Hooray for TV megabucks. Olympic competition always gets under way these days with soccer on the Wednesday, but no, the Opening Ceremony must be held on the Friday night. Day zero should really be day three.

Day minus two (Wednesday the 11th) saw Cranky Franky's Olyroos held to a 1-1 draw by Tunisia. Ho hum. Shannon Boxx (can that be her real name?) opened the scoring for the US in their 3-0 win over Greece. Japan beat Sweden 1-0 and Germany trounced the Chinese 8-0, four goals to Birgitte Prinz. The Matildas went down 0-1 to Brazil, which probably finishes off their medal hopes already.

Day minus one (Thursday), and Dong Hyun Im set the first world record of the Games in the archery. There you go, one world record and we haven't even had the not-quite-opening ceremony yet.

Iraq beat Portugal 4-2 in the men's soccer. The teams were 2-2 when Portugal had a man sent off in the 51st minute. Another success story out of Iraq's Liberation?

But the big tabloid event of the day - the first nominee Marie-Jose Perec Moment of Athens 2004 - involved Kostas Kenteris and Katerina Thanou. The pair went AWOL from the Greek camp when drug test time came around, hopped on a motorbike and duly crashed it. Here is The Guardian reported it in their Saturday edition.