BEIJING?As Team Philippines? flag-bearer during Friday night?s opening ceremonies at the awe-inspiring Bird?s Nest, the main Olympic stadium, Manny Pacquiao became the first Filipino athlete to be so honored without ever competing in the Olympics.
Pacquiao did not ask for it, though. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo asked national sports officials in Malaca?ang if there was a chance that professional boxing?s international superstar could carry the flag in Beijing. Not one official dared contradict her lest she reduced the government?s assistance to sports, according to a source at the Philippine Olympic Committee.
Swimmer Miguel Molina, Southeast Asia Games? Best Male Athlete, didn?t mind yielding the honor to Pacquiao.
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Roger Federer, who will relinquish tennis? top ranking on Aug. 18 to Rafael Nadal after being on top for more than four years, said months before the Beijing Olympics that he would be happy to stay in a room and commune with fellow athletes at the Athletes Village here. He did stay one night at the village but changed his mind the morning after.
Packing his racquets in a huff, he told officials of Switzerland?s national Olympic committee that he wouldn?t be able to prepare mentally and physically if he remained at the village.
Federer said fellow athletes and officials requesting autographs and photographs played havoc to his training schedule. He checked into a five-star hotel.
The name of the hotel was withheld by the authorities, on Federer?s request.
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The most expensive Olympics in history, according to Chinese and international estimates here, costs between $35 billion and $40 billion.
Computed at the peso-dollar exchange rate of P44 to $1, the lower estimate is P1.54 trillion. For a perspective, the Philippines? 2008 budget is already P1.227 trillion.
In contrast, Greece held the previous Olympics in Athens for $14 billion.
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The few media tickets to the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, billed here as the greatest show on earth, went mostly to the wire services.
About 70,000 tickets were put on sale, about 10,000 were reserved for personnel of the Beijing Olympic Games Organizing Committee and the rest were handed over to the International Olympic Committee for distribution to national Olympic organizations.
There were persistent reports here that the scalpers, said to have been rounded up by police weeks ahead of the ceremonies, were back Friday night around the 90,000-seat stadium.
If undercover police officers failed to turn away prospective ticket hunters, though, the scalpers did. A 500-yuan (P3,275) ticket, according to one Chinese reporter, fetched at least 8,500 yuan.
