The Olympics Are Officially Under Way

After the impressive Opening Ceremonies (yeah, yeah we get it... the Chinese are good with the technology), the Beijing Olympics are off to a pretty good start. With no major incidents, aside from Bob Costas' hair, the controversies surrounding these games were temporarily pushed aside. And judging by the large number of little girls performing, it's apparent that the nation had finally found a use for those pesky female offspring. Now that the pageantry is out of the way, the competition resumes in full force. What you missed while you were sleeping after the jump. • Phelps went to Beijing to win medals and it looks like he's pretty darn serious about it. He qualified for the 400-meter individual medley, beating his competitors by 1.44 seconds in the preliminaries and setting a new Olympic record for the event. • The first U.S. gold medal of the Beijing Olympics went to fencer Mariel Zagunas. Her teamates Sada Jacobson and Becca Ward took silver and bronze respectively, sweeping the event and making the U.S. the first country to three medals. • The U.S. women's soccer team has rebounded from an embarrassing loss to Norway to beat Japan 1-0. The win was much needed as the U.S. team is playing without their best player, Abby Wambach, before the games started. • In progress is women's basketball, beach volleyball, and equestrian. Equestrian is like horse racing without the excitement, money, and death. The television coverage today is chock full of events spanning five channels: NBC's coverage has begun and will take you to 6:00pm. On tap is women's volleyball (US-Japan), swimming, beach volleyball (US), men's cycling road race, women's fencing, and rowing. It will pick back up again from 8-10:00pm with various swimming, beach volleyball, and men's gymnastics events. USA will have coverage of various events including women's soccer and women's basketball until 2:00pm. MSNBC will have more soccer, volleyball, and team handball until 5:00pm. CNBC will have your boxing coverage from 5-8:00pm. Telemundo will have Spanish coverage of soccer, volleyball, and boxing.