A weekend at the Bird's Nest -- as close as I'll probably get to the Olympics

Left Coast Leaner A weekend at the Bird's Nest -- as close as I'll probably get to the Olympics

Last month I got a chance to attend the Good Luck Beijing Athletics Open at the Bird's Nest, or the National Stadium in Beijing. The place is simply stunning, as you can see below. Not that amateurish pictures like these can give you any kind of appreciation for how truly amazing the building is. I'm not one to swoon over potential white elephants, but I can't help but be utterly amazed, transfixed even, every time I take a taxi ride by either the Bird's Nest or the Water Cube, both of which are less than a mile away from my apartment. I can even see the lights in the sky when the Cube glows its deep blue, bright purple, lime green or psychedelic cascade of all four. (It looks like a Toon Town fixture in the daylight, surreal and almost out of place against the harsh reality surrounding it.)

Anyway, I saw some events and some stars. I saw Liu Xiang -- the Chinese superstar hurdler (and former 110m hurdles world record holder) who is probably relatively unknown outside China but who is on countless billboards, magazine covers and TV ads over here -- nearly double fault in his semifinal race, which would have been extremely disappointing to the 45,000 or so fans who were there only to see him run for 13 seconds.

That was fun and some other event were cool, but the real reason I was there was to interview the world's top-ranked women's shot putter, New Zealand's Valerie Vili. It was another one of the nearly intolerable athlete profiles I've had to write for the paper. This one about Vili, however, turned out to be by far the best one I've written, even though shot put is not necessarily the most exciting sport out there. It just goes to show that it is so much easier to produce good writing by doing real journalism (i.e. going to talk to people face to face and see them perform) than the e-mail correspondence crap I usually have to do.

Speaking of which, here's my most recent profile about US gymnastics star Shawn Johnson, an epilogue of sorts to one of my first stories here about her Chinese coach, Liang Chow, in a link with a godawful series of typos (CD's website is complete shit, by the way).

Now, some pics:

Bird's Nest in the day

Bird's Nest at night... nice reflection in the moat thing. Wish I had a better camera.

Sudanese 800m runner Amna Bakhit stands atop the podium. It was something of a surprise victory for the teenager from one of the most troubled regions on the planet. She caught my eye 1) because of where she's from and 2) because she ran her race barefoot. That's right. She said after the race "I train with shoes, but for big competitions I wear no shoes." Now that's something. Though it's doubtful she'll be here in August, it's people like her that make us care about sport.

Nest, Water Cube, and the 7-star hotel that is supposedly shaped like a torch (or is it a dragon...?). Still not sure what a 7-star hotel is, but I imagine at least half a star is added for the view of the stadiums. I also imagine I'll never set foot in one.