Olympic Games 2012

The Summer Games in Beijing wrapped up two months ago, but Britain is still drunk on the heady wine of victory. Thousands of people lined the streets here this week for a boisterous parade honoring the nation's Olympians, whose surprising haul of gold medals provided extra reason -- if one were needed in this pub-strewn country -- to party. The hangover might lie around the corner.

The leader of the task force evaluating Los Angeles' Olympic bid sounded like a star-struck tourist. He admired the bid committee's passion for its cause, saying " ... there was not a second we were here that did not remind us of that, and we like that kind of attitude." He commended Los Angeles for having "the best in Olympic venues and venue management," adding: "Like no other U.S. bid city, you have substantial Olympic history and a very good track record.

If Los Angeles could hear the lavish grousing about the London 2012 Summer Olympics even five years out, it might find a new four-letter word for Saturday's narrow Olympic bid loss to Chicago. Whew. \o7Thanks for not choosing us! Wait, if you think about it, we won! \f7London "won" in an upset over Paris in July 2005, and the 21 ensuing months have brought some fine fare from the country that's the best in the world at looking in the mirror and locating tough assessments.

Officials for the 2012 Summer Olympics here were looking to make a splash with their new logo for the London Games, and they surely did. Within two days of the bright, geometric design's unveiling this week, there were 48,000 signatures on a petition to dump the logo immediately. A motion floating in Parliament called it a "childish, ridiculous and pathetic attempt to appear trendy." And London Mayor Ken Livingstone piled on by midweek, pronouncing the new symbol a "catastrophic mistake."

Olympic snowboarding face-planted nine years ago in Nagano, Japan, captivated audiences four years later during a U.S. medals sweep at Salt Lake City, and last year became one of the Winter Games' most prominent sports in Turin, Italy. Now it's skateboarding's turn.

One day before the International Olympic Committee voted on where to stage the 2012 Summer Games, IOC officials were locked in a backstage test of wills with the U.S. Olympic Committee over the sports movement's most precious resource: money. At issue last July in Singapore was how to split up hundreds of millions of dollars in sponsorship revenue over the seven years it takes to produce an Olympic Games.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair may have revolutionized the Olympic bid process by lobbying intently for London in its successful quest to play host to the 2012 Games. Now, with the U.S. Olympic Committee weighing a 2016 bid and Los Angeles among five American cities under consideration, the game plan that delivered the Games to London a year ago Thursday has become a template -- and challenge -- for U.S. officials. Traditionally, U.S.