¡Vámonos!

Whilst I've been getting overexcited about the exceptional performances of Team GB in the rowing, cycling, swimming and sailing - not to mention the gymnastics yesterday - Spain has been enjoying success too.

Yesterday saw Rafa Nadal win gold in the men's tennis singles, beating Fernando González of Chile 6-3, 7-6, 6-3. And this morning he was crowned World Number 1, knocking Roger Federer off his perch!



And Spain won another gold on Saturday, courtesy of Joan Llaneras in the men's points race in track cycling at the Velodrome (Chris Newton of Team GB won bronze)

Then today saw silver for Martínez and Fernández in the 49er sailing - oddly no British medals in that one ;o) They might even be promoted to gold after a protest over the (gold medal winning) Danish crew using a Croatian boat in the final race after theirs broke.


And Leire Olaberría didn't quite manage to emulate Llaneras' feat on Saturday, but did win bronze in the women's track cycling points race. (Rebecca Romero, having won gold yesterday in the women's individual pursuit, came 11th in her first attempt at the points race)
With good prospects of medals in the open water canoeing, hockey, synchronised swimming and triathlon amongst other things, Spain is optimistic of adding to its medal haul before the Games are out.

¡Vamos a ver qué pasa!

Posted by lisibo at 13:19 0 comments    

Labels: olympics, Spain

Regular readers may have realised by now that I'm a sports fan - and even irregular readers probably have an inkling! So you can guess that I'm currently having a fine time keeping an eye and ear on events at the Olympics Games in Beijing. My boys are quite interested too and it's fun trying to work out the rules of various rarely seen sports like fencing and judo as well as explaining those that I do understand like badminton and canoeing (again rarely seen on TV!)

Of course I'm particularly enjoying the cycling - Sami Sánchez (left) came good in the road race although Contador failed to make it a Spanish double this morning - my eldest was pleased though as he's a Cancellara fan.

For those of you who are also enjoying the Games and fancy finding out more in Spanish, you can access the official site in Spanish - as well as English, French, Arabic and Mandarin.



Other places to check out -
Olimpiadas Beijing 2008
Clarín from Buenos Aires for a South American view
the sports pages of ABC and also El País (interesting article about Michael Phelps)
El Universal (Mexico City)
Terra (Miami)

And whilst I'm still on holiday for another three weeks (well, bit under I guess!), those of you in other countries will soon be back to school so here's a link to some great Olympic resources from the Australian Olympic Committee - five lessons worth of stuff available in Spanish but also Arabic Chinese Croatian French German Indonesian Italian and Japanese. I'm thinking that I might use them anyway as part of EDL day - I know all the languages aren't European but it's about celebrating different languages and I'm never really very strict on them being European ;o) You could also check out this blog for some further ideas in Spanish.

And of course, don't forget the Chinese policeman about whom I blogged before the Games - wonder how many people he's helped - and in how many more languages he's mastered greetings!

Anyhow, back to my sporting activities - I have a fantasy football team to complete - and it's not going to plan as there are too few Spanish defenders in the Premiership to make my team fully Spanish so I'm haivng to cheat more than a little. Oh well!

Posted by lisibo at 21:12 2 comments    

Labels: free resources, news, olympics, spanish, sports

With the Beijing Olympics a couple of weeks away, here's a news story from China about one policeman's efforts to make visitors feel welcome.

In an effort to help tourists, he has learned how to greet people in English, Spanish, German, Dutch, Swedish, Polish, Japanese, Russian, Finnish, Italian and Portuguese. Phew! And he did it by chatting to tourists from those countries - just the advice we give to learners - have go!

Not sure about his taste in movies though ;o)

Posted by lisibo at 13:54 0 comments    

Labels: intercultural understanding, languages, olympics, sport, video, Youtube