Monday, 18th August 2008 - the date when Rafael Nadal finally eclipsed Roger Federer as the greatest player on the planet - and what a way to celebrate this ascension with an Olympic title!

Well done, Rafa! And really good to see you doing so well on the hard-court season after Wimbledon. Looks like he didn’r something different during his off-season last December - something which every other top ten player could probably learn from!

Eleven days into the Games, and Bleungberg has been thoroughly enjoying the 29th Olympiad - watching upwards of 11 hours of coverage a day. As it is 20 years since Bleungberg watched his first Olympics opening ceremony from Seoul on a dreary afternoon in Hong Kong, here is a list of all his favourite Olympic memories:

1988, Seoul - The Opening Ceremony and especially the four Korean singers - two men, two women with very many coiffeured hair - miming to the official theme song, ‘Hand In Hand’. Florence Griffith-Joyner’s finger-nails and hair when crossing the line in the 100m final.

1992, Barcelona - The mascot, the arrow in the opening ceremony, and the women’s marathon.

1996, Atlanta - The windsurfing gold for Hong Kong. The BBC’s opening credits.

2000, Sydney - Steve Redgrave’s fifth gold, Jason Queally’s cycling gold, Cathy Freeman’s 400m triumph, and Marion Jones winning the 100m final.

2004, Athens - Matthew Pinsent’s fourth gold, Kelly Holmes’s surprising 800m victory, Haile Gebrselassie’s defeat in the 10000m final, Pieter van den Hoogenband beating Ian Thorpe and Michael Phelps in the 100m freestyle final, Britain’s men’s 4×100 relay final and the mixed doubles badminton final.

It’s somewhat ironic that no sooner had Liu Xiang, the face of Beijing 2008 had limped out even before his title defence had begun, his successor should be found within 24 hours on the same track.

Christine Ohuruogu - whose reputation had taken a severe battering thanks to her missing three random drugs tests between 2006 and 2007 - stormed to an incredible victory in the women’s 400m final today, thus making her the first British woman ever to win this prestigious title AND giving her a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to defend the Olympic title on home soil. In fact, not just home soil but right on her door-step in East London!

The Stratford girl came back from a year’s suspension last summer to win an amazing World Championship title in Osaka - her fourth races upon her return to competitive racing.

Yet, the British public didn’t warm to her, as suspicions lingered over her ‘cleaniness’. This was particularly evident in her last-placed finish in last December’s BBC Sports Personality of the Year, during which she polled just 1% of the phone vote - miles and miles behind the ninth-placed Justin Rose (http://bleungberg.com/blog/archives/618 ) - very worrying for someone who would was always touted to be one of the main faces of London 2012.

Fast forward a year, and her incredible triumph has surely rehabilitated her status amongst the sceptical British public. If the newspapers are anything to go by (’Great Briton’, ‘Golden Girl’), then it’s a sure bet that Ohuruogu will take her place amongst the great and the good in the Olympic Stadium.

Let’s just hope she does a Cathy Freeman rather than a Liu Xiang!

The other slippery fuck to bite the bullet in recent days was, of course, everyone’s favourite, that randy fucker Senator John Edwards.

We told you ages ago that he was not to be trusted, and that his philadering would come back to haunt him - big time! - and it has.

Cheating scumbag - and behind his cancer-stricken wife’s back! Despicable human trash. We’ve nothing against his fucking around in Beverley Hills…we just hate the fact he denied it and brushed it under the carpet.

Well, at least it’s all over for him. His wife’s still dying, and we know he feel feel guilty about this adulterous affair for as long as he lives. That’s a good enough torture for Bleungberg.

Whilst Bleungberg’s been busy lapping it up with a truly outstanding Olympic Games - thanks in part to NBC fucking up the schedule by making the swimming finals go off at 3.30am British time, we’ve been more than pleased to see the demise of two of our least favourite people in the world this past week: Musharref and Edwards.

When Benazir Bhutto was gunned down and bombed out last December - rather inconveniently just as the Coral Welsh Grand National was under starter’s order at Chepstow racecourse - we did wonder a) whether Pervez was behind it and b) how come he has managed to stay alive for so long.

Bleungberg genuinely thought we’d see Pervez getting gunned won by one of his lieutenants - Ghandi-style - but it looks like he’ll get away without being assassinated….just yet.

So Pervez must now scowl the world for refuge and asylum/protection. Britain has been mooted and does seem a bit risky, as al-Qaeda looks a bit too rampant on these shores and by harbouring such a nasty man, Britain’s reputation looks set to take yet another dive in Islamic extremists’ eyes. Likewise Turkey and Pakistan where his safety is not guaranteed. That leaves Saudi Arabia. Mind you, given his panchance for ladies and booze, he might struggle to stay sober and goodness knows what a 65-year-old horny dictator might do to those repressed Saudi women!

Bleungberg’s solution would be for the Pakistani authorities to take the courageous step and impeach him, throw him into jail and let him rot in hell. Not point letting him free and be at risk to others!

A few thoughts on the Olympics so far:

1) The Opening Ceremony was fantastic….so many people…which goes to prove that if China were to go to war with anybody, they can throw body after body into the battlefield.

2) The use of the PLA soldiers to raise the Olympic flag brought back horrible memories of massacres and repression. Stiff marching and flag-raising have no place for this digital age when they want to project a positive image of China to the rest of the world.

3) Huw Edwards is not up to the job of commentating on the opening ceremony. Nor is Hazel Irvine. Let’s have Barry Davies and Clare Balding.

4) Bleungberg sat down to watch a gold-medal match of women’s team archery yesterday…but didn’t know I was watching a bunch of women until half-way through; why do Koreans and Chinese women insist on having spikey haircuts and look like a bunch of dykes?

5) Good to see the Bushes cheering on Phelps and co poolside and at the USA-China basketball match. Wonder what type of security was required for all the spectators involved? Mind you, Bush went to the wrong meet - he shouldn’t been there for the Men’s 4×100 freestyle relay: the best single-race I’ve seen in the pool for years.

6) Sharron Davies is highly underrated.

7) Where’s the fencing? Not on the BBC (it never is); nor Eurosport, or even TVEi.

8 ) Archery is fantastic.

9) Judo is so pure.

Bleungberg has a new candidate for least favourite Belgian - IOC President Jacques Rogge. Rogge joins megalomaniac murderer King Leopold and evil paedophile Marc Dutroux on this short list. Rogge’s crime? Being blind, deaf and probably whatever you call it when someone can’t smell!

Experts have all said the air in Beijing is unfit for athletes - five times more polluted than London on a good day! - yet Rogge is still yapping on about the air being safe for competition when it blatantly isn’t. Well, he doesn’t have to run anywhere so what does he know?Knowing him, he probably comes out of his air-con hotel and gets driven everywhere in air-con cars. (though we must give him credit for checking into a cheaper hotel in order not to be seen as wasteful).

Still, this isn’t the first blunder he’s committed this past month. Rogge has been reluctant to criticse the Chinese for curbing internet access for journalists. Also, as the IOC is supposed to be promoting fairness and equality, human rights and religious freedom issues have been ducked - purposely. It’s as if he’s worried about offending the Chinese even though he’s technically THEIR boss!

Drug cheats are getting away with murder, and he’s almost turning a blind eye on it.

Jacques Rogge - you’re an idiot.

Only a matter of time that Murray leapfrogs the Russian and the Spaniard to make it the big four.

Four days before the Olympics and a grenade attack kills 16 policemen during morning exercises in the volatile province of Xinjiang…

Fascinating to see the retaliatory responses by the Chinese military in the coming weeks if the terrorists were to strike the Games in Beijing!

Canada, for so long been overshadowed by its bloshy and interfering neighbour, has finally got one up on America in terms of notoriety. Well, two, if you count those body parts which were washed up on the shores of British Columbia earlier this summer.

Anyway, of the two giants, America has always had the worst shootings, bombings, terrorist attacks, murders, double-murders, honour-killings, incests, celebrity scandals and all sorts of religious sado-masochists which appall its people and many others around the world.

People never know much about Canada - they think of it as homey, inoffensive and probably quite orderly and nice to live in.

That couldn’t be further from the truth, of course!

Drugs are a major problem - probably more so than America - and pharmaceutcal companies rank in billions in exploiting gullible Canadians (and cross-border Americans); Islamic extremists have always preferred to use Canada to harbour terrorist cells because it’s easier whilst racism continues to be a problem especially towards the indigenous people.

Now, with all these feet washing up on the shores of Vancouver and the unexplained and random decapitation of a young man by some crazy dude on a Greyhound bus in the middle of nowhere has thrusted the dark side of Canada to front-page news around the world.

Canada is still probably a better place to raise your kids than America - better social benefits and health-care for starters - but harmless it ain’t.