Good evening, DTZ. Good morning, Beijing.

5:05 p.m.
NBC begins its eastern broadcasts with ... sorry ... Misty and Kerri, live in the studio. They are wearing their medals. Kerri announces that they are "full of love."

So far, Misty has displayed no new tattoos, not has she sprinkled any ashes in NBC's potted plants.

On to track and field, where it was another not-so-good day for American athletes. (Two words: Baton management.)

7:35 p.m.
Sorry, we may have drifted off there. Or wrote tomorrow's column. Perhaps both.

We awake to find much screaming on the CBC, where Juanita High grad Jill Kintner, 26, avoiding a nasty crash scene on the final curve before the finish, is winning a bronze medal in women's BMX racing, behind Anne-Caroline Chausson and Laetitia le Corguille of France. She'll go into the history books as receiving one of the first medals ever awarded in the sport.

Kintner, by the way, is competing on a trashed knee. Torn ACL. Her decision to switch from mountain-bike racing back to BMX, which she did as a youth, once BMX became an Olympic sport proved to be a good one.

The men's finals are up next.

7:45 p.m.
Americans Mike Day and Donny Robinson win silver and bronze in the men's BMX finals, both evading a major crash on the second turn. Maris Strombergs of Latvia won the gold.

BMX racing, if you haven't seen it, is the wheeled equivalent to a short-track speedskating sprint. Lots of jumps and turns, many crashes. An easy way to see four years' hard work go up in smoke in an instant. A full race, start to finish, is one lap and about 40 seconds.

NBC, incidentally, shows the women's final about 2 hours 45 minutes into tonight's prime time broadcast.

And then they are on to the beach volleyball men's final -- at long last, the final episode of this faux-sport soap opera.

9:15 p.m.
Our long national nightmare is over: The U.S. wins the gold medal in men's beach volleyball. There are no more matches, and the sport can go back to being completely ignored by the world for another four years.