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As everyone is probably aware, the Summer Olympics are going on right now in Beijing. Due to the time difference and the fact I have to work full time, I don’t have a chance to see many of events. Usually I just catch some of the re-broadcasts in the evening. In terms of badminton, matches are nearly non-existent on local TV stations. For some reason, the Canadian channel keeps airing beach volleyball every single day. I guess beach volleyball is popular (the women just wear enough to cover up the vital spots), but I don’t think it’s *that* popular. However, I can’t say that the Canadian broadcaster didn’t air any badminton, because they actually did. The match they aired was the women’s single round of 16 match between Canada’s own Anna Rice and the world’s no. 2 Lu Lan. As expected, Lu pummeled Rice in straight sets for the easy victory. However, the fact that Rice made it to the round 16 is an achievement itself, but of course nobody really expected her to go very far in the tournament. Now that the only Canadian hope is gone, I don’t think there will be any more badminton airing on TV again. That’s okay though since JP has managed to find a website that streams the Chinese broadcast of the Olympic Games, so we can watch badminton that way. I watched one match on the web. The match was a women’s doubles match between China’s defending Olympic champions and a Japanese duo. The Chinese crushed the Japanese in the first game 21-8. However, in the second set the Japanese steadied their nerves and things started to go downhill from there for the defending champ. After a lot of back and forth action, the Japanese won the second game 23-21. I think after the second set the Chinese duo was worn out both physically and mentally, and they ended up dropping the third game 14-21 and are consequently booted from the tournament. From watching the game, JP and I felt that the Chinese team wasn’t mentally into the game. They looked like they were just going through the motions and there wasn’t any passion or excitement, and that’s probably one of the reasons why they were upset by the Japanese.
Those are the only two matches I “sort of” watched. I probably won’t try to follow the games like JP does, but I’ll do my best to catch the gold medal games for each of the badminton events. That’s all for now.