Olympics Blog

• Enlarge

Category: The scene

Beyond Beijing: Lightning Bolts And Laissez-Faire

With the XXth pick in the 2009 NFL draft, the Detroit Lions select ... Usain Bolt?

No, my money's on the Oakland Raiders to pull a stunt like that. And it's not going to happen, anyway. Bolt's got no intention of giving up the life he's got now, dancing and dashing and driving IOC president Jacques Rogge mad every four years.

But before I dive back into the real world -- specifically, NFL football -- here's a few thoughts on the last few weeks spent in Beijing:

1) What to expect of a post-Olympics China? In the short term, I don't think we should expect much, if any, change from a government that's likely feeling even more empowered after the Beijing Olympic successes. But I've always held the belief that a revolution comes from within, and I suppose that's where the hope lies for a more open society in China. The "Bird's Nest Generation" -- one-third of the 1.3 billion population here is age 10-29 -- will grow up with Western influences unlike anything the generations before have seen, and that's where the change will come from if it's coming at all.

But I'm no sociologist, so I'll stop there. Back to sports ...

2) As for Michael Phelps, it'll be interesting to see how he handles the fame this time around. Four years ago, a back injury and a DUI arrest made short work of the Olympic afterglow. This time, it'll be the tabloid frenzy and the overexposure that he'll have to deal with, even as he heads back home to Baltimore -- the new swimming Mecca -- and his new $1.7 million condo. He'll sign a bunch of big endorsement deals through 2012 and the London Games - worth tens of millions of dollars -- but the biggest deecision might be whether he'll leave Speedo for Nike in the next quadrennium.

2) Bolt's "a bad, bad man," as 200-meter silver medalist Shawn Crawford told me after the Jamaican had erased Michael Johnson's unbreakable record. If you ask me, he's a dream come true for the sport of track and field -- provided he's clean. And as naive as this sounds, I do think he's legit, based on his track record (a world junior champion at 15, and so on.) He'll be back on the track Friday at the biggest one-day Grand Prix meet of the year, running the 100. The message to would-be sponsors: Catch me if you can.

3) The Redeem Team did the job on the court. But what was even more important, perhaps, was the way they did their job off the court. In short, they acted like they cared. And I'll say this, too: Kobe Bryant might be a bigger international star than Michael Jordan ever was, as crazy as that sounds.

4) Best of the rest? The U.S. men's volleyball team winning gold was a heartwarming end to a tragic story; the Brits' golden bounty; the tearful press conference after Liu Xiang walked off the track will be hard to forget; Kenya's Sammy Wanjiru running arguably the greatest marathon in history; weightlifter Matthias Steiner's touching tribute; another heart-wrenching misfire for Matt Emmons; and, yes, Stephanie Rice.