I’ve now been on the ground for 24 hours and I’ve been impressed by two things. First, that this event is extremely well organized, and secondly, that everyone in China is eager to help anyone in town with a yellow badge around their neck.    Read More  >

I arrived in an old terminal at PEK — not the fancy new one — so I was a little surprised to see a Hermes shop inside.

Two people decked out in the costumes of two of the Olympic mascots greeted us in the terminal area. The airport was decked out with Olympic sponsorship signage — UPS had signage on the baggage collection area, Samsung had billboards and Panasonic had some signage as well.    Read More  >

Thirteen hours is a long time to sit in a plane seat, but my trip did make me miss college.

I was seated beside two rising sophomores at the University of Virginia, or as the Wahoos say, two rising “second years.” They bought tickets to three events — diving, basketball and baseball — through RazorGator. They thought their basketball tickets were for a men’s game. Turned out, they said, to be for a women’s game between Ukraine and Cuba.

“It’s going to be awesome,” the guy from Nashville said sarcastically.    Read More  >

The international SOS pack

Over the course of the last two months, Jay Weiner (our correspondent), Tom Stinson (our Olympics editor) and I have held weekly conference calls about how we’re going to cover the Games. At the end of each one, I typically bounced a question or two off Jay about covering the Olympics. He helped answer everything from how to get a phone that works in China (buy a GSM phone and plan on popping a Sim card in when you get there) to what an RF is and why I needed to register for it (it’s so you can get wireless Internet in the Main Press Center).

The last question I asked Jay before he left for Beijing last week was how to pack for the Olympics.

“Yeah,” Stinson said, “I wouldn’t want you all to clash or wear the same thing.”    Read More  >

When I went to study abroad in London during college through Boston University, they sent me a reading list of books to thumb through before I arrived. I didn’t read a single one. London seemed familiar and I knew my British history.

China? Not so much.

When I got credentialed to cover the Olympics last year, I knew the basics. A fifth of the world’s population. A booming economy. A lot of factories taking U.S. jobs. In other words, I didn’t know a lot, so I created my own list. Check it out and cram in what you can over the next few weeks.    Read More  >

It started, like most jobs do, with a phone call.

I was sitting in my car in a Long Island parking lot nearly two summers ago sweating and waiting for my phone to ring. My internship at Newsday was nearly over, and I was expecting a call from SportsBusiness Journal’s executive editor about an opening at the magazine. I didn’t know what to expect but was hoping for an offer.

“We want you to cover hockey and soccer and probably action sports, but I really want your focus to be on the Olympics,” SBJ’s Abe Madkour said. “We’ll probably want you to go to China.”    Read More  >