Games In Their Prime

It's taken a few days, but I think I've got this Beijing Games viewing thing down.
Watch a bit in the morning, take the afternoon off (while everyone's asleep in China), then dive back into it all again some time after dinner hour. And hang in there as long as humanly possible past midnight (a guy does need sleep, after all, before the call to the day job the next morning. Thank heavens for weekends).
All that being said, Olympic Prime (CBC's 6 p.m.-midnight block) seems to be prime time for a lot of the best Games watching, though I can't speak for what goes on in the wee hours (though I've decided folks in Vancouver might just have it best of all).
Take Monday night, for example. We saw another action-packed swim session from the Water Cube and yes, another Michael Phelps gold medal (nope, it's not ho-hum here just yet). Then it was off to the gymnastics venue for all the emotion and drama of the men's team final, where we saw a Chinese team rise to national hero status (not to mention boot some huge weight off their shoulders) with a gold-medal triumph that had the home folks raising their roof.
Admittedly, the latter required staying up till about 12:45 a.m. — that's actually Pacific Prime territory — but the story being authored there was well worth it.
Know what? I can see myself doing it all over again tonight.
Now about some medals for Canada to really kick this show into overdrive ...
(and what do you figure the over-under is now on how many days before the 'what the hell is wrong with our athletes' debate fires itself up again? You know it's coming. Oops ... it already has. Taste some of the whine below this story).
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If you haven't heard, Nigel Reed and analyst Jason de Vos are calling women's soccer games for CBC off a monitor in Toronto. So, too, are the public broadcaster's crews for sailing, equestrian, taekwondo and weightlifting events. You'll also notice CBC has borrowed crews from New Zealand, Australia and the BBC for sports such as badminton and men's soccer.
But before you accuse the CBC of doing it on the cheap, consider that big-money NBC has its announcing teams for 13 sports working out of New York (archery, badminton, baseball, equestrian, fencing, field hockey, handball, weightlifting, shooting, soccer, softball, table tennis and tennis).
So what's next? Are they gonna tell us part of the Opening Ceremony broadcast was fake?