I arrived in Beijing with no understanding of Chinese and no idea how I was going to be able to get to my hotel. Luckily China had prepared for idiots like me and had set up volunteer translation tents all over the city.

Once I had made it to my hotel the Beijing Dream Castle the task of translating for me fell on them. Here they are writing down for me in Chinese the address of the triathlon venue.

After an hour long taxi ride we arrived at the venue with no tickets. Scalping is of course illegal, so we had to be discreet. Luckily one of the New Zealand coaches had 4 tickets for sale and was quite reasonable about the price.

Now we were in, but we wanted to meet up with the rest of the Canadians in a different section than we had tickets for. We thought the huge Canadian flag would get us in with question, and we were right.

And the race has begun! Megan's twin brother Mike was good friends with one of the Canadian triathletes, Paul Tichelaar.

We were sitting in great seats, right in front of the transition area. The bike leg was hot and hilly so everybody mostly stayed in one big pack..

..except for these two, they were able to break away from the pack on the bike leg and started the run with a substantial lead.

But for them it was not to be, the best runners took over and it was Germany who got the gold, with Simon Whitfield of Canada taking the silver. Here is Mike and Paul after the race during a rare moment of peace..

..normally it was a mob scene, with everyone trying to get Paul's autograph. Did they think he was the silver medalist? Could be.. :-)