8 days till the Opening Ceremony. Is everyone excited?  

What are your Favourite Olympic sports??  

Quoted from Tasman

... What are your Favourite Olympic sports??  

swimming!

Reading the news - won't be doing much of that in China!!

Why? I haven't seen why there wont be, Aqua?!
Yes! I am excited about the Olympics and the Opening Ceremony should be spectacular! I will miss our lovely old Don Juan Antonio Samaranch who retired after the 2000 Olympics as president of the International Olympic Committee He was so gorgeous, like a cuddly little bear.
I don't have an absolute favourite Olympic Sport although.... all track and field and swimming are absolute tops, followed closely by Gymnastics (all of them) I am more into individual achievements than Olympic Team Sports except for the Aussie swim team and maybe the track team as well. I'm very fickle!

My favourite is the cycling especially the road racing and the time trials. I stayed up to watch every night of the Tour de France, I feel very sad its over.

OOOOOOps, me too LB, love the cycling, dammit I might as well say what I don't much enjoy watching.....
Martial arts, boxing, hockey and most other team sports. BMX is making it's debut this Olympics isn't it? Or is that something else, anyway I like watching it also.

Yip, BMX is making a debut this year. Obviously the big fav is swimming, followed by diving, hockey, volleyball and rowing.

synchronized swimming don't do much for me....lol

Good for putting you to sleep, LB. Anything in the pool I love, diving as well, but not the synchronised swimming. ***ZZZZzzzzzzzz***

I'm more for watching the football and the volleyball. Hopefully London I'll get to see my cousin play for Australia, she's in the Young Matilda's atm, and I think she's played a couple of games for the Matildas

Wow cool Matt :O

I like watching the gymnastics the best.

Love the Olympics, although I'm a little less enthused about Beijing considering the stench of politics that will cover these games like Beijing smog. If I had to nominate sports at the games I love, I'd go with swimming, cycling, track and field, hockey, rowing and football. However whenever there's an Aussie up for gold I'll be there to watch hell or high water!

I hope the TV companies are not so biased this time, in the past they have only televised events where there are aussies taking part..............some of us do like watching events with no aussies involved.

Quoted from LB

I hope the TV companies are not so biased this time, in the past they have only televised events where there are aussies taking part..............some of us do like watching events with no aussies involved.

I know!! They never showed the gymnastics because the Aussies sucked.. sooooooo

Its a big pity SBS does not have a larger share of the quota allowed...........

Well I agree...boxing shouldn't be classed as a sport  
My interests are in the Athletics, Gymnastics, Wt lifting, Diving and  Equestrian events.
My prediction is that China will blow away the completion in the  Table Tennis.

Quoted from LB

I hope the TV companies are not so biased this time, in the past they have only televised events where there are aussies taking part..............some of us do like watching events with no aussies involved.

Unfortunately I am sure that Seven will do as they have done since Barcelona, and as all commercial channels do througout recent Olympic history and across the world, and we will get a fairly biased broadcast. The way Olympic TV works during a games is the host broadcaster (in Sydney this was SOBO) runs live footage from about 30 channels, and then it is up to the licenced rights holders (Channel 7, BBC, NBC etc) to edit and adapt this footage as they see fit. Considering here in Australia the overall commercial imperative is for seeing Aussie gold medals, then expect to see lots of swimming, cycling and the rest will fill up whatever gaos there are when these aren't on. Another thing we will get is heaps of fluff pieces, with the added crap factor of being limited in what can be said and done by the Chinese media minders stopping anything remotely controversial.

Thank goodness SBS will have heaps of team sports...but whatever happened to digital rights and extra channels....

Quoted from LB

My favourite is the cycling especially the road racing and the time trials. I stayed up to watch every night of the Tour de France, I feel very sad its over.

^^^ Me too!! The Tour was just brilliant and I only missed a couple of the nights. SBS must be congratulated for another wonderful telecast. I feel a little bit lost without it.

Looking forward to more cycling at Beijing, though I see Cadel Evans has pulled out of some of his races due to the injury he got at the 'after party celebrations' of the Tour.

Quoted from LB

I hope the TV companies are not so biased this time, in the past they have only televised events where there are aussies taking part..............some of us do like watching events with no aussies involved.

Their is a requirement to appeal to a large audience and we are in AUSTRALIA.....

Quoted from aquamonkey

There is a requirement to appeal to a large audience and we are in AUSTRALIA.....

Maybe so, but we are a multicultural country... from all the lands of earth we come, I am, you are, we are Australian.

I'm looking forward to the Cycling, and so happy to see Cadel Evans injury is healing fast and will most likely be racing again!!!  

So they've axed softball :O

Does anyone know if any new sports have been addded in? or new events?

I think there was one...

Woops I was wrong:

Overall 9 new events will be held, which include 2 from the new cycling discipline of BMX. Women will compete in the 3000 m steeplechase for the first time. In addition, marathon swimming events for men and women, over the distance of 10 kilometres, will be added to the swimming discipline. Team events (men and women) in table tennis will replace the doubles events. In fencing, women's team foil and women's team sabre will replace men's team foil and women's team epee.[b][94][95]

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Olympics#Sports

Quoted from kiwi

So they've axed softball :O

Official Site of the 2008 Australian Olympic Team: Sports: Softball
Beijing could be the last time softball is held at the Games and Australia plan to improve on Athens silver.
http://www.olympics.com.au/LinkClick.aspx?link=237

On the news it said Brisbane wants to big for '24! Well, we're better than sydney

Perth is going for the 2018 Commonwealth Games  


...if we're still part of the Commonwealth by then  

Quoted from kiwi

On the news it said Brisbane wants to big for '24! Well, we're better than sydney

I do not think anything can top what Syd-en-ee did with the Olympics. Honestly! 2024 is a damned long way off. The way the World is going.... The new Games then will be like... Run from the murderous monster with the machete, Jump over 4 serial killers laying end to end. It costs so damned much to Host the Olympics and where it will be held needs so much infrastructure to cope with it. Anyway, the Olympics in Melbourne and Sydney were, IMHO, not a competition between capital cities but Australia's Olympics. I absolutely abhore one up manship between our beautiful State Capitals. They all have their own uniqueness to them. I voted 'NO' for Brisbane to put in a bid for them.

Imagine if both Perth and Brisbane had comm/games within such a short time period. Having said that Perth will need some serious infrastructure to cope with everything, but we do have a new 70,000 seat stadium due for completion in 2016 and a 15,000 indoor stadium for 2012.

Quoted from Tasman

Perth is going for the 2018 Commonwealth Games  


...if we're still part of the Commonwealth by then  

Been there, done that
I hope we are! (commonwealth)

I'll be in my thirties then so probably won't be here anyway, I'd rather Auckland bid But still.

Quoted from kiwi

Been there, done that
I hope we are! (commonwealth)

I'll be in my thirties then so probably won't be here anyway, I'd rather Auckland bid But still.

Auckland only had it a few years ago, but yeah definately the best place  

Perth had it back when it was the Empire Games evidently. Sometime last century  

I am trying my hardest to sit through this soccer game but it is such a boring sport, apart from the few seconds when someone gets a goal.

No, Auckland for the olympics

^^^ oh yeah definately bro!!  

The Opening ceremony has been great!! Well its still going. Finally saw NZ and Australia come out ....that was a long wait. Now the cauldron to be lighted ...hope its not too far away  

Wow I loved that opening hour. The syncronicity of the performers was beautiful to watch.

God the athletes walking in takes soooooooooooooooo long. They need to find some way of shortening it because it takes up 1/2 of the ceremony. Good to be there, boring to watch.

The lighting of the cauldron was good... better than Athens and that bloody matchstick lol.

Oh and the chinese love to show-off with how many fireworks they have!

I recorded it so I can watch it at my leasure today!

I didn't like it as much as some I've seen.  The drummers at the start were awesome, but I fell asleep after that

Stephanie Rice won gold and swam a new WR.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/08/10/2330270.htm?site=olympics/2008

Quoted from kiwi

So they've axed softball :O

and baseball too, so I heard...