Five-Ringed Circus

By JOHN O'SULLIVAN

By the numbers

18: number of days of competition.

302: medal events

10,708: athletes taking part

21,600: media accredited

2,924: judges and referees

70,000: volunteers

91,000: seats in the "Bird's Nest"

31: venues in Beijing

6: venues outside Beijing (Hong Kong, Qingdao, Tianjin, Shenyang, Shanghai, Qinhuangdao)

7,000,000: tickets sold

5,000: yuan per ticket for opening ceremony

30: yuan per ticket for softball preliminaries

137,000km: distance covered by pre-Games torch relay

24.9: average August temperature in Celsius in Beijing

159.7: average August rainfall in millimetres Beijing in

Shooting off at Olympics

Leafing through a compendium of some of the more unusual events to have found their way into the Olympic schedule over the years, you soon learn that shooting has boasted one or two of the more quirky competitions.

Duelling pistols at the 1896 Athens summer Olympics certainly fell into the quirky category.

The participants did not actually shoot at each other but fired towards mannequins dressed in frock coats with bullseyes on their chests.

There was also the wonderfully named running-deer shoot, where participants fired at moving wooden replicas of the animals.

Undoubtedly the most non-PC event involved the shooting of live pigeons at the 1900 Paris Games; approximately 300 birds were obliterated in a welter of feathers and blood during the release-and-shoot competition.

Catching catchwords

It's not quite Saatchi and Saatchi. The slogans festooned on banners near the Silk Market area of Beijing appear, naturally, in Chinese characters. But some are in English and are more mundane than catchy. You'd want some pretty big fortune cookies for these.

"Seize the opportunity of a century to realise the dream of the century." "Brighten the Dream with passion: build the Olympic legend." "Brilliant Olympics, Prosperous China." "Cheer with one voice for the Olympics to bring luck to Beijing." "Passionate Beijing, Harmonious World."

All together now . . .

It's a dog's life for Alekna

Two-time Olympic discus champion Virgilijus Alekna encountered an unusual problem at a final pre-Beijing training session in Lithuania recently: his practice venue was covered in dog dirt.

"Dogs were doing what animals usually do, defecating and peeing," the professional bodyguard told the Lithuanian daily newspaper Lietuvos Zinios after the stadium he was using to train was utilised for a dog show.

"There were lots of dogs and they have left lots of things behind."

British link

DID you know that two of the three newcomers to the Olympic parade, The Marshall Islands and Tuvalu - Montenegro is the other debutant - are connected by British links. The Marshall Islands are named after the Englishman John Marshall, while Tuvalu's anthem is God Save the Queen and the Union Jack appears in the top left-hand corner of the flag.

Quote unquote

"I'm already so famous in Austria, so now it's his [Hans-Pieter Steinacher's] turn." - Roman Hagara, vying for his third Olympic gold medal with the same crew, Hans Peter Steinacher (Austria) being the flag bearer.