This morning, I took the bus to the Laoshan BMX track to see the debut of BMX at the Olympics. Instead of rehashing the details, I'll let you read the piece I did for ESPN.com and the one I wrote for ESPNTHEMAG.com and if you still don't have your fill of BMX coverage, check out my BMXers in Beijing piece for EXPN.com.

Overall, the races were great. Today was a scorcher, and the smog unfortunately returned , clouding visibility on the Green once again. But that didn't stop the Games from taking place as planned (only three days to go!). After BMX, I visited the Forbidden City with USA weightlifter Cheryl Hayworth and track cyclist Jennie Reed for a MAG.com piece (check back for this one).

THIS GUY HEARTS BMX. HE MISSED NOTHING ...

This evening, I headed back out to the Bird's Nest to watch the 200-meter finals, the semis of the 110 hurdles and the finals of the women's 400-meter hurdles. Man, what can I say about Usain Bolt that hasn't already been said? I watched again from the front row, and this time stood next to Olivia Grange, Jamaica's minister of sport. She spent nearly an hour waiting around to congratulate Bolt in person after his 100-meter win, and she wasn't about to do that again. So she walked to the first row of the stadium and waited for him to come by on his victory lap. Since I was standing right next to them, I snapped some great shots and interviewed Grange for a MAG.com piece on the Happiest Woman in Beijing.

MY FAVORITE SHOT. SHE DIDN'T WANT TO LET GO ...

Her runners have won seven medals, four of them gold. The Jamaican women swept the 100 meters, Bolt set two world records and captured the sprint double and shortly after the 200, Melanie Walker won the 400 hurdles. Not a bad week.

Continue reading "Day 14: BMX Hits Beijing" »

This morning, it finally happened. It was fairly quick (lasted about two hours) and not nearly as bad as many of my friends have experienced it. I got a touch of food poisoning. I'm not sure what I ate, because everything at dinner last night was great. My friends Amy and Gretchen and I had dinner at a restaurant on Ho Hai lake and then met a group of friends for drinks at the London 2012 house. All in all, a great evening. Not such a great morning.

THE LADIES AT LONDON HOUSE ...

By the afternoon, I was feeling much better. Just in time for a bike tour. Lisa is writing for the NY Post while she's here, covering parties, sponsor houses and the general scene around the city, and did a travel piece on Beijing that mentioned the Ritz Carlton's stay-and-bike packages. Through her contacts, she arranged for a group of us to test out their one-hour bike tour through a hutong (shanty town), the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. Our guides were RC General Manager Derek Flint, Deputy General Manager Ruby Wang and Director of Sales and Marketing Jennifer Yong. Seriously. And they were both fantastic tour guides and gracious hosts. We even had afternoon tea after our ride. What a fun afternoon.

OUR BIKE GANG ...

Afterwards, Lindsay and I headed back to the Olympic Green. I attended a charity auction for the Right to Play organization and chatted with several athletes who work at ambassadors for the program. I always arrive at auctions thinking there is a chance I will be able to bid on something. But once the bidding opened and the first item, a USA basketball jersey signed by every member of the team, went for $15,000+, I realized I was going to have to sit back and observe.

I finally made it out to the softball stadium today. Of course, I didn't get to watch much of a nail-biter (Team USA beat China 9-0 in four innings), but I at least had the chance to see our superstar team in action. The field was beautiful. I wanted to run down on the field, steal a jersey and take an at bat from Cat! Unfortunately, that's not allowed. I checked our Olympic Media Code of Behavior shortly after having the thought. Also not allowed: lining up in start blocks of any sort, doing flips on the gymnastics floor and half-Gainers off the five-meter springboard. These rules are making my Olympics much less exciting than I'd planned out in my mind.

I also talked to our players about life after the Olymipcs, since their sport has been cut from the 2012 lineup. (Let's hope it's reinstated in 2016.) And, like I suspected, they have a plan for being part of the 2012 Games. Team Handball!

As of midnight last night, I was going to have to watch this morning's swimming session on a TV in the media center. Swimming is such a tough ticket that even members of the credentialed media have to have a ticket. And the IOC is only offering so many. (We could only score one.) So, since Luke hadn't seen a swimming event yet, today's ticket was his. BUT, around 1 a.m. last night, after we got back from the 100 meter finals, Luke talked his way to a second ticket. Score!

What a fun couple of hours. First, we watched Dara Torres take silver in the 50 meters by .001, the same margin Phelps won by on Saturday morning. In the medal ceremony, she cried. I think they were tears of joy, and relef. Honestly, she looked pretty content with silver.

Then, we watched the 4x100 medley relay, Phelps and Co.'s final race. His coaches said it was fitting he won his final gold medal on a team event. They were right. Besides, he had three friends to celebrate with after Jason Lezak touched the wall first and the eighth gold was no longer just a story (fairy tale) he talked about. After Lezak's performances in these relays, I'm dying to know what Phelps plans to buy him as a thank-you present. Hey, he's got that $1 million Speedo bonus to burn.

One of the coolest things about the morning was how many athletes turned out to watch Phelps break Spitz's record. The entire U.S. swim team was there, as well as the Australian team and athletes from Brazil, Uganda, Spain, Canada ...

But the loudest cheering section of all was the Speedo section. At the center of the group was a few of the folks who developed "the suit" and Kobe, LeBron and Jason Kidd. The U.S. basketball team cancelled practice so those guys could attend the event. It was cool to see them snapping shots and hooting and hollering for a fellow athelte. Check out my mag.com piece for more details.

This evening, I met up with the U.S. BMX team and watched some gymnastics with them. It's cool to see Kyle, Donny, Mike and Jill finally here in Beijing. They're all super excited, but totally overwhelmed. Right now, few people recognize them. A lot of folks, athletes included, don't even know BMX was added to the Olympics. But I think after they start competing on Wednesday, that all will change.

As for gymnastics, not to harp on the new scoring system, but it is broken, and something must be done to fix it. Tonight, three athletes medaled on vault who fell (bronze), had split legs and sloppy landings (silver) and stepped out of bounds (gold). It was a shame. I spoke with the queen of the Perfect 10, Nadia Comaneci and her husband Bart Connor to find out what they think about this new system. In a word: It blows.

I've always wanted to watch the Olympic 100-meter race in person, as close to the track and the athletes as I could manage to position myself. So when I arrived at the Bird's Nest Saturday evening and saw a row of empty seats in the first row of the stadium, a little past the halfway point of where the race would take place, I rushed down and grabbed one. And didn't move for the next four hours. Aside from about 10 meters of space (and the railing), there was going to be nothing between me and the fastest men alive.

The race, as I expected, was incredible. By now, you've seen the footage, so I don't need to rehash it for you. (Although NBC missed the boat by not showing that race live.) But what Bolt did in that race was one of the most incredible feats in sports history. After the race, I went down to the media area and got in a couple questions with Dix, who was surprisingly not all that impressed with his bronze medal. Of course, I was bummed Tyson Gay didn't make the final. But I guess it was to be expected. It's virtually impossible to return to a sport like the 100 meters three weeks after a major injury and try and win an Olympic medal. He was about as gracious an athlete as anyone after his semi-final race, but he was certainly disappointed.

When Bolt finally appeared, nearly an hour after the race was over, the media frenzy was insane. I had three grown men hand me cameras and ask if i could, "Take a photo for me, and please try and get Usain in the frame." Right. Let me just ask the 100 men with TV cameras, who are actually doing their job, to move out of the way so you can have a souvenir from the press center.

Bolt was impossible to get near, especially for this shorty, so I realized I wasn't going to get to ask him my question. I have always wanted to ask the fastest man alive, on the day he becomes said Fastest Man, what his day was like. What did he eat for breakfast? I had planned to ask Gay in the interview I pre-scheduled with him for after the race (it's now happening at 4 p.m. on Sunday, so stay tuned), but that plan changed after semis.

So I did the next best thing, something that I've never done before. I asked him in the press conference. At first, I was worried the few hundred media folks in the room would be annoyed with my question, but then I realized I actually didn't care what they thought. And I figured his answer would add a little color to all their stories. Besides, if I had to hear one more person ask Walter Dix what it was like to watch Bolt run by him and set a world record, I was going to pull out all my hair and turn in my membership card to the People Who Write About Sports Society. (Press conferences should come with a Surgeon General's warning. Danger: Extended Periods of Exposure May Make You Dumber.)

So I asked. And he giggled. And then gave the answer I've been waiting for all this time. Nuggets. He ate nuggets. Twice. That's it. The secret to speed. The secret to smashing world records. McDonald's Chicken McNuggets.

My entire belief system has been flipped on its head. And, perhaps, my diet.

So, my friend Lisa is here in Beijing writing stories for th IOC website. Most of the stuff she is doing is behind-the-scenes reporting. She helped author the athlete handbook and was taken behind the walls of the athlete village. But the only people reading many of the cool stories she's written are folks at the IOC. So when she asked if she could interview me for a little profile on a journalist covering the Games, I agreed. Although I hate being on the receiving end of an interview. I figured a few in-house people would see it, I could send a link to my friends (and post it here) and maybe a few more members of the IOC would know my name the next time I called to ask a question.

So when Brian from SI walked up to me in the media room after gymnastics today asking why I was all over the IOC website, I couldn't help but break out in giggles. Oh, yes. The top story on olympic.org, the site all these fancy members of the international media turn to for up-to-the-second Olympics news, for most of the day today (Friday) was a story called "Nice to Meet You, Alyssa!"

Nice.

Since I’ve been a slacker up to this point and haven’t posted any photos in my updates, I decided to shorten my daily post in favor of some of my favorite shots. So here’s a recap of my ninth day, in nine sentences.

I woke up to the most beautiful day we’ve had since I arrived in Beijing. (Yesterday was first the smoggiest and then the rainiest day yet.) Three days ago, I saw the sky for the first time. Today, I got reacquainted with my old friend Mr. Sun. This afternoon, I watched the two best female gymnasts in the world perform flawlessly in the all-around competition and I’ll just say I’m glad I wasn’t a judge. But it was a neat feeling to know that when gymnastics fans wake up in the morning, they’ll read my story to find out what happened. (Wannabe Mary Lou Alyssa thinks that is awful nifty.) Tonight, I had yet another yummy dinner and celebrated Alison’s last night in China, then partied it up at Club Bud. I’m beginning to get the hang of this place.

Click the link below for more photos.

HERE I AM AT OPENING CEREMONIES ...

Continue reading "Day Nine: Here Comes The Sun " »