Shannon Miller
Olympic Gold Medalist

This is such an exciting Olympic Games!

The gymnastics skills that these men and women are doing are just ridiculous. They are all so talented and performing moves I never would have dreamed of attempting.

I am so proud of the American men. Losing both Paul and Morgan Hamm right before the start of the Games was devastating. This could have been a disaster.

Instead, they fought back. These six men, all first time Olympians, faced a grueling task. Along their journey to the medal podium they have shown excitement, class and dignity every step of the way. They turned a bronze medal finish into one of the most memorable moments of these Olympic Games.

As for the women, my heart goes out to them. I hope that they will continue to remember that they won a silver medal at the Olympic Games. That is certainly nothing to be disappointed about.

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The National Stadium, known as the Bird's Nest, is shrouded in smog on opening day of the 2008 Olympics.

Chuck Hadad
AC360° Producer

It’s a historic event taking place on an international stage that’s been seven years and $40 billion in the making. Opening ceremonies last week of the 2008 Olympic Summer Games were lauded as the most spectacular in history, with pyrotechnics blasting from the top of Beijing, China’s National Stadium and a synchronized fireworks display firing off across the capital.

What has been mostly absent from Beijing, however, are protests. Although a unified China is the image that country’s government is eager to portray, many human rights groups allege that China has orchestrated a massive cover-up.

Beyond human rights, questions remain about whether China has kept its promises to the world to improve in two other major areas of reform: freedom of the press and pollution cleanup.

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David M. Reisner
AC360° Digital Producer

I dont know if you caught the opening ceremonies of the Olympics on Friday but they were spectacular! Maybe a bit too much.

According to several reports the ‘Twenty-nine fiery footsteps’ traced in the air above Bird’s Nest National Stadium were created using real fireworks… But The U.K.’s Telegraph reports that because event organizers feared they would be unable to capture the pyrotechnics live on camera, a digital effects team spent almost a year preparing a computerized version of the 55-second footstep sequence, which was inserted into the live video feed. So in truth, what people saw in the stadium and what people saw on T.V. didnt quite match up… (Read more here - see image of the footprint firework)

OK fine, I love my computer grahpics, I guess I can look past that… but another part of the opening ceremony left me speechless… (pun intended)

A little girl sang a beautiful Chinese patriotic song as fireworks lit the sky above her… Except she didnt sing it live… Actually, she did’nt even sing it at all! Read this report from Richard Spencer of ‘The Daily Telegraph:’

Lin Miaoke who lip-synched at the opening ceremony over the voice of Yang Peiyi [right] who was considered unsuited to the lead role because of her teeth.

Richard Spencer
The Daily Telegraph
China Correspondent

The girl in the red dress with the pigtails, called Lin Miaoke, 9, and from a Beijing primary school, has become a national sensation since Friday night, giving interviews to all the most popular newspapers.

But the show’s musical designer felt forced to set the record straight. He gave an interview to Beijing radio saying the real singer was a seven-year-old girl who had won a gruelling competition to perform the anthem, a patriotic song called “Hymn to the Motherland”.

At the last moment a member of the Chinese politburo who was watching a rehearsal pronounced that the winner, a girl called Yang Peiyi, might have a perfect voice but was unsuited to the lead role because of her buck teeth.

So, on the night, while a pre-recording of Yang Peiyi singing was played, Lin Miaoke, who has already featured in television advertisements, was seen but not heard.

“This was a last-minute question, a choice we had to make,” the ceremony’s musical designer, Chen Qigang, said.

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John Vause
CNN Correspondent

Chinese is a very difficult language to learn, even when it’s in English. Often when officials here have said the air is excellent and all I can see is smog, I’ve been left scratching my head trying to work out how that could be. So, recently I’ve been emailing a lot with Dr. George D. Thurston, Professor of Environmental Medicine NYU School of Medicine. He spends a lot of time trying to work out what the Chinese statistics mean when it comes to air quality.
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John Vause
Beijing Correspondent

Seven years of planning, $40 billion spent - more than for any other Olympics in history. And even now everyone keeps asking: Are they ready?

There is still the constant problem with pollution. But even putting that aside, no one really knows what will work and what won’t.

The Olympics have a history of throwing up surprises that even the most thorough Communist planner couldn’t foresee.

Perhaps one indication came today on Thursday. The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, known as BOCOG, planned a press conference called “Are we ready?”

It was postponed until Friday.

I guess they weren’t ready.

Watch Dr. Sanjay Gupta's report on drug testing.

When an athlete is tested for banned substances, most of us have a certain expectation the result will come back positive or negative. And, based on that result, an athlete will either be innocent or guilty. But, it’s not even close to being that easy, according to a new article in Nature, written by biostatistician Dr. Donald Berry (Read study). Dr. Berry calls the science so “weak,” it is often impossible to tell whether an athlete, who has tested positive for a banned substance, really doped or not. Even as a student of statistics, this was pretty amazing to me, so I decided to look further.

Dr. Berry uses the example of Floyd Landis to make his point. Berry concurs Landis had an unusual test result, but argues that result is pretty meaningless. Here’s why: because Landis provided 8 pairs of urine samples, and assuming an approximately 95 percent specificity, the probability of all 8 samples being labeled “negative” is the eighth power of .95 or just .66 (66 percent).

If that’s a little too much math and science for you at this hour, here is the final conclusion: Floyd Landis’ test had a 34 percent chance of being a false positive! Keep reading

Smog hangs over Beijing, and small but effective protests are more common than ever. All this, and the event hasn’t even begun. Anticipation looms and security is getting tighter and tighter.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Chief Medical Correspondent

With the Olympics coming up, there is a lot of concern surrounding the pollution. As the athletes have started to arrive, many of them are wearing masks. They say it is to protect themselves, whereas some in the Chinese government say it is only to be insulting.

Here are a few things to consider. According to a new study out of Northwestern University, the level of particulate matter in the air in Chicago is 20 micrograms/m3. That probably means nothing to you, other than telling you the average level of pollution of a big U.S. city. Here is what caught my eye. The level of particulate matter in Beijing: 260 micrograms/m3 — 13 times as much as Chicago. (See Study)

It is well known that high levels of particulate matter can cause inflammation in the lungs, and that a protein called Interleukin 6 is released in response. The end result may be that your blood gets a little stickier and thicker. That can cause problems such as heart attacks or strokes, especially in those with a pre-existing history.

Read more…

John Vause
CNN Beijing Correspondent

Last week we tried to collect the sticker we need for the camera so we can shoot inside the common green area at the Olympics’ “media village.” At the main press center they seemed very helpful. “No problem,” said the nice man, the sticker is available at the IBC (International Broadcast Center).

One problem, our credentials would not get us into the IBC. “Can someone bring the sticker to us here?” “Terribly sorry,” said the nice man. “You must go in person.”

“How do we get into the IBC?”
“Well, you need to be invited in by someone already inside.”
“Like who?”
“Someone you know.”
“But we don’t know anyone.”
“Oh dear.”

We still don’t have the sticker.

Editor’s Update: A CNN manager has finally obtained the requisite sticker for John.

CNN’s John Vause reports on China’s quest for Olympic gold, and how hard its athletes are pushed to get it.