MONDAY 08/18

-Phelps was in the IBC for an interview (he had just won his eighth gold) but I didn’t get to see him. Instead, I watched his interview on the live feed. I thought he did a pretty good job and was quite articulate.

-Watched in shock and dismay as Liu Xiang DNF’d his heat for the 110m hurdles. Again, it was awesome to be watching the live, uncut feed because I could tell something was wrong long before Liu took the field. Backstage, Liu was hobbling around, halfheartedly doing stretches, then occasionally standing up and pacing in frustration and despair. The broadcasters’ banter confirmed there was something wrong. In Athens, Liu Xiang became the first Asian man to win any track & field event. He became an overnight celebrity in China and the 110m hurdles final was expected to be the most-watched television event in Chinese history. Today, he must have known that he couldn’t run, and any other athlete might just not have shown up, but he had to show that he was at least trying for all of his millions upon millions of fans. I watched as he false-started, the tore the number off his leg and hobbled off the field. I’m told the stadium went dead quiet, and within a few minutes it had become nearly empty—with no Liu Xiang, people just left. The feed I was watching followed Liu as he limped down a side hallway, collapsed against a wall, and just sat there with a blank, disbelieving expression on his face. And there he sat, waiting for the fallout and no doubt feeling the disappointment of his country, his sponsors, his hordes of adoring fans, and himself. He seems like a very sensitive person—when he couldn’t run in New York earlier this year, he’d wanted to get on the microphone and apologize to all the Chinese fans who had come to see him—so this must have been devastating. What surprised me most is how alone he was; the entire time I was watching, nobody was there to help him. No doctors, no coaches, nobody to assist him or comfort him. I wondered what China’s reaction would be—anger? disappointment? encouragement?

-After a frenzied morning, things began to settle down in the afternoon. Week two had begun, and with it came a lot of the more off-beat or untraditional sports like synchronized swimming and BMX, hammer throw and modern pentathlon, water polo and show jumping.