Sir Rols

Thanks CAF, I knew you'd remember. I must check it out again next time I'm in Hamburg.

I agree that the thing is with trains, they sure beat air travel in terms of practicality, at least in moderate distances. But I also tend to think the reason they haven't succeeded in places like Australia and Canada is not just a question of longer distances but also of population. (though Australia has other problems as well _ try the fact that each State here hiostorically has different gauge tracks). The reason they're so popular in places like Europe and Japan is you have very large populations using them regularly for medium distance travel _ I guess we in Oz and Canada just don't have such large population centres so close to each other to make them economically viable. Pity. That said, the idea of a high speed rail line linking Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne is one that often gets mooted from time to time. I've never heard of Brio, though I have at various times had train sets and done layouts with landscapes etc. I've tended to mainly use German kits _ Fleishmann and Marklin. When I was with CAF in hamburg he took me to see what I think is one of the largest model railway layouts in the world _ a really huge one recreating various towns in Germany, a US area and a new one (I didn't see because it wasn't finished yet) set in Scandinavia. Maybe CAF can remember the name of the exhibit and post pics of it. One thing I'd love to do is take a trip on one of the famous luxury routes _ the Orient Express or the Blue Train. Thougb maybe I'd better leave it a few decades _ I hear they're mostly full of older, retired travellers.

Seeing as we've had a few threads for the numerous aviation buffs here, I wondered if we had any rail buffs here, and if they had a favourite fast train system. I don't call myself a big train fan, but I do like train travel (especially in Europe _ Aussie trains are sh!t), and have travelled on a number of the high speed services _ TGV (France), ICE (Germany), X2000 Sweden, Shinkansen (Japan) and favour the German ICE system by far _ very nicely kitted out inside, very smooth ride. TGV _ France ICE _ Germany X2000 _ Sweden Shinkansen _ Japan

Meh, it's okay. Nothing really groundbreaking or memorable.

As I mentioned, maybe once or twice a day (and I'm usually logged on during the full working day with GB in a window in the background), and I can always get straight back on anyway.

Since the redesign of the site I've had the problem that every now and then out of the blue my browser says it can't continue to run the script on the page and then locks out. It's more an annoyance than a fatal flaw _ it's easy enough to log back on, and it doesn't happen a lot (maybe once or twice a day) but it does happen on both my work and my home PC.

Who said the 2008 Games can't help bring the two China's together?

I can see this whole issue of press freedoms becoming the big issue in the lead-up to the games. I just don't know if the Chinese realise how much scrutiny their society is going to be under by the world press in the lead-up.

How ever many medals Canada gets, that first gold one will be THE big one! Finally, the home-turf monkey off your backs. It would be a great moment to be in the crowd to watch that.

I like what the Chinese have done with both the Olympic and paralympic mascots. As Baron said, that's what these things should be, something cute with an appeal to kids, not some excercise in post-modern graphic designm one-upmanship. Nobody remembers the paralympic mascots anyway. I can't for the life of me at the moment remember what Sydney or Athens did.

It looks like the wheels are rolling to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Melbourne Games in November:

How do they know if they don't try it? For the past few games they haven't even attempted it. It's a formula that seems to work in Oz (I'm not sure about Europe but I expect it does there too). Thos keen to see it live get uop to watch it at whatever hour (or crowd round the TV in their workplace), and then the local broadcasters can promote the hell out of it during the day leading up to primetime highlights. It sure works better than trying to oretend nothing has happened at all, but finding the internet has stolen all the thunder out of the action.

This seems to be the only thread where's there's a bit of action, passion and indignation happening. This whole thing just smacks of hypocricy by NBC. They blame their falling viewership for the past few Olympics on bad time zones and lack of live medal events, when it was their CHOICE to go with tape delay, giving them time to put together their little story vignettes to pad out the action that they seem to think US viewers are so enamoured of. With Sydney, for example (about the same time zone as Beijing), they had plenty of morning medal finals they could have shown live in US prime time (including at least one day session of swimming finals). But, no, ALL had to go on delay. Ditto Athens. Actually European games are a bigger problem for them. US prime time is dark AM hours in Europe. I wonder if they're gonna demand 2-3am finals in London? Actually, I wonder if this is more a negotiating stance by NBC. They know they are demanding too much, but are putting in an ambit claim in the expactation that they won't get their way but will be bought off with some other events.

Fair enough, mate. It's good to get genuine debate going here. I have no sympathy for NBC though. If they want to overbid just so someone else (Fox) doesn't sneak through to steal their "The Olympic Network" crown, it's their problem if they can't recoup their investment.

So in other words, from now on the only needs that count are the convenience of the domestic USA TV audience, and the rest of the world, the athletes and the hosts can go to hell!

The argument that "The US (NBC) pays most for the rights so they are within their rights to dictate WHEN events should be held" is such a facetious one anyway. If you accept that, then you would have to also accept "NBC pays the most for the games, so they are within their rights to dictate WHERE the games are being held". That would solve everything _ no need for any country to campaign to the IOC to win the games, the decision only need be taken at NBC boardroom in NY whether this time around the games will go to a US East Coast or West Coast city. It all comes down to what are the Olympic Games _ a gathering of the elite athletes of the world to compete in a spirit of friendship and togetherness to hopefully foster international cooperation, or a schedule filler designed to meet ther needs of the NBC programming department?

Of course, but it's their problem if they bid for and land the rights for the games before the hosts are chosen. When NBC bid for and won the rights for the games from 2008 up to 2012 they must have decided that the price they were willing to pay was a fair one even before they knew what time zone they were going to be in. If any of those games were in the American time zone, it would have been a big bonus. If not, well, that's the risk they took. Anyway, you still didn't answer the big question _ why are Americans the only ones in the world who can't cope with the idea of watching events live no matter when they're held? Why does NBC think tape delay highlights are preferable to actually shopwing the events when they're happening then showing the highlights later on again in prime time? The live coverage model seems to affect ratings less in the Oz and European markets than the delay everything model does in the US. Why shouyld the comfort and laziness of Mr and Mrs Fat-Arsed Couch Potato in Wichita need to outweigh the needs of the the elite athlete wanting the conditions that help them produce their personal best in Europe or Asia.

And so have we _ but we don't whinge about it and try to get the times changed to suit us. That's the point, the games move around and at any one time, two thirds of the world have to accomodate their lives to watch events out of their time zone. For those of us in the same time zone, it's a bonus _ it doesn't happen all the time and that's one of the big incentives to want to have such events in our time zones. Actually, a correction. We haven't been dealing with tape delay because we simply DON'T do it. What is it about US viewers that they can't cope with the idea of switching on their TVs outside of evening prime time to watch events? That's part of the fun of watching the games. We broadcast the games live whatever time their on, and if our athletes have a good chance in an event that's being broadcast at 3am the keen ones wake up to watch it live. And if we win, we watch it and watch it and watch it again throughout the next day. It actually works to get the viewership up the next evening for highlights as well _ there's no better advertisement for olympics coverage than to go into work in the morning and get greeted by comments like: ""Did you get up to watch Thorpie's win last night? It was amazing!''. It seems to only be Americans (or rather, the scheduling execuitives in NBC) who seem to think that if an event falls outside of 7pm-11pm US eastern time nobody is going to watch. Then they complain that viewer numbers are down for their tape delays because people already know the results off the internet, or Canadian TV, or whatever. Well, hello!, why not actually broadcast the events for once live for those who are really keen, and then you can use the highlights in promos during the day to get people's interest up for the night's highlights. It just might actually be better marketing than trying to enforce an artificial and unworkeable news blackout. Anyway, as has been pointed out time and time again on this thread, the comfort and convenience of couch potatoes in whatever particular segment of the world should be way down the list of considerations when scheduling events anyway. At the end of the day, for an organisation that trumpets so much that their decisions and choices are supposed to be in the best interests of the athletes, the IOC should be heeding what the athletes say in this matter.

Well, it looks like the athletes are ghoing to mobilise against it! Athletes want records before ratings! And they must surely be the final arbiters on the issue.

Sydney followed the standard FINA program _ heats in the morning and finals at night.

Interesting. Wonder if it will delay construction work?

Thanks. I always assumed it would be Happy Valley or Sha Tin, but then saw the station and wondered. Great pics. What about the Three Day Event cross-country course? Where will that be? Can't imagine either of the racecourses would have that sort of area needed nearby.

Maybe Pui or one of the other Chinese posters could help me. I was in Hong Kong last week and was wondering where the venue for the equestrian events was going to be. I noticed a stop on the MRT line between Kowloon and the airport called "Olympic" (or something like that) and the station was decorated with Olympic sports scenes. Is this the location? I had no luck finding official Beijing 2008 gear. Everyone I asked had no idea. The only stuff I saw was the odd t-short with the old bid logo on it (which I have already). I was really surprised not to see the "Friendlies" for sale in any form. Oh well, hope the Beijing website puts gear up for sale soon.

The Australian team was 629-strong in Sydney. I'm finding it hard to dig up the 1996 US team size.