- (c) International Olympic Committee for 2008 Summer Olympics
The opening ceremony for the 2008 Summer Olympics is set to begin today in Beijing. The exact start of the ceremony is 8/8/08 at 8:08:08 p.m. Why all the 8’s? Well, the number 8 is considered lucky in China! Let’s hope that this luck is granted and the ceremonies are successful…as well as bring the world some much-needed peace, even if it’s only for a moment. There were (and still are) some rough spots as far as politics and government goes, but overall, it seems to be coming together quite nicely. I love watching all of the athletes from all over the world march in during the opening parade because it shows that we can put our differences aside for once and celebrate the joys of sport and friendly competition. This year there will be over 10,000 athletes competing competing in 302 events and 28 sports. In 2004, there were 301 events.
During the opening parade, the teams will march in the order of the number of strokes in their country’s name when written in Simplified Chinese. This means Guinea will march second (after Greece, who hosted the previous the summer games and by tradition marches first) and Zambia will march 203rd. China will march last, as is tradition.
As host, China has outdone itself to prepare for the Olympics. They have spent a record-breaking $40.9 billion on venue renovation, construction and expanding Beijing’s subway system.
Now, the designer in me loves graphics and looking at graphics. I thought it would be fun to take a look at logos from previous summer Olympic games. Are you ready?
PLEASE NOTE: All logos in this post are copyrighted! I do not own the copyrights, so ownership remains in the hands of their respective copyright holders! I have linked each image to the site from which I found it!
First, here’s an alternate logo for the 2008 games:
20 years ago, Seoul hosted the Summer Games:
40 years ago, Mexico City was the host:
60 years ago, London:
80 years ago, Amsterdam:
A century ago, London:
And finally, here’s the logo of the 1896 games, believed to be the first Summer Games held in modern times:
I’ve only shown the logos in 20-year intervals, but there were many more games in between. To see them, have a look at http://www.sportslogos.net/league.php?id=27. In fact, that site (sportslogos.net) has a wide variety of sports team and league logos, if you’re into that kind of thing!
Well, that’s all for now. I’m looking forward to the games (especially the swimming and gymnastics events), and may the best athletes win!!
Hey, Michelle! The opening of the Olympics was just amazing, did you get to see any of the first performers? I def. was blown away…
Yes, I watched it with my mom and we were both amazed. They really put a lot of work into it. I think my favorite was the huge scroll and the dancers who “danced” the picture on top of it. I had seen anything like that before.
I’ve been watching the games and have enjoyed them so far. I think Gymnastics is my favorite…it’s too bad about the controversy that’s taking place over some of the Chinese gymnasts’ ages (they’re being accused of letting girls who are too young compete).
Yeah, I like watching the swimming. I’ve made a lot of progress lately in learning how to swim, so seeing the pros do it is really fun!
And yeah, i think saw a story about some of Chinese gymnasts being too young. It’s too bad, the lengths they’ll go. *Sigh*