Australia is in ninth place in the Athens Olympics medal tally following Friday night’s official opening.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald’s olympic games website, Australia was on 0 gold, 0 silver and 0 bronze, for a total of 0 medals. Of the 0 events decided in the Games at that point, Albania was in the lead, ahead of Algeria and American Samoa. Pity poor Zimbabwe.

Here’s a screen shot from the SMH website taken on Saturday morning (right).

If Jesus could be born in 4BC then I guess the Olympics can start two days before the uttering of the phrase “Let the games begin”.

Let’s get something clear from the outset - opening ceremonies are a wank. And the Athens opening ceremony was a classic (no pun intended) case. It was an incredible achievement and logistic tour de force… but what does this have to do with sport?

I’ll leave my comments, having viewed the replay on channel 7 during the day today, to just a few:

• The torch reminded me of an extraterrestrial pod, and if aliens climb out of it at some stage during the next fortnight I will not be surprised.
• The Americans looked scruffy and arrogant in the Parade of Nations. Couldn’t they at least have all worn their baseball caps either the right way around, or all worn them back-to-front for consistency?
• The Australian jackets looked very ugly to me, and I for one certainly won’t be paying $3995 (plus $40 p&h) for a framed signed copy.
• Erki Nool carried the flag for Estonia! Way to go, Erk!!
• That well-known Greek goddess Bjork performed a number (”Oceania”) that she composed especially for these Games. A fine tradition is continued: Sarah Brightman 1992, Celine Dion 1996, Nikki Webster 2000, Bjork 2004. Nominations for Beijing 2008 are now being taken.

The IOC website has a complete list of the flag bearers at the opening ceremony.

Some reports on the opening ceremony:
Ben Kimber of the Sydney Morning Herald gave detailed updates on their website every 15 minutes.
Jim White of the Telegraph reported on the warmup comedy routine before the ceremony began.
Richard Sandomir of the New York Times reported on the NBC coverage of the opening ceremony.
Jayda Evans of the Seattle Times decided that the worst fashion of the opening ceremony was a tie between the Australian team and Bjork.

Still on Bjork and Oceania, which appears on her forthcoming album Medulla, MTV described Oceania as “Ethel Merman-like”.

Hooray for TV megabucks. Olympic competition always gets under way these days with soccer on the Wednesday, but no, the Opening Ceremony must be held on the Friday night. Day zero should really be day three.

Day minus two (Wednesday the 11th) saw Cranky Franky’s Olyroos held to a 1-1 draw by Tunisia. Ho hum. Shannon Boxx (can that be her real name?) opened the scoring for the US in their 3-0 win over Greece. Japan beat Sweden 1-0 and Germany trounced the Chinese 8-0, four goals to Birgitte Prinz. The Matildas went down 0-1 to Brazil, which probably finishes off their medal hopes already.

Day minus one (Thursday), and Dong Hyun Im set the first world record of the Games in the archery. There you go, one world record and we haven’t even had the not-quite-opening ceremony yet.

Iraq beat Portugal 4-2 in the men’s soccer. The teams were 2-2 when Portugal had a man sent off in the 51st minute. Another success story out of Iraq’s Liberation?

But the big tabloid event of the day - the first nominee Marie-Jose Perec Moment of Athens 2004 - involved Kostas Kenteris and Katerina Thanou. The pair went AWOL from the Greek camp when drug test time came around, hopped on a motorbike and duly crashed it. Here is The Guardian reported it in their Saturday edition.

Thursday, September 28, 2000, Dianne and I were sitting in the stands at Stadium Australia watching the second morning of the decathlon. Come the discus throw, and there was one guy who slammed both of his first two throws straight into the cage. His third throw was judged to be legal only after a protest. He went on to win the gold medal. My hero of Sydney 2000 is back for Athens 2004. Estonia’s first-ever male gold medallist, he is the one and only Erki Nool.

To be fair, Nool is not a favourite for the decathlon this time around. He is not currently ranked in the world’s top 50 decathletes by the IAAF. But we’ll be cheering for him, come August 23 and 24.

I’ll be keeping an eye on the female athletes of the two Islamic countries Liberated By The Forces Of Good in the past three years, namely Afghanistan and Iraq. Robina Muqimyar is competing in the 100 metres (Aug 20-21), while Friba Razayee is competing in judo. One of Muqimyar’s opponents in the quest for Marion Jones’ vacant crown will be Iraq’s only female athlete at Athens, Alaa Jassim.

Timor-Leste is competing for the first time, after some of the athletes took part in Sydney as independent invitees of the IOC. Agueda Amaral will be running the women’s marathon on August 22. According to the official Athens 2004 website, her interests are “cooking and cricket”. Martinho Ferreira de Araujo is in the men’s weightlifting.

Kiribati, a collection of around 33 atolls in the North Pacific, is a nation in danger of disappearing because of global warming. Their olympic committee was admitted to the IOC just last year. The Athens 2004 website lists one competitor, Meameaa Thomas in the weightlifting.

Palestine: Unlike Sydney 2000, this time Palestine will be sending some home-grown athletes, despite the obvious hardships. Sanna Abubkheet is her country’s first female olympian and is running in the 800 metres. The story of swimmer Raad Aweisat is an inspiring one.

Finally, I’ll be watching out for Sunette Viljoen of South Africa. She played seventeen one-day internationals and one Test for the South African women’s cricket team before taking concentrating full-time on the javelin throw. I hope this has no connection with the five wickets she took for her country.

Next: Roundup of days minus two and minus one.

These Olympic Games are as uninteresting to me as any since, perhaps, Seoul 1988. To try and generate some sort of excitement for myself, here are the competitions, the teams and the people I’ll be watching in Athens 2004:

Baseball: The United States failed to qualify, triggering suggestions that baseball will be cut from future Olympics. Under the stewardship of supercoach Tommy Lasorda, the US were the gold medallists at Sydney 2000. However, at the Americas qualifying tournament in Panama last November, they crashed out after losing to Mexico. It was, however, Cuba, gold medallists in 1992 and 1996 and runners-up in 2000 (report | box score), who qualified along with Canada.

Other nations competing in the eight-team competition are hosts Greece, European qualifiers Italy and the Netherlands, Asian qualifiers Japan and Taiwan, and Oceania/Africa qualifier Australia. Competition starts on Sunday at 5.30pm Sydney time with Australia playing Cuba. I’ll do a fuller preview before then.

Softball: Women’s baseball doesn’t get a guernsey in the Olympics, but softball is there instead. USA will be defending their title, and also competing are Greece, Australia, Canada, China, Italy, Japan and Taiwan. Play begins on Saturday the 14th with the gold medal game on Monday the 23rd. The game to keep a close eye on: China v Taiwan, 4.30pm Sydney time on the 19th. (Just think Honduras v El Salvador, soccer, 1969.)

Hockey: Australia has a glorious tradition of coming fourth in Olympic men’s hockey. In a twelve-team competition they sit in Pool B alongside Argentina, South Africa, New Zealand, Netherlands and India. Pool A consists of South Korea, Spain, Germany, Pakistan, Great Britain and Egypt. The Dutch are defending champions. Germany is currently ranked number one in the world. All of which is a good reason to go for India!

The Hockeyroos are defending champions for the women (and maybe John Howard won’t call them the cricket team like he did in 1999). They are not the number one ranked team in the world however, that honour goes to the Argentines. Also competing in the eight-team competition: Netherlands, South Africa, China, Japan, Germany, Spain.

Women’s soccer: The men’s soccer tournament is a bad joke, but the women’s event possibly has more prestige than the World Cup. Norway, gold medallists in 2000, won’t be there this time as 2003 World Cup finalists Germany and Sweden became the two UEFA olympic qualifiers. In a ten-team competition the other nations are Greece, Australia, USA, Brazil, China, Germany, Mexico and Japan. For once I’ll be parochial and cheer for the Matildas. They won’t get a medal, however.

Women’s wrestling: Making their Olympic debut on August 22. Will I be curious enough to watch?

Next: Part two of my preview. The nations I will be following, and my hero from Sydney 2000 returns for Athens 2004.

Official Games of the XXVIII Olympiad website: www.athens2004.com.