KEY POINTS:
Halfway through the Olympics and I have no idea if Super Saturday will have been a Successful Super Saturday or whether we'll all be berating athletes we've never heard of until this week for being losers and failures.
In an interview, former Olympian Danyon Loader said more records were broken at the World Swimming Champs than at the Olympics.
There isn't the same intense public interest and media focus, and for many athletes, being out of the glare of the spotlight frees them up to perform their best.
My favourite story hasn't been about the athletes. It was the revelation the sweet girl warbling so beautifully in the opening ceremony was not the singer but someone chosen for her facial features.
We know the child with the angel's voice, Yang Peiyi, was deemed too ugly to appear on camera. To my Western eye, the wee 7-year-old looked far cuter than the girl who ultimately took centre stage, Lin Miaoke. There was a touch of the JonBenet Ramsays about Lin, I thought. However, the worldwide outcry looks as if it will benefit both girls.
It's not the first time there's been trickery and sleight of hand in the Olympics. The flaming arrow that soared through the air to light the Olympic torch at the Barcelona Olympics didn't actually light it. It was a flick of the switch. Perhaps the bias for boy babies has meant there are few cute, tuneful girls because in a land of a billion people you'd think they could find a child who could sing beautifully and was also pretty enough for the Politburo.
* www.kerrewoodham.com
