Hopefully the opening ceremony will put the spectacular Chinese one in 2008 to shame!

I personally didn't carry the torch, but I very nearly did. I was on a shortlist of 1,500, but wasn't one of the 800 chosen. My friend was, though!

And it came past my house, did the torch, and my friend has one, so maybe I could 'pretend' I ran with it

The London opening ceremony will involve a bus, rain (not joking- they're making clouds), Chickens, spiders, farmers, cows, buses and nurses. Amongst other things. Hopefully Boris Johnson. The Chinese one was awesome, but no-one will ever remember it for anything but the whole situation with the 'ugly' young girl who had to sing in front of billions, but her voice was dubbed on someone cuter. For shame!

Here's an interesting fact or two-

-Micheal Phelps is the 7th best medal winning COUNTRY of all time in swimming. He'd jump to 5th if he could repeat his Beijing performance.

-Bolt is looking to go sub-9.5s in the 100m, that's over a second faster than the last time the olympics was in London.

-The expected audience for the opening ceremony is 4,000,000,000, or over half of the world's population, making it the biggest ever event in television. That's around 100 times the people who watch the superbowl.

-Steve Redgrave has won a medal in the past...5 (?) olympic games, and is looking for another this games. Will he do it?

There's more, but I'll post them later.

WHAT?! HE'S COMING BACK?! I thought he retired?

Woah, that is wrong. WAAAYY more than 40m people watch the Super Bowl. 

4bn is huge!! Great promo for the UK.

i like track and field but why are there 2 threads again

Why is the attached game mario and sonic? Surely it should be the  official game no?

does that official game have online with the events i wonder,that would be fun,i haven't played one of those games for a while

I always thought the M&S was the official game. That's what it says on the boxart...

And the average superbowl audience is 40mil, but that's EVERY one. My apologies, the one last year was around 110mil, but still...it'll be nearly 40x that number!

And Steve Redgrave is looking at coming back in the rowing, but I don't think anything's confirmed yet, which makes me believe he's not actually doing it...

Anyway, time for the news roundup:

-The Olympics start today with the Women's Football in Cardiff (for whatever reason), with who else what Team GB against New Zealand.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18978628

-David Beckham, who missed out on the Team GB's football team, will have a place at the olympic opening ceremony. The opening ceremony has also been granted a late-night noise permit, so it could last until 1:30AM BST. Weather suggests it should be dry, but the clouds which they're making will cause it to rain anyway...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/olympics/18977404

From around the world:

-The US Men's basketball team HAVE to win, says coach. And I'd have to agree with him:

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/06/05/sport/olympics-gold-olajuwon-scola-leslie/index.html?hpt=iol_bn2

-The Spanish Flag, which was to be carried in the opening ceremony by Rafael Nadal before he pulld out due to injury, will now be carried by Pau Gasol, of basketball fame (no, I don't know either). The USA's flag has yet to be confirmed. But, I wouldn't bet against Micheal Phelps carrying it:

http://www.abc.es/20120720/deportes/abci-gasol-abanderado-201207201049.html



So yeah, things are still a touch slow, but we'll have the first results tonight!