Today was uniform day. Each member of the Chinese Olympic Sailing Team was provided with a suit case of items, including; half a dozen shirts, two dress shirts, a track suit, a blazer, slacks, dress belt, dress shoes, tie/scarf, toiletry bag, back-pack, duffel bag, sun glasses, 6 pairs of socks, one (!) pair of underpants, water bottle, shoe horn, two pairs of sandals, a pair of trainers, two caps, a dress hat, and, most important of all, the emblem of the Chinese Olympic Team.
Tomorrow is a very proud day for the team - they will be the first team to be welcomed on the first day of the formally opened Olympic Sailing Venue and Olympic Village here in Qingdao. It is a privilege for me to be invited to join them. It may seem strange that I am lining up with a team not of my nationality. Sport is increasingly international, even global, in terms of its support personnel - here we have Australians coaching the SIN team, Americans coaching the GER team, and even Brits coaching the RUS team. Who would have foreseen that during the depths of the Cold War?
May be Olympic sport is the great unifier that the IOC hopes it would be ......
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