Olympic fever begins today!
Our partners at the Seattle Times have unleashed an awesome info-graphic to help you track how our local athletes are performing at the games.
As you might expect, one big Northwest impact at the games will be in Soccer – with four Seattle Sounders Women, including Tri-Cities native Hope Solo, joining the olympic team.
There’s potential for high Seattle-centric drama in women’s basketball as well, with Seattle Storm teammates Sue Bird and Lauren Jackson likely to face off as Jackson’s home country of Australia tries to unseat the US team as champions.
Jackson isn’t the only athlete with Northwest ties representing another country in the games. Half-a-dozen members of the Canadian rowing team team attended UW. And other Olympians representing Great Britain, Australia, Sweden and the Marshall Islands have all called the Northwest home.
And there are some unexpected stars like Quanitta “Queen” Underwood, who will be competing in the brand new event of Women’s Boxing. Underwood attended Garfield High School and trained right here in the Central District at Cappy’s Boxing Gym.
But before any actual sports can happen, the guaranteed-to-be-ridiculous Opening Ceremonies take place today at 2:00 pm on NBC (and again at 7pm on tape delay). In an arms race to outdo the opening ceremonies in Beijing that lasted 4 hours and involved much of the population of China, the Brits have brought in Oscar winner Danny Boyle to direct. The ceremonies will also include cameos by James Bond, Sir Paul McCartney, the world’s largest harmonically tuned bell, a song by AR Rahman celebrating Indian influence in the UK, and of course, the Queen herself.
Oh, and Mitt Romney will be there too, possibly to cheer on one of his wife’s dressage horses that will be competing in the games.
