OLYMPIC GAMES, BEIJING 2008

Motif: Pictograms and logo of the 2008 Olympic Games History recorded the name of the Asian continent into its books twice before Beijing started celebrating their victory in the race for the organization of the 29th Olympic Games. At the beginning of this range Tokyo was the first to play host to thousands and thousands of world sportsmen in the year 1964. Twenty years later, to be more precise in 1988, the South Korean Seoul was the host of this greatest world sports event. Now this great honour was granted to Beijing and the biggest Asian country China which was a logical development of sports promotion across the world. This means that next summer the attention of sportsmen and sports fans will be directed to this excessively populous country of the world and the town that is definitely not going to make a single oversight or failure in the organization. The precise, industrious and almost perfect Chinese are going to prepare a new spectacular show in sports terms – both for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games, round all the sports venues, accommodation and even transport – the latter frequently being the greatest problem of towns that decided to grapple with the megalomaniacal organization of such a project. The Chinese have definitely made a huge step forward in terms of sports, too. Already known as a major power in sports, the moment when the outcome of the voting became known, probably even earlier, they started upon their mission of creating Olympic winners. The sportsmen who have almost proverbially greatest success in the Olympics are the sportsmen coming from the United States of America, but recently they have got a strong runner up candidate – the Chinese. Taking into consideration that the Chinese sportsmen appear in home venues this time, we would not be surprised if they were placed by their achieved successful results before the USA sportsmen. Regarding the number of competitors, flanking the Americans and the Chinese there are the Russians striding along and their harvest of medals is probably going to be just slightly weaker. What definitely has to be mentioned here is that Russia, at least for the present moment, can boast of two most successful Olympic contenders of all times. The woman athlete Larissa Latynina participated in three Olympic Games (1956, 1960 and 1964) and won eighteen medals (nine gold, five silver and four bronze medals). In the relatively long history of the Olympics (from the year 1896 when the first modern Olympic Games in Athens took place), according to the number of medals won is the athlete following immediately behind Latynina’s: her fellow-countryman Nikolai Andrianov with fifteen medals to his credit (seven gold, five silver and three bronze). Other sports powers are also Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Germany, Great Britain, Ukraine, Japan and Spain – the names of their athletes will certainly be listed in the upper part of the scale. When it goes for smaller countries, the countries that always achieve great success in the Olympic competitions are Kenya (athletics) or Hungary (swimming, water polo). We believe that Croatia, too, will live to be successful there. At the latest Olympic Games held in Athens Croatia had won five medals – gold was won by the handball team, silver medals were won by Duje Draganja in the 50m freestyle swimming and by the rowing pair-oar, brothers Skelin (Nikša and Siniša). The bronze medals were won by the weight-lifter Nikolaj Pešalov and the tennis double Mario Ančić – Ivan Ljubičić. This was the best harvest of medals of the Croatian sportsmen ever – earlier they had won three medals at the Olympic Games in Barcelona in 1992 and two medals both in Atlanta 1996 and Sydney 2000. This time we might celebrate more often because in close competition for climbing the Olympic pedestal are our Blanka Vlašić, Duje Draganja, the Croatian water polo players, handball players, tennis players, rowers...