There are a lot of different cycling events. Some are short events that take place on a track. There is a long road race; in Beijing, riders were able to ride by some great places like the Forbidden City and the Great Wall of China. BMX has recently been added to the Olympics.

Cycling seems to be a popular sport with Olympians that compete in both the Winter and Summer Olympics. You may remember Chris Witty (another C word), who took the gold in the 1000m women’s speed skating event in Salt Lake City. Although she didn’t medal, she did place fifth at the cycling time trials for the 500m event. Clara Hughes received a gold medal in the 5000m speed skating race in the Torino Olympics, as well as two bronze medals in the 1996 Atlanta games.

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.

USA Gymnastics has just reported that Alicia Sacramone is trying to make a comeback into gymnastics at age 22. At age 20, she was one of the older (if not the oldest) competitor on the 2008 Beijing Olympic team.

Sacramone won the silver medal, along with the rest of her team in 2008 (although if He Kexin or any of the Chinese teammates are discovered to be underage, that may be upgraded to a gold in about a decade, like the 2000 team). Many of her teammates, including Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin, are also competing, but they were much younger when they competed in the Olympics.

She is doing the same beam routine that she did at the Olympics, and is now working on her floor exercises.

Her first challenge will be to make nationals. She has to do well at the 2010 Covergirl Classic, which will be held on July 24th. If she does well there, she can compete at the 2010 Visa Championships in August.

Sacramone didn’t do her best performance in Beijing, and it’s good to see her getting back into the game, especially at an older age. I wish her luck.

Cullen Jones is an athlete that has decided to help others. He was part of the gold-medal winning 4×100m freestyle relay team that won gold in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. While Michael Phelps may have overshadowed Jones (and every other swimmer during that Olympics), Jones is one of those individuals that has become an inspiration not because he can swim, but because he chooses to serve.

Cullen Jones wasn’t always an excellent swimmer. He nearly drowned when he was five. He has used his status as a world-class swimmer to start the Make a Splash foundation, which teaches African-American children how to swim.

70 percent of African-American children either can’t swim or can only swim very little. I’m not sure why this is, but I do remember that in boot camp, there were quite a few of my African-American shipmates in my boot camp company that had to go to swimming lessons. Perhaps they have very little access to water; maybe they have less money for things like swimming lessons. Whatever the reason, I’m glad that we have one Olympic athlete that is taking time to help others.

In a world where there are so many people who reach a certain level and use their fame and popularity for themselves, it’s nice to see someone take some time out for others.

It’s time to dust off any Olympic history books that you might have, because history has changed. The U.S. team of Elise Ray, Amy Chow, Kristin Maloney, Dominique Dawes, Tasha Schwikert-Warren, and Jamie Dantzscher, who originally placed fourth at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, are now bronze medalists. Congratulations!

In 2000, China won the bronze medal. While some of the gymnasts looked young, they were able to prove that they were at least 16 and could participate. If you watched the 2008 Beijing Olympics, does this sound familiar?

In 2008, Dong Fangxiao applied to be an official at the Beijing Olympics. She turned in her paperwork to apply for the job, and guess what… she was not yet 24. Why would that be a problem? While people don’t have to be 24 to be an official at the Olympics, they do have to be 16 to participate in the gymnastic events at the Olympics. Dong was one of the bronze-medal winning gymnasts in 2000. If she wasn’t yet 24 in 2008, that means that she wasn’t yet 16 in 2000, and she wasn’t eligible to participate in those Olympics.

The International Olympic Committee can work very slowly. While they discovered this two years ago, they finally removed the bronze medal from the 2000 Chinese team today and awarded it to the United States, who placed fourth.

Dong Fangxiao did not win any other medals in the 2000 Olympics. She did place below the medal level in some of the other events; I’m assuming that in the official records, she will be disqualified in those events and other Olympians will be upgraded.

As far as the 2008 Olympics go, the IOC still accepts the passports of the gymnasts from that Olympics; however, a blogger did discover documents that showed that a couple of the gymnasts were underage. I personally believe that a couple of the passports were falsified. Should information come out that Chinese gymnasts were underage, those gymnasts would likely lose their medals as well.

Although the swimming world was focused on Michael Phelps in 2008, another swimmer had an impressive year as well. This swimmer was Natalie Coughlin. In any other era, her accomplishments would seem amazing.

Coughlin’s first Olympics was in Athens in 2004. There, she won two gold medals, two silver medals, and a bronze. In 2008, while everyone was paying attention to Michael Phelps, she won one gold, two silver, and three bronze medals, for a total of 11 medals total. In Beijing, she was the first female athlete to win six medals at one Olympics.

Coughlin is currently 27 and still practices at the pool; hopefully we will see her return in 2012. Outside of swimming, she has been on Dancing with the Stars (Season 1). She got married in 2009. She likes to cook; she has been a judge on Iron Chef America, and recently appeared on “The View From the Bay” as a guest chef. Click on the link to see her on View from the Bay.

In 1948, London hosted what would be known as the “austerity Olympics”. The world was just emerging from world war. Simon Jenkins of the UK Guardian argued for a return to the austerity Olympics… way back in 2008. Things have not improved since.

For London, many of the cogs are already in place. But it’s not too late for Rio to host their own austerity games. There are some things that they have to do… they need to make sure that Rio is safe when the world arrives there. They need to have places for the athletes to compete. Even some of the infrastructure needs to be built. However, in tough times, do we really need to try to best the 2008 Beijing Olympics? There are ways to cut costs, and perhaps Brazil should look into that. They have hosted major soccer events in the past, that can be a base for their austerity Olympics. If London can host a pared-down games after coming out of war (where their city was bombed), then Rio can offer a pared-down version of the games.

In 2018 and 2020, it is possible that the games will be awarded to the countries that are performing the best financially. Hopefully we will be pulling out of the economic doldrums by then, but much of the work to build the games will have to come several years before the games are held. Do we really need to spend that much on the Olympic games anyway?

Until the world economy turns around, perhaps we should keep things simple.

The 2008 Beijing Olympics were definitely one that you did not want to miss. The two-week event started off with an unforgettable opening ceremony. China, with a population of over a billion people, was able to amass a huge number of volunteers and put together an event that you would never forget.

Some of the highlights of the Beijing Olympics include Michael Phelps achieving a record-setting eight gold medals in one Olympics, Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin’s performances in gymnastics, and Usain Bolt, with his insanely fast runs.

What would a good Olympics be without a little controversy? In 2008, there were several. Many questioned the Chinese gymnast’s ages. Although one googler found documents to prove otherwise, the IOC accepted the girl’s passports, which said they were 16 (they need to maintain this facade for the rest of their lives, or they might find themselves losing their medal, even eight years from now). Usain Bolt showboated at the end of a run and caused an uproar. Both the men’s and women’s US relay teams dropped their batons (argh!).

In all, the 2008 Beijing Olympics were quite memorable. While the athletics are likely to be good in 2012, London is unlikely to be able to produce the same kind of spectacle that Beijing did. They are already having financially difficulties, mainly due to the recession.

The weather is starting to warm up around here (maybe not everywhere, but I live in Arizona), and I’ve started to think about my summer plans. It’s a good time to start thinking about some summer Olympians. While the summer Olympics has some excellent sports, when you think about summer, you can’t help but to think about swimming.

If you were to ask 100 Americans to name a summer Olympian, more than likely, most of them would say Michael Phelps. While athletes like Shawn Johnson and Usain Bolt also come to mind, Phelps piqued the interest of quite a few people in 2008, when he broke the record for the most gold medals won in a single Olympics.

Phelps’ first turn at the Olympics was in 2000, where he competed in the Sydney Olympics at age 15. He didn’t win any medals that year, but he did get some valuable experience, that he put to good use in the 2004 Athens Olympics, where he won six gold and two bronze medals. In 2008, he beat that total, winning eight gold medals, and beating Mark Spitz’s record of seven golds in one Olympics.

Phelps is an ambassador for this summer’s first Youth Olympic Games. He also plans to compete in the 2012 Olympics, but he has said that he doesn’t plan on trying to repeat or better his feat.

Jaques Rogge says that he’s looking for age cheaters at the Youth Olympic Games. The first Youth Olympic Games will be held this summer in Singapore, and will be for ages 14-18. This is a good and noble goal, and I applaud him for it. However, he’ll need to do a better job than he has in the past.

Most of us who watched the 2008 Beijing Olympics may remember the Chinese gymnasts who looked like they were under age. They had “passports” that said that they were old enough to compete. However, one astute person was able to find documents using Google that said that He Kexin, who won gold on the women’s uneven bars, was 14 years old. He Kexin will be eligible to compete in this year’s Youth Olympic Games, but she will need to continue to lie about her age, or she could lose her medals from Beijing (she also won a team gold medal).

One of the Chinese gymnasts from Sydney, Dong Fangxiao, forgot about this. When she turned in paperwork to participate as an official in the Beijing Olympics… Surprise! Her Beijing paperwork says that she would have been 14 at the time of the 2000 Olympics. Yang Yun, another gymnast from 2000, is also suspected to have been underage. In a recent decision by the IOC, Dong Fangxiao has been confirmed to have been underage, and recommendations are now being made to remove her team medal, as well as those of the Chinese team. Once these recommendations are acted on, the US team from 2000 will move up into bronze-medal position.

Hopefully there will be no age cheating, but I’m doubtful. They also plan on looking for drug cheaters.