You Can Go Home Again

Sometimes, the Olympics offer a revealing lesson about how the rest of the world thinks.
That there is reason to celebrate sport beyond the professional leagues we watch every day.
Take, for example, the story of Jujie Luan, an Edmonton fencer who has returned to the land of her birth for one last stab at Olympic glory. Luan is a national hero in China — she is the country's only Olympic gold medallist ever in fencing, having accomplished that feat in Los Angeles back in 1984 — and has been swarmed by the local media since her arrival at the Beijing Olympics.
Clearly, she is still revered in her homeland (and beyond, it would appear. Canada's most accomplished fencer ever, three-time Olympian Sherraine Schalm, posted an interesting tale about it all on her CBC blog).
Now this 50-year-old mother of three is back on the biggest stage of them all one last time. As we learned in a report by CBC's Mark Kelley, her entire family is here, including a teenage daughter who hopes to follow in her mother's footsteps as an Olympic fencer someday.
It's the kind of tale that escapes so many of us, who often forget there's a sporting world that exists beyond the multi-millionaires who play in the NHL, NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball. But for so many more, it's these stories that are the lure to the five-ring circus, the kind of thing that keep bringing us back for more each and every time the flame is lit.
*****
Apparently, the intrigue and anticipation about these Games wasn't a myth.
NBC reports that Beijing 2008 is on pace to be the most-watched Olympics in U.S. television history, and that's after just the first two days of the XXIXth Olympiad.
Through Saturday night, NBC Universal's networks (seven are being used for Beijing coverage) had attracted 114 million total viewers. That's four million better at the same point than Atlanta 1996, the most viewed games ever south of the border. It's also nearly 20 million ahead of the pace set at Athens 2004 (95 million).
Meanwhile, NBCOlympics.com pulled in a staggering 126.7 million page viewers over the first two days in Beijing, a 641% jump over Athens (17.9 million).
It's probably not hurting the cause, either, than NBC convinced Beijing organizers to schedule swimming (read: Michael Phelps) and gymnastics finals for morning start times (which are translating to prime time back home).
*****
We keep hearing about beach volleyball is one of the 'hot' sports of the Summer Olympics.
So how come every time they show it in Beijing, more empty seats can be clearly spotted at that venue than at any other we've seen at the 2008 Games so far.
Apparently, the Chinese didn't get the memo about this one.