I am the last person to threadjack an Olympics Manlove celebration, but have we discussed the fact that the performers in the opening ceremony were wearing diapers?

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Last updated: 2:09 pm
August 19, 2008
Posted: 1:40 pm
August 19, 2008

BEIJING - Martial arts student Cheng Jianghua only saw the army barracks he stayed in and the stadium where he performed at the spectacular Olympics opening ceremony. But his sacrifices were minor - other performers were injured, fainted from heatstroke or forced to wear adult diapers so the show could go on.

Filmmaker Zhang Yimou, the ceremony's director, insisted in an interview with local media that suffering and sacrifice were required to pull off the Aug. 8 opening, which involved wrangling nearly 15,000 cast and crew. Only North Korea could have done it better, he said.

But some news reports have raised questions about the lengths to which Beijing went in trying to create a perfect start to the Summer Games.

Chinese officials were accused of fakery for using computer-generated images to enhance the show's fireworks display for TV viewers.

Organizers also have been criticized about their decision to have a 9-year-old girl lip-synch "Ode to the Motherland" because the real singer was deemed not cute enough.

Performers have complained that they sustained injuries from slipping during rain-drenched rehearsals or fainting from heatstroke amid hours of training under the relentless summer sun.

Cheng and 2,200 other carefully chosen pugilist prodigies spent an average of 16 hours a day, every day, rehearsing a synchronized tai-chi routine involving high kicks, sweeping lunges and swift punches. They lived for three months in trying conditions at a restricted army camp on the outskirts of Beijing.

"We never went out during the time we were training," Cheng, 20, told the AP in a phone interview. "Our school is quite strict. When we stay in school we can't go out on our own, let alone when we're at a military camp."

In the most extreme case, Beijing organizers revealed last week that Liu Yan, a 26-year-old dancer, was seriously injured during a July rehearsal. Shanghai media reported that she fell from a 10-foot stage and may be permanently paralyzed from the waist down.

Zhang, the ceremony's director, visited Liu in the hospital and has told Chinese media that he deeply regrets what happened to her - but he has also defended the training schedule his performers endured.

He told the popular Guangzhou weekly newspaper Southern Weekend that only communist North Korea could have done a better job getting thousands of performers to move in perfect unison.