Soccer

CSL

Beijing Guoan is set to play EPL’s Birmingham City today at 7:30PM at the Bird’s Nest. Guoan’s recent play has been inconsistent but they will likely put forth their best effort to impress their foreign guests. The Birmingham Mail has a video on Birmingham’s time in the Capital and the Birmingham Post will be live blogging the game.

On August 8th, Barcelona comes to town with what should be great soccer to watch. If you can’t get up to play Beijing Guoan in an exhibition match less than a month after a large number of your players won soccer’s biggest prize, I don’t know what the world is coming to.

Tickets for both games can be had from ClubFootball.

China’s World Cup Bid

Now that the World Cup has ended we can focus on more important things like the 2026 World Cup. It’s only 16 years away! China has to be considered one of the favorites to host it as they are putting forth a strong bid and to tell you the truth, I don’t know why they didn’t try sooner. Modern Leifeng lays out the China’s strong case for the cup in this Three Part Series. It’s good to know that they will at least be secured a spot if they are the hosts.

World Cup Wrap

No need to get into the results of the final. I mean really, you could say that both teams won. And as they say at the New York Post, “This Sport Is Stupid Anyway”. Holland had their “Victory” parade as planned so everyone’s happy. I think the real winners are the football lovers in Beijing. Beijing Boyce bottles that winning spirit in photos and in words. You stay classy, Beijing.

Paul the Octopus has been mostly silent since the tournament ended as he has gone into hiding to escape the paparazzi who have been “taking nude photos” of him. He’s also had to dodge multiple attempts that have been made on his life by non-Spanish fans. He recently escaped the clutches of death thanks to his body double.

Basketball

Kenny Huang can’t be feeling too good about that Cavs minority ownership, now can he? Eh, he’s still gonna be rich. In a related note: Lebron James gets China.

Notes & Link Drop

Skating

I had the pleasure of going down to Daxing over the weekend to check out the Woodward Skatepark with a bunch of the guys from Society / People’s Skateboards. P-Dan was there fresh off of winning a contest in Chengdu and he was pumping the mini like a guy who had been skating for all day for the last, I can’t even remember how many days. It was still impressive. In between his runs there was an 8 year old Chinese kid skating the miniramp like he owned it. Skating in the Capital sure has come a long way.

Sichuan Inspires

A touching piece from Modern Leifeng called More Than Just a Game about Sichuan Province’s team at the recent National Wheelchair Basketball Championships, held in Beijing.

Scuba Diving In Beijing

If diving is your thing sinoscuba says: Join SinoScuba for Shark Week 2010! Available July 31 and daily August 2-6! Dive with seven different shark species at the Blue Zoo Aquarium! See rare baby sharks during our backstage tour! Now with 100% safety record! Just kidding about the “Now”. Check out the link for more details.

Tri Nations Rugby

Here’s the schedule for the rest of the Tri Nations games. I can’t even bring myself to figure out the time changes. All I know is that the games in Australia should all be reasonable judging by the 5:30PM Beijing Start time this Saturday.

• Saturday 24 July - Australia v South Africa -Brisbane
• Saturday 31 July - Australia v All Blacks - Melbourne
• Saturday 7 August - All Blacks v Australia - AMI Stadium, Christchurch
• Saturday 21 August - South Africa v All Blacks - Johannesburg
• Saturday 28 August - South Africa v Australia - Pretoria
• Saturday 4 September - South Africa v Australia -Bloemfontein
• Saturday 11 September -Australia v All Blacks -Sydney

Links

• jingdaily.com: Jack Nicklaus On The Future Of Golf In China (Video)
• China Ultimate Blog: Announcing: Reminder for Dalian beach tournament, July 24-25
• The People's Daily: China's National Beach Handball Championship to kick off