Pre-Olympics 2012: What’s Buzzing · Global Voices
Richard Wanjohi

This post is part of our special coverage London 2012 Olympics.
With the 2012 London Olympics drawing closer, activities relating to the Games are heightening every day. From countries participating in the Games to their athletes preparing to score their best, the world's online audience is coming alive and getting ready for this extravaganza.
To start off, the blog The Rolling Maul gives interesting trivia about the Olympics here:
Today it sounds unreal, but there was a time, many decades ago, when there was a prevailing ethos amongst the aristocracy that it would be un-gentlemanly and unfair towards other participants to actually practice or train for an event. In fact, it was considered tantamount to cheating!
This post also captures how gender parity has evolved in the games:
The only Olympic sport where both genders compete together is the equestrian disciplines. With the addition of women’s boxing to the 2012 OG (Olympic Games), female athletes will now be able to compete in all the same sports as their male counterparts
Women participated for the first time at the 1900 Paris Games. Image courtesy of earthandroid.wordpress.com
Talking of women, The Source has a post dedicated to Women in Sport:
For the first time, the 2012 United States Olympic team will have more women than men: there are 269 women and 261 men on the team. And for your information, the oldest American athlete is a woman – equestrian rider Karen O’ Connor at 54 – and the youngest is 15 year old swimmer Katie Ledecky (another female.)
Still sticking with women athletes, Muslim Women in Sports blog, which acts as a ‘repository of collected materials about Muslim women involvement in physical activities,’ has great images taken by fashion magazine Vanity Fair of Muslim women coming to the Olympics:
The blog collates posts and articles from mainstream media and curates them for an easy read. It has quite a number of posts on Muslim women and the Olympics.
Macro-man Blog takes a satirical look at the Olympics and links them with political and social issues affecting major economies across the world in a post titled “the 2012 Financial Olympics“:
As London prepares for the Greatest Show on Earth, Team Macro Man have been giving their some thought to their own favourites for the 2012 Financial Olympics. Sailing – It’s going to be tough with so many competitors sailing so close to the wind this year. Barclays opted to do their own rigging, having allegedly refused the advice of their BoE (Bank of Engladn) advisors. However the sudden suicides of the team captain and cabin boy have left an opening for Iran’s HSBC crea. With more storms forecast this year, we expect many of the field to be capsized. Team US-JPM have already spent billions on repairs having hit a whale.
MercySisters remind us of the human issues that rear their head, this one being on human trafficking and the Olympics:
Although the stories and statistics around human trafficking for sexual and worker exploitation around sporting events is difficult, we now know these events offer an opportunity to raise the issue, educate large groups of workers and customers and develop new networks around the issue [..] As this year’s Olympics approach, Mercy Investment Services has joined our partners at the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) and our European partners at the Ecumenical Council for Corporate Responsibility to call upon London-area hotels and Olympic sponsors and suppliers to take a public stand and ensure their business operations are trafficking and slavery free
Fellowship of Mind raises the issue of Israeli athletes gunned down during the 1972 Munich Games. They call for a boycott as detailed below:
During the crisis, King Hussein of Jordan was the only leader of an Arab country to publicly denounce the Olympic attack, calling it a “savage crime against civilization… perpetrated by sick minds.” Forty years later and not one of the Arab countries participating in the Games will offer one minute of silence for the horrendous murders?  Speaks volumes to the true beliefs of these countries and their “religion of peace.
JoshuaPundit also raises the issue of a boycott but gets some interesting rebuttals in the comments section his blog:
So I'll be boycotting the Olympics this year, in thought, word, and deed and I urge you to do likewise. I won't watch the coverage, buy any of the merchandise or follow the games in any way. They are unworthy of attention by anyone who still values what the Olympic spirit is supposedly about. The one thing I will be doing is letting the suits at NBC and any company advertising themselves as Olympic sponsors know why. That will be my moment of silence, my tribute. Call it one man's call for simple decency. I hope you'll join me.
Finally, Earth Android gives Android users leads to the best apps to have to follow up-to-the-minute updates during the Olympics:
Countdown of the biggest event of the year to be held in London from 27 July to 12 August 2012 has started. But I think most of you who are busy with their work life want to get latest updates and news of the event. So here we are going to tell you about the applications Android has launched for its users to get every news feed of the event.
This post is part of our special coverage London 2012 Olympics.