Hobart

In Sydney they call them community cauldrons and were lit every night in a community celebration. The city/council got to keep them after the games. I was surprised to find one in Ballarat, Victoria being used as a door stop. Stood about waist height and wasn’t in very good condition.

After 4 European cities bid for the 2012 games and lost out the USA the European IOC members all got together and convinced the IOC President (still Rogge) to implement a rotation policy for bidding cities. Europe 2016 South America 2020 Asia/Oceania 2024 and then the rotation policy was scrapped before 2024 by the new IOC President who was from USA. Sounds a bit like FIFA really.

1996 – Athens wins and is slow to start but just makes it in time and runs the best and friendliest games ever a true reflection on what the Olympics means after 100 years. Coke spits the dump about games not going to Atlanta and pulls all IOC and NOC sponsorships world wide but Chines soft drink maker that no one out of China has ever heard of steps in and gets a better deal than Coke ever had. 1998 – Nagano win with better bribes and gifts for IOC Members then Salt Lake. Salt Lake blows the whistle on what they did to try and get the games. IOC runs a full investigation and dumps Nagano as

the timing of this is interesting. Still wont stop me from going to Beijing

I have booked the below hostel and 10 nights is about AU$2700 and they guy i have been emailing has been really good. http://www.qianmenhostel.com/docc/about.html

I have had an email from CoSport saying they had to shut down there server in Australian site as they were being hacked at that time. I did manage to get tickets late at night (aus time) I then found the next day we had 5 orders confirmed that when I was in the payment screen came back with an error and your cart is empty. I then had 5 lots tickets for the same events same days and they have since refunded. Even got a call when the credit card declined so after first thinking CoSport were crap it has all worked out in the end. Just hope there are tickets from Hockey, Basketball and Softball (a