Olympic fever

Olympic fever has hit our household, mostly because of the tennis nuts that live here! Like many citizens of the world, we watched the opening ceremonies in the comfort of our living room. Well, Keanu and I only saw the first half as we decided to go to bed at 10 - we got bored after watching an hour of athletes march in. However, Kevin was a trooper for the whole 4 hours and it's a good thing he did. Towards the end of the ceremony, 8 people carried the Olympic flag into the stadium and of course the comemtators announced who these people were. Being the socialite that he is, Kevin recognized one of the names from when he was studying in Seattle about 9 years ago. She had been there improving her English so she could work for the International Olympic Committee after retiring as a 13-time world badminton champion. At the time they were studying together, Kevin knew she was an athlete, but not a champion.

Tennis in Taiwan is a pretty close-knit group and so if you know a few players, it's easy to get to know the others. Kevin never planned to go the professional route, but since he's still in the sport, he knows alot of people. It's no surprise that he knows one of the guys who is representing Taiwan in Beijing this week. The interesting part of the story is that the Taiwanese tennis association didn't think this guy, Lu, would do very well so they didn't send a coach with him. Well, on Monday he beat #6 Murray of GB in the first round and on Tuesday he beat an Argentinian to put him in the third round, the round of 16. Well, he wasn't so fortunate today and lost in just 2 sets, but I would say he proved something to the local tennis assoc.

So far Taiwan has 2 bronze medals (that's two more than Canada!) and the big story here is that the coach who helped bring those weightlifting medals is actually Chinese!

I haven't heard much about specifics from America, but it sounds as if Phelps is doing what he set out to do and the US is doing well in the medal counts. I guess that's what's important.

More to come about our future Olympian!