Sunday, August 24, 2008

Olympic Carpet Recap

Sadly, the 2008 Olympics have come to a close, and on Sunday, August 24, closing ceremonies will take place in Beijing. After two weeks of amazing athleticism and thrilling competition, the world will continue as it was.

The Carpetology Blog kicked off our Olympic celebration with Carpet at the Beijing Olympic Summer Games. But we couldn't let the Olympics end without recounting some of our very favorite moments - some of which involve carpet.

*The gymnastics events featured carpet the most prominently. We're so proud of the American women especially! Shawn Johnson won a gold medal in the balance beam competition, and Nastia Liukin won gold in the women's All Around competition.

*Michael Phelps has nothing to do with carpet, but we love him anyway. He's now the only person in the world who can claim eight gold medals from a single Olympic Games.

Photo of opening ceremony courtesy of www.xanga.com/tanguyen

*We were thrilled at the opening ceremony's carpet-like scroll. It turned out to be even more spectacular than we anticipated. The Telegraph in the UK described it like this:

"After 56 children, one from each of China's ethnic groups, brought the Chinese flag into the stadium, a 25m x 100m scroll unfurled to form a giant screen onto which images of China's 5,000-year history were projected. Dancers spread themselves across the bare scroll, making giant paintings as they went. Thousands of years of art, including cave paintings and one of China's most celebrated early paintings, the 12th century Song dynasty master work, A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, were projected onto the scroll."

*The closing ceremonies are expected to include a cast of 7,000 people - still half of the size of the opening ceremonies. Again directed by Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou, they're set to air Sunday night on NBC. You never know - they may include carpet!


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