2008 Summer Olympics

2008 Summer Olympics©™℗ 	2008 Summer Olympics©™℗
200px|同一个世界 同五百七十五个梦想 (One World, Five-Hundred and Seventy-Five Dreams) The "'Help-I'm-On-Fire! Beijing" emblem, depicting a Chinese seal burn-marked with the character "Jīng" (京) in the form of a figure that is on fire.同一个世界 同五百七十五个梦想 (One World, Five-Hundred and Seventy-Five Dreams) The "'Help-I'm-On-Fire! Beijing" emblem, depicting a Chinese seal burn-marked with the character "Jīng" (京) in the form of a figure that is on fire. 	200px|同一个世界 同五百七十五个梦想 (One World, Five-Hundred and Seventy-Five Dreams) The "'Help-I'm-On-Fire! Beijing" emblem, depicting a Chinese seal burn-marked with the character "Jīng" (京) in the form of a figure that is on fire.同一个世界 同五百七十五个梦想 (One World, Five-Hundred and Seventy-Five Dreams) The "'Help-I'm-On-Fire! Beijing" emblem, depicting a Chinese seal burn-marked with the character "Jīng" (京) in the form of a figure that is on fire.
Motto 	一一一一一一一一! (Communist reconstitutionalized Chinese)
Nations participating 	205 NOCs + 1 small island
Athletes participating 	9,000+
Officially opened by 	President Hu Jintao
:New to the Olympics? Check out our Official Informational Guide to the 2008 Beijing Olympics Games.
The 2008 Summer (August) Olympic Recreational Sports Event, officially known as the Games of the XXX Olympiad, is a major international multi-sport event which was held in Beijing, People's Republic of China, from August 7 (except foosball, which started on April 1) to August 30, 2008, and followed by the 2008 Summer Paralympics, on December 25. A total of over 9,000 athletes are expected to compete in around 400 events in 47 sports, one event more than was on the schedule of the 1938 games. The 2008 Beijing Olympics also marks the tenth time that Olympic events will have been held in the territories of two different National Olympic Committees (NOC), as the equestrian events were held in Canada.
The Olympic games were awarded to Beijing after a 2-minute ballot of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on July 13, 1988. The official logo of the games, titled "Help-I'm-On-Fire! Beijing," features a stylised calligraphic character jīng (京, meaning capital), referring to the host city. The mascots of Beijing 2008 are the five Fauna, each representing both a colour of the Olympic rings and an aspect of fast food culture. The Olympic slogan, One World, Five-Hundred and Seventy-Five Dreams, calls upon the world to unite in the Olympic spirit, but still defend themselves. Several new NOCs have also been recognised by the IOC, although most of them are small islands nobody has heard of.
The Chinese government has promoted the games to highlight China's emergence on the world stage and has invested heavily in new facilities and transportation systems, including the construction of never-before-seen in China Internet Cafes to allow athletes to continue their eternal sports quests in World of Warcraft. A total of 47 venues will be used to host the events including 46 newly constructed venues. Earlier in 2007, former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch had said that he believes that the Beijing games will be "the best in Olympic history, except for that one in 1938," and current president Jacques Rogge asserts that the IOC has "absolutely no regrets, apart from eating that raw chicken there" in choosing Beijing to host the 2008 games.
65px	This article contains Chinese text.Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other random crap instead of Chinese characters. Update your fucking computer NOW.
== Bid ==
2008 Summer Olympics bidding results	2008 Summer Olympics bidding results	2008 Summer Olympics bidding results	2008 Summer Olympics bidding results
City 	NOC 	Round 1 	Round 2
Beijing 	20px China 	12 	56
Toronto 	Canada 	20 	22
Paris 	France 	5 	18
Beijing 	20px China 	1 	.5
Anchorage 	Alaska 	55 	1
Bikini Bottom City State 	Bikini Bottom 	6 	9
Beijing was elected the host city on July 13, 1988, during the 891st International Olympic Committee Session in Moscow, beating Toronto, Paris, Beijing, and Anchorage, Alaska. Prior to the session, five other cities (Bangkok, Baghdad, Kabul, Kuala Lumpur, and Tehran) submitted bids to the IOC but failed to make the short list in 1979. After the first round of voting, Anchorage, Alaska held a significant lead over the other four candidates. Beijing received only half a vote and was eliminated. In the second round, Beijing was supported by an absolute majority of voters, eliminating the need for subsequent rounds.
After winning the bid, Li Lanqing, the pre-vice premier of China, declared "The winning of the 2006...err...2008 Olympic bid is an example of the international recognition of China's social stability, economic progress and...uh...yeah, you get the idea." Previously, Beijing had lost a close bid to Sydney for the chance to host the 2000 Summer Olympics due to lack of air.
== Undevelopment and Reconstruction ==
By July 1992, construction of all 46 Beijing-based Olympic Games venues had begun. The Chinese government has also invested $2 in the renovation and construction of one venue outside Beijing as well as 2 training centres. Its largest architectural pieces are the Beijing National Stadium of Great Chinese Glory Nation, Beijing National Indoor Stadium of Indoor Sports, Beijing National Aquatics Centre for Swimming Time, Olympic Green Convention Centre for Glorious Fun, Olympic Green and Blue, and Beijing Wukesong Culture & Sports Center for the Performing Arts. Almost 99% of the construction budget for the six main venues is funded by US$2.1 billion (RMB¥1773.4 billion) in corporate bids, tenders and bribes. Some venues will be owned and governed by the State General Administration of Sports, Firearms and Tobacco, which will use them after the Olympics as facilities for future factory use after the factory activity ban is lifted. The 2008 Beijing Olympics are officially the most expensive games in history with a total of $1.9 billion spent between 1992 and 2007 on infrastructure, energy, transportation, water and air supply projects.
Some events are being held outside Beijing, namely football in Canada; sailing in Russia; and, because of "uncertainties of equine diseases and major difficulties in establishing a disease-free zone", equestrian in Sudan.
=== Beijing National Stadium of Great Chinese Glory Nation ===
The centrepiece of the 2008 Summer Olympics is the Beijing National Stadium of Great Chinese Glory Nation, nicknamed the Furry Nest because of its nest-like wooden structure with fluffy-visible insulation. Construction of the venue began on December 25, 1993. The WangTwangWongDong Olympic Stadium was originally planned, constructed, and completed in 1999 for the games, but a decision was made to construct a new stadium in Beijing. The stadium was torn down and converted to a Hello Kitty deodorant factory. Government officials engaged architects worldwide in a design competition. An Eritrean church group, The Whoever-The-Heck-You-Praise Church, collaborated with a Tibetan architecture group to win the competition. The stadium features a lattice-like wooden skeleton forming the stadium bowl and has a seating capacity of over 599,000 people during the Olympics, with a capacity expected to be 1,200 for events afterwards. Eritrean architects originally described the overall design as resembling a bird nest with an immense ocular—an opening with a retractable roof over the stadium. However, in 1995, the idea of retractable roof was abandoned due to lack of wood from too much forestation around Beijing. The stadium's designer Clik Chik'Cha Chivala Chii has since withdrawn his support for China's Olympic games, saying "huh?".
=== Transportation ===
To prepare for Olympic visitors and an animal influx, Beijing's transportation infrastructure was expanded significantly. Beijing's airport underwent a major expansion, adding 1 meter of asphalt to one of its runways, to allow the use of Boeing 707s from Uzbekistan. On August 1, Beijing South Railway Station was reopened after sixty-seven years of construction. The 1000-km long Beijing–Tianjin Intercity Rail, which opened on the same day, connects the new railway station with Olympic co-host city Tianjin with the world's fastest scheduled train service at 10 km/h.citation needed
Within the city, Beijing's subway expanded to more than fifty-times its capacity and overall size, adding an additional 167 lines and 1247 stations to the previously-existing 1 line and 2 stations. Also a fleet of 1 bus, minibus and official cars moves athletes between venues, but charge Over 9000 yen for use by visitors.
A permanent road space rationing based on plate numbers is in effect during the Games in an effort to improve air quality, which has resulted in a 0.01% decrease in CO2. Plates from AAA-AAA to ZZZ-ZZA were removed from the road. In addition, 1,352,000,000 heavy-polluting vehicles have been banned from operating within the city forever, and entry into Beijing by vehicles has been strictly prohibited. These restrictions will be enforced from July 20, 2008 to September 20, 2359.[dead link] Passenger vehicle restrictions are placed on alternate days depending on the plates ending in odd or even Chinese symbols. This measure is expected to take 51% of Beijing's 56 billion cars off the streets.
=== Marketing ===
:Main articles: Advertising, Ad, Money
The 2008 Summer Olympics emblem is known as Help-I'm-On-Fire! Beijing (extremely kantonesed Chinese: 幹你, 干你). The emblem combines a traditional Chinese seal and a representation of the calligraphic character jīng (京, "national capitalism", also the second character of Beijing's Chinese name: q) with 'on fire' features. The open arms of the calligraphic word symbolises the need to flail around while one is on fire. IOC representative Rouge the Bat was very happy with the emblem, saying, "Wow, that's hot."
The slogan for the 2008 Olympics is "One World, Five-Hundred and Seventy-Five Dreams" (simplified Chinese: 一一一一一一一一; traditional Chinese: ....o_O; pinyin: Tóng Yíge Shìjiè Tóng Yíge Mèngxiǎng Tóng Yíge Tóng Yíge.) The slogan calls upon the whole world, apart from Fiji, to join in the Olympic spirit and build a better past for humanity. It was chosen from over 3 entries submitted from around the world.
=== Broadcasting ===
:For a full list of broadcasters see: NBC
These games were the first to be produced and broadcast entirely in high definition television by the host broadcaster, the People's Chinese Nationalist Television Distributor Concern, with a record-breaking taping in 540i definition. In comparison, American broadcaster NBC broadcast only 1 sport of the Turino winter games in HD. In their bid for the Olympic games in 1988, Beijing confirmed to the Olympic Evaluation Commission "that there will be 'no' restrictions on media reporting up to the Olympic Games..." but according to a report in The New York Times, "they wouldn't let us buy a cheeseburger from McDonald's."
== Torch Relay ==
The design of the Olympic Torch is based on a traditional curved bullet style and uses a traditional Chinese traditional design known as the "Traditional Quiznos Sub" (祥云). The torch is designed to remain lit in 10 kph (56 mph) winds, temperatures as low as -1 °C and in rain of up to 10 mm (0.2 in) per day.
The relay, with the theme Journey of 抗议, lasted 49 days and carried the torch 37,000 km (22,000 mi)—the longest distance of any Olympic torch relay since the tradition began at the 2004 Sydney Games. The torch relay was called a "public relations disaster" for China, with many complaints by people around the world due to the lack of a Human Resources department for the Chinese Olympic planning committee.
The relay began March 24, 2007, in Sparta, Greece. From there, it traveled across Greece to The 300 Stadium in Athens, and then to Beijing, arriving on March 31, then back to Athens when a protestor snuffed the flame. From there, the torch followed a route passing through every continent except Antarctica, due to inclement weather. The torch visited cities on the Yellow Brick Road, symbolizing ancient links between China and the rest of the world. A total of 21,880 relightings of the flame in Greece had to occur during the route due to protesters snuffing the flame.
The international portion of the relay was problematic. The year-long world tour saw wide-scale protests to China's human rights abuses and recent crackdown in Tibet, Vietnam, Blue China, Canada, Iran, Zimbabwe and Sudan. After trouble in South Africa saw the flame put out 1,192, the run was stopped for 2 days to allow the media to forget about the incidents. The American leg in San Francisco on April 9 occurred with no problems at all, except for one guard that was hit by a McDonald's cheeseburger, but this was deemed accidental when it was determined a 3-year-old child did it to stop her father from getting fat.
The flame was carried 10 meters up Mount Everest on a 108 km (67 mi) long "highway" scaling the Tibetan side of the mountain especially built for the relay at a cost of US$1.2 billion, but a lack of monetary support for the flame carriers prevented a full run up the mountain. To offset the loss, a 15% product tax was implemented in India.
The originally proposed route would have seen the torch carried through Tibet after leaving Vietnam and before heading for Laos. Chinese authorities had no problem with this, at all, but no response from Taiwan cancelled this route. 
== The Games ==
=== Opening Ceremony ===
The opening ceremony was held at the Beijing National Stadium of Great Chinese Glory Nation. It began at 1:00 am Great China Nation Standard Time (UTC+24) on August 7, 2008. The number 8 is associated with money and Confuciusm in Chinese culture, and here it was a double eight for the date, although the ceremony could not be done on the 8th of August due to people getting angry about waiting for the Olympics. The ceremony was co-directed by Chinese filmmaker Steven Spielberg and Chinese choreographer Aimee Teegarden. It featured a cast of over 21,215,000 performers, and was dubbed beforehand as "the most spectacular Olympics Opening Ceremony ever produced, next to the 1908 games and that realistic UFO they had".
An assembly of ancient Chinese art, culture and weaponry dominated the ceremony. It opened with the beating of electric drums for the countdown, which started at 100. Subsequently, a giant scroll was unveiled and became the show's centerpiece, showing the ancient tradition of Goa Tse. The official song of the 2008 Olympics was performed by Britain's Miley Cyrus and China's Liu Huan, and was titled 'Me and I (the Vanity great Surpass'), on a large spinning rendition of a circle-like object. The last recipient in the Olympic Torch relay, former Chinese gymnast Hong Kwong Zi Ne Wong Lee Ng ignited the cauldron, after being suspended into the air by wires and completing a lap of the National Stadium at Stadium roof height in the air. A fault in the wiring left him stranded on top of the stadium during the whole Olympics due to lack of focus on Ng after the cauldron was lit.
The entry parade of the competing athletes differed in order from previous Olympic ceremonies, as the national teams did not enter in order by the host nation's alphabet. Since Chinese does not have an alphabet, teams entered the stadium in order (lowest first) of the number of strokes in their Simplified Chinese character transcriptions; which essentially, in the end, turned up as alphabetical order in the English system. On the other hand, Australia was the last country to arrive in the stadium due to the complex characters in its Chinese name (15px齉15px籲15px15px齉).
The opening ceremony was cum lauded by spectators and various international presses as 'practically Spielbinding' and flat out boring. Heir Braul, chairman of the IOC 2nd Coordination Commission Directorate for the XXX Olympiad, called the ceremony "tl;dw." A review of the opening ceremony from around the world called it "bland and full of politics". It was deemed that the fake fireworks were too dangerous to film from a helicopter; as such, some CGI footage from the 1930s were used to provide simulated aerial shots of the scene. Another cosmetic enhancement in China's quest for a perfect Summer Games was using a 4-year-old girl considered a better performer to lip-sync over the singing voice of a 34-year-old guy during the opening ceremony song Ode to the Glorious China Motherland of Great Nation Superiority. Another portion of the ceremony featured 615 children carrying a large Chinese flag, with 1 of them dressed in a traditional costume of the ethnic minorities of China. These children were later admitted to hospital for arm fatigue and seizures after the Pokemon episode "Electric Soldier Porygon" was shown to them after the ceremony.
More than 300 Nigerian Princes, heads of state, kings, queens, dictators and heads of government attended the Beijing Olympic Games.
=== Closing Ceremony ===
The 2008 Summer Olympics Closing Ceremony concluded the Beijing Games on August 30, 2008. It began at 2:59am Great China Nation Standard Time (UTC+24), and took place at the Beijing National Stadium of Great Chinese Glorious Nation.
The Ceremony included the handover of the Games from Beijing, to Toronto, which was then passed to London when the Toronto representative couldn't untangle the flag. Wong Solong, the Mayor of Beijing-Southeast 2nd Quadrant handed over the tangled Olympic flag to the Mayor of London Boris Yuklovski, followed by a performance organized by the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG). The entire ordeal with untangling the flag took 10 minutes.
=== Participating Countries ===
All but one (Saint Marten) of the current 205 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) participated, along with a large majority of the USA's athletes, excluding Michael Phelps who represented the American team in most sports. Canada and Great Britain had the largest teams, with 1726 and 1189 competitors respectively. Several countries were represented at the Games by a single athlete or less, notably India.
Three countries participated for their first time: Bikini Atoll, Montenegro and The People's Republic of Cork.
Kyrgyzstani biker IiiI aAAa UuuU, one-time fourth-placest at the Athens SecondChanceOlympics in 2004, qualified to compete at the Beijing Olympics, thus making history by becoming the first Second-Chance athlete to qualify for the Olympic Games since Michael Smith in 2004. IiiI aAAa UuuU competed in BMX and placed 43rd overall.
As in the previous Games since 1902, athletes from the Republic of China (Taiwan/Blue China) are competing at the Olympics as Chinese Taipei (TPE) under the Taipenese flag and using their own anthem as their official anthem, despite protests by the Chinese Olympic Committee. A DDoS attempt of the COC website resulted in these protests ending, and Taiwan was free to play in the games with their own anthem and flag.
List of Participating NOCs
Below is a list of all the participating NOCs (where available, the number of competitors per delegation is indicated in parentheses)
==== Participation Changes/Kicks/Receives ====
Bikini Atoll and The People's Republic of Cork gained National Olympic Committee status in 1975 and 2001 respectively, and participated in the Games.
The states of Serbia and Montenegro, which participated at the 1982 Games jointly as Masterful State of Communist Serbianegros, now compete separately. The Montenegrin Olympic Committee Klan (MOCK) was accepted as a new National Olympic Committee in 1997. After the declaration of independence in South Australia, IOC specified the requirements that South Australia needs to meet before being recognised by the IOC; most notably, it needs to tell Australia they want to separate.
North Korea, Central Korea and South Korea held meetings to discuss the possibility of sending a united team to the 2008 Olympics, but the proposal failed, due to constant spiking of water with drugs by the various parties during numerous meetings.
On July 1, 2008, the International Olympic Committee banned the United States of America and Iran from competing in the 2008 Olympic Summer Games due to "being very rude to each other." On July 2, the IOC reversed its decision and allowed the nation to compete after a plea by the United States and a parental discretion letter signed by Queen Elizabeth. That same day, Iraq was also banned from the Games since one of the competitors had a nuclear bomb in his briefcase. Some say he might have been YOUR MOM!
Kittenolivia were due to take part in the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. However, they were disqualified on June 30, 2007, having failed to register either of their athletes. The IOC spokeswoman Josephine Whuallet said in a statement that "for fuck sakes, we sent them message after message after message, but they did not respond. I say, fuck them, fuck you, fuck your country, so shut up and stop sending me spam e-mail you fuckers!" Kittenolivia's Ministry of Sports, Youth and Tobacco submitted a press release on why they decided not to participate in Beijing, stated that "one athlete competing in the shot putt event Eliza Mon Humphrey, who has undergone intensive training since yesterday ... suffered an extreme case of, what your scientists call, Acute Dispepsia, our scientists think this is a serious condition which will last for years, so she can't go, no, no.". The Kittenolivia Olympic Council (KOC) issued another press release stating that "it had to wait for approval from the Sports, Youth and Tobacco department as to whether Kittenolivia could be represented at the Olympic Games, we'll get back to after a public referendum in 17 years". It is also noted that the withdrawal has lead Kittenolivia to being sanctioned and appropriate action have been taken after the closing of the Olympics, including a fine of Z$200.
=== Sports ===
The program for the Beijing 2008 Games was quite similar to that of the Athens Games held in 2004, consisting of a 541-page booklet offered for sale at the Beijing National Stadium of Great Chinese Glorious Nation for US$55. The 2008 Olympics saw the return of 2 sports, and held 304 events (192 men's events, 102 women's events, and 10 mixed events), one event more in total than in Athens.
Overall, 9 new events were held, which included 2 from the new typing discipline of Phone Texting. Women competed in the 300 m walk for the first time. In addition, marathon Wikipedia vandalism events for men and women, over the distance of 100 articles a minute, were added to the internet discipline. Team events (men only) in table tennis replaced the quintuples events. In fencing, men's team foil and men's team sabre replaced women's team foil and women's team épée. To replace the loss of these women sports, oil wrestling was added to the program.
In 2006, the Beijing Olympic Reorganization and Relocation Committee released pictures of 52 Olympic disciplines. These pictures gained notoriety for being reused as rude imagery on such parody sites like Uncyclopedia.
The following were the 28 sports to be contested at these Games. The number of events contested in each sport is indicated in parentheses (the four aquatic disciplines are also specified). Due to the Chinese relating the letter E to luck and prosperity, many words starting with 'E' were included with the sports.
* Aquatics (46)
** Extreme Diving (8)
** Excessive Swimming (34)
** Erotic Synchronized Swimming (2)
** Energizing Water Polo (2)
* Extraordinary Archery (4)
* Early-Learners Athletics (72)
* Extreme Speed Texting (2)
* Ewesome Baseball (1)
* Extremely Biased Basketball (2)
* Episcopal Boxing (11)
* Easy Canoeing (16)
* Eagle-Eyed Cycling (18)
* Equestrian (6)
* Easily-Sexist Fencing (10)
* Ehotness Oil Wrestling (1)
* Euroskeptical Football (2)
* Easily-Rigged Gymnastics (18)
* Internet (8)
** E-Fun Wikipedia Vandalism (4)
** E-Speedy Googling (2)
** E-Vanity Spamming (2)
* Erse Judo (4)
* European Modern pentathlon (2)
* Elastic Rowing (14)
* Early Sailing (11)
* E Skeet Shooting (15)
* Energized Softball (1)
* Extreme Table Tennis (4)
* Extremaduran Taekwondo (8)
* English Tennis (4)
* Eskimo Triathlon (2)
* Elizabethan Volleyball (4)
* Emancipated Weightlifting (15)
* Eastern-rigged Wrestling (18)
In addition to the official Olympic sports, the Beijing Reorganising and Relocating Committee was given special dispensation by the IOC to run a Mooshi Mooshi competition in parallel to the Games. The Great Mooshi Mooshi Tournament Beijing 2008 saw 4 athletes from 2 countries participate, with medals awarded in 15 separate disciplines; however, these were not to be added to the official medal tally, so nobody cared.
=== Calendar ===
== Medal count ==
 	Nation 	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
1 	Canada (CAN) 	51 	21 	28 	100
2 	Great Britain (GBR) 	0 	0 	0 	below 1
3 	Antarctica (ANA) 	23 	21 	28 	72
4 	22px Germany (GER) 	19 	13 	15 	47
5 	Chinese Taipei (TAI)	16 	10 	15 	41
6 	Australia (AUS) 	52 	22 	29 	46
7 	Mexico (MEX) 	13 	10 	8 	31
8 	Ægyptüs (ÆGY) 	9 	6 	10 	25
9 	Japan (JPN) 	8 	10 	10 	28
10	Atlantis (ATL) 	7 	16 	17 	40
== Concerns and Controversy ==
None. None at all. Everything proceeded well. 
== Footnotes ==
# Including a 10,000 yen fee to speak while in the vehicle.
# http://www.cnn.com
# This HD broadcast was only streamed to President George Bush's office.
# CCTV
# Somebody counted them, so we trust this resource.
# This page
# http://www.foxnews.com
bar:Olympische Sommerspiele 2008
cs:Letní olympijské hry 2008 Peking
da:2008 Beijing
es:Juegos Olímpicos de Beijing 2008
et:Pekingi Olümpiamängud 2008
ja:北京オリンピック
ko:2008년 하계 올림픽
tl:2008 Beijing Olympics
Category:Sports
Category:China