Recently, the 2000 Chinese Olympic team lost their bronze medal after Dong Fangxiao was discovered to be underage. The age discrepancy was discovered when Dong filed paperwork to be an official at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The US Olympic team will receive medals next month. Questions were also asked of the 2008 team; more than one of the athletes were suspected to be underage, although the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) has cleared them (my opinion is that they might mess up and be discovered to be underage in the future).

The Chinese government will make the athletes produce six different forms of ID to prove the athletes’ ages.

This would be good if the Chinese are actually sincere about their hopes to clear age-falsification; however, if this announcement is just for show, and the Chinese government is behind the age deception, then we might not see any changes soon. With the Youth Olympics, perhaps the Chinese won’t be in such a hurry to push their athletes into the wider stage at an earlier age than they are allowed.

The Youth Olympics will be streamed live over the Internet. I like to watch my television via Tivo, so that’s not going to work well for me. If they podcasted the YOG, that would work well too. Then I could just download the events to my iPod. That’s doubtful, as the Olympic organizers (at least in the past) haven’t been hot on letting their stuff be electronically distributed like that.

I know that Universal Sports is going to be streaming it. There should be some television coverage according to recent reports, but how much, I don’t know yet.

If you’re on Facebook, the Youth Olympic Games have their own page, and you can see pictures of the event. I’m not including the pictures here due to copyright reasons.

The modern Olympic flame did not originate with the first modern Olympics in 1896. It was re-introduced during the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics. The torch relay began with the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

If you ever get the chance to take part in a torch relay or Olympic flame ceremony, I highly recommend it. I was able to take part in the torch relay kickoff in Los Angeles for the Atlanta Games in 1996, and although most of the day was a blur, I do remember getting to run into the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum carrying the American flag, and it was awesome.

The flame will travel to Mexico City, Berlin, Dakar, and Seoul before it heads to Singapore for the game’s beginning on the 14th of August.

What I’m wondering is why do the Olympic organizers only think there are five continents? Has there been a change in international agreement on what a continent is, in the same way that Pluto was demoted to a “dwarf planet”? I’ve always been taught that there were seven continents. Obviously, there aren’t too many people interested in the Youth Olympic Games in Antarctica, but why aren’t they visiting both North and South America? Instead, the organizers lump North and South America into the “Americas”. if we’re going to go by that mindset, we should lump Europe and Asia together into one big supercontinent called Eurasia.

The flame is making it’s way around the world though. If you live near one of the cities that it will travel to, hope you get a chance to see it.

If you live in the UK, it’s time to get psyched up! This weekend is open weekend for the London 2012 games. There will be games-inspired events occurring around the country between now and the time of the Olympics.

You can see the schedule at London2012.com. If your family is looking for some free fun, check out the calendar. You can try out a variety of sports. I’ve always wanted to try out luge… wrong season though (I did go down a waterslide last week on an inner tube, I wonder if that counts.

You can look up the events by location, date, and by type.

For us that live outside the UK, we’ll just have to live vicariously through your experiences.

One person on a message board I visited questioned why there were only 28 states represented, and not 50. With only 82 athletes represented, it is only likely that less populous states like Alaska and Wyoming would have less of a chance to be represented. Furthermore, the Olympics are not a democracy. While the Youth Olympic Games are not intended to be as competitive as the main Olympics, we should be sending the most talented. It is likely that many of these athletes will compete in London in 2012; it’s better to send people that could use the experience in international competition.

There are two people from Arizona, although none of them are in gymnastics. We are only sending four gymnastics delegates; they represent both the artistic and rhythmic sides of the sport.

The Youth Olympic Games are only 26 days away. Some details, like the mascots and such, have been revealed, but there’s still a lot that remains to be seen. The above preview of the Youth Olympic Games Opening Ceremonies may provide a few clues about what awaits.

The opening ceremonies look like they will be a little edgier and younger than the traditional Opening Ceremonies. It does look like they will be injecting some local culture, but at the same time, they are including the unique aspects of youth culture (which I suppose varies around the world, but in many places has a lot of similarities, especially in this networked world).

I have mentioned before that the Olympics need to take advantage of technologies like the Internet and YouTube. Perhaps the Youth Olympics will act as a wedge to kick that door open and bring it about.

The Americans who raced in the women’s 4×400m relay at the 2000 Sydney Olympics have a reason to smile today: they will not have their medals taken away from them, even though their teammate Marion Jones did lose her medals for doping.

It wasn’t until 2003 that the IOC decided to take the medals away from all runners if one of the racers was disqualified. This case also follows precedent: on the gold-medal winning men’s relay team, US runner Jerome Young was retroactively banned from competing in the Olympics after it was discovered that he had been using steroids in 1999.

No word yet as to whether Crystal Cox’s relay teammates from 2004 will lose their medals: it was after the IOC decided to disqualify all of the medalists for the doping violations of one person, but she was an alternate on the team.

Juan Antonio Samaranch, who was head of the IOC from 1980 to 2001, died in Barcelona on Tuesday at age 89. His condition started to go downhill on Sunday, when he was admitted to the hospital.

Samaranch oversaw the Olympics during a time of upheaval; many changes were made during his time as IOC chair. In 1980 and 1984, boycotts kept several countries away. During his watch, professionals started to be allowed to compete. The Olympic schedule changed as well; rather than having a winter and summer Olympics every four years during the same year, the Olympics are now staggered. Several events were also added to the Olympics.

I personally started watching the Olympics during his term… although I was in preschool before that time, so I wouldn’t have remembered much anyway. My earliest Olympic memories were from the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics; I carried the American flag for the torch relay kickoff in Los Angeles for the 1996 Atlanta games, and I was able to visit the 2000 Sydney Olympic site while it was being built.

Olympic fans owe a debt of gratitude to this man, who brought the Olympics closer to where they are today.

The 2014 Sochi Olympic organizers were initially planning on building the world’s fastest, most difficult track for the next Olympics, but after the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, they are changing their plans. They still intend on building a course that is “technically very demanding”, but they are being careful to build a course that is safe.

The Olympic organizers plan on building the course as soon as possible. In fact, they hope to open the track and hold competitions on it by 2011.

In my view, building a safe track is a good idea. No matter what kind of track you have, the top Olympians will still be able to go down the track faster than your average bear. While the Whistler track is not extremely dangerous for the medal contenders, it is dangerous for people from the smaller countries (like Georgia) and from countries that don’t have well-developed luge programs. We can’t expect Felix Loch performance (he won the gold) from a Jamaican luger. The track needs to be safe for the Jamaican, as well as those that have a chance at the medal.