The game have begun

Wheelchair basketball
Originally uploaded by Janamel

After four days I’ve scratched a bit more of the surface of both Beijing and the Paralympics. I’ve just returned from the Olympic Green from watching two wheelchair basketball games, men’s Canada vs. Sweden and Great Britain vs. USA.

We were meant to arrive in time to also watch the women’s team competing immediately prior, but logistics in Beijing are not always easy, and finding cabs at rush hour, loading six people and two wheelchairs into the vehicles, coordinating ticket pick-ups, meeting locations and finding directions to the venue, took a wee bit of time.

Wheelchair basketball is a great game to watch – the rules are understandable to anyone familiar with basketball in general. It’s also fast, and a little bit rough. Ok, sometimes quite rough… it’s not unusual for players to be knock an opposing player off their wheels, or shift their own weigh forcefully enough to end up on the floor. The players themselves are pretty burly guys who look like they can handle a few hard hits. Tonight, at least, there was plenty of both tattoos and bad attitudes on the court.

You’ll be happy to hear the Canadian team won their match, and if all goes well and they make it to the finals, I’ve already got my tickets in hand. If they’re playing either the British or Americans I saw follow later tonight, then God speed… I would not want to run into either of those teams in a back alley (by the way, it’s more likely to be the British, as they won their match after coming from behind).

I’m disappointed most of you won’t be able to see much of the games through CBC as they are providing a shockingly minimal amount of coverage, especially in comparison to many other countries such as Britain, Australia and China and many others. The CBC has some nominal coverage on their website, but the best coverage to be found is likely at Paralympicsport.tv, where you can get a very good sense of what the action is like yourself. In the meantime, I’ve also posted a few pics from the game as well as some photos I’ve taken around Beijing over the last few days.

It’s raining here (as it has been, on and off, for the last few days). It was past midnight when I made my way back to the hotel tonight and the streets are quiet, near deserted, providing a brief sense of stillness in a city of over 15 million people. I swear I could hear a cricket chirp as I walked down Wangfujing Street. Time for me to call it a night, too.