Global Voices · Citizen media stories about Olympics

Special topic archive · 58 posts

These posts are from our coverage of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing China, curated by John Kennedy and sponsored by Reuters.

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12 August 2008

Brazil: Olympics, war and elections

Written by Paula Góes · Latin America

"I confess that I am the biggest fan of the Olympics and that I woke at 5 am on Saturday to see the Gymnastics competition. But every once in a while it is good to look further and see what is beyond an event as large as this", says a 16 year old blogger.

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China: Faking the Olympic opening ceremony, at what expense?

Written by John Kennedy · East Asia

The buzz on Tuesday was that two major components of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony had been faked, leaving a very bad taste in many bloggers' mouths.

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Malawi: Discussing development and the Olympics

Written by Steve Sharra · Sub-Saharan Africa

"Development" has been exercising the minds of Malawian bloggers lately. The approach has taken the form of highlighting efforts of Malawians abroad, Malawi's much touted fertilizer subsidy program, Malawi's presence at the Olympics and Chinese presence in Malawi, and a philosophical discourse on the problems that accompany the adoption of westernization as a development paradigm at the expense of tested and effective African ways.

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9 August 2008

Southeast Asia and Beijing Olympics

Written by Mong Palatino · East Asia

Close to 200 athletes from the Southeast Asian region are participating in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The big news (as far as the region is concerned) during the opening ceremonies are the exclusion of Brunei during the event and the “improper” waving of the Singaporean flag by the country’s flagbearer.

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China: More foreigners protest, aided by 2.0 tools

Written by John Kennedy · East Asia

Saturday saw another Free Tibet protest in Beijing, this time right from the middle of Tiananmen square. Qik.com vlogger noneck was at the scene to live-stream the protest, but that's not all that's going on right now..

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8 August 2008

China: Beijing doesn't love masks?

Written by Bob Chen · East Asia

Four U.S. athletes arrived at the airport in Beijing for the Olympics wearing masks over their mouths. Regardless of the air condition, many Chinese considered this behavior rude, and railed against them in online forums. The athletes have apologized. Are we being overly sensitive?

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5 August 2008

China: Tibetan protesters raise flag outside Olympic stadium

Written by John Kennedy · East Asia

Still waiting (updating below) for more details, but Qik.com vlogger Noel Hidalgo is at the scene and giving updates via Twitter. Here's a video he took just a few minutes...

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4 August 2008

China: Olympic sign taller than the Great Wall

Written by John Kennedy · East Asia

“1st thing I see as I ascend the wall,” writes Flickr user Moonage Daydreamer, “slogan for the Beijing 2008 Olympics…could be seen everywhere in China: on bumper stickers, sides of...

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1 August 2008

China: BBC lambasted for stock photo inaccuracy

Written by John Kennedy · East Asia

"We use LCD screens now, how could a photo with such an old monitor be called news? Do they think we haven't been developing here these past eight years? They can't even make fake news properly!"

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30 July 2008

China: All shook up by the torch relay

Written by John Kennedy · East Asia

It's a double-edged Olympic torch. Veteran sports journalist Guan Jun shares a short sketch on his Beijing Olympics blog of how disruptive preparations for the torch relay proved to be for those living alongside the road chosen for the relay route.

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Updates about Olympics

25 August 2008

Jamaica

“The pictures of the Jamaican track teams facilities haunt me. But what they prove, perhaps is that all the high tech this, that and the other can’t take the place of the sheer power of the human spirit”: Trinidadian blogger Attillah Springer wonders “if we have what it takes to produce a Usain Bolt and a Richard Thompson, how come so many of our people are being left behind in the dust?”

• Janine Mendes-Franco

Cuba

Caribbean Beat Blog congratulates Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago on their gold and silver medals in the Men's 4 x 100 Relay, while Child of the Revolution thinks that “Fidel Castro won’t be happy” with the Cuban Olympic medal count.

• Janine Mendes-Franco

Jamaica

Annie Paul gives a rundown of Jamaica's outstanding Olympic achievements, making the point that “the phenomenal performance of the Jamaican athletes is also due to the cultural self-confidence they feel…this is not a confidence manufactured by the abjectly self-conscious, respectability-seeking, hymn-singing English-speaking middle classes but one bred out of the flamboyant, boisterous, in-your-face Patwa-speaking population.”

• Janine Mendes-Franco

Cape Verde

Cape Verdean blogger Jorge Tolentino [pt] details the medals that the African countries brought back home from China and highlights: “In an overall total of 40 medals for the continent, 17 were won by women.”

• Paula Góes

China

Tomorrow yellow flowers from Pandemonium posted some photos of Funwa after the Olympics.

• Oiwan Lam

24 August 2008

China

Well we couldn't watch it on YouTube, but there was Twitter so we know the Beijing Olympics closing ceremony involved [note: links to profanity] some sort of [profanity] hot-pot tower of babel that spiderman climbed up…and we heard something about ants and a transformer bus. Anyway, we're very thankful we had it and we all learned a lot from the Olympic experience.

• John Kennedy

Dominican Republic

Duarte 101 [es] celebrates the gold medal of Félix Díaz for his win in the Olympics. It was the first time since 1984 that a boxer from the Dominican Republic brought home a gold medal.

• Eduardo Avila

Malaysia

A Malaysian badminton silver medalist found himself at the center of power struggle among Malaysia's political parties when he arrived home. Blogger 4896 advises politicians to spare athletes from political intramurals.

• Mong Palatino

Comments on "Olympics"

China: Beijing 2008 Olympics WordPress theme

Thanks for the resource!

中國的英雄。

Jamaica: "Lightning" Strikes Twice at Beijing Olympics

Bolt is great! He is a demiGod, faster than Flash Gordon, really a living legendary hero. He acquired perfectly Johnson...
phantastic bolt, jome............. mbaya