OLYMPICS 2012 - 5

 

What has been around the world, has three sides and 8000 holes?

Answer the Olympic torch

Ed Barber and Jay Osgerby, designers of the London 2012 torch, explained that the triangular shape of the torch is for the three times London has been the host city - 1908, 1948 and 2012 - and the 8,000 holes in it match the number of relay runners.

London has become a hot ticket since it won the honor of hosting the 2012 Summer Olympics. Getting to the Games by plane from just about any corner of the globe can cost quite a big chunk of change if you don't have enough cash or frequent flyer miles to get you there. One Chinese man may have found a way around that, assuming you have super strong calves and a couple of years to spare.

Chen Guanming a 57-year-old farmer from the eastern village of Jiangsu, has made it to London just in time for the start of the Games today. He claims he got there on a rickshaw, according to the Associated Press.

His long journey started all the way back in 2008 during the Summer Games in Beijing. A British media outlet invited him to attend the Games in London but he couldn't pay for a plane ticket to get there. So in April 2010, he started pedaling toward Great Britain.

Chen told the AP that he had to traverse through some rough terrain to get to London, including flooding in Thailand and a dangerous snowstorm in Turkey, but he stuck through it and was able to ride his rickshaw all the way to France where he caught a ferry to get to London.

Of course, the irony is that after pedaling his rickshaw thousands of miles, there's no way he'll be able to find a parking space for that thing in London...

Before the games has been officially opened he first two world records of London 2012 have been claimed by South Korea in the men's archery ranking round. 

Im Dong-hyun, who is legally blind in one eye broke his own individual record by three points in Friday's ranking round, while in the team event, South Korea, who have won 15 gold medals since 1984 set a new world record for 216 arrows.

According to reports, nine athletes were told that their services would no longer be required on Wednesday due to a series of drug, doping, and other chemically-induced alterations were discovered in their small plastic bottle.

Barry Eva (Storyheart)

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