Five-ring circus

tauringhuang.

Aug 14th 2008
From The Economist print edition

News from the Forbidden Citius, Altius, Fortius


Producers of the dazzling Olympic opening ceremony on August 8th acknowledged that an adorable nine-year-old girl in a red dress was miming her solo rather than singing, and that the actual singer had been removed at the last minute because of her round face and uneven teeth. They also revealed that the impressive 29-step progression of firework “footprints” that on television appeared to lead across Beijing to the stadium was a computer-generated graphic.

Population control
Despite ugly scenes in July when thousands of people queued for hours, pushed, shoved and tussled with police to buy the last available Olympic tickets, many seats were vacant during the first week of competition. When Michael Phelps, an American swimmer, won his third gold medal of the games on August 12th, hundreds of seats at the pool were empty. That day nearly half the venues were less than four-fifths full, and some two-thirds empty. The International Olympic Committee and the games’ sponsors have asked Beijing to increase attendance by easing access to the tightly secured Olympic complex.

1962 avenged at last
India saw further proof of its rise as a global power when it won its first individual gold medal in Olympic history. Abhinav Bindra took the men’s 10-metre air-rifle event. Bindra’s victory came at the expense of Zhu Qinan of China, who took silver, a rare win for the world’s second-most populous nation over its first. As a reward, Mr Bindra was accorded another rare honour: a lifetime rail pass. Air-conditioned, of course.

Weather? Or not?
Worried it might rain on the opening parade, games organisers launched 1,110 cloud-seeding missiles in the hours leading up to the big event. Fired from 21 sites surrounding the city, the missiles carried silver iodide to make it rain in those areas rather than over the ceremony in the Bird’s Nest stadium.

Is it in the 1,500 metres?
“That’s the decision made by the relevant authorities. I don’t think it’s going to be a big threat.” Wang Wei, of the Beijing Olympic Committee, on why an armoured personnel carrier was stationed outside the main Olympic media centre.