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Olympics Xing
Xing (pronounced shing or sing) means journey in Chinese — fitting for this blog, which is all about the journey of the U.S. men's basketball team and N&O staff writer Luciana Chavez at the 2008 Beijing Games. She is covering her first Olympics and making her first trip to China. Check in here for Olympic news and for Luci's impressions getting to and being at the Games.
Preview of medal ceremony
Submitted by lchavez on 08/22/2008 - 06:00
BEIJING — Shhhh. Don't talk so loud. Don't draw attention. I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to be here right now as the people from BOCOG practice the men's basketball medal ceremony at the Beijing Olympic Basketball Gymnasium two days before they're supposed to do it for real.
It's 3:30 p.m. in Beijing, four and a half hours before the semifinals — Spain vs. Lithuania and the U.S. vs. Argentina. It's definitely a dress rehearsal.
Blue-shirted volunteers are standing in for the IOC officials who give out the medals. Blue-coated IOC officials are standing in for team members.
They're actually re-placing their own BOCOG credentials around their necks and handing them flowers that are not as pretty as the roses they give for real.
But it's pretty close to the real ceremony because the beautiful women you seen in the ivory dresses with green embroidery during medal ceremonies are here en masse, holding the medals, escorting the BOCOG and IOC officials onto the floor.
There was one glitch, they were trying to bring a blue carpet out onto the floor so as to place chairs where the teams could take formal pictures with their medals. It took a while to figure out the configuration of chairs.
In case, you're needing a preview, BOCOG practiced this medal ceremony in the following order: "Bronze medalists - Spain." "Silver medalists - Lithuania" "Gold medalists - USA."
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