Olympics: water and horses

As I have previously mentioned, one of the things I like about the Olympic Games is getting to watch sports that I never normally see - slalom canoeing anyone? This event was quite spectacular; the way those guys throw their hips around and ride those waves is amazing. I find it hard enough to keep the boat the right way up when I get hit by a tiny wave, let alone one of those man-made monsters.

The event had all the excitement and drama of glamorous competition: speed was not necessarily of the essence with time penalities and aquatic agility taken into account. There were world champions, unknowns - go Togo! - and a Brit, who powered and thrashed his way to a silver medal. Wow! David Florence is a new superhero. That was worth watching!

I love the swimming events and was thrilled to see 'our girls' Rebecca Adlington and Jo Jackson swim to a gold and bronze medal in the 400m freestyle. I'm also fascinated by their GB swimming caps which look like they are wearing targets on their head.

And Michael Phelps is still on track to achieve what he set out to accomplish. Five gold medals; five world records. I thought Ian Thorpe was astounding (and still do), but Phelps is incredible, though I would hesitate to use the term - heard on Kiwi commentary - 'a freak in the water'.

It seems Britain is good with boats and horses, remaining competitive in the rowing, sailing and equestrian events - two bronze medals for the equestrian team hauls Britain into the top 10 on the medals table at the time of writing.

Meanwhile, the poor New Zealanders struggle in their football games - being drawn against Brazil for the mens and USA for the womens. I would feel more for them if they didn't give their teams such ridiculous names. The All Blacks I can cope with, but the Oly Whites? Come on; how old are you? What's wrong with 'New Zealand' - it's nothing to be ashamed of, and there's no need to give the teams diminutive monikers involving black, white, silver, and ferns. The height of humiliation should have come when they tried to name their badminton team the black cocks. Just stop it, will you?

And apparently the 'oh-so-cute' kid who sang at the opening ceremony (singing children - don't get me started...) was lip-synching. Apparently the real kid who sang the song simply wasn't cute enough. So China puts on a false face to fool the world, and people are suprised by this? Did they learn nothing from Mao Tse-Tung?