大象传媒

Wukesong Arena, Beijing

For 15 minutes, it was a contest.

China, starting with their totemic leader , were raining them in from deep while the "Redeem Team" played "me ball", each member of the cast trying to outdo the other like an Olympic version of .

But it couldn't last - and saw to that - and with an estimated audience of one billion at home, and one head of state in the house, American authority was emphatically underlined. Or was it?

OK, this latest reincarnation of the original (and still the best) ended this basketball battle with a , but who's winning the ?

lost the limelight in Macau on Wednesday as the were in town!

, , et al tuned up for their assault on Olympic gold with a couple of matches here against Turkey and Lithuania, so down I rushed to the ludicrously massive - twice the size of the Vegas version on which it's based and capable of holding a staggering 20,000 people - to join the media scrum.

With Beijing getting closer I've slipped on my Olympic-ringed spectacles to patrol the web for highlights.

How did anybody hear anything about an Olympics or its build-up before Mr Web popped up on our office desks with his new toy the internet? The occasional newspaper feature, books, pigeons carrying the latest qualifying results must have been the only way.

Trawling through the online archives, it seems 1996 was a bit of a watershed for internet coverage of the Games. We'll forgive them for the shoddy graphics, but the likes of the , and were on the ball for Atlanta. Sssshhhhh, whisper this quietly, but the 大象传媒's news website didn't even start breathing until a year after that. Auntie had to wait until for her first Olympic effort.

Welcome to our Olympics and Paralympics blog, which we are launching as the countdown to the begins in earnest.

Wednesday marks exactly 100 days to go to the 8 August opening ceremony (though oddly enough the football tournament starts two days earlier).

Writers from across 大象传媒 Sport, Radio 5Live, 大象传媒 London and 大象传媒 News will bring you the inside track on all , as well as the Games themselves - which are set to be truly fascinating, if controversial, given China's hosting of them.

One of the uncertainties at the moment from a British perspective is whether the Games will turn out to be a triumph - or a failure. My view is...

Keep reading this blog for all the latest about the Olympics and Paralympics in Beijing and also for the inside track on the long build-up to London 2012.

News and reports will be on the but our experts will bring you behind the scenes access to the world's biggest sporting event right here.

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