The U.S. loses to Norway

It was foggy. It was humid. The stadium was barely one-third filled.  No doves. No trumpets. No government officials. No political demonstrations.

But the Olympics opened in the seaport city of Qinhuangdao on Wednesday night. And the U.S. women’s soccer team kicked off the tournament with a disappointing 2-0 loss to Norway.

---

It is likely a reflection of the pack mentality of the U.S. Olympic media corps or a lack of interest in women’s soccer, but there were fewer than a dozen U.S. news organizations represented in the stadium press box. Strange. Shouldn’t we all document the real beginning of these much anticipated Games?

Perhaps it was the distance, about 200 miles away.

Driving east from Beijing, the sky didn’t clear. It remained a gauzy white. The freeway was filled for about 30 minutes with the dense Beijing traffic, and then it disappeared. Soon, hills emerged.

Framed by fields of green — lots and lots of corn stalks — the official media bus from the Olympic city to Qinhuangdao motored Wednesday morning to the first event of the Olympics for a U.S. team.

But leaving Beijing we entered a different China. Gone were the western-style billboards. Bikes dominate. English is not spoken as easily or as well here in Qinhuangdao.

Some organizational notes: Transportation for the media in the run-up to the Games has been on time and friendly. But the Qinhuangdao security volunteers weren’t quite ready for us when we arrived about 20 minutes earlier than our scheduled 2 p.m. arrival. They had waited for this moment, but the metal detectors weren’t quite revved up.

We got a chance to see what an Olympic venue will look like. BOCOG officials have announced that most of the events in the host city are sold out, and tonight in Qinhuangdao Olympic Sports Center Stadium, the crowd was announced at 17,673.

No way. A World Football League ex-pat must have been counting. In the 33,000-seat stadium, I’d call it 8,000. There seemed to be more people in the blue and orange seats for the first game of the night between Japan and New Zealand, which ended in a 2-2 tie.

For color patterns, the facility was awash in yellow and orange. Of course, Olympic stadiums are “clean,” so there is no corporate signage. The soccer field was surrounded on its perimeter by barriers of orange, blue and yellow. The Olympic five rings were the dominant impression with intermittent Beijing 2008 logos.

At the start of the game, there was a smattering of, “Yu-Es-Ays, Yu-Es-Ays,” but when the Americans quickly fell behind 2-0, the handful of Americans quieted down. An intermittent “Nor-way!” screamed through, but otherwise the crowd was knowledgeable and non-partisan.

If you have never heard of Qinhuangdao, it is substantial, with a population of 2.8 million people, about the same population as the St. Louis metro area, but only about 800,000 of the citizens live in the city. It remains rural despite countless high-rise apartment buildings in the city center and a key port.

But it’s one of 200 Chinese cities with populations over 1 million. Ponder that.

On the food front, I had vowed not to eat in stadiums. Olympic stadium food is never good. Why do I forget this?

Day One confirms this. Because there was nothing else that appealed to me in the 85-degree heat — dried noodles were a possibility — I bought a pre-packaged “hot dog.”

It was wrapped like a piece of pastry might be at a convenience store. The “hot” dog was cold. The bun was sweet. I’d politely call it a soggy croissant. I bought a soda — Coke, of course, a TOP sponsor.

Together that “meal” cost me 13 Yuan, or about $2.

I have renewed my stadium no-food vow.

Now, back on the bus to the pack of reporters who missed the start of it all.