to qualify for the final, and the assumption was that he had just dialed it down, saving energy and accomplishing all he needed to.

No one cared.

But in the amazing race Monday, 11 of the 32 swimmers had better times than Phelps.

I mean, what was the reason for that?

He had only the third best time on his own team, with teammate Jason Lezak responsible for the gold.

And when it was over, Phelps spoke for a minute with NBC, but then never went to the post-race press conference that all three of his teammates went to.

Maybe it's nothing. But chills one day followed by an iffy performance the next. Is there something to worry about?

 

 

 

Deron Williams was sitting there, and I walked up. ``Hey man,'' he said, ``How you doing?'' He leaned over to shake hands, but I didn't want to interrupt. Some young man was next to Williams with his arm around his shoulder.

Technically, the man's arm wasn't touching Williams. It was around him, but with about two inches of air between it and Williams' shoulder.

Behind me, a young woman was taking a picture of them.

Williams looked up at me, closed his eyes halfway and shook his head. The man behind him left, and some woman came up, putting her face close to his while someone else took a picture.

``They never stop,'' Williams said, never looking at these people or seeming to notice that they were there.

He looked like a statue in a park. And these people? They were the pigeons.

This was the strangest press conference I've been to. The men's U.S. basketball team, the biggest rock stars of the Beijing Olympics, just finished talking in an auditorium packed with reporters and Olympic volunteers.

The way it works, they spread the players around to all different parts of the room. That  way, we reporters can get to them to ask questions one-on-one, or in small groups.

So I went to talk to Williams, the former Illini player now with Utah in the NBA. And people kept coming up to him for pictures. I don't who these people were, but theoretically, they weren't media.

They were doing the same thing to Carmelo Anthony, one after another, while he took questions. They did it to all the players they could get close to, and that meant most of them. Only Kobe Bryant and LeBron James spoke behind a table up on a stage.

``You should see when we were eating lunch,'' Williams said. ``They come up and stand behind us.''

They put their faces up to behind the players and smile. I have to say it was disconcerting the way these people never said a word to Williams, never asked him for a picture, never asked him to smile. Never thanked him. Nothing. There was zero interaction.

It was a non-relationship, relationship. And Williams was talking about them but they didn't seem to notice.

They just approached him as if he were a site on a vacation. Or maybe like one of those cardboard cutouts that make it look like you're standing next to something when you had your picture taken.

In this case, they really were standing next to something, behind him, around him.

``Yesterday,'' Williams said, ``I'm sitting like this.''

He put his hands into his team jacket pockets by his side. His fingers were in the pockets, but the bottoms of his hands were sticking out.

``Some guy comes up and tries to put a marker in my hand. He's just trying to stick it in there for an autograph.

``I'm like: `No.' ''

 

 

So I'm sitting on the plane now, waiting for takeoff, wondering if Major Daley is up front in those beds in first class. My knees - I'm just over 6-4 are jammed into the back of the seat in front of me in coach.
  (Note to bosses: There are two writers from other media outlets sitting in business).  
 

One week before the Beijing Olympics open in, the Chinese saw a total solar eclipse. It was caught on raw video. Check it out:

I am leaving soon for China. Be sure to check back here at my Olympics blog for the duration of the Games. I'll be Twittering and blogging -- as long as I have access to the Web.