Rick Eyre's blog

The news on the Olympic baseball is that there is none. I will never stop grumbling about this.

"Eight disqualified for underperforming at badminton" is one of those sentences that I had failed to predict that I would be using during the London Olympics.

To coincide with Michael Phelps becoming the most-medalled Olympic athlete in history and with me using medal as a verb for the first and last time, here is an index to all my blog references to The Great Man over the past two Olympiads:

Happy birthday horses everywhere. And a special happy birthday to yesterday's gold medallists: Barny, King Artus, Opgun Luovo, Butts Abraxxus, and dual winner Sam.

Freebies for corporate partners is nothing new in Big Sports. Corporate partners not using their freebies is nothing new either. But the sight of empty seats - and lots of them - has struck a collective raw nerve at the London Games.

Just like any true Weapons of Mass Destruction, Australia's proved to be non-existent.

The NBC is copping an absolute bollocking for sticking to a (for them) tried and trusted formula in covering the Olympic Games - or as Americans insist on calling them, the Summer Olympics. Taking the day's highlights, packaging them up and wrapping them in a journalistic narrative worked in the 20th century. Problem is, we are now a dozen years into the 21st.

Here is a Youtube playlist of ten of my favourite pieces that were performed at the London Olympic Games opening ceremony.

All I can say is that I am as much in awe of Danny Boyle's craftsmanship as ever. This was the best stadium-based opening/closing ceremony ever, and it should be the last because no one is ever going to have a hope of topping it. Seriously.

If being Australian cricket captain is as important a job as Prime Minister, then carrying the Australian flag at the Olympic opening ceremony must be on the same level as winning a Gold Logie. Well, maybe not quite.