Standing Up Standing Out

The worlds eyes are turned to Beijing looking toward the athletes and their achievements, but maybe the need is to look at the people who live there. There are only a handful of athletes from more open countries who are out at these Olympic games versus a larger LGTB community that is existing under Chinese rule.

Today's Out Spotlight focuses on the LGTB community in China. Despite being counter to the conformity that Chinese government demands of their citizens, these individuals are living their lives and building a LGTB community to support each other.

Common Language is a magazine written, published and distributed through their postal system when gay literature and movies are banned by their government. They have a camp each summer a gathering to come together, to be better activists. Who realized that there would be LGBT library and a LGBT center in a nation that to outsiders seems intolerant to homosexuality. It shows that there are people who are standing up to their government, and living the lives they want to have.

So today's spotlight is about those people, taking risks and living their lives.

OMG Olympic Moment
Swimming

"My will to live completely overcame my desire to win."

That was the reaction of 19-year-old Hungarian Alfred Hajos after he won the 1200 metres freestyle at the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896. He won by being the first swimmer to reach shore after a boat had left everyone in the icy waters of the Mediterranean.

Olympic swimming has come a long way, to temperature-controlled 50-metre pools, wave-killing gutters, lane markers designed to reduce turbulence, and status as one of the Games' glamour events. It is far removed from those early days.

There were the venues, from the Bay of Zea in 1896, to Paris's River Seine in 1900, to a 100-metre pool constructed inside the athletics track in 1908. Then there were the events, from a 100-metre race for Greek sailors in 1896, to underwater and obstacle races in 1900, to a "plunge for distance" in 1908. That event involved a standing dive, with contestants then remaining motionless for 60 seconds, or until their heads broke the surface - whichever came first.

Of course today the world is celebrating the incredible athletic accomplishment of Michael Phelps who won 8 gold medals in a single Olympics, breaking the 36 year achievement of 7 golds by swimmer Mark Spitz in the 1972 Munich games.

Congratulations Michael!

OMG's Olympic take. Austin seems to have been born in the water, mentioning in interviews that he was on waterskis before he could walk, and in the water when a few months old. Seriously someone should just check to see if he has webbed feet. And if they ever do a remake of The Man from Atlantis , casting agents should just look no futher. Now Jake and swimmming? Well that's more to do with the suits than that the water. Before the new high tech racers, swimmers were know for their speedos. And Jake is famously known on a dare to go into a store, strip down put one on and just walk out of the store when he was younger. Yeah someone did have a chat with the mall cops for that one.