The closing ceremonies. Photo: Vincent Laforet for NEWSWEEK

1) Eight for Eight: Nobody doubted that Michael Phelps could win each of the eight races—five individual and three relays—he entered. But could he win all of them in the Olympic hothouse, a feat that required him to swim 17 times over nine long days? Turns out he could—seven of them in world record times. But he needed a miracle relay leg by a teammate in one race and had to survive a photo finish (and Serbian protest) in another. The biggest record—eight gold medals in a single Olympics—should stand forever. Phelps’ total of 14 Olympic gold medals is the most by any athlete in history.

Photo: Mike Powell for NEWSWEEK

3) China’s Gold Rush: It didn’t exactly come as a surprise. China almost caught the United States in gold medals in Athens and had pointed to Beijing as the Games in which they would assert their athletic supremacy. The results of world championships during the years from Athens to Beijing gave fair warning. Still, nobody was quite prepared for the landslide win, as China netted 51 gold medals to America’s 36. The U.S. still topped the charts in total medals (110-100), but with China’s population, the state sports system and unstinting investment, that seems unlikely to hold at the 2012 London Games. What keeps China-U.S. from becoming a great rivalry is that China excels at sports—table tennis, weightlifting, shooting, diving—in which American isn’t very competitive and which evoke little interest in our country. In the one sports, woman’s gymnastics, we do care about, there was plenty of consternation about the result, complaints about favorable “home” judging and allegations that the Chinese cheated with underage gymnasts.

4)Tragedy/Triumph: The tragedy at a popular Beijing tourist attraction was almost unimaginable—an attack by a knife-wielding Chinese man on the in-laws of U.S. men’s volleyball coach Hugh McCutcheon. His father-in-law Todd Bachman was killed and Bachman’s wife, Barbara, seriously injured. The killer committed suicide so it is unlikely there will ever be an explanation for the bizarre crime in a city considered highly safe for tourists. Win it for the coach never had to be said out loud. But while McCutcheon was away from the Olympics with his family (he resumed coaching duties after four games), a U.S. volleyball team that hadn’t won a medal since a bronze in Barcelona back in 1992 caught fire. It went undefeated throughout the tournament, climaxing with a comeback win over defending Olympic champion Brazil. When McCutcheon called his wife back home in the States wand heard her, she exclaimed, “You won, you won!” Then he told reporters, “There was nothing left to say. We were just kind of listening to each other smile into the phone.” We smiled too. Maybe even cried a little.

5) Ballet on Bars and Beams: For a reporter a few stories become more personal. Years ago I became captivated by a 14-year-old gymnast who performed with a lyrical beauty that I had never seen from an American.. For NEWSWEEK’s annual, year-end “Who’s Next” issue, I am responsible for picking one young athlete who will make a splash. In 2006 I picked Liukin. But she was beset by a series of nagging injuries, and an Iowa sparkplug, Shawn Johnson, became America’s new gymnastics darling and the Beijing favorite. The American duo went 1-2 in the all-around in Beijing, but it was Liukin’s balletic performance that landed her on top. Johnson, with three silver medals already in hand, finally won a very happy gold on balance beam. But it was Liukin who went home to Texas with the biggest prize (as well as five Olympic medals).

6) The ‘We’ In American Teams: There has been a sneaking suspicion that American athletes had lost their grasp on the team thing. In recent years, our all-star teams have been humbled by international losses in sports that we dominate: basketball, golf and baseball. But in Beijing, most American teams excelled. Both men’s and women’s basketball, volleyball and water polo teams made it to the gold-medal games, as did the U.S. women’s softball and soccer teams. The U.S. went 4-4 in those finals, but this mother lode of team golds and silvers demonstrated that when they put their minds to it, Americans still know how to play well together.

7) The ‘Redeem Team’: The U.S. men’s basketball team had a lot to make up for--two miserable performances in the last two world championships and a dismal bronze at the Athens Olympics. But Kobe and company proved up to the task, thoroughly dominating the competition until the finals where they met defending world champion Spain. In a game far closer than the final scored indicated, the NBA stars responded to every Spanish challenge—and used their speed advantage and some clutch outside shooting to squeeze out a 118-107 win. They celebrated the gold medal with all the excitement of high-school kids who had won the state championship. Beyond the court, the NBA stars treated the competition with the respect the rest of the world gives it—and were goodwill ambassadors all over the Olympics, cheering on Americans from the women’s basketball team (undefeated gold medalists also) to Michael Phelps.

8) Going Solo: Even with the basketball team’s Olympic revival, there was no better tale of redemption than that of Hope Solo. Solo was the starting goalkeeper for an unbeaten U.S. women’s soccer team in last year’s World Cup when the American coach inexplicably benched her for the semi-final against Brazil. After Brazil thrashed the Yanks, Solo went off on him and, far worse, suggested she would have performed better than her replacement. It was an unconscionable moment by the sisterhood standards of American soccer and Solo was kicked off the team and sent home. But the new coach convinced reluctant team members—“Do you want to win? she asked them—to let Solo return for the Olympic run. Against, of course, Brazil in the finals, Solo was the standout star, shutting out a superior attack until the Americans muster a goal overtime. A jubilant Solo explained afterward that she had broken a new barrier in women’s sports: “we don’t all have to be friends.”

Photo: Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

9) China Beach: Just as it has been since beach volleyball was introduced to the Olympics, the rhythm of the beach was decidedly American—from the rock and roll to the Chinese cheerleaders in tiny bikinis. The results went America’s way too. Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh won gold in the pouring rain and extended their astounding unbeaten streak to more than a year. The next day, the sun was shining on Phil Dalhauser and Todd Rogers, who completed the American sweep.

10) Butterfingers: There was, of course, one mortifying exception to all that good American team play: track’s 4X100 relay teams. The U.S. era of sprint dominance is clearly over and the Americans would have been underdogs to Jamaica in the relays anyway. Still, you don’t have a chance if you don’t get the baton around the track. And in the first preliminary heat, both the U.S. teams dropped it before the final leg. It is the third straight Olympics in which the American women have bungled the handling of the baton. If USA basketball can command Kobe Bryant and LeBron James to training camps, then USA Track and Field can force its sprinters to convene and practice their relay skills before each Olympics. It’s either that or more embarrassments on track’s biggest stage.

Photo: Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

Some people predicted the 2008 Olympic spectacle would be worthy of Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's favorite filmmaker whose theme for the 1936 Games was "Triumph of the Will". Instead, for the dazzling closing ceremony which brought the Olympics to a close tonight, we got Busby Berkeley reincarnated as an engineer. How else could you think up 60 furiously pedalling cyclists in glowing tracksuits propelling giant "light wheels" precisely 2.008 meters in diameter, symbolizing "the collision of time and space and the human spirit of constantly surpassing oneself and never giving up".

Or a massive 23-meter "Memory Tower" -- think Tower of Babel built with an erector set -- rising out of a pit in the ground, suddenly swarmed by 396 nimble climbers (in mountaineering kit) clad in tracksuits that are red on the underbelly and silver on the back, enabling the  men to create visual images, like the "sacred flame" and the "running man" symbol of the Beijing Games, by gyrating as they clung to the girders or scuttled scarab-like over the structure and abseiled down its sides?

Leading up to the Games, Beijing's tsars of sport took pains to lowball medals projections in the conservative fashion of its economic planners. In the end the Chinese squad far outstripped its softly stated goal of 40 golds. With 51, China is the first nation to crack the 50 mark since the USSR won 55 in 1988. It's a phenomenal achievement, but what to make of it? The host nation's sweet showing was undercut by bitter controversy over its female gymnasts' ages, the numbing disappointment of its sole track star Liu Xiang, and the perennial critique that Team China is just the latest gargantuan image project - if the Party builds it, the medals will come.

It therefore seemed fitting that China's last couple golds came in the embattled event of boxing. I spent much of the weekend in the circular gallery of the Workers Gymnasium, a musty gem of Soviet-inspired monumentalism. There I saw China's fighters scrap their way on up from a single bronze at Athens to one bronze, one silver and two gold medals in Beijing. One of those two golds, the country's first, was won by the reigning world champ without much of a fight. The other came courtesy of a dark horse with a motivational tattoo of a winged Pegasus on his left arm, not to mention a major boost from the crowd and the benefit of the doubt from the judges. If you think the regurgitated debate over medals rankings is going to be a tough one to ever resolve - given America's historic focus on cumulative medals versus China’s (and many other nations') on gold - try judging the victor of an Olympic boxing bout.

In the light heavyweight final, Zhang Xiaoping outmaneuvered Ireland's Kenny Egan by a tally of 11-7. It was Zhang's second straight upset, and if conventional wisdom in our press section was any indication, the scoring was dubious

Watching Nigeria play Argentina in the men’s soccer final this afternoon at the Bird’s Nest reminded me of a grievous oversight. Sitting in the stands, I was so appalled by the U.S. team's early departure from the tournament last week—2-1 at the feet of Nigeria—that I forgot to vent publicly.

The American team is good enough to compete with most anybody in the youth ranks—the Olympics is a under-23 affair (with three ringers). But it’s not nearly good enough that it can afford the kind of stupidity that in Beijing assured it wouldn’t survive the qualifying round.

Coachs’ sons are expected to be savvier than the average player. But the first dim-witted play came in the game before Nigeria against the Netherlands. In the waning moments, Michael Bradley, son of the coach of the U.S. senior men’s team, took an unnecessary and, even worse, futile, yellow card for delay of game. Granted it might not have mattered had the U.S. hung on to its lead, punching its ticket to the quarterfinals. But the Dutch scored in the final seconds and Bradley, thanks to his second yellow in two games, had to sit out the critical showdown with Nigeria. The 21-year-old is a key cog in the midfield, good enough that a week later he was in the starting lineup for his dad when the U.S. opened World Cup qualifying in Guatamala.

Still, Bradley’s stalling ploy classifies as genius next to the bone-headed retaliatory elbow that got defender Michael Orozco ejected just three minutes into the Nigeria game. The Americans, needing only a tie to advance, were game, but outmanned. And when a late rally fell short—a header clanged off the post—they were headed home.

Orozco compounded his sin afterwards by refusing to express a modicum of regret for his costly foul. But far worse was how coach Peter Nowak praised his team’s efforts in Beijing, acting as if U.S. soccer was still an interloper in the world’s game and couldn’t reasonably be expected to produce anything more than a first-round ouster. Nowak must have been sleeping through his team's brilliant performance against the European U-23 champ Netherlands, when his team looked the equal of any.

Fans of American soccer are used to folks around the world denigrating our game. But it's particularly galling when it comes from our own coach, who should know better. There is no longer any reason to have such meager expectations for a country that, despite its minimal traditions, has usurped Mexico as the leading soccer power in its region. The American game may not yet be at the level where we can expect the team to get out of the qualifying rounds, but it certainly is at the level where we can be disappointed when it doesn’t. While there may still be Pyrrhic victories to come for American soccer, losing in a preliminary round will never again produce one of them.

As for the Nigerian team that the U.S. barely lost to, it proceeded to beat Ivory Coast 2-0 in the quarters and to thrash Belgium 4-1 in the semis before it lost 1-0 to the defending Olympic champion Argentina. Who knows what the United States might have done if it had played with as much brains as it did heart?

The end of the U.S.-Nigeria soccer match. Photo by Mike Powell for NEWSWEEK

Good thing the IOC killed Beijing’s idea, back in 2000, of Beach Volleyball on Tiananmen Square. It would never have been such a blast. Who could fathom the centerpiece of the 1989 carnage sandboxed for a fortnight a la playa? Who spiked Beijing boss Liu Qi’s tea before he had that idea, for that matter? As twisted and tactless as Liu's proposed site in the Square came off globally when the story first broke, it would not have played any better domestically today (even as memories of the 1989 crackdown fade from many Chinese minds, or never entered them in the first place.)  That's because the whole uptightness of the place could never have hosted flouncing beach gals in string bikinis, patriotic odes remixed to techno, and the favored Americans emerging triumphant in a sweep of gold: dude, not in the square. Chairman Mao would have been bummed.

      In the end Games organizers picked a  substitute locale, deep inside Chaoyang Park. It’s the capital’s biggest, least historic and most artificial park, known almost solely for the bawdy nightlife around it. And so it became an natural destination for the varied elements of beach volleyball: white sand brought in from Hainan island, blaring dance mash-ups spun by DJ Stari (an Athens vet from Austria), and the frat-boyish emcee “Geeter”, of the U.S. pro tour, firing up the crowd.

    At each break in the action, on came the aforementioned beach girls, the most shapely of all

 Duncan Hewitt in Shanghai reports on a new trend in Chinese media, which has begun revealing personal stories and quirks of Olympic athletes:

We all know Chinese authorities are just a tiny bit concerned about how their country is perceived, both by foreigners and their own citizens, as a result of these Olympics. “We are an image-conscious nation – we do house-cleaning when guests visit,” announced the official China Daily in an angry editorial denouncing foreign criticism of the Games last week.  This ‘image-consciousness’ has been a sub-theme of everything from ultra-tight security to the politburo-level intervention in the choice of the little girl who sang at the opening ceremony.  And state media are of course doing their bit to present a picture of a harmonious, confident, and increasingly important nation: “Beijing brings happiness to the world,” and “Beijing has made the Olympics more genuinely global in nature” are just two of the front page headlines run by the always on-message tabloid The Global Times over the past fortnight.

An 'I' in Team: The U.S. women celebrate. Photo by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

That notion was supposed to be at the core of the next generation of U.S. women's team players. But the 2007 World Cup in China revealed that it had never completely taken hold. The implosion came after starting goalkeeper Hope Solo, who had backstopped the team without a loss to the semi-finals, was benched against Brazil in favor of the veteran, Briana Scurry. Scurry was hardly the only problem that day when a quicker, more talented Brazilian team kicked the U.S. women 4-0. But afterward, Solo mouthed off, indicating not only her displeasure at being sidelined, but insisting that she would have fared better than Scurry, a hero of the ’99 World Cup triumph.

Trashing a teammate and a coach was something a man would do and the team reacted with predictable fury. No longer was Solo just benched, she was booted off the team and on her way home before the U.S. team, with Scurry in goal, won the bronze medal game. The loss and the subsequent mess cost coach Greg Ryan his job. His replacement, Pia Sundhage, a Swede and the first non-American to coach the U.S. women’s national team, faced a lot of resistance when she invited Solo back. But she insisted that Solo was critical to the team's Olympic hopes. “Do you want to win?” she asked the players.

And last night with Solo in the nets, the United States—in the kind of delicious irony that sport so often serves up—faced heavily favored Brazil again, this time for the Olympic gold medal. Could the woman who had so recklessly shed one legacy be the mainstay in rescuing another—winning?

For 90 minutes, the 27-year-old Solo did everything possible to keep the United States in the gold-medal chase. She gobbled up balls without a stumble or a fumble, executed perfectly timed dashes to beat the speedy Brazilian forwards to the ball and punched out several dangerous corner kicks that she couldn’t snare. And in the 72^nd minute when the brilliant Marta dribbled through two U.S. defenders and fired inside post, Solo knocked away what looked to be a sure goal with her right forearm as she was falling to her left. The Brazilian coach would say later he was already getting to his feet to celebrate.

In the 89^th minute, U.S. forward Amy Rodriguez had the fairytale ending on her foot. After a game in which Brazil had frequently looked dangerous—it had 14 corner kicks to the U.S.’s  3 and possessed the ball 58 percent of the game—and the U.S. hadn’t, Rodriguez slipped through the Brazilian defense and went in alone on the goalkeeper. But rather than try to go around the keeper, who had ventured out, she tried to loft the ball softly over her and didn’t get it above her fingertips.

Sometimes you just have to work overtime for redemption. While Solo remained unflappable, keeping the potent Brazilian attack at bay, the ball finally took a big bounce America’s way in the sixth minute of the 30-minute overtime session, This time when Rodriguez got the ball at the top of the box, she knew exactly what to do with it. She slid it over to midfielder Carli Lloyd, the team’s best outside gun and the one player who had been outspoken in defense of Solo. Lloyd fired a left-footer, diagonally from about 19 yards out, and the ball just slid past the outstretched left hand of the sprawling Brazilian keeper.

The Brazilians never stopped threatening and fired away on Solo throughout the second half of overtime. But their shots were always just wide or just over the net. On one free kick from 30 yards out, Solo appeared to be screened because she never moved on the ball, but it skittered wide right. In the final minute, Brazil had two more golden opportunities; Solo punched one out of danger and sprawled to deflect the second wide. When the final whistle blew and the U.S. had held on for a 1-0 victory, Solo raised her arms in triumph and charged upfield and into the middle of her jubilant teammates.

Welcome: Solo after the match. Photo by Donald Miralle for Newsweek

But soon she was alone at the end of the field, talking on a cellphone to her brother back home in Washington. Later when she was asked if she felt fully part of the team now, she suggested that maybe she had been a pioneer—like Hamm, though she never suggested that—in changing roles in women’s sports. “We don’t have to be best friends,” she said of her and her teammates. But she clearly felt some burden had been lifted. “I can be myself now without looking over my shoulder,” she said. “I’m free to be myself now.” Asked if she felt vindicated, she simply said, “I feel amazing.”

Nobody will ever know if Solo would have made a difference against Brazil in the World Cup a year ago. And maybe her decidedly unsisterly comments were bad form. But in old-fashioned parlance, if she talked the talk back then, tonight she certainly walked the walk. Solo was all the difference. And thanks above all to her heroic efforts, the United States women’s soccer team has added another gold medal—probably the most surprising in its storied history--to its vast treasure trove.

It’s hard to explain to friends back home, deeply envious of my privilege to go to any Olympic event I choose, why sometimes I prefer to watch the events in my office on the closed-circuit Olympic broadcast rather than watch them from prime press seats in the stands. The answer in a word: rain!

When my pal Filip woke me early this morning to tell me not to worry, that he had already confirmed that the beach volleyball final would be played regardless, I sensed that I wasn’t hearing entirely good news. I pulled back the shades in my room, glanced out the window and made the kind of spur-of-the-moment decision the truly great journalist must always be prepared for. Misty and Kerri had no choice but to play in a downpour—“that’s another reason we wear bathing suits,” Misty May-Treanor told reporters—but I could opt to stay dry back at the Main Press Center.

Apart from the comfort of dry clothes, there are certain professional advantages to staying away as well. Even with a bus system that, in my long Olympic tenure, deserves the gold medal for both efficiency and courtesy, the rigors of traveling to and fro pretty much limit you two events a day. But sit in front of the tube, with its 39 Olympic channels and a grandmaster like Al on the clicker, and you can see virtually every play of every game of every sport. At one point, Al was going back and forth so fast that I thought our heavyweight wrestler had just spiked a winner on the beach through the Chinese pair.

The biggest bonus today was that a time when I would have been riding the bus back from the “beach”, I got to see the a real volleyball game instead. Now I am not so old that the appeal of beach volleyball is lost on me. With all due respect to our women's gold-medal duo, May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh, who are not only sensational athletes but among my all-time, favorite Olympians, beach volleyball would not rate NBC prime-time live if not for the dimensions of the uniform and the hardbodies that are uncovered by them. (That is equally true for the men’s game.) And while the downpour might render me a sodden mess, it certainly had the players’ bodies glistening—sweat to the nth degree. (I am told that the Chinese were at first appalled by such immodesty among its athletes, but, with two duos in the women’s final four, they have obvious adjusted to our dubious Western ways.)

I know it is heresy to say this, but absent the titillation (and the rock and roll that punctuates the game), the beach version is simply not as interesting a game as traditional indoor volleyball. The six-on-a-side game has longer, more spectacular rallies and more variety in both play and strategy. Frankly, I had kind of forgotten how compelling the old-fashioned volleyball can be. I suspect that’s because we journalists are parochial and U.S. teams haven’t been serious medal contenders since both the men and women took bronze in Barcelona back in 1992.

But in Beijing we have witnessed an American revival. The men’s team is undefeated and will play Russia in the semis tomorrow. And today the American women played almost the perfect game to reach the finals, sweeping a Cuban team that had shut them out three sets to none just 10 days ago. These women sweat too, but it is not a sideshow; the rivulets simply disappear into their uniforms rather than their bellybuttons. They also leap, dive and sprawl with precious little regard for their bodies, the floor being a bit less forgiving than the sand.

Chacun a son gout, but I’m going against the flow and casting my lot with our indoor volleyballers. Frankly, it was such a pleasure watching the American women’s combination of power and precision, grit and finesse that it was like a day at the beach.

We all knew China's population was graying rapidly, but Wednesday authorities drove home the point by sentencing two elderly women to the gulag. Wu Dianyuan and Wang Xiuying are both citizens in their late 70's who walk using canes; Wang is partially blind.  They'd applied for permission to protest in one of the three government-designated "protest corners" in  Beijing public parks. Their grievance is a common one: that they received inadequate compensation for their homes which were demolished in a recent pre-Games wave of urban redevelopment. Permission to protest was not granted; none of at least 77 applicants have received permission, in fact. Then the two elderly ladies each received a suspended sentence of one year of "re-education through labor", an extra-judicial punishment that doesn't require the decision of a court judge.

On the Run: Bolt wins the 200 meters. Photo by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK

When Johnson set his record at the '96 Atlanta Olympics, he staggered in disbelief after the finish line when he saw his own time of 19.32. Almost immediately the stadium loud speakers blasted a pop song with the refrain "Unbelievable." And there was really no other word for it. Johnson had shattered one of the longest surviving records in his sport--and by a margin of more than a half second.

Bolt only shaved .02 seconds off Johnson's mark, but "unbelievable" seemed the right word choice once again. When Michael Phelps closed out his Olympics with a record eight gold medals, it was hard to imagine any other Olympic athlete giving a performance to rival his. Phelps remains the standout of these Games, but Bolt is giving him a run for his money--at the very least a #2 with a bullet on the Olympic charts.

The Jamaican flash, who is essentially a rookie at the elite levels of sprinting--he turned 22 years old a few hours after his gold-medal race--had already broken the world record in the 100 meters last Saturday. The Olympics, with multiple heats in both the 100 and 200, is supposed to be a challenging place in which to set a world record let alone two. In his winning 200, he ran .35 seconds faster than his own personal best and more than a half second faster than the second-place finisher, Churandy Martina of Netherlands Antilles. America's Wallace Spearmon finished third. Later, both would be disqualified for running out of their lanes, and Americans Shawn Crawford and Walter Dix were awarded the silver and bronze medals.

But numbers don't quite tell the story of Bolt's magical runs here. Just like in the 100, there was remarkably little appearance of effort in his race. Bolt appears to glide over the track, as sweet a stride as the sport may have ever witnessed. If he ever decides that the 400 meters is a good race for him, Johnson's last world record would almost certainly fall quickly.

Then again neither the records nor his running style quite explain why he has emerged here as such a monumental star. Bolt has a playful quality--he danced and mugged and "I'm numbered oned" during his victory lap--and celebrated his latest victory with such infectious joy that not only the Chinese, but fans from every nation seemed to embrace him like a fellow countryman. The two universal rhythms of Jamaica: reggae and now Bolt.

At a press conference in Beijing before the Games, Bolt said he didn't know if he would run both races. When reporters informed him that his coach had already said he would, Bolt wasn't the least non-plussed. Apparently he likes surprises. So do sportswriters and Bolt delivered a beauty tonight. ("No way, no how," was my prescient pronouncement before the race on his prospects for another record.)

In a sport plagued by doping scandals, Bolt appears a breath of fresh air. But after his stunning performance every true fan, burned so many times by champions who turned out to be cheats, offered the same silent prayer: "Oh God, I hope he's clean."

After the bronze-medal disaster of the U.S. men's basketball team in Athens four years ago, there was a consensus that the American men seem to lack some fundamental understanding of the concept of T-E-A-M. If you wanted to see American squads with real team values, you went and watched our women play sports. While Kobe and company have done much to rehabilitate our nation's basketball reputation here in Beijing, the American women have been the absolute bomb. And Thursday will witness perhaps the biggest day in Olympic history for the American women's teams. From 9 a.m. to midnight, six women's teams—beach volleyball, volleyball, water polo, softball, soccer and basketball—will play for gold medals or to reach the finals and the chance to play for gold medals. Here's a preview of those six contests in Beijing chronological order:

11 a.m.—Beach Volleyball: U.S. beach queens Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh face a home-sand disadvantage when they play China's favorite duo of Wang Jie and Tian Jia for the gold medal. The Chinese got the #1 seed here, which is a bit of a puzzlement since the California gals are defending Olympic champions and haven't lost a match since Aug 19th—of last year! Their winning streak now totals 106 matches and they have plowed through the Olympic field without losing a set. (The Chinese, by contrast, have been pushed to a third set three times in six matches.) Misty and Kerri may be the most well-respect and -liked athletes by the press. They are courteous to opponents, thank every official after each match and are exceptionally patient with the press, acutely aware that they are both building their brand and their sport. I wrote a NEWSWEEK article on them before the Athens Game and, after their gold-medal performance, they sent me a signed card thanking me for the coverage and with a pouch of sand from the Olympic beach attached. That is unprecedented—the “thank you" as well as the sand—in my experience through 10 Olympics. Beach volleyball is "hot" and is the only one of the Thursday's six contests that will rate live coverage on NBC prime time.

12:20—Volleyball: Women’s volleyball has been contested at the Olympics since Tokyo 1964 and the Americans have a silver and bronze to show for all their floor burns. But after a fifth-place finish in Athens, the volleyball brass brought in a living legend to coach the team—at least a living legend in China. “Jenny” Lang Ping was known as the “Iron Hammer” when she played on the 1984 Chinese Olympic team in Los Angeles, where China defeated the United States for the gold medal. She returned to the States 12 years later, for Atlanta ’96, as coach of the Chinese team that won a silver medal. Now she is trying to take the Americans to new heights. The dream final would be the United States vs. China. But first "Jenny" has to get the American ladies past Cuba, the only team to beat them in the preliminary round.

6:20 p.m.—Water Polo: Coach Guy Baker won a host of national collegiate championships at UCLA before taking over the women’s national water polo team for the first Olympic competition in Sydney. In a thrilling and controversial ending, the team lost to Australia 4-3 on a goal in the final second. Four years later, the U.S. got its revenge on Australia 6-5—but that only garnered the team a bronze medal. But last year the U.S. women’s team won the world championship—beating Australia in Australia. So guess what country the undefeated Americans have to beat to win the gold medal Thursday night? Probably not. That’s because the American women already dispatched Australia 9-8 in the semis and now will face the Netherlands, the country where women’s water polo was first competed a little more than a century ago.

6:30 p.m.—Softball: No matter the result, this will certainly be the most emotional of all these games. It may be the final softball game in Olympic history. The powers that be have thrown softball out of the Games for sins both real and imagined. One of its concerns is apparently the lack of top-flight competition to challenge the Americans, though American domination in women’s basketball is at least as pronounced. And as the ladies point out, nobody gets upset when Michael Phelps dominates. The softballers will be bidding for a clean sweep of the four Olympics in which the sport has been competed. In Beijing, the team is undefeated and has allowed only two runs in its eight games. Next year softball will apply to the International Olympic Committee for reinstatement for the 2016 Olympics, competing against six other sports for a coveted spot in the Games. It can’t hurt that IOC president Jacques Rogge was in the stands Wednesday for what turned out to be one of the most dramatic days in the game’s brief Olympic history. First the United States and Japan played eight scoreless innings—regulation games are seven—before the U.S. won 4-1. Then Japan, which could still reach the gold medal game with a win over Australia and leading 2-1 in the top of the 7^th, one out away from a rematch with the Americans, surrendered the tying run on a homer, then had the winning run thrown out at the plate in the bottom of the inning. Australia went ahead 3-2 in the 11th, but Japan tied the game in the bottom of the inning before winning it in the 12th. Now it can try to end America's softball dynasty on a doubly sour note.

8 p.m.—Basketball: Much has been made of the show being put on by the American men’s team, with Kobe and company winning its first five games by an average of 32 points. But those are close games by the standards of the undefeated American women who have won all six of their games by an average of 42 points. The U.S. has not lost a game since the Barcelona Olympics in 1992--30-0 with three gold medals--and this may be its strongest squad yet. The Beijing team combines Olympic veterans like Lisa Leslie and Diana Taurasi with a pair of dynamic, young WNBA superstars—Candace Parker, a two-time national player of the year at the University of Tennessee and 6’6” former LSU star Sylvia Fowles, who is leading the team in both scoring and rebounding. The U.S. faces Russia in the semis and, if victorious, the winner of China-Australia in the finals. While the men's team could still get clipped by a Spain or a Lithuania on an off day, there is no team that can stop this American juggernaut.

9 p.m.—Soccer: Women’s soccer captivated American fans in one glorious summer fling back in 1999. Five years later in Athens, Mia Hamm and her soccer sisters left the Olympics and the game on a high—with an overtime victory over Brazil. Tonight the U.S. women will play Brazil again for the gold medal, but the shoe is decidedly on the other foot. In truth, Brazil was the better team in Athens and the American team needed all its savvy, pluck and opportunism to escape with the gold medal. With the exodus of the starry veterans—Hamm, Julie Foudy, Kristine Lilly—and an injury to the team’s high scorer, Abby Wambach, the U.S. team is a big underdog to the speedy and creative Brazilians. (The Brazilian women play a far more “beautiful game” than the Brazilian men’s team, which resorted to total thuggery to try to slow down arch-rival Argentina in their 3-0 semi-final defeat.) In the 2007 women’s World Cup, Brazil eviscerated the Americans 4-0 in the semis, a loss that cost the U.S. coach his job, before losing to Germany in the finals. Here in Beijing they mauled Germany 4-1 to reach the finals. The Americans had a much softer path to the final and had it not been for a bizarre Japanese 5-1 romp over favored Norway would have met Brazil—and likely its demise without a medal—in the quarterfinals. In the semis, the U.S. team played its best game of the tournament, ousting Japan 4-2. The team now plays a far more attractive game under its new coach, former Swedish star Pia Sundhage, with fewer long, futile boots and more ball control through the midfield. But it has not found a breakout star who can change the game with a single rush or a moment of creative genius. At last year’s World Cup, starting goalkeeper Hope Solo was benched for the Brazil game in favor of the veteran Briana Scurry. After Brazil's victory, Solo violated all the sacred trusts of the soccer sisterhood by not only grousing about it, but by insisting she would have done better in the nets. The comments got her booted off the team and she was reinstated for the Olympics over the objects of some teammates. We will all get to see if she does any better. Actually, better may not be good enough.

Contributor Jennifer Conrad ran into Michael Phelps, posed for photos with a Ferarri, and didn't eat Italian food while doing a circuit of the National Houses. Her report:

     At each Olympics, governments set up National Houses to provide a home base for their athletes and supporters. Some are frenetic party zones where medalists stop by to scribble autographs for adoring fans. Others are showcases for their respective nations. Some are pretty dull venues for networking. And while some let just about anyone (me) breeze through the door, others are almost impossible to access. Still, I did my best to check out the Olympic action.

     Let's start with the good ones: The Heineken-sponsored Holland House, a tradition since the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, served up one of the best parties, with Dutch food (weird croquettes and fries with mayo) and hordes of orange-clad Dutch fans (seriously, for a small country, they have a lot of people in town). The tricky door policy means that if you get there early enough, you can enter by showing your passport. Once it gets too crowded, only Dutch passports are allowed in. Set up in the massive Agricultural Exhibition Center, besides big indoor and outdoor party spaces, there was a small area with exercise equipment. Which made it possible for my friend to get a computerized health analysis while I was taking a photo with a Chinese visitor who asked if I was an athlete.

...Club Bud promotes the five elements of feng shui