Day 5: The Grand Finale!!!

I spent a lot of the day walking around checking out the buildings in Beijing (I am a real estate guy after all) and some interesting pictures. These are all within one block of each other..look at the contrast between the new (1st and 4th pic) and the old communist era grey boxes:






























Video of the crazy 1st building:



The last night of track, which was super sad - I will need to do my best to go to London 2012 b/c it really is the most unbelievable atmosphere. Makes me remember how much I really love track. Some great finals including the 4x400 (both men and women), 5000 meters men final, 800 meter mens final, and womens 1500 meters.
Video of one of my fave races, the 5000 meters...hopefully this gives a sense of the pace they are going, they keep this up for 3 miles. To give you a sense, the winner ran about a 13 mins, which is something like 3 x 4 min, 15 second miles! Unfortunately the big U.S. hope Bernard Lagat was not able to come through but maybe next year at the World championships:


3 races for Bolt, 3 gold medals, 3 world records. Unbelievable. This is he and the Jamaican 4x100 team getting their golds.
The women's 4x400 was awesome, with Sanya Richards of the U.S. chasing down Russia in the final 50 meters. Sorry for the crappy video but was going nuts - watch her power to the finish:



















Women's 4x400...Sanya Richards was off somehwere else so too bad did not get all 4 of them. Pic of Jeremy Warnier getting ready for the 4x400, which the men dominated and set a new Olympic record - race was basically over after the first leg!




















A great, great finish to the 2008 Beijing Olympics Track and Field.

Day 4: Not getting old in the least

Sorry for the lack of actual "Beijing" pics...i figured I took enough/spoke about it enough in the blog entries from last year that it was not necessary this year. One thing I did want to note that I dont think I did before is big brother has done a remarkable job sweeping up the beggers, homeless, and ripoff DVD shops that were all over last summer. There used to be TONS of bootleg dvd shops all over the place but now the few that exist have gone "legit", i.e. non bootleg DVDs. Unless, you know to how to ask them...in which case, as what happened at one place, they opened a secret door behind a bookcase to get to a secret bootleg room! I love it.

Another packed day at the track, the main events being the 4x100 (with no U.S. teams in it, but a potential Jamaican world record with Bolt and his teammate former WR record holder Asafa Powell in it), and pole vault. I had pretty cool seats right in front of the long jump pit though, check out this video (I have a special affinity towards the long jump, was 8th grade conference champion!):


Men's 4x400 prelim video, which the US men predictably dominated (lets hope so since we got gold, silver, and bronze in the individual 400). Can you believe those seats???:



Did not get many pictures this night, but the Jamaican's killed the WR thanks to a dominating 3rd leg by Bolt. Bryan Clay of the U.S. won the Decathlon, which was extra cool b/c i was sitting directly behind his family - how much fun would that be to have a family member get a gold in the Olympics?? (Teresa and Angela, I still love you).