So here it is after one week of competition.

So far it has been a pretty good olympics. Many of the compeititions have been exciting to watch to be sure especially on the swimming though from the coverage on NBC, it was more like the Michael Phelps show. Question is what NBC is going to do for coverage now that the swimming meets are over? There are no other individual stars like Phelps on the Olympic team especially for the track and event fields which should dominate coverage for the final week. Do expect, though, a heavy emphasis on the US men’s basketball team and its crew of NBA stars, aka the Redeem Team.

As for the Canadian, it was the typical slow start as many of the events to date are not Canadian specialities like archery and table tennis. That will change with more track & field and boat events as the week progresses. So far, the expected medalists have come through with a surprise or two. Ryan Cochrane bronze in the men’s 1500m swim was the validation that the swim team needed to keep the program going forward. The team posted many personal and national bests and the future looks promising for the future games. The rowing events, as usual, were a Canadian strength with a silver in the men’s pair, bronzes in the women’s pair and men’s lightweight four but topping them all was the gold in the prestige event, the men’s eight.

Still the highlight for the Canadian team was the gold medal won by Carol Huynh in the 48kg women’s wrestling. It is quite an accomplishment for her and the Canadian wrestling team as it also placed two other women in bronze medal matches winning one.

There were disappointments like the Canadian women’s soccer team falling in the quarterfinals, the diving team coming just a bit short but there will a next time for many of them

Still more opportunities in the days ahead for Canada to improve its medal standings. Perhaps, the people who were so despondent about seeing only 0 medals for the first several days of the games can lighten up a bit.

The television coverage has been pretty good for the most part even if it seems to be inordinately focused on swimming and beach volleyball on the primetime show. The other NBC networks seem to be picking up the load pretty good from what I have seen of it.

What has been a life saver for me was the video feeds of many of the ‘minor’ sports. That allowed me to see Huynh’s gold medal match and some of the rowing events. Given that television broadcast of much the other events happens during work hours, I take what I can despite that the on video has no spoke commentary just text.

I still have issues with the web sites. Still laggards on many of the results and not well organised or intuitive but I manage to make the most of it.