It's 1pm Friday in Athens, 8pm here in Sydney on a balmy Friday evening in late winter. We're getting down to the Bismuth End of the Athens Games. Here's where the team sports are up to:

We've come a long way since Rick DeMont lost his swimming gold medal because of his asthma spray in 1972. Are there really more drug cheats in the Olympics these days or is the IOC just doing a better job of catching them? Two words: (i) East. (ii) Germany. Two more words: (iii) Stella. (iv) Walsh.

Since the start of these Games, the following medal-winners have been disqualified because of drug breaches:

When the Australian Government introduced anti-spam laws earlier this year, an exemption was included for charities and political parties. I've yet to see any legalised spam from an Australian charity or political party. They'd be mad to do it, you'd think.

They've been in Olympic competition since 1952, but tragically the words "Israel" and "Olympics" have mostly been used together in terms of the terrorist atrocity at Munich 1972. On Wednesday, however, Israel finally picked up its first gold medal.

Cuba has won the gold medal for Olympic baseball. That's three gold and one silver in the four Games since baseball was introduced in Barcelona 1992. They did so by defeating Australia 6-2 in the final on Wednesday night. It was Australia's first medal in olympic baseball competition.

Goodness me. There is a push on to have Tony Blair impeached over his handling of the Iraq/WMD issue, invoking some obscure laws not used since 1848 and never repealed.

Read these:

If there's anything that makes me immensely patriotic, it's the way we Australians place our imprint on the world stage. It doesn't matter whether it's David Wenham being Faramir, Jimmy Little doing U2 covers, Steve Waugh snubbing GW Bush, or the Puppetry of the Penis simply existing. And then there's the Australian baseballers beating the Japanese Dream Team.

Erki Nool failed to retain his Olympic decathlon crown on Tuesday. That was expected. He did, however, go one better than Sydney in having two discus throws judged legal instead of just one. The Erki Nool fan website doesn't appear to have been updated since April 2003 in Estonian, or September 2001 in English. Decathlon2000 covers the Estonian and world decathlon scene quite well however, and is up to date.

They were wetting themselves on the Monday night edition of TVE's Telediario. Spain had won their first gold medal of Athens 2004. And where else could it be but in the gymnasium? It was Gervasio Deferr who won the men's vault to become only the 20th Spanish gold medal winner in summer olympics history (including 13 at Barcelona 1992).

The unexpected happened in the Olympic softball final on Monday. That's right, Australia scored a run! Pity the USA made five...

I watched the final live on SBS from about the 3rd innings onward. Team USA got on top very quickly and left the Aussies playing a forlorn game of catchup. Chrystl Bustos whacked a huge two-run homer in the top of the first, and before the inning was over, Lisa Fernandez scrambled home on a Melissa Carpadios error.