Olympics '08: Lopresti is 'face and voice of Gannett'

[Closing ceremony: Fireworks light up "Bird's Nest" stadium]

Last of a series by Gannett Blog Olympics news analyst Ed Hutcheson, a pen name for one of my long-time readers. An employee at a GCI paper, Ed filed dispatches about the Summer Games, which ended yesterday with the closing ceremonies. Back to you, Ed -- and thanks for your insight!

Mike Lopresti, the national sports columnist for Gannett News Service, has been the face and the voice of Gannett at the Beijing Olympics. Lopresti isn’t for everyone. His understated Midwest everyman's persona may not play well in other parts of the country. His style of writing, with its often distinctive cadence, sometimes seems overdramatic.

In Beijing, Lopresti (left, reporting at Tiananmen Square) looked past the scores, past the U.S. teams, even past sports itself, to find the stories within. As he often has at America's biggest sporting events over the past 25 years, Lopresti rises to the occasion.

Consider Thursday's column on Becky Hammon, an American playing on the Russian basketball team. Lopresti puts today's Olympics into perspective for the folks back home:

"Her dilemma is the Olympian dilemma now, where borders are not worth the ink it takes to print them on a map. Where the republic of Georgia strikes back at the Russian invasion with imported Brazilians in beach volleyball. . . . Where many table tennis competitions come down to whoever has the best former Chinese player. And where an American woman, with no grandmother back in Moscow or any other family lineage, plays for the Russians because they need a guard and are willing to fast-track a passport for her. Plus get her a nice contract on a Russian club team. The Olympics are now like major league baseball. They have gone free agency."

How did Lopresti know about Brazilians as Georgians facing Russians? He was there: He wrote about it Aug. 13, with the Russian invasion of Georgia as the backdrop.

How did Lopresti know about China's dominance of table tennis? He was there: He wrote about it Aug. 18, comparing it to the Super Bowl but also noting that "Olympic players have to chase down their errant balls, just like we do in the basement."

Of course, Lopresti writes about the biggest U.S. names -- swimmer Michael Phelps, gymnast Alicia Sacramone, soccer goalie Hope Solo and the men's basketball team. But he also found an Iraqi sprinter on Aug. 11: "Back home in Iraq, where the athletes have died like everyone else, there are two running tracks Dana Abdul-Razak can use to make herself a sprinter. One requires ignoring the scars from the mortar shells. The other is two hours away. This is the route a woman must take, dashing through a war to get to the Olympics."

Visiting Tiananmen Square
Lopresti took his own route to the truth in Beijing, strolling through its repressive past on his way to these Olympics. Even before the Games opened, Lopresti went to Tiananmen Square, chatting up the locals to get a sense of life in China today, but asking what many wonder: What do you know of “the Tank Man,” the solitary protester who became the symbol of the crushed 1989 rebellion?

"It happened here?" says one.

"No one knows about that," says another.

Watch the video that accompanies that remarkable column.

[Photos: closing ceremony, Greg Baker, Associated Press; Russian beach volleyball player Natalia Uryadova, right, hugs Cristine Santanna of Georgia, Reuters; Lopresti, screenshot from GNS video; lone Tiananmen protester, Jeff Widener, AP]