It will be the site of 12 medal finals this February, but Richmond's Olympic Oval has already won gold in one event: on October 9th, it was awarded top honors for a sports or leisure structure from the Institution of Structural Engineers, beating out Wimbledon, the Copenhagen Zoo's Elephant House, and another Olympic venue, Beijing's Birds Nest. The Richmond Oval won largely on the strength of sustainability, including a 2 hectare roof built out of salvaged lumber from the Mountain Pine Beetle infestation. [more inside]
posted by mannequito on Oct 26, 2009 - 33 comments

The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association has filed suit against the City of Vancouver over a recently enacted 2010 Olympic bylaw which the BCCLA claims limits free speech and is in violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. [more inside]
posted by futureproof on Oct 7, 2009 - 57 comments

Seeking to be the first Green Olympics, Brazil wins its bid to be the first ever South American nation to host the 2016 games. [more inside]
posted by msali on Oct 2, 2009 - 108 comments

Cleveland Rocks! While the IOC is still preparing to elect the host city for for 2016 Olympics, the (unaffiliated) Federation of Gay Games has just announced that the 2014 Gay Games will be held on Lake Erie, with Cleveland's bid beating those of Washington, DC and Boston. [more inside]
posted by kittyprecious on Sep 29, 2009 - 38 comments

The Revolutionary "Consider, then, the Fosbury Flop, an upside-down and backward leap over a high bar, an outright—an outrageous!—perversion of acceptable methods of jumping over obstacles. An absolute departure in form and technique. It was an insult to suggest, after all these aeons, that there had been a better way to get over a barrier all along. And if there were, it ought to have come from a coach, a professor of kinesiology, a biomechanic, not an Oregon teenager of middling jumping ability."
posted by dhruva on Sep 14, 2009 - 27 comments

"Twenty-five years ago this month, Al Joyner won a shocking gold medal at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles … and fell in love with a lady in tights."
posted by trillian on Aug 27, 2009 - 12 comments

The push for Chicago as the 2016 Olympic-host city is gearing up, and even the usually reclusive Michael Jordan has publicly declared his support. Jordan also appears in this recently released ad that features testimonials from other former Chicago Olympians such as Jackie-Joyner Kersee, Greg Louganis, and many more.
posted by jon_hansen on Apr 3, 2009 - 48 comments

Explore the History of the Ancient Greek World from the Neolithic to the Classical Period. Covering important topics, such as Art and Architecture, Mythology, Wars, Culture and Society, Poetry, Olympics, History Periods, Philosophy, Playwrights, Kings and Rulers of Ancient Greece.
posted by netbros on Feb 21, 2009 - 3 comments

New Satellite Data Reveal Impact of Olympic Pollution Controls. [Via James Fallows]
posted by homunculus on Jan 9, 2009 - 26 comments

"Conquer English to Make China Stronger!" is the philosophy of Li Yang, founder of the Crazy English school (and style) of language, described by some as "English as a Shouted Language" for its main method of shouting English words in public to overcome shyness. Li Yang has achieved Elvis-like popularity in China, not just through his public lectures but also through the sales of books, media, teaching materials, and a memoir titled "I am Crazy, I Succeed". Li Yang's unorthodox methods - which include encouraging students to "lose face" and cope with embarrassment on the way to success - have earned him fame and fortune, including headlining the 5th Beijing Foreign Language Festival and being the main English teacher for China's Olympic volunteers. Li Yang's secret to success: "... to have them continuously paying—that’s the conclusion I’ve reached."
posted by divabat on Dec 31, 2008 - 10 comments

A tower on the Excalibur gondola at Blackcomb Mountain north of Vancouver collapsed yesterday. Early speculation centres around the possibility of the tower filling with water and freezing. The Excalibur gondola is built by the same company who recently finished constructing the record-breaking Peak2Peak gondola. This is not the first lift incident at the resort, which is set to host alpine events for the 2010 Winter Olympics.
posted by vansly on Dec 17, 2008 - 27 comments

Sports activism is dead? - so asks Andy Kroll in his review of Dave Zirin's new book, A People's History of Sports in the United States.

"And since the ‘80s, the money, TV time, and narcissism have only increased. Most professional athletes could care less — that is, if they even know at all — that their sponsors’ shoes and jerseys are made in squalid conditions in third world countries."

The 2010 Olympic Winter Games ticket requests start one week from today! It's just up the road in Vancouver, B.C.. [more inside]
posted by neuron on Sep 26, 2008 - 42 comments

Photos of the 2008 Paralympics. Sadly the Paralympics rarely garners the coverage of the Olympics, but thanks to the internet you can witch videos of the competitions at Universal Sports (though it may be region-blocked, require registration and only seems to work on Windows).
posted by GuyZero on Sep 12, 2008 - 30 comments

An American in Beijing's Detention Facilities (via kottke) [more inside]
posted by kliuless on Sep 3, 2008 - 69 comments

An open letter to sports columnist Jay Mariotti , who resigned from the Sun-Times and lashed out during a TV interview announcing that newspapers were dead. (via Sports Filter)
posted by An Infinity Of Monkeys on Aug 29, 2008 - 25 comments

Sex at the Olympics. "I am often asked if the Olympic village . . . is the sex-fest it is cracked up to be. My answer is always the same: too right it is." Table tennis Olympian Matthew Syed dishes the dirt. (possibly NSFW, TimesOnline).
posted by fourcheesemac on Aug 23, 2008 - 113 comments

Joel Stein on a new scoring system to improve the Olympic Games.
posted by twoleftfeet on Aug 23, 2008 - 69 comments

Beijing Olympics Stadium, about 30 minutes before the the men's 100m final. A 360-degree view (including overhead) from the stands by Finnish photographer Kari Kuukka.
posted by lou on Aug 22, 2008 - 25 comments

Olympic logos from 1896 to present. Tons of trivia too.
posted by Brandon Blatcher on Aug 21, 2008 - 98 comments

Some of the female Chinese gymnasts are apparently under-age. It wasn't their skulls, their chins or their eyes that gave them away: it was the internet.
posted by chuckdarwin on Aug 20, 2008 - 130 comments

The Pisces Effect is a statistician's find that birth sign may predict likelihood of Olympics medal victories relating to Zodiacal attributes. Past statistical studies indicate Pisceans may be bad drivers...with perhaps some fluctuation for hemisphere. One columnist feels Washington, D.C.'s problems (and potential) may be attributable to being Pisces. Maybe Pisceans [flash; auto/unstoppable sound] have more luck as horses. Previously: [post] [comments]
posted by batmonkey on Aug 19, 2008 - 54 comments

The Hong Kong Lego Users Group created an exhibition called Lego Sport City, a recreation of the Olympic Village in Lego. It's 3m x 8m, and has over 300,000 bricks; you can read more about it here and here. Brickshelf has a very comprehensive collection of photos here, including a lot of shots showing the construction and the smaller details. [Via /.]
posted by Upton O'Good on Aug 18, 2008 - 8 comments

"Like the dotcom bubble, the disaster bubble is inflating in an ad-hoc and chaotic fashion." Journalist Naomi Klein discusses how corporations and governments are working together more closely than ever, using the mandate of catastrophe — whether natural or man-made — to further concentrate power in fewer hands, with less oversight: from illegal sales of American police technology to China to avert hypothetical tragedies during the Beijing Olympics, to the privatization of water supplies in post-tsunami Sri Lanka.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Aug 17, 2008 - 50 comments

Usain Bolt is (still) the fastest man in the world. [more inside]
posted by chuckdarwin on Aug 16, 2008 - 98 comments

A comedic break from the Olympics. Plus a mildly amusing advertisement. [more inside]
posted by five fresh fish on Aug 15, 2008 - 30 comments

At the Beijing Olympics this summer there is a camera that follows divers through the air until they hit the water's surface in glorious high-definition. The DiveCam was originally invented by Garrett Brown, the inventor of the Steadicam, and was first used in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. What new technology made this innovation possible? The power of gravity and pulleys.
posted by HaloMan on Aug 14, 2008 - 21 comments

This is the moment Hungarian weightlifter Janos Baranyai's first Olympics ended in agony when he dislocated his right elbow in the ugliest moment yet of the Olympic weightlifting competition. Video, for the foolish.
posted by R. Mutt on Aug 13, 2008 - 83 comments

No More Perfect 10s. The new Olympic scoring has rendered the Perfect 10 obsolete. Let's remember what it looked like: Nadia Comaneci - Balance Beam & Uneven Bars - 1976. Balance Beam - 1980. Mary Lou Retton - Vault 1984. Lavinia Milosovici -Floor Exercise 1992.
posted by grapefruitmoon on Aug 11, 2008 - 85 comments

Remember Tibet during the Olympic Games. Jonathan Barnbrook and Pedro Inoue raise awareness through this new site. [Via Computer Love]
posted by wundermint on Aug 11, 2008 - 72 comments

Olympic fireworks digitally faked. Giant, stomping footsteps were created by digital trickery. [more inside]
posted by Dave Faris on Aug 11, 2008 - 112 comments

Yang Wei, the 2006 and 2007 mens gymnastics world champion, and number 13 on Time Magazine's 100 Olympic Athletes to Watch in Beijing 2008, is a symbol of absolute power and coordination. He stands 5 feet 3 inches tall and weighs 121 pounds.
posted by clearly on Aug 10, 2008 - 27 comments

A chinese man killed Todd Bachman in Beijing today before jumping to his death from an ancient tower. Todd Bachman was the father-in-law of Olympic Men's Indoor Volleyball Head Coach Hugh McCutcheon, his wife is still in hospital for her injuries. Not part of the curse of the fuwas.
posted by dabitch on Aug 9, 2008 - 66 comments

Opening the Olympic Ceremony with a bow to ancient Chinese tradition, 2,008 Drummers on the traditional Fou drums. [more inside]
posted by grapefruitmoon on Aug 8, 2008 - 117 comments

Misc-Olympics-Filter. Google's 2008 Olympics page (gadget can be added to your Google homepage). Former Sudanese refugee chosen as US flag bearer for opening ceremonies. And a scandal after BeijingTickets.com (now shut-down) fails to deliver tickets that they sold: BeijingTicketScam.com
posted by allkindsoftime on Aug 8, 2008 - 32 comments

The Munich Olympics through Otl Aicher and his teams’ iconic designs. Amazing posters, cute mascot and even tickets that look great. Not to forget the medals.
posted by dabitch on Aug 8, 2008 - 13 comments

08-08-08 is not only the start of the Olympic games in China. It's also an extremely lucky date, given that the number 8 is considered fortuitous in Chinese culture, being associated with wealth and prosperity. Due to this unlikely (but very lucky) confluence of events, upwards of 9,000 Chinese couples will be getting hitched on 08-08-08. Note that not everybody agrees with the astrological implications of this particular date, but that just sounds like mumbo-jumbo to me. [more inside]
posted by baphomet on Aug 7, 2008 - 63 comments

The Olympics buys a one-way ticket to bizarro world with its new "11th inning rule." Critics are fuming. [more inside]
posted by Gordion Knott on Aug 5, 2008 - 102 comments

The Antikythera Mechanism has been decoded. Two years ago, it was confirmed that the machine was capable of astronomical calculations. Now it appears there's just one more thing: 3D imaging of the machine made it possible to reconstruct the complete workings, and it turns out it was also capable of tracking the timing of the Olympic games. The findings were reported today in Nature. Previous Apple joke here, an incredibly deep post about it here, and a longer report from the New Yorker.
posted by one_bean on Jul 30, 2008 - 40 comments

In late 2006, Santhi Soundarajan took the Silver Medal in the Women's 800m at the Asian Games in Qatar. Less than a week later, she was stripped of her medal by the Olympic Council of Asia after a chromosomal test. According to the Times of India, "the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) said the 25-year-old had failed a sex test, implying she had deceived the sporting world by competing as a woman when she was actually a man." The disqualification ended her athletic career, and several months after returning to her rural village in Tamil Nadu, India, she attempted suicide. [more inside]
posted by Kadin2048 on Jul 29, 2008 - 25 comments

Jamie Hewlett of Tank Girl and Gorrilaz fame has created the animated film that will be used to introduce the BBC's coverage of the summer Olympics with music by his fellow Gorrlaz compatriot, Damon Albarn, inspired by Monkey, the cult classic television program. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Jul 25, 2008 - 21 comments

It's almost time again for everyone's favorite WTF Olympic Sport -- Modern Pentathlon. But as the Games approach, the sport is rocked by scandals -- faked scores, questionable competitions, international disputes. Meanwhile, the French MP team, not content to merely swimshootfenceriderun, add singing to their skill set with this catchy tune "T'as les jambes et t'as la tête".
posted by grounded on Jul 23, 2008 - 50 comments

What's the second most popular sport in the world after soccer? Badminton. (According to some sources - volleyball and cricket are also contenders.) When played competitively, badminton looks more like this and less like this. The Chinese are poised to win Gold in Beijing, while the American team, featuring star player Howard Bach gets no love.
posted by grapefruitmoon on Jul 22, 2008 - 31 comments

Should Oscar Pistorius be allowed to run with prosthetic blades in the Olympics for South Africa? Current money says maybe.
posted by Xurando on Jul 16, 2008 - 154 comments

Is Batman Possible? "There's a quote from Neal Adams, the great Batman illustrator, who said Batman would win, place or show in every event in the Olympics."
posted by gwong on Jul 16, 2008 - 130 comments

Is Xinjiang Province The Islamic Jihad Battlefront in China? China detains 82 'terrorists' targeting Olympics and police have shot Uighurs dead. Meanwhile people from the Uighur minority call on the international community to boycott the Beijing Olympic games. What side of the Jihad is China on? Previously there was The Al Qaeda - China Tie. The oil and petrochemical sector account for 60% of Xinjiang's local economy.
posted by adamvasco on Jul 16, 2008 - 21 comments

China's secret plot to tame Tibet. "Internal Communist party documents have revealed that China is planning a programme of harsh political repression in Tibet despite a public show of moderation to win over world opinion before the Olympic Games next month." Meanwhile, the military has sealed off several monasteries in Lhasa, keeping over 1,000 monks locked up. Another 1,000 monks have mysteriously disappeared, and may have been sent to prisons in a neighbouring province to keep them silent through the Olympics.
posted by homunculus on Jul 13, 2008 - 111 comments

Beijing 2008: China's Olympian Human Rights Challenges. This website was set up by Human Rights Watch to monitor human rights issues in China during the run-up to the Olympics. "This is a historic opportunity for China to show it has the confidence to make tangible and sustainable progress in ensuring basic human rights for its 1.3 billion citizens." [more inside]
posted by homunculus on Jun 11, 2008 - 34 comments

Veteran sportscaster Jim McKay dies. The host of ABC's Wide World of Sports for forty years, Jim also called the 1980 Miracle on Ice. However, he will probably be best remembered for being thrust into the role of news journalist during the 1972 Munich Games.
posted by never used baby shoes on Jun 7, 2008 - 25 comments

Superstitious bloggers explain the recent earthquake in China by suggesting that the official Olympic Mascots of the Beijing Olympics foretold of disaster. [more inside]
posted by NikitaNikita on May 19, 2008 - 26 comments