Let the Games begin!

8/9/08 22:36 Local time, Broadcast Compound

The Olympic torch is officially blazing bright over the Bird's Nest! I saw it for the first time this afternoon on my way to work. The symbolism associated with that torch makes even looking at it from afar an incredible experience. I haven't taken pictures yet, but I do plan on it. It's not every day you actually get to see the Olympic torch in person (well it will be every day for me for the next 2 weeks, I guess...unbelievable).

Since I didn't have to be in to work until 1:00pm today and I was up early anyway, I decided to take an earlier bus to the IBC. Claire came, too, and we decided to stop in at the National Indoor Stadium to watch some of the gymnastics that started this afternoon. I've never been to a gymnastics meet, and I think I was incredibly spoiled to start at the Olympics, but it was one of the coolest sporting events I've ever witnessed. The athletes marched out in 6 groups (USA, Italy, Spain, and 3 mixed groups) and performed on each event by group all simultaneously. It was overwhelming at times because I couldn't really decide who to watch on what event, but after a while I got the hang of it and was able to see a lot of incredible things in a very short amount of time.

Today was also the first day of swimming competition. Finally. I wasn't really assigned to any specific job for preliminaries, so I just sat in the stands and got to watch the races as a spectator. To kick things off, Michael Phelps broke an Olympic record in the 400 IM, both American women made semifinals in the 100 fly, Peter Vanderkaay and Larsen Jensen are both top 16 in the 400 free, Katie Hoff is off to a much better start than her 2004 debut and is going into the finals of the 400 IM in second place, Brendan Hansen is only in 10th in the 100 breast and Mark Gangloff squeezed into 16th place for semis, and the U.S. women's 4x100 free relay is in 2nd place for finals tomorrow morning. It was a pretty eventful preliminary round, but finals tomorrow morning should be even better.

The crowd was pretty big tonight, too, considering it was only a preliminary. The Chinese people were going crazy for all of their swimmers. I just kept thinking how cool that must be for the Chinese team to be swimming in that gorgeous pool in front of a home crowd that just leaks pride everywhere they go.

Diving starts tomorrow afternoon and Phelps will go for his first gold of the meet that could make history. I don't care how many people are rooting for an upset (Ryan Lochte has a legitimate chance of beating Phelps tomorrow), I want to see someone win 8 gold medals in one Olympics. And I want the person to be American, and I want it to be Michael Phelps. Tomorrow will set the tone for the rest of the Games, no matter the sport. Everyone is cheering for Phelps, and I can't wait to be there to witness that 8th gold.