Summer Olympics News

My wife and I have been very busy this week, so I wanted to go ahead and share a few of the more interesting 2008 Summer Olympics related stories from around the web this week:

Beijing Olympics Airport: World’s Biggest Airport Opens in Beijing
This post has very cool pictures of the new Beijing airport.

Many hotel rooms still vacant for Beijing Olympics
This is good news for people planning on traveling to the Olympics this year.

Olympic Sponsors Cheer the Home Team
This is very interesting article about the way sponsors are advertising in this Olympics.

GYMNASTICS: Paul Hamm has surgery on hand
Story about Olympic gold medalist Paul Hamm’s hand surgery and how it affects his changes to compete in the upcoming Olympics.

Shawn Johnson won’t be an official member of the U.S. Gymnastics Olympic Team until the Olympic trials in June. But as the reigning world champion, it’s hard to imagine she won’t make the team. I recently read a nice profile on Shawn that I though I’d share with you all.

The U.S. National Gymnastics Championships were televised this weekend. Five of the girls are potential U.S. gymnastics Olympic hopefuls.

Shawn Johnson won the national title. At 16, she could definitely be in contention for an Olympic title. She makes no bones about wanting to hold an all-around Olympic gymnastics title.

Other gymasts in the top five were Nastia Liukin, Ivana Hong, Shayla Worley and Alicia Sacramore.

It’s still a long way off, but the USA Gymnastics Committee has set the date and the city for the Olympic trials for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. The event will be held in Philadelphia in June of 2008.

It’s always amazing to me that teams are chosen so close to the event. When I was younger, I thought Olympic teams were chosen years before the Olympics, not weeks. But, of course, this year’s champion may be next year’s broken down ex-athlete. Choosing so close to the Olympics is the best opportunity to get athletes at their peak.

Hot on the heels of the new figure skating scoring system, gymnastics is also implementing a new scoring system. Similar to the skating system, there will be a difficulty score and an execution score. The new system was used for its first competition at last weekend’s American Cup in Philadelphia. Two Texans won the international competition.